How to Write a Winning Scholarship Essay
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?
First, you need to understand that the point of having you write the essay is so that the judges can get to know YOU. They already know your name, SAT/ACT score, GPA, date of birth, etc… When you write the essay you get a chance to share with the judges your opinions, thoughts, and feelings about the subject they ask you to write about. They will be instantly bored if you start your essay with something like, “My name is _______ and I go to _______ high school”. This information is found on your application and is not very interesting!
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.
By writing your essay, you are able to make yourself real to the judges. You know that you are more than a name on a piece of paper and now is the time to prove it. Help the judges use their imaginations to see you in their minds by writing with lots of real life situations, heartfelt emotions, and descriptive words. Use tools like the thesaurus to make your writing come alive and be remembered by the judges. Tell the truth and never lie in your essays. Write your own essay and do not let your parent write the essay for you. Remember, scholarship judges have read a TON of essays and can easily spot the ones that are not student-written, stretch the truth, and want to win so badly that they will say anything to make themselves look better than the other applicants.
Scholarship essays are a way for the judges to get to know YOU on a deeper level. When you draw them in from the beginning of your essay, tell the truth, and write from your heart, your chances of winning the scholarship money are much greater. To win scholarships, you need to learn how to create a scholarship application that gets noticed by the judges out of all the other applicants. Visit http://www.how2winscholarships.com to learn this method, find free scholarship tips, and win free money for college.
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