Chevening 2020/21 Online Application Preparation Mentorship

(via Global Whatsapp Group)

Day Ten: Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Presenter: Mr. Ahmed Issa (Palestine) – Chevening Scholar 2019/20
Moderator/Compiled by: Mr. Jason Sabajo (Suriname) – Prospectus Chevening Scholar 2020/21

Opening Remarks on the session day by the Moderator and calling the platform to
order.

Guys, good afternoon,

Today’s presentation will be about the Why study in the UK essay.

The question you will be answering in this essay is: Outline why you have selected your chosen
three university courses, and explain how this relates to your previous academic or
professional experience and your plans for the future. Please do not duplicate the
information you have entered on the work experience and education section of this form.
(minimum 100, maximum 500 words)

Some background information of the Presenter:

Today's presenter is Mr. Ahmed Issa from Palestine. He will talk about the Why study in the UK
essay. Ahmed holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and is currently working as a
Social Media Administrator. He will be studying the MSc in Marketing and Strategy at Warwick
Business School.

If you are welcome please welcome Ahmed in the House

Ahmed welcome, the floor is yours!

Presentation by Ahmed

Thank you very much Jason for introducing me for this group and your splendid efforts in helping
the future Cheveners in achieving their dreams.

Hello everyone, my name is Ahmed Issa and I work as social media and online community
engagement manager. I am going to study MSc Marketing and Strategy at Warwick University
this year 2020/2021 and got the Chevening Scholarship from the first attempt.

I would like to talk with you about Study in the UK part and how I approached this question, but
before this I want to emphasize on some aspects.

Before applying to Chevening:

− Open a word document and answer this critical question; Why do I want to get Masters?
Your personal, professional, and community goals? What is the impact that you want to
make in your country?
 − Read as much as you can from Chevening website and about other Cheveners. Get deep
understanding what Chevening is looking for? what are the personal traits for next
Cheveners?
− Write every idea that come up to your mind that you may think will support your Chevening
application.
− Work hard every day and write every idea don’t limit yourself with 500 words. You need
to write at least 2000 words for every essay question in order to trim it to 500 words.
− Be specific and focused about everything in your application, and make it aligned around
one goal.

Now, I want to talk how I approached the Study in the UK essay question.
First, I understood every part of the question and divided it into different parts so I can answer it
fully without ignoring anything.
The question is as follows: Outline why you have selected your chosen three university courses,
and explain how this relates to your previous academic or professional experience and your plans
for the future.

The questions contain two parts:

The first one: why I choose the three university courses, which must be in the same specialty from
different universities. You have to choose three courses in the same field/specialty, for example, I
choose Marketing and Strategy from Warwick, Marketing from Durham, and Digital Marketing
from Loughborough.

The second part is to explain how this relates to three different things, previous academic or
professional experience, and the plans for the future.

So, I started my answer as follows:

− First, I stated the overall problem in my country that is related to my studies and how I was
affected by it personally and mentioned some statistics from Palestinian Central Bureau of
Statistics.
− Second, I mentioned briefly my previous working work positions, voluntary work during
studies and after graduation and then mentioned my future goal (this in one short sentence),
please make sure what you mention here are all related to what you are going to study in
the UK.
− Third, I mentioned the three universities that I am applying for and what are the
commonalities in the three university courses, and how the basic modules are going to help
me to achieve my career goals.
− Fourth, I started talking about the university courses, starting from the first choice
(Warwick University) and dug deep in the specific modules for the course and how they
are going to help me in my future career goal. Here, I suggest you read a lot about the
university as a whole and read about the course modules in details, ask the university
admission officer to get you more details if it is not clear from their website, and make it
aligned with your specific career goals. Please make sure that your career goals are so much
specific, by mentioning names of organizations that you are looking to work with, or if you
are currently working for an organization and you want to study something that will help
in developing a department in the organization and try to link it with how this will in return
help the community as a whole.
 − Fifth, I mentioned the second choice and how it relates also to my career goals.
− Sixth, the last choice talked about it in brief and what differentiate it from other choices.
− Last, talk about in general how studying in the UK will help you develop yourself, mindset
and attitudes and how it will affect your career goals in helping your community.

For the interview:

The interviewer asked me, why do I want to study in the UK?

So, I was prepared for this question to talk about UK in general and how it will benefit me, read
the Chevening website it has a lot of information about this. And don’t say general things that does
not relate to you, everything that you say make it related to your personality, your professional
experience and your future career goals.

That’s how I approached the study in the UK essay question. If you have any question please let
me know.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Moderator: Ahmed, many thanks for this short but in-depth presentation.
The group will be open for some questions.

The attendees didn’t had questions for our presenter.

Moderator: Ahmed, once again thank you for your contribution.

Group thank you for being present!

We will close today's session, till the next one!!