The Secret to Writing a Winning Scholarship Essay

You have your scholarship application carefully filled out. Your letters of recommendation are collected and your scholarship resume is ready. The last thing to do for your scholarship application packet is to write the winning essay. How do you decide what to write about? Where do you start? Is there a secret to writing a scholarship essay that will help you be picked by the judges to win the scholarship money?

The first thing you need to do is understand that the point of a scholarship essay is for the judges to get to know YOU. They want to know more than your name, date of birth, GPA, standardized test score, etc… The essay allows you to let the judges know your thoughts, feelings, and opinions on whatever subject they want you to write about. They don’t want to know facts that they can easily learn from your scholarship application, so refrain from starting your essay with something like, “My name is __________ and I go to _________ high school”.

Your essay need to instantly draw in the scholarship judges (who have probably read thousands of essays at this point) with a compelling statement. Get their attention right off the bat and make them want to read your whole essay, instead of skimming through it quickly and throwing it into the reject pile. How do you draw them in? Answer the essay question by using a personal experience that you feel very deeply about. For example, to answer the question, “If you win this scholarship, how will the money help you?” you can begin your essay with something like, “My favorite thing to do on Saturday mornings is sleep in, but for the last 12 months I have set the dreaded alarm clock and dragged myself out of bed so I can go to my local children’s hospital to read stories to the kids who are sick and alone there…” Then you share how winning the scholarship money will bring you one step closer to being able to afford college so you can become a doctor, which is your life-long dream.

By writing your essay, you are able to make yourself real to the judges. You know that you are more than a name on a piece of paper and now is the time to prove it. Help the judges use their imaginations to see you in their minds by writing with lots of real life situations, heartfelt emotions, and descriptive words. Use tools like the thesaurus to make your writing come alive and be remembered by the judges. Tell the truth and never lie in your essays. Write your own essay and do not let your parent write the essay for you. Remember, scholarship judges have read a TON of essays and can easily spot the ones that are not student-written, stretch the truth, and want to win so badly that they will say anything to make themselves look better than the other applicants.

Scholarship judges want to know YOU in your essay. When you tell the truth, write from the heart, and draw them in right from the start, your chances of winning the scholarship money greatly improve. Other than the essay, there are ways to make your scholarship applications stand out and get noticed by the judges. Visit http://www.how2winscholarships.com to learn more about these winning methods and for free scholarship tips.

Want to find out more about winning college scholarships?, then visit here to learn the method that will help you win free money for college.

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