college essays Archives - Consultants' Corner

Three Tips for Scholarship Essays

A stressed graduate student sits at a cluttered desk with papers, scholarship applications, and a laptop. The student is holding a pen and jotting notes on a notecard, with symbols of leadership, community involvement, and achievements in the background, including a trophy, a community service medal, and a graduation cap. A thought bubble shows images of dollar signs and a graduation gown. — Getting a scholarship is often as stressful as getting in.

At Gurufi, we know that getting in is often only half the battle! Paying for it can be just as -if not more- stressful as applying. With the average cost of graduate school starting at nearly $50,000, getting a scholarship is an important way to defray costs and save a little money, as well as bolster your resume for the future. Writing an impressive scholarship statement is essential to your success, and keeping these tips in mind will put you on the right path.

Identify the key themes appropriately and use language that reinforces those themes. This can’t be stressed enough. Read the statement and make sure you understand exactly what they’re asking for. Most scholarship applications will explain precisely what kind of person they feel meets their qualifications, and all you have to do is interpret that correctly. While it will vary from essay question to essay question, you’ll typically see key themes related to leadership, community involvement, or milestones/successes in life. So that you don’t miss them, it’s a great idea to write these key themes on a notecard and brainstorm each one. Identify stories, successes, or key pivotal moments in your life or professional / academic journey that demonstrate these themes or attributes. Repeat the theme in your thesis statement and use it as the backbone for your whole essay.

Know your audience and cater to them. You’re not writing an essay that has to appeal to thousands of people. This is a targeted piece of writing designed to evoke a positive response from at most, a large committee, and at least, one or two individuals. This audience has a specific goal, and that goal is to find an applicant or applicants who they feel, in their completely subjective opinion, accurately and appropriately represent the organization, charity, company, group, estate, individual or other entity who will be providing the scholarship. Cater your language, your words, your stories, and your approach directly to this narrow audience. As long as you’re able to do this without pandering, your words will resonate with the committee in a positive way, and that can only help.

Make it personal. Your ultimate goal with a scholarship essay is to ask a committee of people to see you as something more than words on a page. You want them to see you as a person – a student, striving for success and overcoming burdens one at a time as you work hard and tire thanklessly to achieve your dreams. As you give examples in ways you’ve demonstrated leadership, or helped your community, or achieved certain goals in life, be specific. Show how these events impacted you emotionally and personally, and don’t be afraid to let your passion show through.

These three tips will provide you with some guidance as you tackle your scholarship essays. Remember, too, that sincerity and enthusiasm go a lot further than flattery and exaggeration, so be honest and transparent as you write. These committees don’t expect someone perfect – they want to find someone who they’ll be proud to call a scholarship recipient as you grow and succeed in life. Show them that you’re someone worth investing in.

For more help with your personal statement, check us out at Gurufi.com. Our personal statement editors and consultants have decades of experience helping clients get into top Masters and Ph.D. programs in STEM, humanities, fine arts, and social sciences. Our specialty is helping you craft compelling personal statements that move the needle in your admissions process! For questions, shoot us an email at service@gurufi.com. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

What is a Frankenstein Essay, and Why Will It Destroy Your Application?

Cartoon of Frankenstein sitting at a desk, writing a personal statement with a quill, portraying a humorous juxtaposition of a monstrous figure engaged in a scholarly task — Avoid turning your personal statement into a ‘Frankenstein essay’. Even Frankenstein knows the importance of thoughtful, careful editing!

After nearly 20 years of reading, assessing, revising, and consulting on personal statements, I have seen every variety of mistake an applicant can make. More importantly for you, though, is that I am pretty good at identifying the upstream source of the problem and providing guidance on how to fix it. One of the most common mistakes might seem counterintuitive: the author sought too much help… or at least too much of the wrong kind!

Once you’ve finished your personal statement, you may feel a little apprehensive about what you have written, and as such it is only reasonable to seek out second and third opinions to make sure that you have overlooked nothing, the prose is tight, and you have made a compelling case for your candidacy. But, just as an excellent revision and editing can make an average essay excellent, bad editing can wreck an essay. On such occasions, one is smart to heed the old aphorism that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth.’

Once you have completed your first draft, you need to think carefully about how you go about using advice from other people. Here are six pointers for how to get the best advice in order to turn your draft into an excellent final version you are proud of and happy with.

1.) Be careful about who you pick.

Obviously, you want to get advice from someone who writes well, can be frank with you, and has some understanding of the field to which you are applying. If you choose to get advice from a boyfriend or your mother, for example, then be careful because they might give you an overly glowing review because of their esteem and love for you or may lack the qualifications to point out minor problems with your approach. Similarly, asking your English major friend to look at your Engineering graduate school essay is not a bad idea, but if you go that route, also have someone involved in Engineering (preferably in an academic capacity) is a good idea.

Good people to talk to are your academic advisor (if you are applying to graduate or professional schools) or guidance counselor (if you are applying to college). I know that many people will take their essays to message boards and post them to see what people think of it. The problem here is that you have no real way to gauge someone’s level of expertise and you may get too much feedback from too many sources.

Which leads us to point #2…

Don’t give it to too many people.

If you get critiques on your essay from 8-9 different people and you incorporate all of their suggestions, you will be pulled in too many directions and the essay will lose its sense of voice and focus. The old joke that a camel is a horse designed by committee applies here. Your essay cannot be everything to everyone, and you have to accept this fact. There will always be something that someone would have done differently, so they will often naturally advise you that you should do something different than what you are doing.

Ask follow-up questions

Whenever someone suggests a change, don’t be afraid to ask them about it. Sometimes you will agree with their rationale, but disagree with the execution of the change. Also, through a conversation people will often help you see larger problems that you may have missed. People are often hesitant to give tough advice, and a friendly conversation can help you to avoid this problem because by talking to someone, the person will see that you are serious about valuing their advice.

Don’t be afraid to ignore advice.

At the end of the day, this is *your* personal statement, and *your* future depends on how well you execute it. When someone suggests changes, consider their level of expertise, think about it carefully and if you disagree, then don’t do it. Not every piece of advice given is good; often, you will receive terrible advice.

The final decision is yours, so take your role as the gatekeeper of advice seriously, and only let the best suggestions that work well with your theme, tone, approach and goal through.

BUT, try to avoid pride of authorship

In my capacity as an admissions essay consultant, I often encounter customers who are furious when I tell them that they have things that they need to work on. It is almost as if they paid me $200 for me to tell them that their work was perfect, and they should not change a single letter.

Because a personal statement is so, well, personal, it can sometimes sting when someone gives you some pointed advice. Try to see the bigger picture and embrace the process that will help you to move towards a better and stronger essay. Do your best not to see a critique of your essay as a criticism of you as a person, and rather see it as a positive moment that moves you one step closer to your goal.

Consider using an essay editing service

They can be a bit expensive, but in the end, it makes sense to spend a hundred dollars to give yourself a better chance of getting into the graduate program of your dreams. Getting into a top school, as opposed to an average one, is worth investing in, especially when the cost is less than a pair of fancy Nikes or a new purse.

Some things to consider:

-Make sure that they guarantee your satisfaction.

-Ask if they will work with you beyond just receiving a single revision back from you. Often, it will take 2-3 exchanges with your editor to completely understand what you want to say, how you want to say it, and what core message you want to convey.

At Gurufi, we don’t put a cap on the number of revisions you get, and we’re not happy until you are. That’s why we get such consistently excellent reviews!