How to Write a Scholarship Essay
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to writing a winning scholarship essay because this type of essay is supposedly exclusive to you. Therefore, it must be something that you customize and delve deep into, as well as should be responsive to the application. Arguably, it is the ability of the essay to give the admissions officers a concrete idea of who you are and what your potentials are.
1.Read the essay statement more than once.
The first thing you have to do is to read your essay statement to have a good sense of what you are supposed to write about. Read it more than once to ensure that you fully understand the statement and that you do not miss out on any point. Every detail is crucial so take your time to identify all the key themes that are required.
2.Understand the key themes.
Once you have identified the key themes, it is time to do your research on them to ensure that you fully understand what they mean. Do not just rely on your previous knowledge about them because they might not be totally the same. As an example, leadership is not the role you held in one of your organizations. It is the steps that you took in order to succeed in that leadership role.
3.Fill your essay with the magic words.
The magic words are basically the key themes that you have identified from the essay statement. Their presence all throughout the essay can demonstrate your commitment to addressing these themes. Including them, in your essay, multiple times can also help the admissions officers spot them in instances where they only skim through essays due to a large volume of submissions.
4.Start with an excellent introduction.
More often than not, the introduction is a make or break situation because chances are, the admissions officers will only read that part of your essay especially when there is a large volume of submissions. To be safe, you have to really craft an excellent start to attract them to read on and finish your piece. There are various ways in which to start your essay: a quote, an anecdote, or a controversial statement.
5.Identify the criteria to evaluate the scholarship essays.
Criteria are the grounds upon which your essay will be evaluated so ensure that you are aware of what the criteria are or at least research about the possible criteria in order for you to properly address everything on your essay. As an example, leadership will probably include the scope of your accomplishment, the reason for your involvement, the obstacles that you had to face, the lessons that you have learned along the way, and what this experience would mean for your future endeavors.
6.Edit and proofread more than once.
There is nothing more that will discourage the admissions officers than reading grammatical and spelling errors, no matter how minor they may be. To avoid this common mistake, make sure to edit and proofread your scholarship essay more than once until it is perfect.
When you are done with your essay, detach yourself from it for a bit so that once you actually start editing, you will be editing with fresh eyes. When editing, make sure that every sentence makes sense and that they remain to make sense when coupled with other sentences. In short, zoom in and zoom out on your editing process to ensure the overall coherence of your scholarship essay.
When you are done editing, you can now proceed to proofread. You have the option to proofread it yourself or ask for assistance from either a family or a friend, as they will tend to spot more mistakes than you will. You can also look for proofreading tools online if no one is available. What is more important is that you remove all possible flaws that could discourage the admissions officers from giving you that scholarship.
In conclusion
Again, the key to submitting an impressive scholarship essay is to make the essay yours. This means that it has to tell a story about yourself and why you deserve the scholarship. Avoid generalizations and stay focused on the specific details that are unique to you. The goal is for the admissions officers to get to know you by just reading your scholarship essay and that is not going to happen if you are only going to include things that any other applicant will probably write about.
