Do not, under any circumstances, have your parents write essays, letters, or anything else, on your behalf.
Over the last few years, the media has been telling us that America is a society where, to be blunt, kids are a lot slower to become independent than they used to be. Apparently it’s no big deal to graduate from college and move right back in with your parents for a few more years, often paying no rent. Just like when you were in high school, Mommy has a hot breakfast for you on the table when you roll out of bed at 10 a.m. Except back then, you were actually in school at 10 a.m. Now at 10 a.m., you’re halfheartedly cracking open the Classifieds looking for a company who thinks a degree in art history and comparative literature may qualify you for a job. Fortune magazine recently ran a story about parents attending job interviews with their children. And I don’t mean waiting outside in the lobby; I mean actually sitting next to their sons and daughters at the job interviews themselves. I’m not kidding.
ANYWAY… you can see where we’re going with this. Moms and Dads are doing quite a few things for their adult children these days that, not so long ago, were considered to be the jobs of the children themselves. I had always assumed that, despite this disturbing societal shift, all students and parents still knew that scholarship applications were still 100% the responsibility of the student, not the parents. But on a couple of occasions, I have been proven wrong.
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Do not send your essay with postage due.
There are many ways to make a bad first impression, but I can’t think of a worse one than making the committee pay money for the privilege of reading your essay. When in doubt, add an extra stamp or two. I hate wasting stamps as much as the next guy, but trust me, you’ll never miss that 40 cents.
Do not print your essay in all boldfaced type.
Yes, this actually happens, and more than you’d expect. We suspect the writer begins bolding certain passages here and there, and then before long, decides to shoot the moon and bold the whole thing. Don’t do it. Bolding text here and there adds emphasis to certain words, setting them apart from the rest, but that’s a trick you have to use sparingly or it’ll lose its effect. Needless to say, then, when you bold everything, there is no effect at all. Not only that, but the words appear to be screaming at the judges from the paper, and that’s not good, either.
Spell everything correctly.
Seriously. No excuses and no exceptions – everything. Here’s a little yarn about why it’s important to spell things correctly.
My company once managed a very large online events calendar for a major news website in one of the largest cities in the U.S. It was a very important job, but it didn’t require a great deal of experience. It was grunt work. So we placed an ad at a local university, looking for an intern to handle the job of editing the calendar. We got dozens of responses, but my favorite one went something like this:
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Type — don’t handwrite — your essay.
Now that computers are omnipresent, this seems obvious; however, we continue to receive a steady stream of handwritten essays. There are exceptions to this rule: for instance, many of our applicants from Africa and other underdeveloped nations have very limited access to computers, and have no choice but to use paper and pen. But even those applicants are at a disadvantage for one simple reason: legibility. At this point in time, scholarship committees are accustomed to reading typed, laser-printed essays. Even if your handwriting is excellent, it’s not as easy to read as a typed essay. So if you absolutely must handwrite – and few people reading these words could make that claim, since you purchased this book over the Internet with a computer! – do so as legibly as you can. But if you can gain access to a computer – even for an hour or so – take your handwritten essay, type it up and print it out.
Do not include sensitive personal information that you’re not asked for.
In fact, if anyone asks you to submit sensitive information, I’d advise skipping that scholarship altogether, because I know of no reason why a reputable program would be asking for your sensitive personal information.
First, let me clarify what I mean by “sensitive personal information.” I’m talking about things like your Social Security number, your driver’s license number, bank account information, passwords, logins, etc. I’m not talking about basic contact information like name, physical address, email address, and basic things such as that. After all, if you’re lucky enough to actually win the scholarship, the committee needs a way to notify you, and if you don’t provide any contact information, you’ll never find out you won and you’ll never get your money!
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Don’t print your essay on a used piece of paper.
Hey, we told you this section was dedicated to the painfully obvious. We wouldn’t write about this stuff if it didn’t actually happen.
On occasion, we’ve had essays sent to us that were printed on the back side of personal letters, scratch paper, and other gently-used documents. In one case, the writer scrawled across the back of the essay in pen, “Written on Recycled Paper!” I guess the writer expected the committee to be impressed at her environmentally friendly approach, but it didn’t work that way. It just made her look too lazy to find a blank sheet of paper.
Make sure your name is on the essay.
Go ahead and laugh, but our committees tell us that about 1 out of every 20-25 essays that we receive has no name on it. And some of them are pretty darn good essays. In fact, I know of at least two times in which committees that I actually served on would’ve selected no-name essays as winners; obviously, however, we couldn’t, since we had no idea who wrote them. Was it you? Probably not, but maybe. You never know.
Even if your essay belongs in the Scholarship Essay Hall of Fame (there should be one of these, shouldn’t there? We should start one.), no committee will put any work into tracking down the writer, retracing the envelopes to look for a return address, or anything like that. Your prize-winning words will just get tossed aside and the runner-up will get the money that should’ve been yours! Ouch! So heed the warning of your third-grade teacher: if your paper has no name, it’ll end up in “File 13” – the trash.
Don’t use a cursive or novelty font.
I debated including this one in the “painfully obvious” section, because hundreds of people have done it over the years, and it’s not as indubitably boneheaded as some of the other things in this section, like sending your bank account information or having your mom write your essay for you. But submitting your essay in cursive or novelty font is still a very horrible, never-advisable, avoid-at-all-costs thing to do. Allow me to explain.
Cursive fonts. Here’s another of many controversial notions in this book: Cursive is dying. I almost said “dead”, but dead means completely extinct, like mastodons; millions of people still write in cursive, of course, most of whom are over 50 years old. I mean that cursive is dying in the same way other once-omnipresent things without anyone to carry on their torch are dying: newspapers, American Indian languages, workplace smoking, and the like. None of them are quite dead yet, but it’s just a matter of borrowed time and everybody knows it.
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Don’t use novelty envelopes or paper.
I’ve already covered the type of paper and envelopes you should use for your application, so if you’ve read this far, you can consider this a review. Just so we’re clear, though: you should save the Hello Kitty envelopes and sparkly pink paper – or the NASCAR stationery with “In Loving Memory of #3” envelopes — for personal correspondence.
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Bad News: 98% of applications get tossed in the trash. Yours is probably one of them.
More Bad News: Financial aid is drying up, even at big colleges. Without scholarships, you're probably screwed.
Good News: I'm a real judge who writes scholarship checks every month & I just released a guide to winning scholarship money. (Your teachers and counselors have it all wrong.)
