One of my all-time favorite movies is “Dumb and Dumber.” When I got my first job out of college and was so broke that my bed was actually my couch, I used to pop in the VHS tape (remember those?) on my tiny living room TV and listen to it as I went to sleep every night. Consequently, I can pretty much quote every line from the movie.

One of my favorites is when Lloyd (Jim Carrey) has just been royally chewed out by Harry (Jeff Daniels) for accidentally driving 400 miles *away* from their destination of Aspen, Colorado. Harry is so mad that he jumps out of the van and starts walking along the road by himself, even though they’re in the middle of a cornfield in the boonies of Nebraska. Lloyd is crestfallen, and screams after Harry:

“WELL EXCUSE ME, MR. PERFECT! I guess I forgot that you never, ever make a mistake!” And then he starts to blubber and cry a little, and Harry looks like a big meanie.

That’s how I feel sometimes when I’m giving out scholarship advice to students like you. I mean, just from memory, I can rattle off 20 or 30 big mistakes that will completely screw up your essay and get you eliminated from competition. And they’re all legit and you need to know them, but I also know that it’s hard to listen to a guy sometimes when it seems like all he can do is bark “Don’t do this!” and “Don’t do that!”

So in this email, we’re going to dial it back a little. Let’s be honest here — no one’s perfect, and the “perfect essay” has still eluded me after many years of judging and paying out scholarships. But the great thing about a scholarship essay (or a resume, or an audition, or an interview) is that you don’t actually have to *be* perfect — you just have to *look* like you’re perfect at that one critical moment in time when the bigwigs decide who wins the big money and who goes home with pocket lint.

The emails I send you are about getting to that point where your on-paper excellence can deliver the knockout blow to everyone who’s trying to compete with you, but we’re gonna take it slow. Today, we’re going to choose one, and only one thing for you to worry about: Spelling everything right.

Easy, right? Well, judging by a lot of the essays we receive, not really. Most people are not perfect spellers, and that’s not a problem. But on a scholarship application, you do have to look like a perfect speller. Remember, a scholarship application is your polished and rehearsed best effort — you’re putting your Best Foot Forward. Your toughest competitors will be doing exactly the same thing, I promise you, so you have to do it, too. Don’t even crack open the door to defeat, because if you do, a better-prepared student will kick the door down and leave you behind.

Not a great speller? That really doesn’t matter, actually. What matters is that you’re resourceful enough to hunt down those who are and polish up your work before sending it along. Ask a parent. Ask an English teacher — any English teacher, even if it’s not your English teacher. Tell them you’re applying for a scholarship and you want to put your best foot forward, and you’d like their expertise in proofreading your writing. Any teacher worth his/her salt will admire your desire to excel (it’s rarer than you think) and ought to gladly assist. If not, tell ‘em I said they’re a lousy excuse for an educator, then move on to the next English teacher. It won’t take long.

I’ve written a longer blog entry on the spelling issue, and it involves a colorful story of a student berating me, Harry-and-Lloyd style, for correcting her spelling. It’s sad and hilarious at the same time, and I hope you enjoy it. Have a great weekend!

http://www.givemescholarships.com/2008/03/26/spell-everything-right/

All the best,
Josh

Anyhow, this story and others like it that seem to appear every other day really reinforce the message of this site and my book, and that’s this: you absolutely MUST get out there and bust your hump for scholarship money, and you have to do it RIGHT. The costs for financing college are just spiraling upward, and although you don’t know it yet, you definitely don’t want to be getting out of college with a $40,000 job and $85,000 of student-loan debt. That will cripple you — trust me. And if you don’t take my word for it, fine — just look around. Incurring massive amounts of debt that you can’t afford to service over the long term is EXACTLY why the US entire world economy is paralyzed right now.

The scholarship money is there, I promise you. Go out and get it!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/your-money/22count.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=tuition&st=cse

That’s right – those fat financial-aid packages they were all offering two years ago? Gone. Done. Over.

So let’s get down to brass tacks: If you want to make it through college, you need to win scholarships now more than ever. And if you’re like most students, you’re going to fail miserably unless you let me help you. 

I’ve read over 10,000 scholarship essays and awarded $100,000 of my own money over the last 6 years, and I’ve come to realize that most students don’t know squat about writing a good scholarship essay.

Listen up:

Tip #1: Don’t talk solely about your participation in common high school activities.

The Internet has opened up scholarship opportunities to thousands of applicants who wouldn’t have been there 10 years ago. The less unique your essay is, the more likely it is that you’ll be passed over for the scholarship.

Four years of science club, soccer team and varsity band isn’t enough for the committee. They see hundreds of essays come in with that same stuff in them every single day. It’s not going to set you apart. Dig for something deeper, better and more unique if you want to win.

Tip # 2: Be careful with sensitive political issues.

Unless the scholarship you’re applying for is sponsored by an explicitly liberal or conservative organization, you have almost no chance of winning if you write about controversial issues like abortion, affirmative action, the Iraq war or any other polarizing issues.

Here’s the ugly truth: the more contentious the issue you choose to write about, the more likely it is that one or more committee members will completely disagree with you. Although judges try to keep their emotions and personal beliefs out of their decisions, it doesn’t always work. Offend them with the content of your essay and you probably won’t win the scholarship.

Tip #3: Be careful talking about religion.

See above. Same reason, times 10. It’s fine to have religious convictions and no one can ever take them away from you, but it’s also one of the quickest possible ways to offend a judge who doesn’t agree with you. Once again – it may not be right, but it’s true. Take the safe route and don’t make them the crux of your entire essay.

Tip #4: Don’t dwell on your GPA – it’s not a point of distinction.

Are you sitting down? OK, here goes:

Your GPA doesn’t really matter that much at all. A grade-inflation epidemic has killed the significance of a high GPA.

At some point in the recent past, someone decided the horror of seeing the letter “D” or “F” on a report card was more damaging to a kid than, say, not knowing how to read, write or spell. Lots of parents agreed, and convinced schools that even though Johnny still doesn’t know what a comma is, he still deserves a B in English.

So now, just about everyone has a GPA of 3.0 or above. And if everyone’s GPA is basically the same, what’s the point of even looking? Don’t expect it to carry you to a scholarship victory. It won’t.

Tip #5: Omit vanity awards from your list of accomplishments.

Remember the first time you got a letter from Who’s Who Among American High School Students? Felt great, right? Someone thinks you’re among America’s best! Happened to me in high school, too. And my folks dutifully shelled it out the $40 for the book.

The truth is, Who’s Who is in the business of selling books, not finding excellent students. Scholarship committees know this all too well. I recommend omitting Who’s Who and similar vanity awards from scholarship applications.

This article in the Seattle Times, transplanted from BankRate, gives you 10 tips on how to get the best financial aid package. Some of it’s obvious (”On-campus jobs are an option.” Oh really, Einstein? I can get money from a job?), and some isn’t so obvious (don’t try any flea-market bartering with financial aid officers). Worth a read if you’re still deciding how to pay for school.

Glater cites proposed new policies that would increase some grants by a few hundred bucks and available loans by a few thousand. If you’re right on the bubble of being able to pay for college or not, then these proposed differences may make the difference for you.

(Side note: I keep emphasizing the “proposed” part, because we’re talking about politicians here, the most reliably unreliable people in our society. Politicians are professional panderers whose job involves consistently lying to large numbers of their employers, the voters. Never assume they’ll keep their promises.)

That aside, I like the idea of high school grads taking a year off before heading off to college. I wish I’d done it, but I was one of those many millions of students who were in a desperate hurry to plunge headlong into the workforce by age 22. I’m now 35 and realize what a foolish hurry that was; believe me, there’s plenty of time for you to wage-slave in the real world, and if you’re able to take a year off while you’re young, strong, attractive and healthy, then by all means, knock it out of the park. Have fun. Send me a postcard.

Ask anyone over 30 if they wish they could have one free year to casually work, learn, explore, dabble, sample life’s pleasures at his/her own pace. Look closely into their eyes, and you may actually see them begin to weep internally at the pure joy of such a notion. The older the person you ask, the more intense the weeping. Don’t stand too close to these people, lest they grab your leg and beg you to take them along.

If you’re not interested, don’t sweat it. Besides, you can always take a year off later during college, or after college, if you so choose. Maybe you’ll have a bit more cash in your pocket then anyway, so you can enjoy your travels on an airplane instead of a Greyhound bus.

But my best advice on the subject is this: Slow down. Don’t be in such a huge hurry. Enjoy yourself while you can. The world will still be here when you get back.

Josh

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.)

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?

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.