I always thought the best student gets the position. A Master’s degree scholarship, a Ph.D. fellowship, an internship, whatever.
The one with better grades, standardized scores, more experience, or more awards.
Not true.
Yes, more awards and accolades mean more chances and more open doors, but being the best on paper doesn’t guarantee anyone a position.
Why?
Because you can’t go higher in grades than 10/10 or 5/5. But there is no number limit on how well you can communicate to be the best person for the position in question.
A couple of years ago, I was applying for a competitive internship at several top institutions. My grades, recommendation letters, awards, and everything else on my CV were identical in both.
Both places were equally competitive and had pretty much 80% of the same candidates applying to both institutions.
Everything was nearly identical, and yet, for one institution, I was in the top 10 candidates, and in the other one, I wasn't even in the top 80.
It was only months later that I found out these two institutions were focusing on different profiles of students.
One of them was finding the best students generally for research, while the other one was looking for specific traits to match them to specific labs.
Had I known this, I would have written a completely different motivation letter for this institution.
You could be the best… but on the wrong numbers.
Once, a professor at the University of Toronto told me that he never looks for the “smartest” person on paper, but the one that will be the best for the project he has in mind and fits his lab culturally.
If it’s a tedious project, you need a hyper-workaholic with lots of persistence.
If it’s a project that requires out-of-the-box thinking, you need that kind of thinker.
What good does it do if you keep talking in your application about being super independent if they are primarily looking for the best team player to fit the lab?
Each time you write an application for a competitive position, you must profoundly understand what the person you’re writing to cares about or needs from you.
This will guide you to tailor your CV, motivation letter, and all other documents according to that.
Here’s the catch.
If you don’t care about what they care about… and you try to write as if you do… isn’t that… LYING?!
It is, and you shouldn’t do it.
Not only because it’s morally wrong, but because you don’t want to end up as a people-pleasing resentful invertebrate, working on science you don’t care for in an environment you hate.
So, what you need, before any kind of investigation on what your potential supervisor might want to hear or see in your application, is understanding what you care about.
You need to get clarity on:
Who are you
Where do you want to go
What kind of science do you want to do
What are your strengths and weaknesses
What do you care about in the way of approaching research
Once you have clarity on your own values and non-negotiables, you can filter the places that will suit you.
Then, you need to:
learn about precisely what they need,
learn about precisely what they care about,
tailor your application so that it emphasizes strong points relevant to them.
Is it hard doing all this? Extremely.
How long does it take? It took me several years of thinking and rotating labs.
But is it worth it to invest all this time? Absolutely, because this is your life and career.
Talk soon,
Kenan
P.S. In case you need help with any of the mentioned points, such as finding clarity in your career or crafting a “best-match” application, consider clicking on my coaching services HERE.