what should a scholarship essay look like

what should a scholarship essay look like

How to Write a Winning Scholarship Essay

1. Introduction

For many scholarship competitions, the essay is the most important part of the application. It gives the scholarship committee a sense of who you are and your dedication to your goals. You’ll want to make sure that your scholarship essay is the best it can possibly be. If you’re planning to apply for a college scholarship, you will probably need to submit an essay along with a resume, transcript and other background information. Looking at a few sample essays before you start writing can help you get inspired to craft a winning essay of your own. Very few scholarship programs are based solely on an application form or transcript. The essay is often the most important part of your application; it gives the scholarship committee a sense of who you are and your dedication to your goals. Your essay should provide the readers with an insight into your understanding of the topic. This could be shown by evaluating a relevant piece of reading. If you write a structured plan and a good draft, it will help you to keep on track during the rest of your writing, and it will save time.

2. Understanding the Purpose of a Scholarship Essay

Scholarship essay. Though it is often uncomfortable to write about yourself, we invite you to relay your story, one that has led you to apply for scholarship funding. Given scholarship essays should reflect your personal experiences, hopes, and ambitions, with critical examination of your personality, strengths, and the obstacles you’ve overcome. This is a chance to make your application stand out, to convince the committee that you are worth their time. While no essay will be perfect, acknowledging your purpose and your audience will ensure a refined product, the one that will simply invite success. Taking the time to understand the requirement can eliminate those which meet the goals and requirements of scholarship. Allow your essay the time it requires because a quality essay takes an initial commitment in time, making it through these stages to become a reflection of who you are is an accomplishment. This is the first step in any writing. Understanding the audience is fundamental to writing a quality essay, to get an idea of what type of people comprise the Scholarship Committee go to our Student Veterans of America page and have a look at our Board of Directors. Submitting an essay that is too broad or too specific can hurt your chances of selection. Too broad can lead to an essay that is cut and paste, making the reader feel like you are uninterested. Too specific can eliminate those who have lived similar experiences or have similar goals to you. This however does not mean you are to omit any painful experiences in your life, sharing your trials and tribulations can often times narrow your essay for you, a helpful tip may be to write the essay and have an peers review and edit it, and then asking them to relay to you what the essay was about without you telling them first, often times a new set of eyes can be your best audience judgment. Remember to stay on track with your goal. If your goal is to write an essay that states you are the most eligible candidate; a seek higher education a great essay is one that continuously supports the one statement.

3. Crafting a Compelling Personal Story

Though it goes without saying that the above framework is something that should be done for any essay, the following are some general techniques that can be used to more effectively engage an audience with a personal story. First and foremost, the story should be interesting due to the added details and associations that were planned earlier. The story should have an emotional appeal. The more that a story can activate an audience’s emotions, the greater the chance that the audience will remember the story. Be wary, however, that the story does not create such a strong emotional sympathy that the audience simply feels sorry about what has happened. This can commonly happen in stories about some form of failure which then turns into a success. It is typically far more effective to create a form of adversity that can evoke righteous anger from an audience. This is due to the fact that if someone is angry because of an injustice, it is typically just motivation for them to take action. Finally, it should be clear that not all details of the story are purely for entertainment. At several points in the story, there should be fairly obvious links which demonstrate how the story is relevant to the reader and how this is meant to reinforce the original general statement.

A common mistake in writing a compelling personal story is jumping straight into the basic requirements of scholarship. While this may be a good approach for some, it can be a lot simpler when thinking from the audience’s perspective. The first thing you need to take into consideration is who will be reading the essay and what the specific requirements of that scholarship are. For example, if the essay requirement is to tell something about yourself, then this general statement will be a lot more concise and take a lot less time to prove. In order to be effective, you need to tell a story that can strongly support any general statement that you come up with about yourself. Once the target audience has been clearly identified, you must think of the bare minimum requirements to effectively convince this specific audience and tailor the essay in a manner that will consistently achieve this. This way, you will plan out the most effective way to tell the story and not waste time on unrelated details which could potentially throw the audience off track. Another benefit of having a well-planned essay is to create a convincing piece due to the fact that it reinforces every point with another. A story whose details jump from place to place will lack consistency and will fail to effectively reinforce later points in the story as there were not enough associations made between details. This is highly important as it is a means to an end: the stronger and more convincing a story is, the higher chance it has to be remembered by the audience. This step is often the biggest difference between the average and the strong essay.

Even the best writer who is assigned to write about personal experiences can fall into the trap of telling instead of showing. The difference between the two is quite simple: telling is a way to inform a reader of what is happening without truly involving them in the story, while showing is a technique which allows the reader to become more involved with the story, creating a vivid image in their mind. To create an essay that will engage a reader and make them truly interested in the person writing, one must think from the audience’s perspective. There are three things that a writer should take into consideration: the audience being written for, the purpose within the assignment, and what it would take to truly convince the audience of the body of the essay.

4. Highlighting Achievements and Goals

If you realize the magnitude of the questions and feel like you have bits and pieces but nothing concrete, then this is the time to start. Make a list or even a timeline of past experiences with an axe to what has had the most significance. Then identify issues and beliefs that have constructed the way you think and act. With a bit of brainstorming, said lists should take the shape of a very rough draft of your personal statement. Upon completion, you will find that a great many pieces of other essays you may have written will fit in nicely, even helping to steer the direction of this paper during subsequent revisions.

The most important element is to briefly tell the reader why you are unique, and the most ideal means of doing so is to prove this through action. This will help the judges better understand you because they will see that incidents in your life have molded your beliefs and how you act upon them. This could be the defining moment of your life, an issue you feel passionately about, or a core belief. An effective way to do this is through a “cause and effect” theme – when an event or issue has affected change in your outlook or extended your knowledge to the point where it generated an active response. This should explain a progression of maturity on a certain issue or level of global understanding. At this point, focusing too much on what you have achieved is a better fit for a resume instead tell the reader why you are a great fit for the achievement. Finally, it is always best to present yourself in a light that shows an understanding of your field of study coupled with a strong desire to succeed in said field.

When looking for a theme, focus, or issue to highlight, it is best to choose an issue that was sparked by an event or an interest that will serve as an entertaining and informative, yet relevant. This will also lighten the tone of your writing and make a personal statement more enjoyable to read! Keep in mind, judges have lots of essays to read, and it usually helps them recall a face to the paper.

Your achievements, experiences, and skills will strongly enhance your application and make you an ideal candidate. Therefore, this is the first step in actually writing your paper. Start off by brainstorming and considering the implications of each of your experiences, whether they were launching a successful market campaign for your grandmother’s cookies, running a pet-sitting business, scoring a standing ovation at Carnegie Hall, earning a national merit scholarship, teaching English in Japan, or even styling hair. Every experience brings new lessons and personal growth, and the pool of experiences and their significance to you and your field of study can help earn you valuable cash for college.

Writing a stellar scholarship essay: Highlighting achievements and goals

5. Concluding with a Strong Call to Action

The concluding paragraph, in theory, will be your last chance to persuade the reader to your way of thinking. With that being said, it is the last place you are able to forcefully insert your own opinions. It is your “closing argument.” A solid conclusion to an argumentative essay will summarize everything that has been said in the essay and then add validity to the thesis with a solid call to action. Essentially, the conclusion will draw insight from validity of the arguments that pertain to the claim. Then the conclusion will ensure the audience has understood your issue and why it is valuable before finishing with a call to action.

Though subtlety can be misleading, this quote rings true. Your task is to create a dynamic, convincing essay that will bring to life the reason you should be awarded this scholarship. It is up to you to effectively bring the life of “Harry Potter on the pages” to show why Harry’s experience should be your own. According to Harry Bauld, a former Ivy League admissions officer, what often makes all the difference is an essay that causes the reader to take a second look and consider the applicant.

Simple language can help create an effect of understated drama. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt