How to Write a Scholarship Personal Essay

Writing personal essays for scholarship applications can be tricky. The personal essay is your chance to write about yourself in the first person to help the evaluator understand who you are and why you deserve the scholarship. You want to stand out, but not for the wrong reasons.

Instructions

1. Write out your personal goals and ambitions. Think about both short-term goals, like what college program you would like to attend and why, and your long-term goals, such as your career goals. Write out some ideas about how the scholarship will help you achieve both your short- and long-term goals.

2. Jot down personal skills, characteristics and experiences relevant to your goals and to the objectives of the scholarship. Choose different ones than on your resume, or elaborate on those that are on your resume. Explain how your personal traits make you an ideal candidate for the scholarship.

3. Brainstorm some additional ideas about what the scholarship committee might be looking for in applicant essays and why or how you are different from other applicants.

4. Write a rough draft based on the ideas from Steps 1 through 3. At this point, don't worry about grammatical issues, wording or word count. Just get your ideas written out.

5. Evaluate your rough draft. Be sure you touched on the objectives of the scholarship, that it flows smoothly from idea-to-idea and paragraph-to-paragraph.

6. Write your opening sentence(s) after you've written the majority of your essay. Based on the body of the essay, think of a relevant short story, statement or borrowed quote. Your opening should grab the reader's attention while offering a unique and memorable piece of information about you. Make sure it is relevant and leads naturally into the rest of the essay.

7. Read through your entire essay again. Check that the general layout is to your liking and reads smoothly. Find places you can make it more interesting. Add unique details, short stories or anecdotes that illustrate who you are and how or why you qualify for the scholarship.

8. Proofread your final essay for technical violations. Fix any spelling and grammatical errors. Do a word count and remove unnecessary or irrelevant words, phrases and sentences until it meets the word count requirement.

9. Set your essay aside for a few days. Proofread it again from a refreshed mindset or ask another person to proofread it for you and offer editorial comments.

Tips & Warnings

• Begin the writing process well in advance of the scholarship due-date. Writing and editing and rewriting is a process that takes time.

• Keep your writing clear, concise and on-topic.

• Use positive language and be proud to share yourself and your accomplishments.

• Go ahead and use the personal essay to incorporate brief explanations of any negative markings on your academic record, such as particular times of hardship.

• Don't repeat information given elsewhere in your essay or on your application. Use your limited space to convey as much unique information as possible.

• Avoid using clichés or extreme language.

• Tell the truth. Falsified or misrepresented information might damage your chances for the scholarship.

• Don't write long-winded excuses for negative markings on your record. Explain them in a brief and straightforward way, and then move on.

• Follow the essay length guidelines closely. Essays that overextend the allotted length may not be considered.

Resources

• Help improving your writing for essays and resumes.
• Help finding and applying for scholarships.
• Scholarship database and resources.