French families search for a "lettre de motivation" for an American university or for UCAS, because that is what Parcoursup, the French admissions platform, asks for: a formal cover letter. American and British universities do not ask for a cover letter. They ask for something else, with a different name and different rules, and a student who sends them a French-style cover letter gets the exercise wrong from the first line.
What American universities ask for
The Common App, the shared application platform, asks for a personal essay of 250 to 650 words, on a topic chosen from seven. For 2026-2027, the Common App has kept the same prompts as the previous year: an element of one's background or identity, an obstacle, a belief challenged, an unexpected gratitude, a moment of personal growth, a topic that makes you lose track of time, or a topic of your choice.
In 2025-2026, according to the Common App, the topic of choice was the most popular (28%), ahead of adversity (23%) and personal growth (20%). Intellectual curiosity, the prompt that speaks most naturally about what a student wants to study, was chosen by only 5% of applicants.
On top of this come each university's supplemental essays, including the famous "why us", and an additional information section limited to 300 words. None of these texts is a letter: none is addressed to "Dear Sir or Madam", none lists qualities.
What British universities ask for
In the UK, UCAS asks for a personal statement of 4,000 characters, which since 2025 answers three questions: why this subject, how studies have prepared for it, what else has been done to prepare. It covers all five courses applied for and speaks almost exclusively about the subject. We have covered it in The UCAS personal statement.
Why the French cover letter doesn't work
The French lettre de motivation follows codes: formal address, praise of the programme, a list of qualities, a career plan. None of these codes matches what American and British universities ask for. An American essay tells a precise story and draws a reflection from it; a British personal statement shows intellectual interest in action. In both cases, the reader must learn something no other part of the application tells them.
The trap for a French student: writing a text about themselves that could belong to any good student. "Curious, rigorous, passionate about science" says nothing. A maths problem they struggled with for three weeks, and what they understood by solving it, says everything.
Writing it yourself
The Common App treats as fraud presenting as one's own work another person's ideas or language, or the output of an artificial intelligence platform. UCAS compares every personal statement with previously submitted texts and with examples published online. Both require the same work: successive drafts, written by the student, reviewed for substance.
2026-2027 rules. Common App prompts and limits announced on 27 February 2026; UCAS rules for applications for 2027 entry. Both should be checked each year before starting to write.
Where to start
The work starts with a list: the moments, books, problems and decisions that mattered. The essay topic comes out of it, rarely the first one that comes to mind. For the rest of the American application, see The Common App from a French lycée and "Why us" essays.
That is the support we offer at Carmine: finding the topic, building the drafts, reviewing until the text sounds like the student, without ever writing it for them.