Scholarship facilities help students to continue their education without having to worry about their financial problems. It helps institutions to pick the perfect students who could prove a great asset to the university. Thousands of students apply for a scholarship essay, but not everyone manages to impress the supervisors with a mind-blowing application essay.
Nowadays, applicants are asked to submit the scholarship essay along with their application. The better your essay is, the higher the chances you will win the scholarship. If you want to get a scholarship, you must write a perfect essay that stands out from the other applicants. In this article, we'll talk about the top 7 ways to write an outstanding scholarship essay. Let’s begin.
1. Understand the Prompt and Stick to it
First thing first, what is your prompt? Are you being asked to share a personal story that made you a good student? Or, the struggles you dealt with? No matter how engaging your essay is; you cannot get a scholarship for writing something that's different from the prompt. Your goal is to construct a perfect piece without distracting the audience from the prompt and essay question. It is, therefore, advised to read the prompt and understand it so that you get an idea of what exactly you are supposed to write.
2. Include Emotions, Not Just Facts
When other applicants are trying to come up with facts and statements, you should do something that obviously makes your essay impressive. For example, you can use narratives, imagery, and pacing to draw the attention of your audience.
We all know that people love to read articles and essays that are filled with emotions. Your goal must be to write an essay that has emotions, expressions, and words that can allow the readers to understand you both as a person and student. In simple terms, the readers must be able to feel what you have been through and the struggles you have faced. However, you must not distract the readers from the prompt or the questions assigned. This can have a negative impact on your essay application. You only need to express your points with emotions and expressions so that the readers get to know you better.
3. Consider the Language
In the above-mentioned point, we asked you to write an essay filled with emotions and expressions. But does that mean you can use too many slangs, idioms, phrases, and abbreviations in the essay application paper? Well, you cannot do that! You are writing this essay to attract your audience. Hence, adding emotions is necessary. But you should pay special attention to the language you use. For example, words like ‘gotta, wanna, lemme, gimme, IDK, TBH, and etc cannot be used in formal essays.
The scholarship committee will definitely take your language and the use of vocabulary into consideration. You can neither sound too professional nor too informal. Stick to the regular language you speak, but use proper vocabulary.
4. Stick to the Word Count
A lot of scholarship applications are rejected because the students couldn’t stick to the word limit. You are provided a word limit for some reason. If you think you can have a good impression by writing more, then you are wrong! College scholarship committee gets thousands of essay applications to read. The last thing they want is a long essay that never ends.
This can have a negative impression since you couldn’t follow the terms. Try to stick to the main points. If there’s any possibility of shortening the paragraphs and sentences, do it. Never try to fill unnecessary information to reach the word count. There’s no point in writing sentences that sound boring and unattractive to the audience.
5. Be Honest While Writing the Essay
Not everyone has gone through the struggle that could be mentioned in the essay. That’s why they choose to write their imaginary struggle and some fake stories where they imagine themselves fighting the issues. If you think you cannot write the answer to the prompt genuinely, just pick some other prompt.
The scholarship committee reads many essay applications. Believe it or not, it won't be tough for them to find out if you are lying. The essay that speaks the truth seems original. Besides, the supervisors would love to read genuine essays.
6. Keep in Mind the Format
Just because you have a story to tell, you cannot overlook the format. You are given an essay writing a task to evaluate your writing skills, creativity, and personality. No matter how interesting the story you have to share with the readers, the format should be your number 1 priority.
The college scholarship essay must start with the introduction, where you have to lay out the main points of the essay. The second part is the body, which should be divided into paragraphs. The body is where you are supposed to answer the prompt in an engaging yet professional manner. Once you are done writing the essay, leave a short conclusion that summarizes the main points of your essay. Don’t just throw some random sentences, add valuable points and summarize the essay properly. The format of the scholarship essay is usually the same, but the university might ask you to use other formatting structure. Make sure that you stick to the format.
Proofread, Proofread, and Proofread
Before you submit the essay, check it twice and thrice. If you don't feel like reading the essay, again and again, to ensure that it's free of errors, have your computer read it for you. You cannot send an essay that’s full of grammar errors.
Of course, you want to get your essay approved for a scholarship. Do you think the grammatically incorrect sentences can win you the scholarship? Well, there are thousands of applicants who put their best efforts into crafting a piece that's perfect in every way. If you want to stand out
, check your content on Grammarly and other grammar checking tools.
998 Words
Oct 31, 2019
2 Pages
