by Veronica Hunt
When you make the next step in your education and start applying for scholarships and colleges, you understand that writing skills are even more important than you thought.
The admission committee will pay special attention to your scholarship essay since it demonstrates your individuality more than any diploma. Thus, they have already seen thousands of those papers before and they are quite bored to read something like "I want to become a doctor because I want to help people" once again.
How do you make your scholarship essay special and the entire writing process less stressful? Well, try relying on these tools and pieces of advice we have gathered for you. Hopefully, they will come in handy!
Scholarship essay samples
Before you start writing your scholarship essay, look through some other papers composed by students. A great resource of professional essay samples is the website called Student Share. Just use the search bar to enter your request and enjoy sample papers done by successful students.
You can download one paper per day for free, or share your own writings and get an unlimited access to the paper base. Use these samples to get inspired and realise how good the paper should look like, but do not plagiarise or steal ideas - this will not make your essay the way it should be. You have to show your personality and uniqueness, not your rewriting skills!
Online guidelines for the scholarship essay
Next, look through some online guidelines, "do's and don't's" and pay special attention to the hints given. For instance, Harvard College Writing Center provides students with a number of useful writing guides and resources to let you handle the writing process easier and become more confident in yourself.
Harvard Writing Center offers a great range of tips and hints on how to understand the paper requirements, how to structure a paper, and how to make your thesis statement clear and strong. Be sure to keep these tips and pieces of advice in mind and they will help you stick to the academic standards and general writing rules.
Formatting of the essay
You have to look through some formatting guides and pay attention to the specifications your institution gave you about the paper format. Sometimes, committee members are really scrupulous and sometimes they may not even read scholarship essays formatted incorrectly.
It is natural for students not to keep in mind all details and rules of formatting. However, you can try using Purdue Online Writing Lab, a resource for students and academic community members that provide instructional material on how to format a paper in MLA, APA, Harvard, Chicago or Turabian style correctly.
General scholarship writing rules
Every institution has application standards, but you should also get a clear idea of general scholarship writing rules. These are necessary since a college you are applying to can describe some special requirements only because it is considered that you already know a bunch of general rules and you have to combine them with the particular ones. That is why you should benefit from guidelines published online. Try Bates College Tips to make your essay stand out.
Avoid common expressions and try to be unique
Well, it may sound strange, but most admission committees do check scholarship essays for plagiarism. You are expected to present your unique personality and that is why the committee wants to make sure that this is really so.
In fact, even if you didn't copy the content elsewhere, don't leave it to chance. Some common expressions and widely-used phrases in your paper may fall short. Check your text online using PlagTracker to make sure that no nasty surprises happen.
Other useful tips for your scholarship essay
- Make sure to read the instruction attentively. Do you understand what is written there? Not really? Then read it again and do not start writing before you get the idea. If you have any doubts, contact the university administration and ask for clarifications. Don't be shy. At least, it is your path to your bright future!
- Create an outline before you start. This will help you keep your thoughts and ideas organised and you will not forget to include everything you want.
- Write in a clear, concise, simple and straightforward manner. There is no need to use complex and long sentences since you risk making mistakes and puzzling your audience.
- Try being original. Think about some personal stories and episodes that made you set your sights on choosing this particular academic career. Tell the stories, but don't go over the top with jokes and informal language.
You can apply right now for our Studyportals Scholarship: International Distinction Awards.
Don't let a scholarship essay discourage you! Every student has to go through it, so brace yourself up, arm yourself with these tools and pieces of advice, and good luck!