'At my age, I'm confident of my achievements' - Chevening Leadership essay

I was born in an ordinary sunny day, surprisingly no special effect! Few days later my father, a former commander, advocated opposition to participating in devastating civil war; this decision agitated militants and the growing menace enforced us to leave Afghanistan to Iran. He was right, gun would not stop disagreement without creating hatred. Our family resided in XXX where a majority of residents are afghan immigrants so I had the chance to grow up among my compatriot. I ranked XX/311042 in Konkoor national examination despite poor educational quality, graduated with honors from a top university and studied double majors Electrical engineering and Physics simultaneously.

Later I met people who felt obligated to provide appropriate education for children in suburbs. We started to hold extra classes in XXX and two other cities. The nucleus was consisted of three people. This project was heavy because of the large number of involved people in a non-academic environments. Groundwork such as finding supervisor, planning, advertising, and supplying books had been done in three months.

Though success in gaining financial support, there was serious challenge for assuring other institutes that we're not trying to damage their reputation. Good diplomacy helped us to have their cooperation instead of pointless friction. Another difficulty was inappropriate social situation in the suburbs so one of my responsibilities was preventing unwanted conflicts and probable provocations. That experience was really blossoming, 30% of students entered the university; some of them were the first ones among their relatives.

I had multiple leadership experience about academic and industrial projects too. At VLSI laboratory of university of XXX I had the chance to be involved in three projects. Successful projects were Fast Distance Meter and Standard Test Method Development for Electronic Devices. Progressing according to their tight schedule could not be achieved without perseverance and determination. Commercial Low Noise RF amplifier project was not that much satisfactory but earned good criticism. I've done two projects for Water Research Institute of the ministry of energy. Hydraulic section of WRI is responsible for assessment of massive dam projects. Accurate measurement on enormous dam models is crucial for them. They had problems because of sanctions. During internship I showed that my determination stands out of crowd so I had enough self-confidence to propose construction of a measurement device for turbulent multiphase flow. Their generous trust on me was due to proving myself as an organized multi-disciplinary, smart engineer. I needed to meet WRI demands and to keep the group inspired and motivated through failures. The device was verified in extreme field tests. After that successful experience we sold several copies of our device, accomplished another construction project and now I'm supervising another project beside my main job as a research assistant in Optical Network Laboratory in XXX University of technology.

At my age, I'm confident of my achievements. I think my special trait for being impressive is the ability to win the confidence of others and this has been earned by integrity, honesty, foresight and intelligence.

Masfa, when you write a leadership and influence essay for a Chevening scholarship, you have to keep in mind that you are not writing an autobiography. You are also not writing an academic background paper. All you have to focus on in this essay is the major theme or topic, that of narrating your leadership and influencing abilities in a professional setup. At this point, your essay is a cross between 2 different essays; the personal statement and the academic background essay. Neither of which truly deliver the needed requirements of a leadership essay. That said, you don't really need to part that details the information about your birth, your father, or who sponsored your studies. There is no relation between that information and your application prompt.

The part of your essay that deals with your leadership of school projects does not offer much in terms of informing the reviewer about the intricacies of your leadership skills that were required to complete the project.Right now, I cannot tell which one was your academic project and which one belonged to your internship. Here is a word of advice regarding your leadership experience in this case. Present your story based upon your internship instead of the academic setting. In an internship, you work in a professional setting and deal with with real world professional problems. Such situations showcase your strong leadership abilities in most instances. It will also be easier to present a method by which you influenced your peers as an intern. As an academic student, the reviewer will not be very impressed with any leadership skills that you displayed. Don't forget that you are seeking to become a masters degree student. Therefore, your ability to lead and influence needs to be grounded in more relevant and serious matters. Academic matters are far easier to resolve than the internship and professional situations. By the way, if you have any actual work related leadership experience, you should use that as well. In fact, you should use that in place of the internship whenever possible.

Your last line in the essay kind of comes across as over confident. You don't need to be like that. Allow your leadership experience to speak for your confidence within the essay. Let your other documents portray that to the reviewer. Saying things like that come across as cocky instead of humble. Show a humble side to yourself in this application. Show confidence through your actions and the results of your actions. That is what matters the most to the reviewer.