Don’t be afraid to admit your past shortcomings and explain how you turned things around.
Sometimes, the best story you have to tell a scholarship committee will involve explaining some of the worst or most embarrassing moments from your past. Maybe you hurt or insulted someone close to you. Maybe you had an addiction or even went to jail (actually, If you’re still hurting your loved ones, addicted to drugs or making frequent trips to jail, then you may want to choose a different topic).
Why? Well, some of the experiences that give the clearest insight into a person’s constitution are those times in which he was beaten down like a dog in some way and forced to drag himself up off the ground and get back in the game (Yes, that was three tired, trite expressions in one sentence. Don’t emulate that poor writing in your scholarship essays, ok?). I’m not just blowing smoke at you here. Sometimes, the things that Oprah repeats over and over again are actually true — it really isn’t how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get up. I plan to teach my own children that the most critical factor in their success in the world is their ability and willingness to rebound and recover from life’s pits.
But if you’ve become a better person and conquered these kinds of obstacles, then that’s the sort of human progress that scholarship committees like to recognize and encourage further with monetary awards. And admitting your shortcomings also shows humility, which is another favorite trait among winners, in our experience. So if you’ve got to dip into your dark side to show how your bright side emerged, don’t be afraid to do so.
(Note: This depends, really, on how dark your dark side really is. If your dark past includes any serious violent or sexual crimes, then it’s probably best to talk about something else.)
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When you’re talking about your future plans, be specific, and speak in terms of how they’ll benefit others.
A rule of thumb in scholarship essays (and life, if you will) is that it’s better to be specific than to be general or vague. Society is accustomed to using vague labels for people and what they do: student, businessman, housewife, factory worker, etc. These labels are convenient for the normal conversations that fill our daily lives.
But your scholarship committee is a different audience. We want to know what’s different about you, and how you stand out from the millions of other people in this country alone who call themselves “students.” Even among those who have specific plans for their lives, there are big differences, and in a scholarship competition, it’s up to you to give the judges details about what you actually plan to be doing in the future, rather than just dropping a label on yourself. Let’s consider the example of students who aspire to be doctors.
If you tell the scholarship committee that you want to be a doctor, that sounds pretty good. If you say that you want to be a doctor who performs research that leads to new drugs to reduce the effects of Alzheimer’s, or that you want to work to improve dental health among inner-city children, or open a practice in the country in order to improve elderly care in under-served rural areas — that sounds exceptional.
The more specific you are, the more your essay is going to resonate with the committee, and it’s not hard to see why. Saying you want to be a doctor is nice, but it just doesn’t mean a lot unless you say why you want to be a doctor and what you’ll be doing once you’re in that career.
And now, on to the second part: It’s a good idea to talk about your future plans in terms of how you’ll be helping others. If you plan on becoming a teacher or a nurse or another job that’s strongly associated with community service, then this will be pretty easy; however, your future plans don’t have to be 100% charity work in order to do this effectively. Well-compensated professionals of all types are responsible for helping people in countless ways.
Of course, there’s an elephant in the room here that we need to acknowledge. For a great many people, the biggest (and sometimes only) reason for working toward a certain profession is the fat salary it promises. Many doctors and lawyers care less about helping people than having a Ferrari in the garage and a vacation house in the south of France. In that case, I say — more power to you, and I hope you get it all! (If you do, please remember little old Josh who helped you get there). But when it’s time to write about your career aspirations on your scholarship application, then you should lie.
Lie? Yes, lie. Remember again — this is not a book about morals and ethics. It’s a book about how to win. And in this case, honesty is not the best policy.
What’s wrong with expressing a desire to make a good honest buck? I mean, isn’t the desire to get rich at least part of the legendary American Dream? Yes indeed — I’m right there with you. But let’s have a practical moment here: Who’s reading these scholarship essays and deciding whether you should win?
You guessed it — mostly teachers and other education professionals. And as you know, teachers don’t exactly make boatloads of money. They gave up any dreams of big paychecks when they chose a more service-oriented, feel-good job. So a lust for money and material possessions is not going to resonate terribly well with these people.
Remember Rule #2: scholarship judges are normal people, and it’s normal to gravitate toward people whose interests are similar to your own. Therefore, we can assume that teachers will tend to empathize with students for whom wealth is secondary to service. If that doesn’t describe you, then do your best acting job, at least until you’re done with your application.
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Don’t knock your peers.
When they’re trying to show the scholarship judges what hardworking and focused young people they are, a lot of our applicants end up disparaging their peers in order to make the point. We get a lot of statements like:
“While the other kids in my class were out(fill in the blank here: partying, horsing around, having fun, etc.), I was (fill in the blank again: studying until midnight, working three jobs, caring for my seven nephews and nieces, etc.).”
Most writers don’t realize this, but drawing these comparisons to the other students can make you sound a little uppity. You should definitely mention all the challenging things you’ve accomplished, but it’s better to just mention those and drop the “While my classmates were out…” part.
We already know what a lot of the other kids are doing in their off-time: We see them street racing on the highway, loitering at restaurants and preening at the mall. But we also know that those are mostly just the normal things that normal teenagers do, and there’s nothing wrong with being normal. When you go out of your way to bring up comparisons between yourself and normal students, it can make you look arrogant. Another reason not to bring up what “all the other kids” are or aren’t doing is that, frankly, even if you’re busting your hump three times as hard as your friends, there are lots of other kids you don’t know who are doing the same thing. No one knows better than us — we’ve got stacks of applications lying around from kids who are saying the same thing.
The moral of the story, then? Don’t talk about others, just talk about you. The judges will already be comparing you to all the other kids — you don’t need to remind us.
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Balance pride with humility.
This can be tough, since just about every scholarship essay you’ll ever write is asking you to trumpet all the qualities that make you deserving of free money. But think about it – you’ve known lots of people who were very, very good at certain things. Some you hated, and some you admired – probably because of how they balanced pride with humility. We can find some easy examples in the world of sports.
While Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens has a lot of fans in Dallas, he’s easily the most reviled player in the NFL by players and fans alike. Is it because he’s great, and everyone is just jealous of his greatness? No – he’s definitely great, but so was Jerry Rice, who was beloved and respected by nearly everyone. The difference is this: Owens does everything he can to embarrass his opponents while he’s dominating them. But Rice, who understands his own greatness just as well as Owens understands his, respects his opponents and does not “rub it in.” It isn’t that Rice doesn’t know how good he is, and it isn’t that he’s not proud — he just balances that pride with humility.
Using another example, when did you last see Mia Hamm taunt a goalie after scoring? Never. She’s the most prolific scorer in the history of women’s soccer and never once has let her pride trump the fact that she was just happy to be there. In your essay, you’ve got a much better chance at winning if you temper your pride in your achievements with some humility. Bragging turns off more people than it impresses.
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Avoid references to perfection.
Some of the most tired, overused phrases we see in essays is that of “striving for perfection,” “perfecting my skills,” etc. Leave perfection alone – you’re never going to achieve it. No one ever does. And even if they did, no one would recognize it. This may seem like nitpicking, but there’s already too much emphasis on perfection today. Do the best you can, and be proud of the level at which you arrive. Musing about your pursuit of or brushes with “perfection,” however, has been known to arouse a snicker in more than a few judges over time. Remember, “nobody’s perfect,” and it’s going to stay that way for a long time.
But of course, you’re still striving; after all, the law of the jungle says that the moment you stop moving is the moment you get eaten, right? Fair enough, and you definitely ought to be talking about this in your application. Just adjust your language to indicate that you’re trying to be all you can be, to fulfill your potential, to use your talents to the fullest, etc. — rather than trying to be “perfect.”
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Stay on topic.
In other words, exclude any unnecessary information that has nothing to do with your essay. Everything in your essay should be relevant to the topic at hand. We receive bad examples of staying on topic every day. They’re the essays that start like this: “My name is Jane Doe, and I was born in Hershey, Pennsylvania on July 3, 1986. My mother is a dental hygienist and my father is a mortgage broker, and I have two brothers and two sisters. I attend Kennedy High School, where I am a senior.”
Unless you’re somehow going to tie that information into some critically important part of your essay, the committee doesn’t care a lick about any of it; instead, it sounds suspiciously like you’re trying to fill up space on the page and nothing more.
Unless you’re bringing up things like your birthplace, parents and siblings in order to shed light on your unique upbringing – as in the old “Tobacco Road” song that goes, “I was born in a trunk, momma died and my daddy got drunk and left me here to die alone” – then info like this is a waste of space and a waste of the committee’s time. We call it “commodity information.” Everyone has a birth date, a school and a hometown, and unless yours have some sort of special significance, leave them out of your essay.
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Don’t talk solely about your participation in common high school activities.
This is an important tip that you’ll rarely hear, but it’s true. Remember what was said at the outset of this book: The Internet has opened scholarship opportunities up to thousands of applicants who wouldn’t have been there 10 years ago. And that means the less unique your essay is, the more likely it is that you’ll be passed over for the scholarship. So four years of science club, soccer team, dance team, school play and varsity band is going to end up as a blur to the committee. They see literally hundreds of essays come in with that same stuff in them every single day. Not even a scroll of AP classes and high SAT scores are going to set you significantly apart from your competitors.
So, are you a slacker for doing the things that high-achievers around the world do? Of course not. I’m just telling you straight out that listing your participation in the clubs and sports and activities found in most high schools across the country is probably not going to be good enough to make you stand out. You’ll have to dig for something deeper, better, more unique.
How, you say? Keep reading.
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Show some industry.
Talk about what you’ve actually done – not just the groups you’ve joined. Sure, you were in your church’s youth group. And you can put “Four years in my church youth group” in your application if you want. But if you do that, you’re not telling me much. Since I haven’t been to your church, I don’t know what your church’s youth group does. For all I know, you could be building full-scale models of Noah’s Ark and doing research at the Dead Sea, or you could all be taking a one-hour nap every Sunday. I have no idea. You have to tell me.
Set yourself apart, then, by talking about what you did over that time. Let’s say you spend four years in your church youth group serving meals to the homeless one day a week in a soup kitchen. Maybe you served an average of 150 people on each of those days in the soup kitchen (it’s OK to give an honest estimate — you’re not expected to be exact on matters like this). There are 208 weeks in four years, and that means you served 31,200 meals to homeless people during high school.
Now that’s impressive. But I’d have never known about it if all you put on your scholarship application was “Spent 4 years in church youth group,” now would I? If you want us to know you’re industrious, you have to tell us what you’ve done. That makes the difference between a boring, commodity essay and one that makes the committee’s eyes pop.
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Don’t be preachy.
Scholarship essays are certainly about self-expression, and lots of applications ask open-ended questions about how you, the forward-thinking leader of tomorrow, might solve today’s problems. That gives you full license to come out with your ideas on how to change things, and in so doing, you’ll probably find yourself pointing out the flaws of society — i.e., the things that need to be changed. But be careful about getting on a “high horse” and sounding too judgmental or preachy, or giving the impression that solutions to the world’s problems are obvious.
Let me point out why this is important. There are legions of intelligent young people out there, but maturity eludes many of them. Intelligence is cheap. Maturity is priceless. If I had to choose a single most important quality in scholarship winners, it would be maturity. Show maturity in your essays and you’ll be much more likely to bring home a check.
Why is this? It’s because you’re headed into a make-or-break stage of your life when you hit college. The things you do there — even seemingly small things — will have an immense, life-altering effect on your life. And it’s maturity, not raw intelligence, that is your key to handling those situations successfully. You may be a wizard at literature or science or economics or whatever, but if you can’t handle the pressures of the world, you’re likely to flame out and not meet the goals you have for yourself right now.
As scholarship judges, we don’t want to give money to people who are going to flame out. We want to give money to the ones who are going to make it. Hence, we look for and place great value on maturity. Got it? OK.
So, how do we tell who’s mature and who’s not? Well, it’s an inexact science, to be sure. But one of the hallmarks of maturity in young people is their ability to balance their own big ideas with the knowledge that the world is complex, and that they still have a lot to learn. The world is a complex place, and solutions to society’s most difficult problems are hard to find. That doesn’t mean you can’t help solve them someday; it just means that, if we’re talking about a real problem, it’s not going to be easy to solve.
With that in mind, if you catch yourself writing overly simplistic phrases such as, “If more people would just…” or “The world would be a better place if we would just wake up and realize,” remember that the problems you’re talking about probably don’t have solutions as simple as you think. I’m not positive, but few major problems have ever been solved by a collective bunch of folks all spontaneously “waking up and realizing” anything. Your scholarship judges are educated and know this all too well. Preachy proposals will likely lead to some eye-rolling when your essay is being read, and that’s not good for you.
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Go easy on the slang, yo.
Every generation uses a great deal of slang, but it’s usually not the same slang the previous generation used. And it’s most likely that the committee evaluating your essay isn’t from your generation. One recent applicant mused about his football career and “leaping for a pick and taking it straight to the house.” If you watch SportsCenter on ESPN, you know that our applicant meant he intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown. But guess how many of our committee members watch SportsCenter religiously? Not many.
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