Bức thư động lực đã giúp mình giành học bổng Thạc sĩ tại Pháp

Fort de La Bastille à Grenoble, France.

Một mùa nhập học và săn học bổng nữa lại đến. Mình muốn chia sẻ bức thư động lực đã giúp mình giành học bổng Thạc sĩ tại Pháp – kết quả của nhiều năm viết, sửa, và lắng nghe góp ý.

Hồ sơ của mình không hề nổi bật, nên mình đặt rất nhiều tâm sức vào bức thư này. Sau nhiều lần thất bại và học hỏi từ anh chị đi trước, mình rút ra được vài nguyên tắc quan trọng:

Ngắn gọn: Hồ sơ ứng tuyển (Curriculum vitae) hay thư động lực (Motivation letter) đều nên gói gọn trong một trang. Hãy tưởng tượng bạn là người xét duyệt phải đọc hàng trăm hồ sơ – bạn sẽ trân trọng những gì súc tích, rõ ràng và có điểm nhấn.

Kể chuyện, đừng liệt kê: Sai lầm ban đầu của mình là cố nhồi thành tích vào thư. Nhưng thư động lực không phải là bản sao của CV. Nó cần kể một câu chuyện mạch lạc, thể hiện con người bạn – không phải chỉ những gì bạn làm được.

Hiểu bản thân: Qua từng lần viết và đọc lại thư cũ, mình nhận ra sự trưởng thành của chính mình. Chỉ cần bạn thành thật và đặt tâm huyết vào từng câu chữ, người đọc sẽ cảm nhận được điều đó.

Hi vọng chia sẻ này sẽ giúp bạn có thêm định hướng khi viết thư động lực – để không chỉ viết đúng, mà còn viết chạm.

Dear Sir/Madam,

My name is Nguyen Sy An, and I graduated from Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) with an engineer’s degree in Information Technology. I am writing to apply for the MIAI Master Scholarship, motivated by my passion for AI both in research and industry. I want to share my experiences and explain why pursuing further education in Grenoble, specifically at MIAI, is a crucial step in my journey.

Ever since I was a kid, I loved watching science documentaries and dreamed of being a maker like Tesla, creating useful things for a better life. Living in Vietnam, I realized that studying Software Engineering was the best way for me to create things, needing only a computer and the internet. Compared to others, I started late. I got my first personal computer in my 20s while studying at HUST in Vietnam. From that point, I never stopped learning to reach my goal.

Six years ago, I got a scholarship to study at Tampere University of Technology (TUT) in Finland for one semester. There, I learned about AI, signal processing, and data science. I was amazed by how AI could learn and do things like humans. After the exchange study, I returned to Vietnam and asked one of the leading experts at my university for guidance in exploring AI. I was lucky to gain his attention and was given a promising project: a real-time cancer diagnosis system to assist doctors.

I worked on this project for three years, starting from the proof-of-concept phase to receiving funding from the Vingroup Innovation Foundation. Our team then grew to over 20 HUST students, each exploring different aspects of the problem. We built platforms for doctors to annotate, track model training, and use model quantization and parallel processing for real-time computing. This project was like a startup for me and taught me a lot. I even got two research papers published and won the best thesis defense presentation award when I graduated.

After graduation, I wanted to work in a fast-paced environment, so I joined akaBot, a startup aiming to be Vietnam's first B2B unicorn. Over the past three years, I have learned a lot about building products and working with customers. I started focusing not only on AI but also on solving real problems. I was promoted to AI Engineering Manager and led a team of five young, enthusiastic people. We worked hard to use AI for business automation. Our product, akaBot Vision, now serves thousands of businesses worldwide. Our hard work paid off when akaBot was recognized as a Major Contender by the Everest Group RPA PEAK Matrix in 2023, alongside companies like UIPath and Microsoft. In the same year, I received my first US patent, achieving a major milestone in my career.

Now, I am ready to take a bigger step and pursue a PhD. The rapid development of AI has made me realize that I need to enhance my knowledge and skills to stay at the forefront of the field. Despite six years of building AI software, I still need to improve my research capabilities to achieve bigger goals. During my application to Université Grenoble Alpes, I became particularly interested in MIAI's research on distributed learning. While developing AI applications for both medical image processing and business document processing, I encountered numerous challenges related to data privacy and security. For instance, I received datasets from various hospitals and institutions with strict data sharing protocols, requiring adaptive training model methods. I believe that overcoming these challenges is essential for any AI system to achieve optimal performance, and distributed learning is a crucial approach to address these issues effectively.

Moreover, MIAI offers Master's Scholarships for students like me, who are committed to working in AI during their Master's and PhD. This scholarship would significantly ease my financial burden, making it possible for me to relocate to France and fully commit to my studies. I am determined to succeed, knowing that this opportunity will help me continue my journey in the exciting field of AI and achieve my long-term goals.

Yours sincerely,

An Nguyen