The Secret To Writing A Winning Scholarship Essay

       By: Christopher Simmons
Posted: 2012-01-17 01:24:12
You have carefully filled out the application, collected letters of recommendation, and have your scholarship resume ready to include in your scholarship packet. Now all you need to do is write that winning essay. Where do you start? What do you write that will capture the attention of the scholarship judges? Is there a secret to writing an essay that will help you win the scholarship money?The first thing you need to do is understand that the point of a scholarship essay is for the judges to get to know YOU. They want to know more than your name, date of birth, GPA, standardized test score, etc... The essay allows you to let the judges know your thoughts, feelings, and opinions on whatever subject they want you to write about. They don't want to know facts that they can easily learn from your scholarship application, so refrain from starting your essay with something like, "My name is __________ and I go to _________ high school". What you need to do to quickly get the attention of the judges (who have read possibly thousands of essays) is to start your essay with a compelling statement. Draw them in right away and create in them the desire to read your whole essay from start to finish because they WANT to, not because they HAVE to. How do you do this? Read over the subject of the essay, form your own opinion, and then write your first sentence with a personal experience that you feel strongly about. For example, when you answer the popular essay question, "How will the scholarship money help you?" you can write something like, "Sleeping in on Saturday mornings is something that I love to do, but for the past year I have literally dragged myself out of bed so I can go to my local children's hospital and read stories to the kids who are patients there...." Then you write about how winning the scholarship money will bring you one step closer to realizing your dream of becoming a pediatrician. Your essay is the time to make yourself real to the judges. You know that you are much more than a name, so prove it to them! The essay is a way for you to come alive in the minds of the judges, so use descriptive words, real life situations, and heartfelt emotions in your writing. Take advantage of tools like the thesaurus to help you use words that make your essay stand out and be remembered. Always tell the truth and never lie in your essays. Do not let a parent write your essay for you. Scholarship judges KNOW which students wrote the essays and which ones had someone else write it for them. They can tell when the truth has been stretched and those students who want to win so badly that they will say anything to make themselves look better than the other applicants.Scholarship judges want to know YOU in your essay. When you tell the truth, write from the heart, and draw them in right from the start, your chances of winning the scholarship money greatly improve. Other than the essay, there are ways to make your scholarship applications stand out and get noticed by the judges.
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