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

Make learning their mission your mission
Where to find great scholarships

There is no mystery to figuring out why organizations give away money.

In most cases, the organizations come right out and tell you what they are trying to achieve with the award.

Start by carefully reading the award description. Oftentimes organizations spell out what they are looking for in the description of who is eligible for the award. Sometimes they provide the criteria that they use for judging the competition. Criteria can include qualities such as academic achievement, community involvement, leadership, specific career goals and character.

These requirements are valuable clues. Is there a minimum GPA? If there is and it’s high, then academic achievement is probably important.

Does the application provide a half page to list your activities? If so, then your involvement in organizations and projects outside of school is probably a fairly significant part of the selection criteria. Do you need to submit an essay on a specific topic or a project to demonstrate your proficiency in a field of study? All of these requirements are clues about what the scholarship committee thinks is important. Visualize yourself filling out their application. Would you have enough information to fill all of the blanks and answer all of the questions? If not, then you may want to consider passing on this award to focus on one that you are more qualified to win.

After reading the application, research the awarding organization. What is the group’s mission? Who are its members? What do they hope to accomplish? You can probably guess what kind of student will impress a group of physicists versus poets. All things being equal, most clubs and organizations want to reward students who are most similar to their membership. If you don’t know much about the organization, contact them to find out more. Check out their website. Read their brochures or publications. The more you know about why the organization is giving the award, the better you’ll be able to understand how you may or may not fit with their expectations.

For a local scholarship you may actually know the previous winner.

If you do, definitely contact him or her and learn as much as you can about the selection process. Ask for advice. Don’t forget to ask winners why they think they won. Often, their familiarity with the contest and experience of having gone through the competition will give them an impression of why they were selected.