I'm hitting that time in my life where I have need to write scholarship essays. Any tips? For me, they're just so bizarre. "If you took a year off from school, what would you do? Write about it." (There actually is a question like this I'm considering doing.) What are these people looking for, and how am I supposed to do what they want me to do...?
“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.” ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Scholarships? Where? (No, really Suzie, I know nothing of this magical search for college money, and you must tell me who you are writing these essays for.)
What people have told me about college essays--I don't know how similar scholarship essays are--is that you should show a lot about yourself. A book I picked up at the public library once and read for about half an hour said that your essay should be about "nothing"; a small event, a moment in time. Not the time you saved the puppy from the burning building, but the time you learned something about yourself and gained from the experience.
Friends' college essays have included stories about family, travels to other countries, stuff like that.
If the question is "What would you do if you took a year off from school?" answer it honestly!
"My pet, I've been to the devil, and he's a very dull fellow. I won't go there again, even for you..."
Colly, that's actually good advice... I don't know if they want me to write something that shows I'm a good person, or if they want me to ramble for 800 words.
They are looking for originality. I did quite a few through fastweb, but really you should check with your guidance counselor about scholarships you can apply for locally (which he/she should know about if they are any good at their job) because fastweb is available for the entire US highschool population, some middle school and some college to apply for. You are more likely to get the ones you apply for locally.
Oh, and always do the ones with the essays! No one else wants to do those, better chance! Haha.
Last edited by Via on Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Brace your ears for a minute...
*just be yourself*
Okay. Sorry for the cliche XD but seriously, that's what we've been hearing from guidance. As in, if you don't normally use big words, don't put them in just to impress the person reading it; if you're not usually a clown, don't try to crack a lot of jokes, etc. From what I understand, an essay serves a few things: it serves to get to know you better (as designated by the topic and subject you choose) and to gauge how articulate you are/ how adept you are at writing.
For instance, I heard of this one guy who got accepted, but his essay was insane (I wish I could remember what the topic was), because it was well-written and organized. Now, I know I couldn't pull off something so creative a topic as he did, so I won't try to, etc.
So I don't know if I would ramble for 800 words but like Cade said, just answer it honestly. See where it takes you ^_^
(by the way, it's fastweb.com, not freewebs.com ^_^)
Do not use, don't or any word like that, don't use, i think, past tense. My english teacher grades paper for a colllege down here. Well looks at the scholarship papers, she said that if she sees past tense she just tosses the paper out. I'll double check with her and get back to you but I'm pretty sure that is it. Before you send it off to the college have several people go over it. Read it OUTLOUD several times so that it sounds right. The more people that read it the better it will turn out. Hope that helps.
I won close to 10,000 dollars in scholarships this past semester. The man who I won 1,000 dollars from actually contacted me in person and told me why he chose my essay. He said I was a powerful writer and what he loved most about my writing was that it wasn't a listing of all the great things I could do, but more of an honest statement. I believe the prompt was about ways to reach college success, and I described my weaknesses and ways I could create safety zones to prevent failure.
So instead of describing how smart I was or what score I got on my SAT, I embraced my weaknesses and reinforced them with positivity.
My advice to you is to take risks while writing your scholarship essays; don't write a cookie cutter essay. Many people will submit essays listing everything great about themselves, write something that will stand out.
The past tense thing is only when discussing literature. Like, when writing about Macbeth, you shouldn't say "Lady Macbeth used supernatural elements during her monologue" you should say "Lady Macbeth uses supernatural elements during her monologue" [couldn't even come up with an example in past tense XD]. But this doesn't apply to college essays, or most other kinds of personal narrative [unless, I suppose you're writing about yourself in third person... but don't know why you'd do that XD]. Similar with contractions, though I don't know if it matters so much as long as you're consistent [like, don't say "I do not want to attend that other college" in one sentence and "I don't want to go to college close to home" in the next].
Ah, I knew the present tense for lit papers thing. XD My lit professor would have shot me for that. (He found an "I" in my last paper. "NO!!!" I was so horrified at myself. How did I let that slip??)
Stellar, that's really good advice... I've only written one so far, and I think it was pretty cookie cutter, but that was because it was short and I wasn't sure what to do. Hopefully I make some money, right? ^_~
“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.” ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
I won an essay contest a few years ago, and from what I remembered, the reason I won was becasue they thought I was consise and knew my topic.
If you're writing a personal narrative, that won't eb a problem, but if you're saying you want to take off a year to go to South America, I'd imagine you'd need to know about it.
Also, blabbing on is bad.
I am realizing this is probably no help because you should knwo this by now, but oh well.
"reading one book is like eating one potato chip."
-diane duane in so you want to be a wizard [url=secondday.proboards.com]best rpg ever[/url]
Since they're asking you to write about yourself (and almost all of them are), using "I" should be okay. And, I agree with the above. That they're looking for uniqueness. Why should they give you their scholarship? That's the question you want to answer. Now, that being said, you don't want to go out of your way to impress. Write in your style, with your language, telling your stories. If you try anything else, it will, more likely than not, come across as awkward and too eager. Usually, they're looking for a specific story from your life that you want to tell. Pick an experience that applies to the essay material, and tell it as well as you can.
All in all, write for yourself. And they'll see that, and they'll appreciate it. Good luck!!
The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.
~ Robert Cormier
Alright, I am probably to late, but I had forgotten about this. I meant like: "I was playing sports." That will make them think that you aren't going to think about playing sports in their college. Or:
"I used to be in the student goverment." SO did you quit or what. It's just stuff like that. They like hearing about what you are involved in now. If that makes any sense.
Oh, I'm so glad those days are over...psh, I wish! I've written quite a few scholarship essays (still do actually!) and this is my humble offering:
-Be concise. One word is always better than two and flowery language tends to zone people out unless you are amazingly good at it.
-Be unique, not weird. Your ideas should be interesting, but not crazy. All the writing books say "new ideas are great" but remember that real people are going to be reading this and you saying you'd take the year off to street race turtles or something along those lines is going to make this person uncomfortable and not want to give you anything. I've found that taking an old idea (like traveling through Europe if we're sticking with the year off idea) and adding in a new twist tends to work (traveling in order to tour cutting edge cloning laboratories). This leaves the reader with a memory of your paper without pushing them outside their comfort zones.
-Get someone else to read it. Two or three someone else's that know their grammar and aren't afraid to tear your paper apart.
-Turn it in well before the deadline! Remember, real people reading these. There's going to be a flush of papers just before the deadline and they're going to be up to their eyeballs in interesting things. Turning your paper in early gives them more time to look over it and gives you a better chance of catching their attention with your words.
-YOU have to be happy with what you wrote. A person can tell if the writer wasn't really into what they were writing, choose something that you're passionate about or, at the very least, like. That gives it "voice" and "style" and lots of other obtuse English class lessons. Don't write about something because you think that's what "they" want to hear. That's what everyone else is doing, make yourself different.
I hope that these help! Good luck and if you need someone to look over your papers, I'd be more than happy to!
Cheers,
Ollie May
There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people out in California who couldn't write.
-Terry Pratchett-
but like Cade said, just answer it honestly. See where it takes you ^_^
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