Scholarship Essay - A Complete Writing Guide

Getting admission to a dream college can be very costly. Luckily, colleges now grant scholarships and other financial aids to the students who deserve a quality higher education. Having all the criteria to be fulfilled, getting a scholarship depends on a strong essay explaining why the applicant deserves the aid.

Learn how a winning scholarship essay is written if you are applying for financial assistance in a reputable college. Continue reading the blog to learn the writing process with examples.

What is a Scholarship Essay?

A scholarship essay is a writing type that a student drafts to impressive the committee to receive financial aid. This essay is the most crucial part of your college application as it allows the committee to decide why you deserve the scholarship among all the applicants.

The purpose of writing a good scholarship essay is to reveal your personality and the reasons why you are the best choice. So prove yourself in the best possible way in your essay.

Writing a scholarship essay requires the writer to understand everything about the financial aids and the organizations providing them. Usually, private and individual organizations offer this assistance for the deserving candidates to encourage them to study further.

Before you make up your mind on drafting a scholarship essay, it is vital to understand that it is different from a personal statement. A personal statement or a college application essay is only prepared with an objective to present yourself and how that institute will help you achieve your goals.

On the other hand, a scholarship essay identifies the interests of the organization and your need to get financial assistance.

Scholarship Essay Format

Every formal piece of a document requires proper formatting. Without the appropriate arrangement of the content, it will be harder for the readers to understand your essay’s purpose.

Read the guidelines provided to understand the basic pattern and format in which you have to draft your scholarship essay. Every institute requires a specific design in which the applicants are instructed to write their scholarship essays.

Although, if there are no requirements for the formatting, work with the basic style. The general formatting of the scholarship essay can be done in the following way:

• Use Times New Roman font in size 12pt for the entire content.
• Use double spacing between the lines.
• Align your content leaving a one-inch margin on all four sides
• If your essay’s length is more than a page, present your last name and the page number on the top left corner.

In order to leave a good impression on the scholarship committee, make sure that you have formatted your essay well. It will provide an image of your better understanding of the requirements and instructions.

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Scholarship Essay Outline

Developing an outline for your scholarship essay plays a vital role in the overall structuring of the document. An outline is a plan through which you prepare your scholarship essay and make sure no important information is missing in the content.

A scholarship essay can be written using the basic essay outline. According to this outline, your scholarship essay will be divided among the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. Body Paragraph 1
3. Body Paragraph 2
4. Body Paragraph 3
5. Conclusion

All the gathered information for the content will be divided among these sections to create a logical flow and meaning. Moreover, if you want your scholarship essay to be really effective, draft each part accurately.

The writing process of each section will be discussed further in the blog.

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How to Start a Scholarship Essay?

If you want your essay content to be effective and focused, it is essential to take all pre-writing steps carefully. The planning or the pre-writing steps taken makes it easier for the writer to present every information in a systemized manner.

Start off your scholarship essay by taking the following steps:

Understand the Guidelines Provided

The first and foremost step to take is to read and understand all the instructions provided. Every college/university provides a set of instructions to let the students know the basic requirements of the document.

All the basic requirements, including the formatting style, are usually given in the guidelines, so read them attentively.

Read the Essay Prompt Carefully

Understanding the prompt is equally important as writing strong content. If you fail to understand the prompt, you will be unable to produce a document that will fulfill the committee’s requirements. This will end up affecting the opportunity to avail of financial assistance.

Understand what objectives and purposes your scholarship essay should be serving. And draft your content accordingly. Avoid adding irrelevant information and sticking to the actual requirements.

Identify the Targeted Audience

Unlike other essay types, the audience of your scholarship essay is the committee that needs to be impressed. When you know what your audience is looking for in your essay, it will be easier to provide them with what they want.

Your scholarship essay should reflect the best of your personality and the reason for the committee to grant you the scholarship.

Choose an Interesting Topic

The first attempt to grab the reader’s attention is through an interesting essay topic. Select a good topic that you think will make the audience want to read your essay. Pick a topic or theme that you are passionate about and is important to you.

Moreover, make sure that a topic is a perfect reflection of your content, and best describes your personality.

Gather Information

Once you have a topic in hand, start gathering information. Brainstorm ideas that perfectly compliments the prompt and topic of the essay. Conduct research by going through some already existing quality scholarship essay examples.

Carefully observe how they are drafted that what you should include in your assignment. At the planning phase, make bullets about the information that you think is relevant enough to help you get the scholarship.

Organize the Information

All the gathered information needs to be organized in order to make it understandable for the readers. Arrange the collected data according to the essay outline to make sure that there is a logical harmony in the document.

Take steps to prepare a plan for your scholarship applications, and make the writing procedure simpler.

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How to Write a Scholarship Essay?

According to the plan developed, start writing your scholarship essay. The planning will keep you focused throughout and will not let you wander or add irrelevant information.

Draft your scholarship essay writing the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. Body Paragraphs
3. Conclusion

Let’s discuss the writing process for each section.

Introduction

An introduction of a scholarship essay is the first section that either encourages or discourages the audience to read the entire text. It introduces the applicant and his personality that is discussed in the body section of the essay.

In other words, the introductory paragraph gives a quick review on what your essay will be talking about.

The introduction should be very exciting for the committee. Make your introduction creative and exciting to make the judges read the whole document. A good introduction will include the following elements:

• The name of the writer and the place where he/she is applying for the scholarship
• A catchy hook statement
• An interesting piece of information to motivate the readers to read the document
• An unanswered question that will make the audience curious

A scholarship essay is not lengthy and is usually in a word limit of 500 words. Keep the introduction short, interesting, and clear.

Body Paragraphs

The body of the essay is the second and the longest section. It includes all the details about the statements and questions made in the introduction section. If you want your essay to be strong, draft this section according to the committee’s requirements and add the following information:

• Interesting Real Life Experiences - Share interesting events and experiences of your life that inspired you in any way. State how those courses of events changed your perspectives and behavior.
• Educational and Career Goals - Precisely present your educationals and career goals, the field of study, and college. State the need of financial assistance and why you best deserve it.
• Achievements and Strengths - Discuss your greatest achievements and strengths that helped you overcome difficult situations.
• Obstacles - State obstacles and issues that you faced. Share how you dealt with them and what you learned from them. Discussing the obstacles attempts to connect the writer with the readers emotionally. So creatively mention the challenges and excite the audience.

Your body of the essay should be properly written with connection and transition between all the paragraphs. Make sure that each paragraph is gradually taking the audience towards the conclusion.

Conclusion

The last section or the conclusion is drafted to give closure to your discussion. Keep in mind to write this section perfectly as the audience will remember this part of your essay vividly. The concluding paragraph should contain the following information:

• Emphasis on the need for financial aid and how you can best make use of it
• Present the lessons learned from the challenges
• How tough situations resulted in self-growth
• A final statement that connects the introduction and the concluding paragraph.

Proofreading and Editing

Your work does not finish here. Once you have written your essay, spend some time revising and proofreading the document. Go through the text a couple of times to make sure there are no punctuation, spelling, or grammar mistakes.

Recheck the formatting done and analyze whether it is understandable by the audience or not. Cross-check your content with the guidelines provided to make sure everything is according to the requirements.

Readout loud or let someone read your essay for you to see how your writing is sounding to the audience. Here you will observe how convincing and creative you are in your scholarship essay.

Notice if the tone of the essay is complimenting the theme and the choice of words is accurate. Make all editings before submitting the final draft and impress the committee with a well written and structured piece.

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Scholarship Essay Writing Tips

Looking for professional tips to make your scholarship essay out of this world? Expert essay writers of CollegeEssay.org have gathered some easy tips for you to help you write a winning essay. Follow the easy tricks provided below:

• Follow a narrative structure for your information
• Stick to the prompt provided the whole time while writing your scholarship essay.
• Choose a topic that you enjoy talking about
• Conduct research and read the already existing scholarship applications that worked for the committee.
• Do not exceed the word limit provided
• Use appeals such as ethos, pathos, and logos to connect to the audience
• Be honest and share only true stories and events
• Avoid repeating and exaggerating things
• Be specific and concise
• Be professional but be yourself at the same time
• Avoid using cliches
• Start writing the essay way before the deadline to have enough time to proofread

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Scholarship Essay Prompts

Writing a scholarship essay is all about answering the essay prompt correctly. No matter which institution you are drafting your essay for, it should be specifically designed to provide answers for the prompt.

Following are some of the prompts that are commonly required to answer for your scholarship application essays:

• Who or what influenced you to become a dedicated student? What experiences persuaded your decision?
• How did you face the most challenging situations in your life? How those challenges influenced your perspectives about life and people in general?
• Discuss your achievements and the challenges you faced between the journey.
• What are some of the amazing skills you have that differentiates you from other people? How did they develop?
• What is one trait that makes your personality strong?
• Were you passionate about getting something in life and you succeeded? What were the factors that contributed in your success?
• What made you identify your weaknesses? And how did you managed to get rid of them?

Select a prompt if you haven’t assigned one and start drafting a strong essay to avail the scholarship opportunities.

Scholarship Essay Examples

In order to help you understand the writing process and the format better, some examples of scholarship essays are provided. Go through these examples carefully and observe how students wrote winning essays.

300 Word Scholarship Essay (PDF)

Scholarship Essay Sample About Why I Deserve The Scholarship (PDF)

Scholarship Essay Example About Yourself (PDF)

Scholarship Essay Example Financial Need (PDF)

A dedicated and passionate high school student will always want to study further and get a college education. But it is obvious that paying for college is not something feasible for everyone. In such cases, people try to get scholarship awards or other financial aids.

There are a plethora of institutions that offer college scholarships to motivate students to fulfill their life long dream of studying. To influence the committee to grant you a scholarship is not an easy task.

Only a strong scholarship essay will let you avail of the financial assistance offered. If you are confused about writing this document we suggest to not risk the opportunity and get professional assistance.

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