Writing the Scholarship Essay
The essay is one of the most important aspects of the scholarship application and gives the applicant an opportunity to truly show the selection committee why the applicant deserves to be awarded with the scholarship. The essay may be the most difficult part of the application, but after the selection board has seen a student’s grades, SAT scores and background, an essay that holds its audience captive through good writing and an original theme will often be the deciding factor between applicants.
Remember Me!
You want the essay to make an impression on the scholarship selection committee and to leave the selectors remembering your application even when reviewing others. When writing the essay, make sure you are actually answering the question being asked of you. Often, an essay will be fairly broad and open ended, particularly if it is a personal essay asking you to explain why you deserve to win or what makes you a unique applicant. Some essay questions are more narrow and specific, asking for a definite answer. Before writing your answer, think about the question. Analyze the reasons why the scholarship committee would want applicants to answer that particular question and what kind of responses they might be looking for. Think about the organization sponsoring the scholarship. Often, a scholarship committee is looking for an applicant who can be closely correlated to the organization’s own mission, or its founder, or a precise viewpoint the organization holds. Do not read simply read the question and write an answer. Look through all the material provided with the scholarship, and read about the sponsors of the scholarship as well. Writing your answer with this background information is a valuable tool often overlooked by applicants.
Prepare Carefully
Once you have determined what the question is asking and have read into the background and organization of the scholarship’s sponsor, you can begin to prepare your answer. One of the best ways to do this is to create an outline targeting all the points you want to discuss within your essay. Remember, you want to show the selection committee all of your own personal traits through the essay but you also want to show the committee why your traits and background make you a candidate for their specific scholarship. Create a theme to your essay as you prepare your outline, keeping in mind all you know about the scholarship’s sponsors and how your own traits and background fit in with the goals of the scholarship organization. Having an outline will not only prevent you from forgetting information you want to include, but it will also allow you to prepare your essay in a neat format, including all important points in order and leaving out irrelevant or unimportant material.
Write, Review, Revise
You can now begin writing your essay. A good essay will require a lot of re-writing and a lot of reviewing before it is complete and ready to be sent in with your application. Leave yourself plenty of time to get your rough draft written, and then to review it, to show it to others and to re-write it again. Use the resources available to you. Ask an English teacher, a writing specialist or another trusted person to review the essay and to give you feedback. Get as much critique as you can, and then take the advice you have been given and re-work the essay, always keeping in mind the question being asked and your goals for answering that question. Keep your writing on topic and to the point, but make sure you are not writing a generic paper that anyone could write. This essay is about showing who you are, and why you are the best applicant for the scholarship. Take your time, make revisions and don’t stop until you think your essay is worthy of the scholarship for which it was written.