An essential part of any application, the cover letter, helps your interviewer or interview panel to get to know you better, beyond the very factual information in your CV. It also gives an indication of how you express yourself, the care you have taken in your application and your understanding of the programme/school you are applying to.
To give yourself the best chance of success, it's important not to neglect it.
And yet there are three mistakes that international students regularly make in their applications.
1. Content inspired on the web but not personalised
With the numerous templates on the web and the recent artificial intelligence tools, it's very tempting to use a little help when writing your cover letter. But in any case, generic content cannot and should not be copied literally, without personalisation or adaptation.
Templates often leave text boxes to be filled in with, for example, the name of the intended training programme or course of study. If you don't take the time to complete these elements with your own project, it will be obvious that you didn't write the cover letter yourself or, in any case, that you didn't devote as much attention to it as you should have.
For example, "I hereby wish to highlight my determination to join the Name of programme at your Name of school" or "I have been passionate about the [Insert name of sector] sector for several years...".
This kind of mistake can quickly turn the strength of your cover letter into a weak point in your application. If you use borrowed formulas or automated writing tools, take the time to finalise the document so that it reflects your personal project.
2. Paragraphs off-topic
Here again, it is not uncommon to see letters that seem to have been written for another programme, another school, another project. It's perfectly understandable to have several projects or to be applying to several programmes, but in that case you absolutely must adapt your letter to each project.
A student hesitating between an international business programme and a tourism programme, for example, will not be able to use the same letter and the same argument for both projects. Talking about the growth of the tourism industry to justify the desire to train in international business doesn't make much sense, and also shows a lack of attention to detail in the cover letter.
The same goes for the name of the school or programme to which you are applying: it is essential that you quote it properly and avoid getting confused with other names, whether from competing schools or not.
3. Spelling and grammatical errors
While what you say is certainly the most important thing, how you say it is also of major importance.
Providing a cover letter with repeated spelling or grammatical errors runs the risk of suggesting both that your academic level is inadequate and that you did not consider this step to be important, highlighting a lack of motivation on your part.
Automatic document correction tools are now highly developed and easily accessible on any digital medium, so it is even less understandable to submit a badly written covering letter.
By avoiding these 3 pitfalls and taking care to demonstrate the coherence of your project and your profile, you will ensure that your cover letter is a tool that will help you gain admission and make your study project a reality!
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