3 critical insights for Chevening applicants

After advising more than 20 worldwide applicants for Chevening this year, I have three general recommendations for the last adjustments:?

1. Replace STAR with CAR.-?They are similar, but many applicants forget to emphasise the "Challenge" part in their stories. They focus too much on the context and results but less on why it was a big challenge for them and how they used their leadership/networking skills to solve it.?
2. Start and constantly repeat your "Why".-?Finishing the essays is an extreme challenge, and it is easy to miss important details about your personal story. However, the "why" is a non-negotiable part because it shows the importance of the problem you want to solve for yourself. It also shows why you have not invented the whole story only to apply for the scholarship. Some questions that could help:

• What do you stand for and why?
• Why the human problem you choose is relevant over the other ones (As you may know, we have plenty of challenges as a society right now)? How does it connect to your personal story?

1. Be extremely clear in the short term but bold in the long run.-?Many people fail because it includes too many different activities in the short-term career plan, forgetting that each part of it requires a relevant effort. When the short-term plan is too complex, it reduces the credibility of the medium and long-term plans.?

On the other hand, other candidates outline clearly and in detail the entire plan (Short, medium and long), but the end goal does not look ambitious. It's ok to be bold in the long term. Just be careful to be consistent. A couple of questions from future thinking that can help:?

• How does the country you dream of look like?
• What changes were made?
• What role did you play in this change?

All the best during this last days!!