Three rules worth repeating. Over and over and over again.
There are several very important themes in this book, and you’re going to hear me repeat these themes over and over again. And again. You’ll probably get tired of them, but the reason I repeat them so often is because they are constantly overlooked by scholarship applicants every day, and because of that, these applicants lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of scholarship money. Ouch!
Each is equally important, so let’s walk through them before we get into the meat of the book, shall we?
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Rule #1: Competitors are everywhere, so put your Best Foot Forward at all times.
You’ve probably heard me talk about this website before, but it bears repeating: Thanks to the Web, you now have access to thousands of scholarships you never would’ve known about prior to the Internet age. That’s the good news. The bad news is this: So does everyone else. The competition for scholarship money is more intense now than at any other time in history. And it’s not only your American neighbors who are competing with your kids for scholarship money; it’s over 100 million students worldwide, from India, China, Europe, Africa and every corner of the globe.
Scholarship contests are like any other contest in that the more competition you have, the less room for error you have if you plan to win. If you’re competing against a dozen kids from your own school, you might be able to make a few mistakes, get a little sloppy and still win. If you’re competing against the best in the world, mistakes kill. One mistake and you’re out.
And as we’ve just established, you’re now competing against the best in the world every time you fill out a scholarship application. Even in the case of local or other restricted-entry awards where you’re not competing against the whole world, your odds of winning go way up if you approach the process as if it’s you against the world. For the purposes of this book, we’re going to refer to that process as putting your best foot forward, or BFF for short.
Mistakes and imperfections range from very large and obvious to the tiny, nitpicky details that you probably think no one cares about. This book goes through all of them, and if you want the best chance at bringing home the most scholarship money, you must pay attention to all of them! That’s the essence of putting your best foot forward – the idea that, when you’re facing the world’s toughest competition, no detail is too small or too unimportant. Cover them all, and cover them well. BFF at all times!
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Rule #2: Scholarship judges are normal, busy human beings.
When you think of a scholarship committee, what do you think of? What do you see in your mind? If you’re like most of us, you see somewhere between 5 and 10 middle-aged academic types sitting around a large table, giving each essay a great deal of scrutiny, debating with one another the merits of each applicant. Except, of course, when your essay comes up for review, in which case you imagine them all agreeing on how exceptional and wonderful you are, and lamenting that they don’t have a few thousand more dollars to toss your way.
Now, I’m not saying this never happens — sometimes, somewhere, I’m sure, committees do sit down at such tables and review applications together, somewhere in between lively discussions of Chaucer’s influence on Shakespeare and the implications of the war on terror on globalization. Much of the time, though, that’s not the case. Why not? Well, this is something you’re going to hear over and over again throughout this book, so get used to me saying this: Committee members are busy people, just like all other people in the world. Allow me a tiny tangent here to explain what I mean:
Everyone’s busy. Seriously, I mean it, everyone. Kids of every age are busy with school, activities and friends. College students are busy with class, activities and of course, their social lives. Adults are busy with their jobs, friends, spouses/significant others and children. The older you get, the bigger your family gets, the more complicated your job becomes, and the more stuff you have to obsess about. Even retired people are busy. What’s the most common question you hear people asking someone who’s retired? It’s this: “Are you keeping busy?” Even though these folks (usually) are no longer working or raising families and are finally in the stage of life where they can kick back a little, we still expect them to keep busy! And they do not disappoint: usually, when asked, retirees assure us that they are indeed staying busy, even if it’s busy napping, golfing and being nagged by their spouses.
So there you have it — everyone’s busy already, even without volunteering to be a scholarship judge. For those of us who actually DO volunteer to be a scholarship judge, then, life is quite a bit busier, even. Judging thousands of essays is an enormous task — a task stacked on top of all the other responsibilities in our lives: our day jobs (and our night jobs, for some of us), spending time with our families, etc.
For some reason, though, we tend to imagine scholarship committees in a vacuum. They’re perfectly unbiased and fair (much more on that subject later) and they always choose the most accomplished applicant without much difficulty or struggle, always with plenty of time on their hands to spare.
I’m here to tell you: it ain’t so.
Ever wonder why the essays you submit are never returned to you? No, it’s not because they’ve been rushed to the Smithsonian Institute for Incredible Essays. It’s highly likely that it’s got barbecue stains on it because the judge was reading it over lunch at a restaurant, or it has scribbling all over it because it was accidentally used as a piece of scratch paper during the judging, or it’s got a perfect “coffee circle” on it because the judge decided to use it as a coaster. Maybe it was accidentally shredded when it mistakenly ended up on a stack of junk mail bound for the paper shredder.
All of these are distinct possibilities. Why? Because scholarship judges are extremely busy people.
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Rule #3: Scholarship judges pay attention to every detail.
The crush of applicants from all over the Internet isn’t only tough on students; it’s also pretty rough on us judges as well. Not only is it extremely time-consuming to wade through thousands of essays instead of a hundred or even a few dozen, as it used to be, it’s also a lot tougher to choose a winner. Every contest now has dozens of students whose essays are great and deserve to win. But when there can only be one winner, all but one of those excellent, sometimes-flawless essays has to be tossed in the same trash can with the essays that contained all the silly mistakes you’ll read about in the rest of this book. It’s tough to do, but we have no choice.
So how do we make the tough choices at the end, when all that remains are tip-top, primo essays? We have to start picking at the details, the small things – you’ll read about a lot of them later in this book. Make no mistake, when a tie needs to be broken, the smallest details matter. And that’s why you must pay attention to the small details – in the ultracompetitive world of scholarships that shows no sign of getting any less competitive anytime soon, you must pay attention to the small details, because the judges do. I can’t say it any plainer than that.
Let’s get on it with it then, shall we?
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