Writing a Scholarship Essay is one skill that every student must be enriched with, whether aiming for a scholarship or not. The writing skills involved while curating a scholarship essay help you, and your achievements get amplified better to the selection panel and make you stand out as an exceptional candidate.
This article will demonstrate a few examples along with several guidelines to help you understand what ingredients you would need while writing a scholarship essay and how to use them.
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Scholarship Essay Structure/Format
Even though there’s no set format for a scholarship essay like in letter writing, etc, there are still some common placements that are often used to make your essay come out more striking. You are free to experiment with your essay while explaining things with clarity. For improved structure and format make sure to follow the following:
- Always align your thoughts and make a rough outline of the things you will be mentioning and in what order.
- Break down the body of the essay in small paragraphs and dedicate each paragraph to a single point.
- Make sure to stick to the specified word limit of the essay.
- In the case of an online scholarship essay, use fonts that can be read easily.
- Typically the range of these fonts size is between 10-12.
- Be sure to space the lines with 1.5 spaces and ensure that the margins are 1 inch on all sides.
- Always add a concluding paragraph to draw all the attention of the reader to the main reason for writing this essay while highlighting the main points from the essay.
Scholarship Essay Examples
Here’s a scholarship essay example:
As righteously said by the (author name) that (Quote), is a quote that gave me strength throughout not just academics but life. It very well puts together the core values of my life, which are being consistent and making my way through hard work without caring about the result as much as the task itself. The Scholarship offered by your institution would help me not just overcome my financial stress but also provide me with a platform that will equip me with skills helpful for positive career growth and overall make an impact on the society and community.
My primary reason behind seeking to gain an education from your prestigious institution is due to the stand-out opportunities it provides besides the formal education. I believe that my skills and attributes will become much more enhanced after attaining a chance to study at your university I moreover will be enriched with all the additional goodness required to nourish my intellect and wisdom. From courses to teaching faculty, every aspect of it is well-suited for my interests and goals.
My family’s economic condition has not been quite the best which affected our condition to pay for my entire coursework fees. Despite all the financial hardship and disturbances faced by us, I managed to maintain a GPA of 4.0 with subjects like mathematics and advanced sciences being a part of the coursework. Throughout my lifetime, I’ve been a responsible candidate for my studies and my community. I’ve always been motivated and dedicated to attaining excellence in almost all disciplines of life.
I tried not to make myself limited to academic learning alone and took part in a community initiative called the “Code for Good” where we had to teach underprivileged kids how to code and make them understand some of the basics around coding. It helped me push myself beyond my comfort zone and allowed me to improve my overseeing and leadership skills.
I have a lot of aspirations and dreams for my future, and every part of me imagines to become a student at this university to make those all come true.
Example 2
I, (name of the candidate) find myself writing this essay to express my keen interest in (Name of the scholarship) as it aligns with the best of my interest and will provide me with ample opportunities to improve myself. I would like to begin my essay by saying that my academic journey hasn’t seen as many A’s as one might expect from an exceptional student.
The grades I got eventually also contained perseverance, hard work, and a sense of commitment toward earning them. However, factors like financial instability caused me to lose most of my focus. The background that I come from contains experiences of major financial constraints, due to which I had to work frequently and for longer shits to keep ourselves financially stable. I worked several part-time jobs alongside my studies to make sure my tuition fees were getting submitted timely.
The work-life I believe has to some extent made my marks suffer but also taught and enriched me with several life lessons such as resilience, time management, and a solid work ethic.
I aspire to pursue the degree of (name of the degree) from your prestigious institution and make my way to unleash my potential in the best of me and my community’s interest.
I may not be the top scorer of my batch, but I can assure you that whatever obstacle I face in my upcoming journey, I will keep my head-on attitude whilst facing them like I always have been.
Scholarship Essay: Things to Remember
Below are some of the tips that one should be mindful of before and after essay writing:
- Make sure to fully get a grasp on the given prompt about the experiences and journey asked to share.
- Be authentic and natural while giving real-life examples and stories, made up stories tend to easily get detected by the experts which makes you look less authentic in front of the panel.
- Make sure to share and emphasize how challenges like failures and hardships have helped you grow as a person overall and what lessons did the whole experience left you with.
- Make sure to create an essay that is well-structured and easy to read.
- Using jargon and hard terms unnecessarily won’t add much to your scholarship essay it can moreover lead to reduced clarity and disengagement.
- In case of being an active member of the community and serving in community services, make sure to mention that and mention the major takeaways from those events.