So you are faced with one of the most difficult parts of your application: writing an essay or a motivation letter. You have no idea where to begin or what to write. It seems like everything you can come up with is “little important” or you fall in the trap of devoting all of your essay to writing about your life, your achievements and the circumstances that led to your application to this particular university and program…
No need to despair! Below you will find some suggestions to make your essay writing less of a pain and more effective.
1. Content: one of the most difficult factors is to decide what to write, as it is commonly believed that this is the most important part of the document, that you need to amaze the reader with your almost supra natural traits and achievements. Fortunately, this is a myth. What is really important is how you express your ideas: the flow of your ideas, the way in which you engage and touch the reader.
In order to make the document more “important”, applicants often fall into the use of complicated words and clichés and philosophizing, which should be avoided as they make the text sound stiff and grandiloquent.
2. Attractiveness: it is not necessary to be a prize-winning writer to make the essay attractive. This is simply a matter of finding an original approach, a way of presenting ideas that is very much aligned with one’s uniqueness.
An opening line that catches the reader’s attention is fundamental. A question or an original and even controversial statement, which appeals to the reader’s imagination is fundamental to ensure that he/she wants to continue reading. A phrase such as “It all started then: the search, the finding, the decision” is way more interesting than “After a long search, I found this program to which I am applying with this letter”, don’t you think?
3. Flow of ideas: all of us can probably think of a text that we had to read more than once to understand it. The need to re-read happens when ideas are not clearly connected, when words don’t flow.
The secret to an attractive reading is that every idea and every word is interconnected to the others. Thus, every phrase and paragraph leads the reader, without gaps or confusions, in a fluid and natural way, from the beginning to the end of the document.
4. Unforgettable impressions: the last part of the document must contribute to making the text something that the reader won’t forget. To achieve this, it is not necessary to have done some supra natural deed; you just need to generate an emotional connection with the reader. At the end of the text he/she must feel either touched or identified, surprised or amused.
In short, the document must be attractive and entertaining to the reader. It must flow and must leave an impression in the reader, without using clichés, complicated phrases, nor philosophizing.
