Motivation letter, help needed

Hello MountainHiker,

I'm trying to write a motivation letter to apply to a Master's program. I read your recommendations before starting to work. I really liked them and tried to stick to them but still feel that I failed in many ways. I had a good idea about organizing my letter around things that drive and motivate me in life but looks like I just end up writing a vague and wordy letter. Hope you could help me to save it until it's too late.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I think that the best way to describe reasons why I intend to attend the Master’s Program in Computer Science in the University of XXX is to tell about things that have been driving me through my life so far, thing that really excite and motivate me, things that keep showing me the way forward.

The first such thing is my will to create. I have always had it, as long as I can remember myself and it is definitely it what brought me to computer science. I wanted to write programs even before I knew what programming is. The sole idea of creating something that would live on its own and let other people interact with it excited me. So I wrote my first program in C at the age of 15 and never stopped since then.

In the university I found that studying alone could not satisfy my creation hunger so I started to work in the industry as soon as I could, in the second year of my education. Besides a chance to take part in development of large scale, real world applications it also made me familiar with working in an international team so now I can say that I almost cannot imagine different work environment. I have been working in the industry during my whole study period, and it gave me a lot of priceless experience. Right now I am working as Senior Software Engineer in a FFF office of a Swedish IT company being the youngest employee in the company.

Working in this international environment was not only useful for me, I also enjoyed it because being able to communicate with people from all other the world, learn from them, try to get a sense of how they percept the world around them is the second life determining part of my personality. I was trying to satisfy this desire to learn from different cultures by traveling as much as I could and by taking part in the CouchSurfing project, hosting people from all other the world at my place in HHHH and, as a final point of on this path so far, last year I decided to go to study in Europe by exchange for a semester. I applied and was nominated by the University among just two people in that semester. This story was starting just as a, so to say, long time travel, that was supposed to deepen my understanding of German culture and give me some experience of living abroad but in the end it has truly changed my plans for the future.

In the YYY University I was studying on a Computer Science Program and it was a very useful experience by itself but it was not it what affected me so much. During my stay in JJJ I made friends with some students who were studying on the Autonomous Systems Master’s Program and they opened for me the field of intelligent systems. It is not that I had never heard about robotics or artificial intelligence before that, I even had a course in robotics in my university in HHH, but, honestly speaking, it was quite superficial and boring. This area always seemed to be something very far away from me but in JJJ I met regular students, students just like me, who were doing amazing things during their studies. They showed me their labs, told about researches they were doing and I understood that this might be the thing that I really want to do in my life. Field of intelligent systems has all the properties that I was missing in software engineering: it is complex and mathematically intensive, it has a lot of unsolved problems and it sets really big goals.

This last property is especially important for me because the third thing that was driving me in my life is ambition. I always knew that I can achieve everything that I want and there have been enough proves of it in my life. For example, I was studying in German in JJJ but half a year before going there I did not know a word in German. For many people it seemed impossible to learn the language good enough in such a short time, but in the end of the semester I did not only pass all the exams bust passed them with perfect marks. Having big goals ahead was always very important to me and the field of intelligent systems definitely sets such goals: applying data mining trying to find a cure for cancer, developing a new version of internet with the linked data technology, working on creation of a general purpose artificial intelligence, in the end. Each of these and many other goals that arise in that field are definitely one of those things you will not regret that you have spent your life on at the end of it.

After returning from Germany I started to dig deeper in the field through reading articles and watching lectures on the web. Right now I am attending Stanford online courses in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. This experience of self education has proven for me that this is definitely the field that I want to work in but it also became clear to me that self education alone is not enough. To be able to conduct a serious research I need a strong theoretical base which I can get only through a Masters Degree.

When I was choosing a university in which I want to get this Masters Degree I considered a lot of options but the critical factor that led me to choosing the University XXX was an extremely positive feedback that I got from student who study on this program. During my stay in JJJ I made friends with a number of students of the Master’s Program in Computer Science from different countries with different backgrounds but they all were absolutely happy with everything that was happening in the university. Above all, the facts that all professors are involved in an active research and that there are a lot of opportunities to find a part time job in a research institute nearby and start your academic career during your study were especially appealing to me.

It is fair to ask why I do not apply to the Autonomous Systems Program in the YYY University which affected me so much. There are two main reasons. First of all I would like to work in the research field, whereas Autonomous Systems Program prepares student for working in industry. Secondly this program is focused on Robotics and I am more interested in general question of Artificial Intelligence and in Machine Learning and never wanted to work with hardware.

So, as you can see, will to create, openness to the world, and ambitions are three factors that led me to the decision to apply to this Master’s Program and make me sure that I will both benefit from it and contribute to it. My strong experience in creating large scale, real world systems will be very useful in working on team assignments during the study and applying my knowledge after it, my international experience will let me integrate to the university environment easily and even help other students to do so and my ambitions will make me take the most out of the study, achieve the best possible results and, in the end, make my own contribution to science.

Yours faithfully,

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