Research Internship Motivation Letter Example

The problem with applying at this stage

You are in your second or third year. Everyone applying has roughly your marks, roughly your coursework and no publications. The group leader cannot separate you on credentials because there are none yet.

So they separate you on two things instead: whether you understand what the group does, and whether you show any sign of being able to work without being told what to do next. Both are demonstrable in a letter, and most applicants demonstrate neither.

The example is from Ilya Sokolov, a third year biochemistry undergraduate applying for a ten week summer placement in a structural biology group in Germany.

Pick the group before you write anything

Ilya's letter names the group's current focus, which is cryo electron microscopy of membrane transporters, and states which of the group's two active projects he wants to join and why.

That already puts him ahead of the majority, whose letters make clear they found the lab through a database filter and could not say what it works on. Group leaders receive dozens of letters addressed to "Dear Sir or Madam" describing a general interest in molecular biology, and those go nowhere.

What to take from it: read one recent paper from the group. Name it. Say which figure made you want to write.

One project, described as method

Ilya has exactly one piece of relevant experience: a semester project purifying a bacterial protein. That is not much, and he does not pretend otherwise.

What he does is describe it properly. He states the construct, the expression system, the purification route, the yield he got and the yield the protocol claimed. He notes the yield was low, that he traced it to a proteolysis problem during lysis, and what he changed. He mentions he ran the gels himself.

A paragraph like this tells a supervisor more than a list of ten techniques. It shows he was present for the work rather than watching a postdoc do it, and that he can describe a problem and its cause.

What to take from it: do not list techniques. Narrate one problem, its diagnosis and its fix, at the level of detail your supervisor would use.

Say what you want to learn

Undergraduates often write as though they should already be useful. They should not, and the group leader knows it. Ten weeks of a student who wants to learn one technique properly is worth more than ten weeks of a student who wants to be impressive.

Ilya names the technique: sample preparation and grid screening for cryo EM. He says he has never done it, that his department has no microscope, and that this is exactly why he is applying abroad rather than staying.

Practical details the supervisor needs

Four lines, near the end. His available dates, which are longer than the minimum the group asks for. His funding position, which is that he has applied for a national mobility grant and will know the outcome in March. His visa status. Whether he needs help finding accommodation.

Supervisors have hosted students who turned up without funding sorted. Putting this in the letter removes a round of emails and marks you as someone who has done this thinking already.

Length and tone

400 to 550 words. Address a named person. If the group has more than one principal investigator, pick the one whose project you named and say why you wrote to them rather than the other.

Attach a one page CV and a transcript. Do not restate either in the letter.

The usual failure modes

• A mass email with the lab name substituted. The absence of any specific reference to the group's work is obvious in the first line.
• Claiming competence in techniques you have seen once. You will be asked about them.
• Writing three paragraphs about a lifelong fascination with science. It is not evidence and the reader has read it four hundred times.
• No dates. A supervisor cannot plan around an applicant who has not said when they are free.

Before you send it

Check the group's website for a page saying how they want to be contacted. A surprising number specify a subject line format or ask for a particular attachment, and ignoring it is the cheapest possible way to be filtered out.