How to write a winning scholarship essay - Gen Tanabe, Kelly Tanabe 2018

How does your scholarship selection process work?
Judges’ Roundtable: inside the selection process

Understanding how the selection process works as well as realizing that not all competitions are the same will help you see where to focus your energies. If you can, learn about the scholarship program’s selection process, what happens at each stage and how the applicants are evaluated.

Kimberly Hall

United Negro College Fund

“Students submit their applications directly to the UNCF. We perform a preliminary screening and send the strongest applications that we feel match the goals of specific donors on to those donors. Typically, the donor will then select the winner.”

Trisha Bazemore

Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation

“The foundation first selects semifinalists based on a quantita-tive analysis of students’ initial applications. Then, a 27-member Program Review Committee reviews the semifinalists’

applications and essays. From this judging, 250 students are advanced as finalists. These students are then asked to travel to Atlanta at the expense of the Scholars Foundation to attend the Scholars Weekend, where they meet the other finalists and are interviewed by members of the National Selection Committee. Based on their applications and this interview, finalists are designated either as one of 50 National Scholars, receiving a four-year, $20,000 scholarship or as one of 200 Regional Scholars, receiving a four-year, $4,000 scholarship.”

Corisa Moreno

The Music Center Spotlight Awards

“We start with our preliminary audition and there we screen for the basics. For example, let’s say you’re a singer. We would look for basic skills like tone and pitch. For dance we would look at the quality of your dance skills and musicality. As the applicants advance, the competition gets more intense because you’ve got a handful of very qualified dancers and musicians.

At the final level everyone is extremely talented and what often makes the winner stand out is that extra level of professional persona.”

Tracey Wong Briggs

All-USA Academic Teams

“We have two steps. The preliminary judges score each applicant against a score sheet. That’s why it’s real important for people to read the nomination form carefully since every item on the nomination form is what we are judging for on the score sheet. During the finals, the judges meet and they try to build an academic team. They read all of the finalist applications and pick the first, second and third teams.”

Wanda Carroll

National Association of Secondary School Principals “When you are dealing with thousands of applications, you have to find a way to narrow the field. All of the applications are screened using an algorithm. We determine a set number of criteria that they have to meet and a certain number of points that they need to have to be considered for the finals.

We narrow down our applicants to the top 1,000 or 2,000 applications. Each application is then read by a team of readers.

A team will select a state and read all of the applications from that state. The number of awards for a specific state is based on the population of that state.”

Laura DiFiore

FreSch! Free Scholarship Search

“There are two stages for the judging. I personally pull out the no go’s. These are the applicants that on first glance are clearly not qualified to move forward in the competition. Those that pass this stage are sent to judging. During the judging stage you have to impress all 10 judges. We use a point scale, and the winning applicant and essay has received the highest marks from all of the judges. We usually pick out the winner in about three hours. The second and third prizes tend to take us two days. Out of all the entries, there will be about 50 stories and 70 poems going to final judging.”