Leiden: Letter of motivation

Dear Admissions Committee, I am applying to the BSc International Relations and Organisations at Leiden University because I want to study how international institutions actually function, not how they are imagined in headlines. ¹Over the past two years that interest has narrowed from a broad curiosity about world politics to a specific question: why do states sometimes comply with rulings of bodies they could ignore, such as the International Court of Justice based here in The Hague? My background has prepared me to study this rigorously. In my final two years I took Higher Level History, Economics, and English, and wrote my extended essay on whether economic sanctions on Iran between 2012 and 2015 changed state behaviour or merely signalled disapproval. ²Researching it taught me to separate what I wanted to find from what the data supported: I had expected a clear causal story, but the trade figures forced me to qualify almost every claim. That experience of being corrected by evidence is, I think, the habit your programme is built to train. I bring three skills I believe map onto the programme. First, languages: I am fluent in English and Spanish and have B1 German, which lets me read primary sources rather than relying only on translations. ³Second, quantitative literacy: I completed an online course in introductory statistics and can read a regression table, which I know underpins the methods training in your second and third years. Third, sustained writing: my history coursework required me to defend an argument across four thousand words, and I expect the analytical essays at Leiden to demand the same discipline. I have looked closely at how the programme is structured, and the design is part of why I am applying. The first year grounds students in political science, economic, and historical approaches before the specialisation tracks; ⁴I am drawn to the International Organisation track because it connects most directly to my question about compliance and institutions. I am also aware that Leiden teaches IR in English to a deliberately international cohort, and I want to be argued with by people who grew up reading different newspapers than I did. Beyond coursework, I have tested this interest in practice. I chaired the Security Council committee at two Model United Nations conferences, which meant managing disagreement under procedural rules rather than simply holding opinions. ⁵I learned that the procedure itself shapes outcomes, a small lesson that is really the whole subject of institutional study. I also tutored younger students in essay structure, which sharpened my own sense of how an argument should be built before it is decorated. I am confident I can handle a degree taught and assessed in English, and I am ready for the independence a Dutch research university expects. ⁶I want to spend three years learning to ask sharper questions about international order and to answer them with evidence rather than assertion. Leiden, and this programme in particular, is where I believe I can learn to do that well. Yours sincerely, A prospective student