Writing Chevening Essay: Breakdown Those 4 Questions

Writing an essay for Chevening scholarship was not an easy task. But surely, we need to invest our time to write, revise and polish it. The whole writing process took me 1.5 months, but let’s not use this as a standard as anyone can have different situations.

In this post, I’m going to breakdown each question and share how I answered my Chevening essay. It is surely not the perfect one, but I’d like to share what I think essential when answering those four questions. I also did a mentoring program for Chevening applicants 19/20 and some of my mentees were accepted! Having said that, I’m sure there are some of my tips that you can use.

Disclaimer. This post does not reflect on the Chevening Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and its partner organisations. This story is just my experience and personal thoughts working on Chevening’s essay.

Without further ado, let’s go through each question.

Chevening 2018/2019 Farewell!

Leadership and Influence 

One of the common thoughts that most applicants have about leadership is the position; the title. I would say, no. The title is a legitimation that you have the power to lead, but beyond that, I think the most important thing that Chevening really look is the impact of your leadership. They are also looking for a potential leader. So, it does not matter if you don’t have a Manager, Head, Leader, etc in your resume as long as you can showcase your influencing and leadership skills by giving examples.

Before start writing, think about what leadership accomplishments that you had. List all down and select two to three examples that gave great impact and made you learn the most. Each question only allows 500 words hence we really need to be careful to choose which experience to be put in the essay. If you can, try to put examples in different cases and environment to show that you have a range of leadership experiences.

As I already mentioned in the previous post about general tips for writing Chevening essay, it is important to give an introduction. Although this is just a suggestion, if you’re unsure where to start, you can try with what you believe about leadership or a brief about what kind of leader you think you are. After that, you can link to your leadership experiences, supporting your statement about the leadership that you write in the introduction. Build an engaging introduction is also crucial to make the panel stay reading your story. Remember, they read thousands of essays, at least you want to keep them engaged with your essay.

In my case, my first sentence in the intro was: I believe that the leaders are not born, but made through a process of hard work. I then supported this statement by briefly telling several experiences during high schools and how it has been forming me primary wisdom about leadership. However, this is not my highlight of the leadership experience that I want to tell the panel. Hence, I used a linking sentence such as I apply this wisdom to excel my role in current employment, but my training is never complete. The linking sentence could also serve as a bridge to the next thing I have on my plate and build the story’s flow.

Then, I wrote two examples of my leadership experiences which are happened in my office using Situation, Task, Actions, Result (STAR) structure. Read about this here. I would say give more portion for “action” because the more specific and detail you give, the more panellist know you hence more room to asses you.

I wrote one success story about my experiences in leading an early-stage start-up company. When you write a success story, make sure that you’re really specific about what you did, what steps that you did differently to achieve the goal? Did you face challenges? How did you overcome the challenge? Did people doubt you? How did you convince them to finally follow your leadership? I wrote about making an unpopular decision which I deemed a huge challenge; I should do it otherwise it won’t do any good for the company. From this story, I took an angle on the lesson learned and how it contributed to mature my emotions.

When you write about result, if you can, give a quantifiable result to justify the impact. However, the bottom line is to justify your impact. Tell them that there are people who benefited from the projects that you led — it could be personal or organisational.

Another thing is to mention your lesson learned. What you learned from each experience that contributes to your personal development. I personally think this is critical to show that you’re a human and a growing person. We all know that leadership is not a one-day skill, it takes years to sharpen it hence mistakes are okay to be mentioned as long as you can turn the “angle” into supporting your story.

Finish the essay with a closing paragraph which amplifies Chevening’s role in developing your leadership skill. What is your aspiration, in regards to leadership skill, if you were accepted as Chevening scholar? State this briefly and do the same for the next 4 questions.

One of the Chevening events specifically for scholars: Leadership skill workshop with business pitching and social entrepreneurship as the theme

 

Networking

I would say that the networking question was a bit difficult for me to elaborate. Why? Because again, Chevening is looking for someone whose networking skills could create an impact. So, in my opinion, it’s not about showing off how big your network is or how often you attend networking events, instead of how you use your network to create a greater impact.

Using the same approach as in question 1, answer the question by STAR structure. Started by an introduction, get into the main body and finish with closing.

In my case, I was using my exchange program to South Korea during undergraduate study as a chance to meet new friends — where one of that friend was playing a great role of me working at an early-stage startup company, a place where I highlighted my  leadership skills in the first question. The company is obviously has been a place for me to create an impact on the team and communities. For instance, a collaboration opportunity with external media to provide cross-content and it would give us huge traffic for the website.

Emphasise the impact you’ve created because of the networking you did. Give two to three networking skills and experiences that you have and again, be detail. Highlight that the impact is not only beneficial for you, but also for another side that you network with.

In the closing, you should elaborate Chevening’s role in your networking skills, you can try to relate how Chevening would expand your networking and how will you use Chevening networking if you were accepted as Chevening scholar.

During the workshop, scholars were grouped to pitch our business ideas. This is one networking benefit by being a Chevening scholar: meet brilliant minds that have the same passion 🙂

Studying in the UK

While questions about leadership and networking are more to dig your skills and capability in becoming a potential future leader, in my opinion, questions about studying in the UK and career plan are crucial to showing your cause, passion and how do you stay true with that. This can be a very critical part that would differentiate you from other applicants I guess, as I would say that Chevening is looking for people who would serve and build their community. So, it is important to answer the last 2 questions coherently.

To make your essay coherent, try to answer these questions as a base for you to answer questions number 3 and 4.

• Who am I?
• What is my passion/concern?
• What problems do I want to solve?
• How will I solve the problems?

My ultimate advise for this part is don’t write more than 50% for the courses and campus rank. Write more about you: your passion, area of expertise, problems found in your field and what is your vision — which supposed to be related with your expertise area. Think about why taking a master study in those three specific courses and universities is going to help you to achieve your vision. This information is really helpful to link and congruent your story in the question no.4 (career plan). 

In my case, I used a fact that the growth of digital start-up in Indonesia has been astonishing recently but it is not followed by the success rate of a startup. If you want to use a fact, don’t forget to put the source. I outlined that the major problem was startup founders mostly great in building products yet tend to ignore other managerial skills such as people development, sales and finance (again, I put source). I then linked this statement to my personal experience working in an early stage start-up company where I had limited experiences or skills which happens to be a similar situation like startup founders. Hence, a degree in innovation and entrepreneurship would give me a balanced set of technical skills and knowledge in building early ventures.

From previous paragraph, I answered three basic questions to outline my background. Who am I? — A start-up early employee, what is my passion? — early venture development, what problems do I want to solve? — the high rate of startup failure rate and how will you solve it? — a degree in innovation and entrepreneurship by Chevening scholarship as one of stepping stones and followed by action plans that I will write in the question no.4

After outlining the “background” story about you, you can write the three courses. Highlight the reason why you choose them, it can be the campus ranking, curriculum, or professors/projects. I chose Warwick University’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship because of the curriculum, the final project worth 50% of the final grade in which devoted to developing the business innovation carefully.  The school also placed the second rank of best Entrepreneurship master degree in the UK, after Oxford. My second choice was Imperial College and the third was the City University of London.

By the way, another advise choosing the school, besides research the course and its curriculum, do find out about the whole campus. Think about the facilities, clubs/societies, opportunities, the lifestyle (or living cost), nearby attractions, the city it’s located, etc. Ask current students about living in your designated campus, how do they like the campus and its surroundings? How about life after campus? I’m saying this not because I dislike Warwick University, instead, the campus has its own art centre and biggest sports centre in Coventry — which is realllly cool, but I would say Coventry itself doesn’t have many attractions to offer. But for the bright side, that really helps me to focus on my study and save money (it’s true!); it forces me to travel to other places more often hehe.  I would share my travel stories in other posts. Coventry also not too far from London and Birmingham, the two biggest cities in the UK. It’s easier for me to jump on opportunities in UK startups scene.

Me, after submitted my dissertation project. Look how happy I was!

Career Plans

One thing I always shared to Chevening applicants who asked me to proofread their essay is: make a clear plan and breakdown into short term, mid-term and long term goal. Ensure each breakdown is contributing to your long-term goals if that makes sense? This way, it shows that you know how to get there. In my case, I wrote for immediate plans (2 years after study), the next 5 years and beyond 5 years. Make sure that your career goals are answering your concern and supporting your passion (stated in question no.3) which forms a more congruent essay.

As you need to relate your career goals to what the UK Government do in your country, you need to research. This might be different in every country and it might change year by years. You can start the search from the official UK’s government website (http://gov.uk/world/name of country/news). Research thoroughly and try to link what you can contribute through your career goal.

Another thing to highlight is state how Chevening is one of the paths you would greatly benefit to take you to your future goals. How would you apply things you got from Chevening (the scholarship, the network, the education, the international friends) in your future career path? In my case, I outlined that I would use network from Chevening alumni to open access for mentors who can guide and share expertise to founders in establishing a new business.

As this is the last question, end the whole essay with a strong “punchline”. Keep elaborate Chevening, you can try to summarise outlined your aspiration by being a Chevening scholar. In my case, I mentioned that I still have to acquire deeper knowledge in innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as expanding my network to collaborate together in solving the problem. I acknowledged that from previous experiences, I gained valuable lessons in networking and leadership, however, I believe it’s still not enough. I then closed with thus, by being a Chevening scholar, I believe I would be (fill in the blank). 

I hope this article helps you! I also want to highlight that this is just my personal experience and thoughts, it might be not relevant for different courses; many of my Chevening friends pursue a course that I don’t know it exists 😀 (but that’s what I like about Chevening: they acknowledge that future leaders can contribute in any field). Lastly, write the essay with all your heart, write what you feel right and true. Good luck, keep fighting and believe in yourself!

Good luck, keep fighting!