finding. applying. winning
Scholarships

secrets to winning scholarships

Here are three important steps one must complete that will guide you on the road to success in winning scholarships.

1. Get the scholarship application, review the requirements carefully, and find the ones you qualify for and make sure to apply before the deadline.

2. Make sure that you complete the application completely, carefully, neatly, and correctly.

3. Be certain that you have written the very best and outstanding
personal essay possible. The vast majority of the scholarship applications
will require you to write one.

Review item 1
I recommend that you collect as many scholarship applications as you can. Some you may qualify for and others you may not but obtain all the application you can anyway. Look over each application carefully and look at what they are asking for and requiring. The more applications you examine and analyze the more you will understand what information you need to collected if you are going to be successful in winning funds. By looking over each application you may notice that the majority of them ask for almost the same information. If you work hard to organize your information in order to complete what it asks for on the applications then you will be able to complete many applications very quickly for years to come. For those scholarship that you do qualify for go ahead and apply and make absolutely sure you mail it in before their deadline. In most cases scholarship agencies immediately disqualify any application that arrives after the announced deadline. They take their deadlines very seriously.

Review item 2
When I state that one needs to complete the application correctly what I am emphasizing is to make sure that all the required information that the application is asking for is provided and that the persons that will look over your application will be able to easily read and understand what you wrote. I personally think that completing the application in ones own handwriting is not a very good idea. What may be clear to you in your own handwriting may be next to impossible to read by others. Persons that decide who will qualify for their scholarships must first have to read each of many applications for perhaps many hours. It is very frustrating to have to read an application slowly because it is hard to read.

I was on a scholarship application review committee recently and we had enough applications that even before we started to read them we decided to divide the pile of applications between those that were written and those that were typed. We agreed to first read the typed ones and if we had any scholarships left over after we went through that typed pile we would then consider those that had hand written in the information. Quite honestly we never got to the applications that had been hand written. Between all of us that were going to read the applications we also agreed to eliminate any application that was missing important information clearly requested on the application.

The pile of applications that we never read and were rejected because they were incomplete was much bigger than those we read carefully.

Approximately 70% of the applicants were never considered simply because their applications were incomplete or they were handwritten.

Review item 3
Let’s talk about preparing and writing a strong, clear and concise personal essay. While all three items being mentioned in this article are important to be successful, this last item is the most important step that will ultimately determine if you will win the scholarship. This is the part of the application that will require the greatest amount of time to do successfully. Students that have won many scholarships normally do so because they have invested hundreds of hours preparing, writing and rewriting their personal essay statements. What takes the longest is organizing ones thoughts and gathering the information needed to write a winning essay. It will take a long time to write a short (normally a 1 to 2 maximum page essay) but very well written essay.

The essay will be judged on quality and not quantity.

When I give conference presentations on how to win scholarships I emphasize that what large scholarship winners have in common is they have worked on their essays for months and even years. It is more than just spending a lot of hours writing, its also a matter of investing a great deal of time planning and writing different ways of answering an scholarship essay question. Each new version requires more research, more consideration, more planning and more editing.

Yes, it may take hundreds of hours to prepare great answers but the results can be invaluable. Preparing a great essay will also serve to prepare you to be ready and confident for the final stage to winning the scholarships, which is finally the oral interview session.

Your time preparing will be well invested and the essays will help you for the several years that you will be attending college. If different versions of the main essay helps you to pay for college education and get a college degree then working on your essay merits your full and undivided attention.