PhD application

Hi all,

I am a Dutch student and while I am confident in writing English for a scientific paper, I have never written an PhD application before. I was hoping someone out here could check my letter whether it would be sufficient. Thanks a bunch!

Dear prof. XXXX,

I wish to apply for a PhD position in your research group at the XXXXX.

Currently I am a Master student specialized in Molecular Pharmacology, at the department of XXXX. In February 2012 I will obtain my Master of Science degree, and I expect to graduate with honours.

Even though I always had a strong academic performance, ranking among the best students in my year, I felt that laboratory research interested me more than coursework because I could put all my theoretical knowledge in practice. This became very apparent during my major research project for my Master’s, in which for the first time I found myself truly motivated to work for results. The project has allowed me to sharpen my skills in critical thinking and acquiring the necessary advanced technical skills I could not develop by doing coursework. Above all, I just loved solving parts of this biological puzzle of cellular signalling networks and protein dynamics.

Because of my drive for laboratory work, this past year instead of doing coursework, I did a research project in Canada in one of the laboratories at the University of Toronto. I chose to go abroad to a completely new environment in order to challenge myself. I got to meet and interact with many people from around the world with all kinds of diverse backgrounds. This experience allowed me to develop myself both personally and professionally by gaining a deeper understanding of different perspectives in life and research.

When I initially started my project in Toronto, I was overwhelmed by the amount of freedom I was given, because in my former project the outline was much more defined. I needed to develop a lipid extraction method but no one before has had any positive results. In addition, the field of research was very different from my own background, so at first I was worried that I would not be able to succeed. However through hard work, and my ability to adapt to this new environment I was able to develop the method to the validation phase. Currently some last experiments are being performed and I will be writing a paper about my results in the near future, something I never expected to be doing for this particular project.

I want to further establish myself as an independent researcher and I believe that a PhD position would facilitate that growth. While I like all kinds of fields such as developmental biology or diabetes research, cancer has always been the most fascinating to me. Your group’s focus on cancer cellular signalling networks in combination with drug target finding, is particularly interesting. Furthermore, the fact that scientists at the Netherlands Cancer Institute are able to collaborate closely with clinicians in the nearby hospital, I believe creates an optimal learning environment I would like to take part in.

If given the opportunity, I am confident that I would be a great addition to your team. As I am ambitious in nature, I hope to exceed your expectations. Complementing my academic qualifications is a strong desire to do high quality research using advanced techniques, something your laboratory could offer me.

Thank you for considering my application and I look forward to your acceptance.

Sincerely yours,