Hi I am currently in the process of applying for PHD's and a few of the applications are asking for covering letters. The problem being i have never written a covering letter in my life and was never shown how to do one in either my BSc or MSc. Can anyone give some advice in what to put into a covering letter when applying for a scientific PHD. There are lots of different websites on the issue but all give conflicting advice.

There may already be a similar topic about this but for some reason everytime i try and do a search for topics i get a timed out message so I hope this posts.

thanks in advance.