how to write a winning scholarship essay

how to write a winning scholarship essay

Tips for Writing a Winning Scholarship Essay

1. Introduction

The first sentence of the essay is the most important one as its intention is to grab the attention of the reader. The essay introduction is where the reader is introduced to the topic of the essay. An introduction should begin with discussion of your specific topic (not a broad background overview) and provide just enough context (definitions of key terms, for example) to prepare your readers for your thesis or purpose statement. After the reader is hooked, he or she will be led to your thesis, which is the main point of the entire essay. When writing the actual essay, this should take up around 80% of the entire essay, as by providing your point of view and supporting it with evidence and examples, you are allowing the reader to understand the issue that is being presented. The introduction is the first impression to the reader, so you may want to begin well. With that being said, I will end this essay with a reputable quote that is apropos to the topic that we have chosen. This quote can also be used in the conclusion so that you are reminding the reader of the essay topic. The introduction to an essay is rather like a formal social introduction: How do you do! For this reason, it is probably easier to write the introduction last, after you have written the main body. Often, an essay will progress best when every one of its steps – and every one of the steps within each step – can be clearly understood in relation to the whole transition of the essay. This speaks to answering why the need to write the essay exists. High school students are not affected so much by the sum of the lesson in class; as a Tuesday becomes forgotten during the Friday that follows, they want to know if, when they go home, there will be a change in their routine study habits. This is akin to painting a picture on academic achievement. One would want to hang on the above mentioned hypothetical situation of a poor student to his parents. And, obtaining a greater understanding of the issue’s context with the use of evidence will allow the parent to make a better decision in their judgment of their child. This is discussed by Brendan Gill in the prompt of preparing a persuasive essay is, in effect, preparing to play a high-stakes courtroom game. With this revelation, the student now knows what their issue is and how to best address it. So in sketching out the blueprint of an essay, one must know the plan to reach at the mentioned conclusion. And outlining helps to achieve this. The lesson to draw here is the necessity to write with brevity. Too much time spent explaining anything but the argument itself will be a useless waste of the reader’s attention.

2. Understanding the Scholarship Essay Prompt

Understand the criteria used by the scholarship committee to evaluate application essays. Based on the experiences of graduated scholarship winners, I have learned that there are two key criteria of an application essay: the issue and the plan. The issue addresses the prompt by providing an example of a private local or global concern. The essay should provide at least one concrete example to demonstrate the need for better understanding or resolution. For example, an essay on human understanding might move an incident where the writer witnessed or experienced discrimination of mentally or physically challenged persons. That may be the basis of the advice plan, which describes the action steps that writers intend to take to try to address solutions outlined in the issue. In continuing with the same example, the writer might think to make an effort to increase awareness of the conditions of mentally handicapped persons and to try to foster greater acceptance for them into communities by volunteering at a local shelter or organization.

3. Crafting a Compelling Essay

Crafting an essay is one of the most daunting parts of applying for college scholarships. Scholarships are in high demand and you often have hundreds of applicants vying for the same money. In essence, your job is to make yours stand out. The judges will read the essays of the applicants and choose their winners based on the content in their essay. They will be choosing the person that best fits their criteria and has the best content. This is the whole reason that they are offering the scholarship in the first place. So now that we’re clear on what exactly you’re trying to accomplish, let’s go over a few techniques that will help you craft a compelling essay. First, make a bulleted list of the most important or most frequently answered questions about the scholarship. Then, make sure your essay aligns your answers with their questions. By doing this, you will be providing the judges with exactly what they are looking for. You may need to do a little research on what the organization offering the scholarship is all about. This is great information to know about and will not only help you answer their questions more effectively, but will give you an edge in the application process. By knowing what the organization is about, you may even write your essay in a way that crafts a solution for a problem that they may be having. This is a valuable strategy for making your essay stand out, and the reader will remember you specifically because you provided a valuable solution.

4. Highlighting Your Achievements and Goals

Explain the difficulties in clarifying for oneself and then later identifying specific accomplishments. (i.e. Being selected president of your high school club, working with children at a summer camp, taking part in a volunteer mission trip to a third-world country, etc.) Give enough detail to let the reader understand the specific accomplishments you are most proud of. Instead of being given a broad topic, you are often instructed to provide the scholarship reviewers with what they are looking for… a personal statement that clearly states, elaborates on, and then supports the essay writer’s accomplishments, and their future goals. One thing to consider when preparing your personal statement is that unlike other academic writing assignments, you must write to your experiences, and explain the significance of those experiences, in order to best communicate them with the reader. This variable in itself makes it that much more difficult to begin on a personal statement. To add to the complexity of writing to one’s experiences, the scope and amount of experience the essay is meant to describe is quite vast. Mentioned earlier were the kinds of experiences which most high school and undergraduate students have in abundance. Usually an experience has to be narrowed down to one to three specific instances, the memories of which the writer finds significant in one way or another. Whether your essay with has to describe the experience of a once in a lifetime internship, or the simple experience of taking your little brother or sister to the movies, it is necessary to pinpoint different experiences within the scope of what a given experience has meant to you.

5. Perfecting Your Essay: Editing and Proofreading

Remember that editing is more than just a few quick reads through your essay – it is a conscious and deliberate process focused on the content. Some tips on editing and proofreading: – Read your essay out loud. When an essay is read aloud, there is a higher chance of hearing awkward phrasing or grammatical errors. – Ask a friend or parent to do a mock interview with you based on an essay. If they can easily understand your general position by the end of the interview, you have a successful essay. – Wait awhile before rereading your essay. Often imperfections are not noticed the first day. If you start your essay the day it was assigned and devote an hour a day to it, you will most likely have it completed within a week. – Use the spell-checker on your computer as a first step. After that, carefully read through the essay looking for spelling and grammatical errors. – Looking up synonyms for “said” and “happened” can lead to more dynamic proof which can lead to grade changes.