Now that the new school year has begun, it is the ideal moment to get serious about the pursuit of scholarships to pay for college and to increase your chances of getting those scholarships.
You will need to know how to write an essay that will convince the board of the scholarship program that you should be the one to receive the money that is being offered because many scholarship programs require applicants to submit an essay as part of the application process.
Your scholarship best essay writer has the potential to be a window into your world if it is written correctly. These essays, much like your personal statement for college applications, should offer the readers a feel of you as a multi-faceted person who is more than what your high school GPA and test scores can alone indicate.
All of us here at Scholly have contributed to and read a significant number of scholarship essays. And in this piece, we will provide some of our favorite methods and strategies to help you create scholarship essays that will earn you money and significantly increase your chances of graduating without having to pay out any of your student loans!
18 Pointers to Keep in Mind When Writing a Scholarship Essay
#1 Make sure that you stick to the fundamentals of excellent essay writing.
You should style your scholarship essays in a way that makes it simple for the reader to absorb and process the information included within them, just like you would format any other essay that you write for school. To put it another way, an essay that wins will have an effective “flow.”
The following is a list of successful essay writing skills that can assist you in developing an effective format for your scholarship essay:
Make sure that the first sentence of the essay is a powerful one; this is commonly referred to as a “hook.” This is an excellent explanation of the various forms of essay hooks; nevertheless, it is important to remember to maintain your own voice and tone throughout the essay (more on this later).
You might want to come out of the gates strong with a snapshot of where you see yourself in ten years, after getting the education of your dreams. For instance, you might say something like, “Diving deep into the mysterious reaches of the ocean daily may not be everyone’s central goal in life, but I can’t wait to search for and protect endangered aquatic life for a living.”
Continue using the tried-and-true structure of having an introduction, body, and conclusion. Even though the essay prompt seems to provide a lot of room for interpretation, you should nevertheless organize your essay such that it has a distinct introduction, body, and conclusion.
When you have new ideas, start new paragraphs. It is ENORMOUSLY preferable to have a greater number of shorter paragraphs rather than a few lengthy paragraphs that are difficult to read.
Be sure to give your essay a satisfying conclusion and not just leave it hanging by leaving it hanging. To round it off, you may say something like, “Ultimately, I want to be a strong role model for other young women who may have been afraid to use their voices.” This is an example of a statement that would be appropriate for a personal statement for postsecondary education. It’s possible that you won’t have enough time for an entire closing paragraph, but a brief “bow” at the end is always a lovely touch.
And while beginning an essay for scholarships or a personal statement is sometimes the most difficult aspect, here is a video that will give you some suggestions on how to write an appealing first line:
#2 Read over the essay prompt and make sure you understand everything… and don’t deviate from it!
Be sure you completely understand what is being asked by carefully reading the prompt a few times. Many scholarship programs ask applicants to write essays on topics with similar focuses, such as how they have displayed leadership skills or how increased financial freedom would affect their lives as college students.
If the prompt doesn’t seem to have a question in it (for example, “Reflect on the state of the environment and your role in helping it”), then we strongly urge that you re-frame the essay prompt as a question and use that. Asking questions such, “What is the overall state of the world’s natural environment, and how am I directly impacting it?” is a good place to start.
In addition, although this may sound like a straightforward instruction, you should NOT depart from the prompt. Scholarship committees will evaluate you in part based on how well you can speak to a very specific issue in your application. Your mind may easily go off topic, but it is important to stay focused on the question being asked.
#3 Pick a subject that you have a true interest in.
You should ensure that your response is relevant to the essay prompt. However, there are several circumstances in which you might have some leeway to select the subject matter, or at the very least, the primary concentration of your work. Write about a topic, an experience, or a value that has personal significance to you. If you care about what you’re writing, not only will you generate better work, but you’ll also come off as more genuine to the reader. Your scholarship essays will benefit greatly from this, and you won’t have to take on any additional burdensome work as a result.
This is what we have in mind. Imagine that you have been given a prompt that asks you to recount a period when you felt particularly proud of yourself. One might be able to think of a few examples. Perhaps it was the very first time you dove off the high diving board. Or perhaps it was the time when you gave back a wallet that you had found and which contained one hundred dollars.
Don’t pick an example based on what you believe the people who will read your scholarship essay want to hear. Pick the one that speaks to you the loudest and most clearly. Your writing will be far more powerful if you write from the heart with sincerity, despite the fact that this may sound corny.
#4 Do some research on the organization that is providing the scholarship.
Who are the individuals or groups responsible for administering the scholarship program? Learn more about the company by perusing the front page of their website. Learn more about their work and why they are offering this scholarship by reading up on their mission statement. When you have more information about the people who are awarding the scholarship, you will be better equipped to personalize your essay to fit their needs.
On their websites, the scholarship givers of many different awards also highlight previous scholarship winners, sometimes even include the winning essay (or at least an excerpt from it). Research what the organization that awards the scholarship has to say about prior winners to get an idea of which of your qualities to emphasize in your application essay.
#5 Be aware of the word and character count limits.
The majority of scholarship applications have a maximum number of words or characters that can be used in your essay. If you aren’t used to keeping these limits in mind, it can be difficult to get a good sense of what “250 words” truly looks like in practice. One page of double-spaced typing is equal to around 250 words, therefore this is a good rule of thumb to follow. (This means that 500 words equals two typed pages with double spacing, and so on and so forth).
We recommend that you take one of your essays, or really any piece of written work you’ve done, and run a word count and character count on it so that you can get a sense for different lengths of writing. A letter counter such as this one can also be used, in addition to the functions that are already built into Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
Once you have determined the number of words or characters, be sure to keep to it! If you have to write an essay that is only 500 words long, don’t make it 501 words long. If you go over the limit, you risk being disqualified. It is a good rule of thumb to get as near to the limit as you can when writing an essay, even though it is not required that you create an essay that is exactly the limit.
#6 Conceive of and make a plan
This point cannot be emphasized enough by us. If you have a plan for where you want to go with your essay before you start writing it, the entire process of writing it will go much more smoothly for you. The very first thing you need to do is get some spontaneous ideas rolling about in your head so that you can choose a topic for your essay that makes the most sense to you. Here are some fantastic essay brainstorming techniques.
After you have a good grasp of the central point of your essay, you may go on to creating an outline. Avoiding the outline is something that some students want to do. However, having an outline in place makes the actual process of drafting much more efficient. Because of this, we have provided you with an essay outline that can be used later on in this topic!
You might be able to get away with simply outlining the elements you’ll want to include in your essay’s introduction, body, and conclusion, but this will depend on the length and complexity of the paper. It can be as straightforward as that, but you shouldn’t skip the planning stage altogether.
#7 Use ethos, pathos, and logos in your argument.
Um, what the heck? Let me give you a little introduction to ethos, pathos, and logos in case you haven’t heard of these rhetorical devices before. Your ability to convince your reader can be accomplished through the use of ethos, pathos, and logos. In other words, these are strategies that may be implemented into your writing to make it more persuasive and impactful.
You can get an excellent explanation of ethos, pathos, and logos here, but in a nutshell, each of these terms refers to the following:
Ethos means the manner in which you establish your own credibility, reliability, or authority on the subject matter (here’s a hint: you’ll be depending heavily on your own life experiences in the essays you submit for scholarships).
You may, for instance, talk about how your perspective on minimum wage regulations has changed as a result of the fact that you’ve worked part-time jobs in the past.
Pathos refers to the use of emotional appeal in the telling of a tale or the presentation of an argument. This can include creativity, imagination, and other such traits.
You could, for instance, paint a picture of all of the fauna that was eradicated as a result of enormous brush fires.
The application of reasoning or logic to argue a position is referred to as “logos.”
To illustrate how dependent high school kids are on their mobile devices, you may, for instance, cite some relevant statistics.
A visual that explains ethos, pathos, and logos in a straightforward manner is presented here:
To put it simply, if you want your essay to be as sincere and convincing as it can possibly be, you should incorporate all three sorts of support into it.
#8 Be honest
Your life and the events you’ve had are both fascinating and significant. It is not necessary for you to exaggerate or fabricate details in order to make yourself appear to be more deserving of the scholarship money. Nothing is more powerful than being genuine in everything you do. Believe us when we suggest that it is a lot simpler for readers to discover untruths in an essay than you might believe it is.
Here’s a simple example. If you are a tutor, you could feel the urge to say something a little over the top, such as “during the past four years, I’ve had the privilege of assisting in the development of thousands of lives.”
Hmm…have you truly worked with tens of thousands of kids as a tutor? Probably not, given how busy you are! We get it. It’s quite simple to exaggerate.
You may add something more along the lines of, “After four years of tutoring nearly 150 individuals in mathematics and science, I feel that my own mathematical and material science skills have improved significantly.”
#9 Illustrate rather than describe
This is the most important rule to remember when writing creatively. Instead of just explaining everything, you should make an effort to construct a vivid image for your reader. For instance, you shouldn’t just remark that you’re stressed out because you have to balance your career and your high school studies. Give some examples of how this stress manifests itself in your life. (Are you staying up all night and chugging coffee to stay awake? Doing your homework during the pauses that you get between working, participating in school activities, and performing community service?) Paint an image for the reader and be as specific and believable as possible.
If you’ve been requested to talk about some difficulty you’ve had in your life, the following is an example of something you could write in response:
You can be more descriptive by not mentioning anything like “When I was in middle school, I tore my ACL playing ice hockey.”
You may say something along the lines of, “It felt like an anvil had been dropped on my knee.” I was in excruciating discomfort as I laid on the ice while the crowd became silent. There was a serious problem with something.”
When you start writing the essays for your scholarship applications, here is a video from Reedsy that will give some additional creative writing tips to assist you in showing rather than telling:
#10 Be as clear and straightforward as possible.
While we want to encourage you to use language that is vivid and descriptive, we also want to emphasize that you should get to the point as quickly as possible. In most cases, the most successful word selections are those that are the simplest and most straightforward. Stay away from broad generalizations and focus instead on concrete examples. In a similar vein, eschew flowery language in favor of statements that are more precise.
Let’s demonstrate. The following sentiment comes out as being too vague and wordy:
“One of the reasons I adore nature is due of its stunning aesthetic. To tell you the truth, I can’t think of a single activity that I don’t enjoy doing when I’m outside in nature. Since I was a young child, it has always been my favorite place to be, and I find that doing anything that requires me to be outside is just plain healthy for my spirit.
This rewrite communicates the same thought in a manner that is considerably clearer and concise:
I find that spending time in nature, whether it’s hiking, wading in the water, or planting seasonal flowers in the garden, always helps me feel refreshed.
