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chevening.org
Where did I go wrong? Reading
Committee feedback for applicants |
Chevening
6-8 minutes
As Chevening Scholarship results are announced, you may find
that you have not received the news you were hoping for, and in
this case will no doubt wonder where you might have gone wrong
in your application – after all, you’ll want to review your application
ahead of reapplying with even stronger essays when applications
reopen soon!
Chevening uses independent Reading Committees to assess all
eligible applications, and this year, they assessed over 53,000
eligible Chevening Scholarship applications for 2020/2021 intake.
Based on their collective feedback, we have highlighted some of
the most common reasons applications were not scored as highly
as they could have been, and what applicants can do to improve
their essays for the future.
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Leadership and influence
Chevening is looking for individuals who will be future leaders or
influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this
requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and
influencing skills to support your answer.
Strengths:
The best scoring applicants demonstrated clear examples of
leadership and influencing with concrete results.
Weaknesses:
Very few applicants were able to combine successful leadership
qualities with evidence.
Some applicants focussed on leadership examples from their early
academic experiences, even their school experiences, rather than
examples from their recent or current professional experience
which may have provided more relevant examples of leadership
ability.
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A significant number seemed to have assumed that occupying a
particular position or role was in itself sufficient to demonstrate
leadership skills. Thus, detailed instancing of how influence was
successfully gained and deployed, and the beneficial outcomes of
this, was fairly rare.
The most common error is students continuing to define leadership
rather than provide examples of their traits and linking them to the
degree/post-study work plans.
General recommendations:
Taking more of a STAR (situation, task, action, result) approach
may have helped to refine these responses.
Applicants should focus less on the collective “we” and “team” in
this answer and place greater emphasis on their individual
contribution, to achieve a higher score.
Examples required more focus in terms of exactly how they led
and, more notably, what were the results of their leadership and
how did that have a long-term impact on their professional
development.
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Networking
Chevening is looking for individuals with strong professional
relationship-building skills, who will engage with the Chevening
community and influence and lead others in their chosen
profession. Please explain how you build and maintain
relationships in a professional capacity, using clear examples of
how you currently do this, and outline how you hope to use these
skills in the future.
Strengths:
Strong applicants in this section used specific examples of their
own networks, describing unique and diverse ways of maintaining
networks, and discussed how they facilitate networking.
Weaknesses:
Many applicants scored ‘good’ as they could clearly evidence
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networking skills, and even the start of building networks within the
current Chevening community, but few expanded on this.
Merely joining a social media network is relatively straightforward
and quick to organise, and probably not the strongest example of
relationship building skills; few applications demonstrated in
specific detail how and why creating and joining these networks
had proved beneficial.
Many of the applicants found it difficult to connect their notions of
networking with clear examples of using them at work. Answers
were often generic with relationships and collaboration with direct
and indirect colleagues discussed, but not expanded upon to
clearly show how these relationships would help the individual in
the future.
Studying in the UK
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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
Strengths:
The strongest answers had a clear focus on study outcomes with
evidence of research at institution and course level.
The applicants who answered this question best did so by having
distinct paragraphs discussing their courses.
Weaknesses:
Applicants frequently did not specify their chosen universities or
demonstrate an awareness of key details from within their fields.
Applicants who had applied for three very diverse course subjects
did not inspire confidence in their research into courses and were
frequently unable to give clear and coherent reasons for these
choices.
While many showed a cursory or better than cursory knowledge of
their chosen course and university, often the detail given on this
read like a cut-and-paste from university promotional material
rather than real engagement with subject or course detail.
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Career Plan
Chevening is looking for individuals who have a clear post-study
career plan. Please outline your immediate plans upon returning
home and your longer term career goals. You may wish to
consider how these relate to what the UK government is doing in
your country.
Strengths:
The strongest responses tended to be based on an outline of
specific, concrete goals, which usually therefore seemed more
convincing and achievable.
Weaknesses:
Applicants often listed future aims in relation to their careers, and
some explored realistic next steps in depth. Yet most did not give a
strong rationale, which made a potential clear career path
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unconvincing.
Many applicants illustrated a desire to do a PhD in the post study
section. This is ambitious and realistic, but wasn’t always a
convincing career goal on its own. That is to say, it needed to be
backed up with reasons why they wanted to pursue research work
and how it plays a part in their longer-term ambitions.
Career plans were too often poorly developed and it was not
possible to discern how a Chevening Scholarship would be of
benefit.
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