You must Beat the Stack.
Once you read this section, it’ll seem very obvious, but most people completely overlook the advantage you can give yourself by paying great attention to the way you physically package your essay. Remember Rule #1: Competitors are everywhere, and you must put your best foot forward. Your essay’s packaging is one way to do this that hasn’t even crossed the mind of most of your competition; hence, it’s an area where you can seize a big advantage if you give it your best effort.
First, though, let me give you a little bit of background on the nuts and bolts of what happens to your scholarship essays once you send them in. Where do you think they go? You’ve probably never given it much thought, and rightly so. You’re much more concerned with winning the contest and collecting the cash. I can’t blame you.
In most cases, the scholarship essays go in a) a big pile; b) a big file cabinet; or c) a big pile inside a big file cabinet. If you imagine the committee eagerly rips them open and reads them the moment they come in –- sorry, it doesn’t happen that way. Most scholarship judges have day jobs, and during the day, that’s what they do –- their day jobs. Usually, we just set aside big blocks of time later on down the line, closer to the end of the application period (often after the application period has passed) for reviewing applications. And like other normal people, we often procrastinate as the stack grows bigger and bigger.
Consequently, you as the scholarship applicant face one of the most difficult challenges around: you must beat The Stack. That’s what we’re going to call this phenomenon from now on in this book: Beating the Stack. You’ve got to find some way, any way at all, to somehow make your piece(s) of paper stand out from the thousands of others in that stack. If this site were a human being, his purpose in life would be to help you Beat the Stack.
Submit your essay in a large envelope.
Preferably a 9″x12″ or even a 10″x13″ envelope so that you don’t have to fold or otherwise crumple your essay to get it to fit. After all, you’ll be going to a lot of trouble to make sure your essay has a very nice appearance, and you don’t want to let it all go to waste by folding it up into a small envelope and letting it sit with the post office for a week.
Don’t use clear plastic page protectors
Don’t use clear plastic page protectors, and for that matter, the long triangular binders that come with them. First of all, these are a pain to read — it makes turning the pages difficult, and as far as that goes, trust me, staples are just fine! More importantly, though, a plastic cover for every page of your essay prohibits us scholarship judges from doing one thing that we very much like to do, and that’s write on your essay! Maybe it’s an asterisk marking your essay for more consideration later (in other words, a possible winner instead of one bound for the trash), or maybe it’s a note to another judge to “Read this one first, it’s very well done” or some other thing. In any case, we can’t do it if the pages are in plastic protectors. That’s overkill. Don’t do it!
Send your essay in a folder so the papers stay crisp.
Remember when I said that using high-grade paper was one of the best dollar-for-dollar ways of making your essay stand out? Well, this tip is in the same category as that one, but this one may be even better.
Let’s examine what happens to your essay after you drop it in the mail (or even if you send via UPS, FedEx, etc.). Surely you’ve already heeded my earlier advice about putting your application in a large envelope that prevents you from having to fold it. But even then, it still has quite an ordeal to endure before it gets into our hands.
It’s going on a brutal trip across the country that begins when it’s picked up and tossed into a document bin on a truck. Then, it gets taken back to an office, where it’s dumped somewhere else into another box and eventually loaded onto a plane or semi truck (depending on how you sent it). With the higher-end delivery services, it’s then going to a sorting facility where it’s going to be tossed around with millions of other packages on conveyor belts and tons of other sorting machinery. Then it reaches its destination city, where it’s tossed onto a truck again, and then, if you’re lucky, maybe the delivery guy won’t fold the thing in half and shove it in our mail slot.
Keeping pieces of paper in good shape from point A to point B isn’t easy, is it?
But you have a weapon at your disposal — a high-quality folder. They’re sold at Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, even Wal-Mart and the like. Get a good-quality, glossy folder (I like glossy ones myself, just because they look even sharper than the cheap-o folders, and they might run you a whopping 50 cents more) and put your essay/application inside it.
Even one of the flimsy, 6-for-a-dollar folders will keep a few sheets of paper safe from creases, tears, and rips, but you’ve come this far already, so don’t go cheap-o on me now. Go the whole nine yards and buy a thick, glossy folder. Trust me.
Here’s a secret for you: Essays that arrive in folders tend to stay in their folders as they’re passed around from judge to judge. Don’t ask me why; it’s just one of those tendencies about human beings that seems to be innate. I do it myself. Something inside me says that when I pull a nice essay out of a nice glossy folder, then I ought to put it back in that folder when I’m done with it. So not only will it stay protected from the delivery folks, it’s very likely to stay pristine as it gets handed around between judges.
And like I said earlier about the high-quality paper, an essay in a folder stands out from the thousands of others that aren’t. That’s probably the single best thing about this trick: almost no one does it. That’s why you should — it gives you a great little edge and is a great tactic for Beating the Stack.
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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.)
