Motivation letter / Statement of purpose: Part 2: For PhD

Getting into graduate school / higher education is hard. Even though a few percentage of the University / College graduates prefer to go into grad school, due to limited paid positions, the chances of ending up in your dream institute can be challenging. Now that I am 6 months into my PhD, and after getting positive responses on my previous post on how to write motivation letter for Master's degree, I decided to write a post on tips I learned the hard way with a couple of rejections. Everyone's journey and background are different, every department has its way of selection, feel free to modify it depending on your needs.

Now that you have a master's degree and a little more research background, there may be too much to write. Even though it is always recommended to keep CVs, resumes, motivation letters as short as 1 A4 size page short, with all the experience and background, it may be hard to summarize it to 1 page. My motivation letter is a little longer than 1 page and a half.

This short description is a way to advertise yourself and catch promoters attention. I don't know how the review process goes in each department, but I would personally check the CV first and if it catches my attention, read motivation letter to see how this person describes the things they mentioned on their CV.

Here is how I structured mine;

1st paragraph I explained why I became a civil engineer and how my bachelor's degree helped me

2nd paragraph I summarized my accomplishments and projects and general skills I obtained in the master's degree

3rd paragraph I explained why I couldn't go into PhD directly (I took approximately 2 years off between my masters and PhD) and how I used this time, including brief information about my industrial job and highlighted the skills I improved that can help me get into the position I am applying for.

4th paragraph I explained how I conducted research part time because I just liked it better than my industrial job while looking for a full-time PhD.

5th paragraph summarizes why I want to go back to academia and pursue a PhD. Depending on the topic of the application I try to write a few sentences on how and why I am interested in those research areas.

The 6th paragraph is my final paragraph which I wrap up everything in the letter and give some final comments on why I can potentially be a good candidate.

Even though with 6 paragraphs I almost reach 2 pages, I wished I could write a small research interest paragraph. Depending on how relevant the topic is with your background, this paragraph can be as long as a page. After being the 3rd selected candidate for a position I really wanted, one critical comment the interviewers had was that they preferred to have a research proposal added that is relevant to the topic. After learning that, I start writing a short proposal to the positions I really wanted to get into, which I had some background.

As I mentioned, it is very hard to get a good PhD position, one thing I'd like to add is that sometimes some positions open for specific students already known by the department who proved themselves. Don't let this discourage you, but always keep it on the mind.