How to write a motivation letter: what the form actually asks for, with examples
How to write a motivation letter for a master's, a scholarship, an internship or a job: the limits real forms impose, and a full annotated example.
A motivation letter is the one document in an application where you are asked to argue rather than list. Most guides treat it as an essay: find your story, open with a hook, keep it to a page. That advice skips the part that decides whether the letter is read at all. The programme, scholarship or employer that asked for it almost always published the length it will accept and the questions it wants answered.
This guide starts there, with the limits and questions we found on nine official pages, then shows how to write a letter that answers them in order. You get a full annotated example for a master's application, three shorter ones for a scholarship, an internship and a job, and a section on what "letter of application" means depending on the country you are applying in.
The form sets the length, and usually the questions
We read the application instructions of eight European universities, scholarship offices and institutions that ask for a motivation letter, plus the German federal employment agency's guidance for job seekers. Every one of them states a limit. Most of them also list the questions the letter has to answer. All quotes below are verbatim, read on 4 October 2026.
| Who asks | Stated limit | Questions listed |
|---|---|---|
| Aalto University, Chemistry and Materials Science MSc | "maximum 4000 characters (with spaces) and must be written in English" | 4 (reasons, future plans, areas of interest, you as a candidate) |
| Aalto University, Biotechnology MSc | "maximum 4000 characters (with spaces) and fit in a single A4 page" | 4, same set |
| University of Gothenburg, Master in Communication | "4,000 characters (including spaces, but excluding name, e-mail address and question-wordings). Letters exceeding 4,000 characters will not be considered." | 4, each with its own text box |
| Goethe University Frankfurt, DAAD PROMOS scholarship | "approximately 1 to 1.5 pages long and must not exceed 4,000 characters, including spaces. A line spacing of 1.15 should be used." | 8 |
| TH OWL, DAAD STIBET scholarship | "should not exceed a DIN A4 page" | 10, including your financial need |
| University of Göttingen, Intercultural Theology MA | "should ideally comprise one page, max. 1,5 pages" | 4 focal points, including a research project outline |
| University of Freiburg, scholarship tips | "Depending on the requirements of the scholarship provider, approx. 1-3 pages" | 4 paragraphs prescribed |
| European Youth Portal, EU institution traineeships | "Usually, the range is between 1,000 and 2,000 characters, depending on the application" | none, it is a form field |
| Bundesagentur für Arbeit (ZAV), jobs in Germany | "about one to two pages long" | none |
Three things follow from this table.
None of the nine gives a word count. Four cap the letter at 4,000 characters with spaces, the EU traineeship field takes 1,000 to 2,000, and the rest give pages. A word count from a blog post is useless against a form that counts characters, and Gothenburg says what happens when you overrun: the letter is not considered.
The questions are the outline. Aalto and Gothenburg each ask four. Frankfurt lists eight, TH OWL ten. When the questions are published, the reader is going to look for the answer to each one, in roughly that order. A letter built around a story that never gets to question three has a hole in it, however good the story is.
The page you are applying to beats every guide, including this one. Freiburg's own tip sheet opens with the warning that "Some scholarship providers have their own tips or specifications for the letter of motivation or use a completely different format. Please find out about the specific requirements in advance." Find that page before you write a word.
Motivation letter or cover letter?
The two overlap, and the name you are given tells you which one is wanted. The clearest definition we found is from the German federal employment agency's international placement service (ZAV). In its words, the cover letter "shows that the applicant is qualified for the job" and the motivation letter "shows that the applicant really wants the job". The cover letter answers "What are my strengths, and why is my profile a good fit?" and is "strictly limited to one A4 page". The motivation letter answers "Who am I, and what drives me?", is "usually optional or is explicitly required in specific situations", and is "often referred to as the 'third page' (after the cover letter and resume)".
So in practice:
- A job in the US, the UK or Australia asks for a cover letter. The letter is about fit, and the one-page format in our cover letter guide is what the employer expects.
- A master's, a scholarship, a traineeship, a volunteer position or a job in continental Europe asks for a motivation letter. The letter is about why, and the length is whatever the form says.
- A job that asks for both wants the cover letter to carry the proof and the motivation letter to carry the reasons. Do not write the same letter twice under two headings.
If the instructions say "motivation letter" and nothing else, write about reasons first and proof second. If they say "cover letter", reverse the order.
Who reads it and what they score
A motivation letter is read by someone with a list. For the Gothenburg programme, the published selection criteria are the "ability of the applicant to demonstrate an understanding of the field of communication", the "ability to relate objectives and foci of the programme Master in Communication to the applicant's academic and professional profile", the "ability to show how the applicant would contribute in a meaningful, yet realistic way to the programme", and command of English. Each criterion maps to one of the four questions on the form.
Göttingen's instructions are a list of what loses points: "Do not use your letter of motivation to repeat your CV", "Do not describe the advantages and the curricular of ICT" (the programme already knows its own curriculum), "Avoid all kinds of platitudes, flowery phrases and flattery", and "Deal with your topics in a reflective and factual way. Do not campaign for your beliefs."
Frankfurt's PROMOS guide adds a rule written for this year's applicants: "We advise against having the wording generated by AI tools. The final version should reflect your own language and personal perspective." Göttingen and Gothenburg both say they assess the applicant's English through the letter. A fluent, generic letter tells them nothing about you.
What this means for you is simple. Before writing, copy the questions and the criteria into a document. Each paragraph you write should be traceable to one of them. If a paragraph answers nothing on the list, it is taking characters from one that does.
How to write it: answer the questions in order
Take the published questions, or the four-question set Aalto and Gothenburg converge on when the form gives you none. Then fill one block per question.
The fill-in template one block per question, in the order the form asks them
One verifiable reason that applies to this programme and not to its competitors: a named course, lab, track, supervisor or partner. Then what you expect to get from it.
"I am applying to [programme] because of [specific thing], which I need in order to [concrete goal]."
Two or three pieces of evidence from your studies or work, each with a result. Not the CV again: pick the ones that prepare you for this programme and say how.
"In [course / job / project], I [did what], which [result]. That is the [skill] that [this programme] builds on."
The sector or role you are aiming at, and the step this programme is on that path. A plan can change. A missing plan reads as not having thought about it.
"After the degree I intend to [role / sector], where [what the programme gives you] is required."
How you would contribute to the cohort, the lab or the team, "in a meaningful, yet realistic way" as Gothenburg puts it. One thing, specific.
"I would bring [experience or perspective], which [how it helps the group]."
Count characters, not words, before you paste. Most forms count spaces.
Three rules on top of the template:
- Write the first sentence last. Once the four blocks exist, the opening is whatever connects block one to block two in a single line. Starting with the opening is how people spend an hour on a hook and ten minutes on the content.
- One number per block minimum. A grade, a sample size, a team size, a result. Freiburg's tip sheet says "Substantiate it with facts (e.g. from your CV)". A letter with no numbers is a letter with no evidence.
- Short sentences. The same sheet gives a rule of thumb we would not have dared to publish ourselves: "No sentence should be longer than 8 to 15 words." You will not hold to it everywhere. Aiming at it removes most of the filler.
A full example, annotated
The letter below answers the four Aalto questions for a fictional applicant to a materials science master's. It is 2,155 characters with spaces and 367 words, so it passes a 4,000-character cap with room to spare, and a 2,000-character field would take it with the greeting and sign-off trimmed. Every number in it is the kind of thing an applicant can back up with a transcript or a reference.
The full letter and the question each paragraph answers
Dear members of the admissions committee,
I am applying to the Master's Programme in Chemistry and Materials Science because of its battery materials track and the electrochemistry laboratory that supports it. My bachelor's thesis measured capacity fade in lithium iron phosphate cells over 400 cycles, and I ran out of equipment before I ran out of questions. I expect this programme to give me the characterisation methods, in particular in situ X-ray diffraction, that my current department does not have.
I completed a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry at the University of Ljubljana in June 2026 with a grade average of 8.9 out of 10. In my final year I worked twelve hours a week as a research assistant in the inorganic chemistry group, where I prepared and tested 60 coin cells and wrote the Python scripts that now process the group's cycling data. My thesis received the highest mark in the cohort. Alongside my studies I spent two summers as a quality control intern at a cable manufacturer, running tensile and conductivity tests on 30 to 40 samples a day. That job taught me to document a measurement so that someone else can repeat it, which is the habit I will rely on most in a research master's.
After the degree I intend to work in cell development at a battery manufacturer or a materials start-up, in a role that sits between the laboratory and the production line. The programme's industry collaboration courses are the part of the curriculum I will use first. A doctorate is possible later, but my immediate goal is to work on materials that reach a product.
I would bring two things to the cohort. The first is a working data pipeline: the scripts I wrote are open on my GitHub profile and already used by four other students in Ljubljana. The second is the manufacturing perspective from two summers on a production floor, which is rare among applicants coming straight from a chemistry degree. I speak Slovene, English and intermediate German, and I have taught first-year laboratory sessions for two semesters.
Thank you for considering my application. I would be glad to provide my thesis or any further document.
Ana Novak
What makes it work is not the story. It is that a reader with the four Aalto questions in front of them can tick each one, and that every claim comes with a number they could check. The sentence about running out of equipment before running out of questions is the only flourish, and it is doing a job: it explains the move in one line.
Three shorter examples
The same method, applied to a scholarship, an internship and a job. Each is an excerpt, around the length of one or two blocks, so you can see how the "why" changes with the reader.
Scholarship (financial need plus merit). TH OWL's STIBET guidelines ask directly "To what extent and why are you in need of financial support?" and "Are you going to complete your studies within the standard length of study?" Answer both, with figures:
I am in the third semester of the Mechanical Engineering bachelor's and on track to finish within the standard six semesters, with 92 of 180 credits completed and an average of 1.8. I currently cover my rent of 410 euros and living costs through a 20-hour-a-week warehouse job. The scholarship would let me cut those hours to eight during the two semesters of my thesis, which I will write with the institute of production engineering.
Internship (no experience yet). The question is what you can already do and what you want to learn, in that order. Say which skills come from coursework and show one piece of work:
In the second year of my BUT in computer science I built the booking system our department now uses for its 14 lab rooms, in Django, with two classmates; the code is on my GitHub profile. I am applying for the backend internship because your team works in Python on a product with real users, which is the step I cannot take in a classroom. I am available from 6 April to 10 July, full time.
Job (motivation letter requested alongside the CV). The CV carries the proof. This letter carries the reason you want this employer, so the reason has to be one only this employer can read as theirs:
I have followed your work on district heating retrofits since the Aalborg project in 2024, which was the case study in my final-year energy systems course. Over the last three years I have sized heat pump installations for 70 residential buildings at a consultancy in Lyon. What I want now is to work on the network side rather than building by building, and your Copenhagen team is one of the few doing that at scale.
Each excerpt could be pasted into a form field of 1,000 to 2,000 characters, the range the European Youth Portal gives for EU traineeship applications. That is the test: if your "why" does not fit in a field that size, it is not yet a reason, it is a paragraph about yourself.
Letter of application: the same letter under three names
Search for "letter of application" and you get guides that describe a cover letter. For a job in the US or Australia, that is correct: the job board SEEK opens its own guide with "An application letter, also called a cover letter, explains why your skills and experience match a specific role." Outside the US private sector, though, the phrase points at two other documents that are scored differently.
In the UK public sector, it is a personal statement scored against the essential criteria. The Civil Service Careers site describes the document most adverts ask for: "The purpose of a personal statement is to showcase your relevant skills and experience against the job requirements. The statement is your opportunity to give examples of how you fit the requirements of the job." The advice that follows is about evidence, not voice: "try to include specific facts and figures that demonstrate the tangible results of your work" and "keep to the word limit – if your statement is too brief it will not provide the required depth of detail and evidence to be assessed fully". The Office for National Statistics puts the scoring rule in one line on its careers page: "This section should match up with the essential criteria part of the advert." Write one paragraph per criterion, in the advert's order, and give each a worked example. The STAR method is the structure these sifts expect.
In Germany, it is the optional third page. The ZAV guidance quoted above is explicit: the cover letter (Anschreiben) is "the centerpiece of almost every job application in Germany", limited to one A4 page, and the motivation letter is the optional "third page" about "personality, values and underlying motivations". If a German posting asks for a Motivationsschreiben alongside the Anschreiben, it wants the reasons, not a second summary of your CV.
In the US, the form calls it a cover letter, and it is usually optional. We counted what application forms call the field on 210 postings from 35 public Greenhouse job boards on 4 October 2026. 174 of them had a field for a letter, and 172 of those 174 marked it optional. The label was "Cover Letter" on 173 forms; the one exception was "Lettre de motivation", on a bilingual posting in Canada. No form used the English phrase "motivation letter", and none said "letter of application". Our earlier count of 390 forms on the same kind of boards found the field optional on 78% of them. So when a US posting says "letter of application", write a cover letter, one page, upload it as a PDF, and treat the optional field as a chance rather than a chore.
The practical rule across all three: find out what the reader will score. In the US it is fit with the role. In the UK public sector it is the essential criteria, one by one. In Germany it is whether you want this job in particular. The name on the form matters less than that.
Mistakes the readers named themselves
The ranking guides list typos and generic phrasing. The institutions we read list more specific failures, and they are the ones that cost places.
What the readers flag in their own instructions
Loses the reader
Retelling the CV in paragraphs (Göttingen: "Do not use your letter of motivation to repeat your CV")
Describing the programme back to the people who run it
Flattery and "flowery phrases" instead of facts
A letter written by a tool, in nobody's voice (Frankfurt: "We advise against having the wording generated by AI tools")
4,100 characters in a 4,000-character form
Gets scored
Two or three results from the CV, each tied to what the programme builds on
One named course, lab or project you need, and why
Figures: grades, credits, sample sizes, hours, dates
Your own sentences, proofread by a person who knows you
A character count checked against the form before pasting
One rule covers all of them: the reader has a list, and every paragraph should answer something on it.
Writing it with HiredFolio
HiredFolio's letter generator writes a cover letter for a job you have saved in your tracker, not a motivation letter for a master's. It is worth knowing how it treats length, because the same arithmetic applies to any form field.
The generator offers three lengths, and each is defined in characters: short is 900 to 1,300 characters, medium 1,300 to 2,200, long 2,200 to 3,200. A short letter fits inside the 1,000 to 2,000-character field the European Youth Portal describes; a medium one can overflow it. It writes from the saved job description, the resume you select and the language you choose, English or French, with six tones to pick from and a box for your own instructions, such as "answer these four questions in this order". Its instructions forbid inventing employers, degrees, certifications or figures that are not in your resume, which is the same rule the institutions above apply to you. Draft your letter from a saved job, then paste it into the form and check the character count before you submit.
Key takeaways before your next application
Find the application page's own limit and questions before writing; they beat every guide.
Write one block per question, in the form's order, with at least one figure in each.
Count characters with spaces before you paste; most forms count that way, and some reject overruns.
If the posting wants a cover letter rather than a motivation letter, the one-page structure and template are here.
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