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 …
This is more applicable to college students than high school students, since there’s really no high school equivalent of the Greek system of social fraternities and sororities. Simply put, social fraternities and sororities are primarily social organizations, but they also do a lot of charity work. Socializing is fine and dandy — everyone needs to …
Discuss your social organizations in terms of the service work they do. Read More »
Scholarship essays are as unique and varied as the people who write them, and the winning essays even more so. But if there’s a common theme that judges seem to like (and seem likely to throw money at), it’s the theme of someone overcoming adversity in order to succeed in the end. Doesn’t everyone like …
Committees like stories of overcoming adversity. Read More »
Have I said this before? I believe I have. Most scholarship essays have word limits of some kind, but when possible, don’t summarize the most telling parts of your story. Instead, give details. Don’t simply say that “I work three jobs to get by.” That doesn’t tell me what type of work you’re doing, how …
This is a new tip we created about a few months back after receiving an essay from a young man who was quite confident that he was “completely fluent in Spanish” (those are his words, not mine). He decided to write a couple of introductory sentences in Spanish that were his undoing. Rather than sticking …
If you decide to show off your foreign language skills, you’d better come prepared. Read More »
We’re surprised at how often some students go to the trouble of laser-printing their essays on high-grade paper and mind every last detail so that the essay’s appearance is near-perfect — but then, at the last minute, ruin it all by scrawling something in pen at the top of the page (usually their name, address, …
Don’t scribble something on your typed essay in pen. Read More »
I’m going to guess that you’ve never thought of this either, because judging by the applications I’ve received in the past, fewer than 1 out of about 500 applicants do this. But you should. Here’s why: When thousands of multi-page essays stack up, it’s inevitable that some are going to get torn apart. Lots of …
