Amsterdam: AUC personal study plan & self-assessment
Around 500 words each
Personal Study Plan (~500 words): outline roughly 20 courses ordered by semester, including required, major and elective courses. Self-Assessment (~500 words): reflect on your capacities and ambitions, your strong points, your weaknesses and how you would address them, and how you would exemplify AUC's values and contribute to the community.
What it’s really asking
The study plan asks you to design a realistic AUC curriculum that shows you have read the course catalogue and have a coherent direction. The self-assessment asks for honest reflection on your strengths, weaknesses, and fit with AUC's values.
Why they ask it
AUC students build their own degree, so the study plan tests whether you can plan independently and have actually researched the programme. The self-assessment tests self-awareness, which AUC values more than a flawless record.
Three ways in
Give the study plan a coherent thread
Pick a clear major direction and let your electives show curiosity rather than randomness, and reference real AUC course names from the catalogue.
Name a real weakness with a plan
In the self-assessment, give a genuine weakness and a concrete way you would work on it, because vague humility reads as evasion.
Tie strengths to AUC's values
Connect your strengths and intended contributions to specific AUC values and community life, not generic teamwork claims.
✕ Weak opening
“My greatest strength is that I am a hard worker and a perfectionist, which is also my greatest weakness.”
✓ Strong opening
“My weakness is that I commit to too much. Last year I ran a debate club into the ground by saying yes to every event. I am learning to protect a few priorities instead.”
Personal Study Plan. My intended major is Sciences, with a track toward Environmental Science, organised around one question: how do cities share water fairly. I have ordered roughly twenty courses across six semesters so that the science deepens while the social and ethical courses keep asking who the science is for.1Semester 1: the required Big Questions in Science, Academic Writing, plus Calculus and Chemistry as foundations. Semester 2: Big Books (a required core course), Environmental Chemistry, and Statistics, which I will need before any fieldwork. Semester 3: Hydrology, Microeconomics (so I can read water pricing arguments), and a Themes in Social Science elective on cities. Semester 4: Environmental Policy, Geographic Information Systems, and a Philosophy of Science course to keep me honest about what data can and cannot prove.2Semester 5: I plan to study abroad, taking Water Resources Management and a course on environmental justice at a partner university, to test my ideas in a different climate and legal system. Semester 6: Ecology, an Independent Research Project measuring runoff in one Amsterdam neighbourhood, and a Capstone that pulls the strands together.3My electives across the plan, Ethics, Statistics for the Social Sciences, and a language course in Dutch, are not decoration. Each one is a tool I expect to need to answer my question well. Self-Assessment. My strongest capacity is patience with messy data.4In a school project measuring our canal's nitrate levels, my readings made no sense for weeks until I realised the sensor drifted in cold water. I did not enjoy being wrong, but I enjoyed finding out why, and that feeling is the most honest reason I want to be a scientist. My clearest weakness is that I retreat into numbers when conversations get political. In group work I would rather recalculate than argue, and I have let louder voices decide things I understood better.5I am choosing AUC partly because a small, discussion-heavy programme gives me nowhere to hide from that. Concretely, I will take seminar courses early, ask my tutor to push me to speak, and join the student association that organises debates so practice is a habit, not an emergency. I would exemplify AUC's values of community and curiosity by treating disagreement as data rather than threat. I want to start a small reading group where science and social-science students argue over one paper a month. My ambition is narrow and stubborn: to leave AUC able to stand in a room of engineers, residents and council members and help them share water without anyone being quietly cut out of the conversation.6
- 1Opens the Study Plan with a single organising question, which signals genuine curiosity and gives the twenty-course list a logic. This is exactly the 'fit with this exact programme' that AUC's self-designed curriculum rewards.
- 2Demonstrates real knowledge of AUC's actual course architecture (required core like Big Questions and Big Books) and sequences prerequisites sensibly. Mixing major science with economics and philosophy shows true interdisciplinary intent, not box-ticking.
- 3Includes study abroad and the required capstone, showing thorough programme research, and anchors the plan to a concrete local research site, which makes it believable rather than aspirational.
- 4Justifies every elective against the central question, then transitions cleanly into the Self-Assessment with a clear strength claim that the next segment will back with evidence.
- 5Backs the strength with a small, specific story and ends on an honest motivation, then names a genuine, unflattering weakness rather than a disguised humblebrag. This shows strengths and faults 'shown, not claimed,' which Amsterdam values.
- 6Gives a concrete, programme-anchored plan to address the weakness and a specific community contribution, restating ambition in a grounded register. The closing ties the self-assessment back to the study plan's central question for a unified, full-length response across both ~500-word parts.
Stuck? Start here
- What coherent thread runs through the AUC courses you would choose, and which real electives show your curiosity?
- What is a genuine weakness you can describe with a specific example and a real plan to work on it?
- Which AUC value can you point to with evidence from your own life, and how would you live it in the community?
Before you submit
- Does my study plan use real AUC course names and show a coherent direction across semesters?
- Is my weakness honest and specific, with a concrete plan rather than a disguised brag?
- Have I addressed all parts: capacities, strengths, weaknesses, and contribution to AUC's values?
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