Help for Motivation Letter

Hi everyone! \(^o^)/~

My name is Lunar. I am senior student and I am preparing for applying for a mater's program now. I have read many motivation letters and the directions on how to write a good motivation here, and they are very helpful. But I am still uncertain about mine, as I find it hard for me to express in a more concise and native way. So I want to post my draft here, looking forward for advice and revision. Any kind suggestions would be highly appreciated.

The following is my draft:

To whom it may be concerned,

My name is **, a senior student from *** University, **, majoring in Applied Psychology. Greatly impressed by your studies with considerable achievements in Clinical Psychology, I am very motivated to apply for your Master Program in Behavioral and Social Science in September, 2012, and I also have the exact schedule of preceding the doctorate study in the field afterwards.

I came to know your faculty of Behavioral and Social Science as I collected methods and materials about the implicit motivation. Your investigation on the implicit cognition patterns underlying the various psychological disorders, and the efforts in exploring the reliability and validity of the implicit tests inspire me greatly. I am longing to know more about how to help people reduce the sufferings from the anxiety and depression and always wondering how to adapt the current implicit tests, to provide more reliable interpretations rather than controversial results. Therefore I believe your Master Program of Behavioral Science would provide me with the exact knowledge and skills necessary to understand and apply.

My interest in psychology began when I was still in the senior high school. Although my studying would have mainly earned the very fame from entering into any one of the prestigious universities here in **, I was lost in finding my near future’s goal. This phenomenon may be rather common in **, as everything is arranged well by the very parents. I felt rather puzzled and I quitted my school days with opposing voices from everywhere – my parents, my teachers, and even the relatives. Exactly, I did not know how to go forward. I did a job instead, and everything was as planned, but I still felt puzzled and anxious. I read a lot and asked many people, but it was not until one day I read a self-assistance book that I found out that what I was experiencing was the conflict between the identity and identity confusion, which is normal for adolescents. I finally sensed the value of my struggle and felt a great burden relieved. Succumbed to the magic of psychology world, I read as much as possible, from the self-assistance ones, to the elementary ones like introduction to the psychoanalysis, which not only suited my appetite to study people’s emotions and minds, but also inspired me to learn more. I finally found out my direction and went back to school with an absence of two and a half years, but still passed the college entrance examination successfully one semester later.

My passion in psychology intensified as I watched two of my classmates, suffered from schizophrenia and severe depression respectively, visiting doctor after doctor and clinic after clinic in the city. If they had received effective psychological help in time, the situation would be rather different. In addition, I also found many adolescents and adults in my community troubled by various causes as well, which overshadowed their life quality. We were only told that hard working brought happy life, which was proved not always to be true. I finally realized that mental health was one of the determinants in the quality of life, and I determined to explore deeply in this field.

During the undergraduate days, I have been keeping on working hard to improve myself constantly. In addition to maintaining a high GPA, I also had an internship at the psychiatric hospital in our city and volunteered at ** Consultation Center, where I both gained much practical experience. Supervised by experienced psychological counselor, I helped a teenager girl get adapted her junior school life and alleviated a young man’s constantly phobia for death, which inspired me very much. Besides, being a research assistant of Professor ** and taking charge in my own project, I learned that research is far more than simply doing experiments and writing a report. In addition to finding an interesting and meaningful topic and making a research draft, I must deal with some challenges as well, of which the most difficult was to perform an implicit test to access the learning motivation of college students, by using the Semantic Priming Paradigm. I searched many tutorials, and stayed in the library until it closed to learn how to use E-Prime and Inquisit. Finally, I composed the program we needed and I am adjusting it now.

Briefly described above, I am confident to be a positively potential candidate for the coming 2012 graduate program. As contributing to the alleviation of the sufferings from mental disorders is my lifelong focus, I am committed to succeeding at this master program, and I believe that my passion, integrity, and human kindness would surely be a credit to the profession I would step into, a source of pride to the institution from which I graduate. Thank you for consideration.