Scholarship Applications

For those of you that have already dealt with these, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that filling out a scholarship application ranks right up there with tax returns, mortgage documents, and FAFSA forms. Plus, there’s a lot riding on it. Making the right statements could have a significant impact on your student’s educational future. Submit an application that has typos and grammatical errors, and you may as well have just skipped it altogether.

Listed below are some tips to help your student navigate through the process of completing the application and essays.

Scholarship Application Tips

• Pay attention to deadlines. Applications submitted past the deadline are not considered.
  Prepare a resume. Not only is this good practice for the student as they venture closer to the world of a career, but also gives the student an opportunity to “showcase” their activities and achievements.
• Send more than asked for. It may help to provide additional materials, such as evidence of awards, additional activities, or writing examples. This will give the decision-makers a more complete picture of the student. If, however, there are explicit instructions to limit your submission to specific items, follow the instructions. Any additional information will be considered “clutter”.
• Prepare letters of recommendation. The student should cultivate the sources of these letters fairly early on in their career – so that when the scholarship deadline is looming, the letter-writer isn’t put under pressure to produce a letter on short notice. These letters are an important source of information for the display of character, personality, and specific talents.
• Essay writing. The student should make certain that the essay allows their personality to show. In addition to scholastic and academic achievements, it is important to showcase the well-rounded student, highlighting sports, club memberships, honors, achievements, volunteer and community work. It is also important to include personal vignettes, lessons learned, and information on financial need where applicable.
• Proofread. Nothing will come across with a greater negativity than a sloppy, poorly written, grammar and punctuation nightmare. Have at lease two other people review your application and especially your essay in order to find all the errors and correct them before submitting.
• Copies. Always keep a copy of everything that you submit. Things have a way of getting lost in the mail. Plus, if you’ve got a copy of what was sent, if there are questions on a portion of your submission, you can easily answer them from your copy. (By the way, this is a good practice for anything that you send anywhere. In today’s world of computers with scanners, there is simply no reason to ever be caught without a copy of a form you’ve sent somewhere.
• Thank You. It’s a good practice to get into: regardless of the outcome by the scholarship committee, the student should send a brief letter or card, thanking them for their consideration. In the event that the student receives the scholarship, a more formal letter of thanks would be quite appropriate.