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.
I once tore open an envelope to find a two-page (front and back) hand-written letter from the mother of a high-school senior, who made the case for why her daughter should receive our scholarship. Now, I am not a cold-hearted person nor a closed-minded one; I read the entire letter before I made up my mind. When you’ve read as many thousand scholarship applications as I have, you know there are a lot of strange situations out there that you haven’t thought of. Thousands of children are paralyzed and cannot write or type; others are blind, etc. So you have to have an open mind, at least at first.
However, that was not the case here. The mother explained that she’d tried to get her daughter to sit down and do the applications, but that she just couldn’t get around to it because of all the other extracurricular activities she was involved with. This is the wrong thing to tell a person who gets hundreds of essays daily, and at all hours of the night, from students who are involved in all those same activities yet still find the time to complete their own scholarship applications without their mothers’ help.
Not only that, but the mother’s long letter covered very little about her daughter; mostly, it just talked about how badly she needed the money to go to school. I’ll always remember that one, obviously – it isn’t every day that a mother applies in place of the student – but I also remember it because it was sad. How desperate did that mom have to be in order to pick up a pen and paper and write out a two-page letter, essentially begging for us to send her daughter money?
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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.
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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.
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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:
Dear Sir:
I read with great interest about the job of calender editor with StraightForward Media. I think I would be an excellent candidate for this job, because I currently work on the events calender for my church, and am very aware of community events and also good with computers. I am excited about the opportunity to become your calender editor and look forward to talking more with you about this opportunity.
Sincerely,
Jane Doe
Maybe I’m biased because I’ve been a fairly decent speller since I was young, but come on – are you kidding me? The average fifth grader can spell the word “calendar,” I guarantee you. And if you can’t – hey, get up and walk to one of the walls in your dorm room or apartment. See that big thing with all the squares and numbers on it? Check the cover, and I guarantee you’ll see the word “CALENDAR” written somewhere on it. Copy that spelling. That’s all you have to do to get it right.
Against my better judgment, I couldn’t resist writing this girl back. I don’t consider myself to be a crusader for correct spelling, because that’s a losing battle if ever there was one. Usually these things just get deleted, but some people are begging for a little correction. And I told myself to feel good about it, because my “tough love” might actually help this girl someday. So I wrote her back, and my response went something like this:
Dear Jane,
Thanks for your inquiry about the calendar job. I wanted to be frank with you and tell you that you were eliminated from consideration for the job due to the fact that you misspelled “calender” three times in your email. To be honest, I couldn’t trust you to do error-free work as a calendar editor when you’re unable to spell the word “calendar.” I wish you the best of luck in the future.
Best regards,
Josh Barsch
I didn’t expect her to feel good when she received it, but sometimes you need to hear the unpleasant truth in order to improve, right? Well, not according to Jane. She actually wrote back.
Dear Mr. Barsch,
I don’t know why you had to write me back just to tell me about my spelling. I would have liked it better if you had not written me back at all. I am not a perfect speller, but I still think I could have done a very good job.
Sincerely,
Jane Doe
So much for trying to be helpful.
Many people today tend to say that spelling matters less depending on what career you’re pursuing. They say things like, “What do you expect? I’m in marketing!” or “I spray for termites. Don’t expect me to win the spelling bee.” But that’s not the point. No one expects you to be a perfect speller or grammarian in your day-to-day life; however, your scholarship application is supposed to be your one-time, absolute best possible effort. It’s not just you — it’s you and the dictionary and whoever you can find to proofread it, taking as much time as you need to make this ONE document perfect. Yes, perfect – no errors whatsoever.
Whether you like it or not, if you misspell words on a scholarship application, you are telling the committee that you’re lazy, and that’s the worst possible thing to tell us. We don’t reward laziness with money. We think, “Wow, if this person is putting his/her best foot forward on a scholarship application and it’s still this sloppy, how bad does this person’s work usually look?”
So how do you get your application into tip-top, error-free shape, even if you can’t spell to save your life? For starters, of course, use the spell-check function on your computer program. That will catch most of the obvious errors. But once the document is spell-checked, give a copy of it to friends, teachers, spouse, children or whomever else you know that’s a better speller than you are. Ask them straight out, “Would you mind taking two minutes to check my application for mistakes? I’m not a great speller.” Not only will you get another set of eyes looking over the application, you’re also likely to flatter the person a little. It feels good to have someone acknowledge they respect you enough to seek out your help, doesn’t it?
Don’t be embarrassed to say you’re not a good speller – trust me, you’re in good company. Once you’ve had a few people glance over it for errors, you should have an error-free document. It doesn’t take long, and it can make the difference between getting the scholarship and getting your application tossed in the garbage.
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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.
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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!
Back to the issue of sensitive information: You’d be amazed at how many people enclose their Social Security Number with their essay. I have no idea why that is, nor do I have any idea why a reputable scholarship program would ask for it. If you win a big monetary scholarship, then they may need it for tax purposes later – and if you get to that point, they can ask you after you win. Identity theft is rampant, and a valid SSN is the jackpot for an identity thief, especially if it comes along with the owner’s name, address, and other vital information.
Some of our applicants have gone even further. I remember two in particular – one who provided her parents’ full tax return (complete with both parents’ Social Security numbers, names, addresses, employers, incomes… the whole nine yards), and one gentleman from Africa who included his bank account number.
I’ll give both these students the benefit of the doubt and say that SURELY, at one point before sending this info, each paused for at least a moment and thought, “should I really be sending this?” And they likely went ahead and sent the info because of one thing: they trusted the committee not to abuse it. And certainly in our case, they were right to do so. However, mail gets lost, and mail gets stolen. And those who steal mail do it for two reasons: a) to steal money and checks that are in the mail, and b) to steal the personal information within the mail in order to do heavy-duty financial damage later.
Bottom line: Don’t send your SSN or any other sensitive information in a scholarship application. Doing so puts you at high risk for little reward.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Cursive used to be considered the “grown-up” way to write. You learned it in the third or fourth grade, and it was expected to be your sole form of written communication by the sixth grade. And just before you left the sixth grade, your teacher would issue a not-so-veiled threat to the entire class: “When you get to junior high, you must write everything in cursive. If you turn in a paper that’s not in cursive, they just throw it right into the garbage.” Then you got to junior high and found out it was all a lie. They were just beating cursive into your head for… well, for no apparent reason. Just because their teachers had done the same thing to them decades ago, with a good paddling thrown in here and there for good measure.
This was long before the personal computer, in a time when no one imagined that computers would ever be affordable enough for everyone to have one and long before the convenience of email would force the entire population to use keyboards. So when you put those two things together: 1) everyone has a computer, and 2) everyone wants to use email instead of write letters, you get 3) no need for cursive. Personally, I think that 50 years from now, the ability to read cursive will be akin to the ability to read Braille or hieroglyphics. They will all be equally foreign to the average reader of English.
So, how does this relate to your scholarship essay? It simply means that going out of your way to use a cursive or script font (fun fact of the day: in cursive fonts, the letters actually touch each other; in script fonts, they don’t), you’re actually making your document more difficult to read.
Novelty fonts. Using novelty fonts is a sin more grave, even, than using cursive fonts. At least cursive used to be considered the fancy, sophisticated way to write. Novelty fonts, on the other hand, have always been for novelty only. That’s why they’re called novelty fonts, people. There’s plenty of room for creativity in the content of your essay, but don’t insert much creativity into your font selection. Have you enjoyed reading this paragraph so far? Of course you haven’t. It’s been a little slower going than reading the rest of this book, now hasn’t it? Now, imagine trying to read an entire scholarship essay written in this font. Not fun. OK, I’m going to change fonts now. You ready for me to change fonts? Are you sure? How about now? OK, I’m really going to change fonts now.
Readability is key (and if reading the above paragraph didn’t prove that to you, nothing will!), so stick with time-tested serif fonts like Times, Times New Roman or Palatino, or sans serifs such as Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana, maybe even Tahoma. Don’t even think about a novelty font: it may make your essay memorable, but only for the annoyance it caused by being so difficult to read.
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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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