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

What advice do you have for future applicants?
Judges’ Roundtable: inside the selection process

Some of the best advice you can get is from those who will be judging your scholarship applications. Since many have seen hundreds if not thousands of applications, they see firsthand how you can find awards, create a powerful application and essay and avoid the mistakes that other students make.

Kimberly Hall

United Negro College Fund

“Start looking for scholarships and applying early. I encourage students to start in their sophomore year of high school. Of course, they can start even earlier than that too.”

Tracey Wong Briggs

All-USA Academic Teams

“Pursue the interests you love. One of the things we see is students who just care so much about what they’re doing. If you do that, the awards will come.”

Mario A. De Anda

Hispanic Scholarship Fund

“Read the application before you start filling it out. Spend time on the personal statement. It’s our first impression of you so it needs to be good.”

Wanda Carroll

National Association of Secondary School Principals “There is nothing that disqualifies a student quicker than not following instructions. Make sure that all the signatures are there.

Make sure you have every ’i’ dotted and every ’t’ crossed. We have hundreds each year who don’t make the first cutoff. It’s not that they are not qualified but they just haven’t followed the instructions.”

Russ Hobbs

Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship Program “Sell us on the things that you have done outside of the academic area. You need to let us know why we should want to fund you over 30 or 40 other candidates in our district.”

Ellen Frishberg

Johns Hopkins University

“Focus and do well. We’re looking for the academic program not just grades. We also want to see that students do well in activities and that they don’t just join lots of organizations for the sake of listing them on their application. Focus on leadership since this award tends to go to students who invented, chaired, captained or did something that shows leadership.”

Laura DiFiore

FreSch! Free Scholarship Search

“The bottom line is that we want to give you the money. It’s up to you to give us a reason to say ’yes.’ Please, please, please give us reasons to say ’yes.’”