How should I go about answering “Why do you deserve to win this scholarship?” without sounding cocky? This is my first scholarship application and I’m a freshman student at a community college. -Emilio Good question, Emilio – why do you deserve a scholarship? Notice the emphasis on the “you” and not necessarily the “why.” Anyone can …
Judges know that you would very much like to receive the scholarships that you apply for. It’s natural for you to have some emotional stock in whether you win or not. College costs are serious business, and every dime you can get someone else to pick up for you, the better. But in hundreds of …
Scholarship Screwup #10: Act Like You’ll Starve If You Don’t Win Read More »
I know, I know – that’s an abrasive way of putting it for those of you who are easily wounded. In other words, then, do yourself a favor: exclude any unnecessary information that has nothing to do with your scholarship essay. Everything in your essay should be relevant to the topic at hand. We receive …
Scholarship Screwup #9: Bore Me With Irrelevant Crap Read More »
Scholarship essays are certainly about self-expression, and lots of applications ask open-ended questions about how you, the forward-thinking leader of tomorrow, might solve today’s problems. That gives you full license to come out with your ideas on how to change things, and in so doing, you’ll probably find yourself pointing out the flaws of society …
Over the past two days, I’ve written about how school activities alone aren’t enough to win you scholarships, and that worried some of you quite a bit. Fear not, friends: today we’re continuing yesterday’s discussion of how to beef up those scholarship applications and cash in on the mistakes of your classmates. Here’s a huge …
Yesterday I wrote about how school activities alone weren’t enough to win you scholarships, and that sent some of you into a panic. Seems many readers have been banking quite heavily on those school activities to win you some money. Not to worry: Today and tomorrow, we’re addressing how to beef up those applications and …
The average scholarship applicant lists a truckload of school-sanctioned activities in which he/she has participated over the four years of high school. Sports teams, clubs, projects, competitions, etc. This can only be a good thing, right? After all, that’s what your parents and counselors have been telling you all along — the more stuff you …
Scholarship Screwup #5: Ignore the World Outside High School Read More »
A rule of thumb in scholarship essays (and life, if you will) is that it’s better to be specific than to be vague. Society is accustomed to using vague labels for people and what they do: student, businessman, housewife, factory worker, etc. These labels are convenient for the normal “small-talk” conversations that fill our daily …
Scholarship Screwup #4: Give Us Some Vague, Self-Absorbed Plans for Your Future Read More »
Hardships: We all have them, right? If you read as many scholarship applications as I do, you’d certainly think so. With college costs spiraling upward every year and families pinched for cash to pay for it all, students are going all-out to make sure the committees understand how rough they have it. But the truth …
Nothing angers the high-ranking students (and their teachers) more than this one, but I’ve some bad news for you, and you’re not going to like it. Are you sitting down? OK, here goes: Your GPA doesn’t really matter that much. If at all. It’s ok, I’ll give you a minute to let it sink in. …
More practically, consider this very basic truth: the more contentious the issue you choose to write about, the more likely it is that one or more committee members will completely disagree with you. Divisive issues divide, and in all likelihood, you’ve got no idea who’s even judging your scholarship application, let alone the personal and political beliefs of those people.
Sometimes, the best story you have to tell a scholarship committee will involve explaining some of the worst or most embarrassing moments from your past. Maybe you hurt or insulted someone close to you. Maybe you had an addiction or even went to jail (actually, If you’re still hurting your loved ones, addicted to drugs or …
Seriously. No excuses and no exceptions – everything. Here’s a little yarn about why it’s important to spell things correctly. My company once managed a very large online events calendar for a major news website in one of the largest cities in the U.S. It was a very important job, but it didn’t require a …
In fact, if anyone asks you to submit sensitive information, I’d advise skipping that scholarship altogether, because I know of no reason why a reputable program would be asking for your sensitive personal information. First, let me clarify what I mean by “sensitive personal information.” I’m talking about things like your Social Security number, your …
Do not include sensitive personal information that you’re not asked for. Read More »
Go ahead and laugh, but our committees tell us that about 1 out of every 20-25 essays that we receive has no name on it. And some of them are pretty darn good essays. In fact, I know of at least two times in which committees that I actually served on would’ve selected no-name essays …
Back when our scholarship committee was switching our scholarship over from postal mail to e-mail, I made a joke on one of our websites about the U.S. Postal Service. I know, I know – you’re thinking, “That’s impossible! How could you possibly find something negative to say about the U.S. Postal Service?” I don’t remember …
The Internet has made it easier than ever to plagiarize, but if you’re bold enough to do so, beware of the double-edged sword: the Web also makes it easier than ever to catch you in the act. A stolen essay can be uncovered often and easily by Googling any sentence or phrase that sounds like …
“OMG I want this schol soooooooobad! J/K, its all good!” Now, I’m no curmudgeon. I understand that language, both written and spoken, is constantly changing and that it’s young people of every generation who drive a lot of that change. However, most of you realize that the style of communication you use for email, IM …
Don’t use email smiley faces or any other sort of text-messaging language. Read More »
They don’t have to be smarter than you, or better spellers than you, or anything like that. But you should never send in an essay that hasn’t had at least two or three sets of eyes other than your own look over it. They will help you catch errors and other imperfections like the ones …
Have two or more people read your essay before you send it in. Read More »
We don’t mean to sound elitist here, but the rules of the English language have already been invented; you can’t just make them up as you go along. I could use any of 100 examples here, but one of the most recent examples to cross our desks is this one: “Another importance in my life …
Remember how we said that you’d be ahead of 90% of applicants if you just turned in an error-free paper? Well, if you learn these three, you can probably bump it up to 95%. These three distinctions are a) very basic and easy to learn, and b) seemingly screwed up by almost everyone, almost all …
Going into detail about all the rules of punctuation would take forever, and frankly, writing a punctuation book would bore me straight into the grave. To be honest, the rules of punctuation are far less well-known that those of spelling and grammar. But if you run your essay by a few people, including an English …
Just like punctuation, this isn’t the place to list all of the rules of grammar. It’d fill a book five times longer than this one. But the more people to whom you show your essay before you send it – and ideally that list includes one English teacher or other grammar wizard – the less …
I’m borrowing here from our forthcoming sister site, givemearesume.com, because the advice applies to the scholarship application process just as much as the job-hunting process. When describing the things you’ve done, use as many strong action verbs as you can. Don’t say that you just “went” somewhere, “signed up” for something or “participated” in an …
Your introduction should be completed in a paragraph, maybe two. Not four or five. Long-form, scene-setting openings are for novels, not scholarship essays. Get to the point quickly and begin to develop the “meat” of your essay right away.
Redundant language is one particular way of writing badly that wastes your writing space and annoys the committee at the same time. There are a lot of commonly used redundant phrases, but some of the most common are “actively involved” (if you’re not active, you’re not involved) “past history” (all history is in the past) …
In a nutshell, this simply means making sure your paragraphs flow well from one to the next. There’s no magic formula for doing it, but you’ll know you’ve done it when the last sentence of one paragraph seems to lead nicely into the first sentence of the next paragraph. Without good transitions, an essay is …
It’s disappointing when an applicant is rolling along with an excellent essay, and then all of a sudden, bang! It’s over. Or at least, we think it’s over. We don’t see a next page, so we assume it must be over. The reason for our confusion is the writer’s lack of a closing. A closing …
That’s cheating. It’s also the equivalent of starting your introduction with “I deserve this award because” – it’s not creative at all. Your closing should speak for itself, without a need to say “in closing” or “listen up, committee, here comes my closing.” It’s a challenge, but you can do it.
Your name should be on the page elsewhere, eliminating any need for you to waste the all-important first sentence of your essay by simply stating your name.
