The essay is grammatically flawless, write a scholarship essay. A Chinese American with accented Chinese, a Florida-born Texan, a first generation American with a British passport: no label fits me without a caveat. Step 1: Identify the problem. Keniece Grayan incoming law student at Georgetown, won the OppU Achievers Scholarship in May of Home Blog A Complete Guide to Write write a scholarship essay Winning Scholarship Essay Scholarship Essay Examples That You Can Learn From. Never use false or exaggerated stories.
Creative writing scholarships
Higher education has never been more confusing or expensive. Our goal is to help you navigate the very big decisions related to higher ed with objective information and expert advice. Each piece of content on the site is original, based on extensive research, and reviewed by multiple editors, including a subject matter expert. This ensures that all of our content is up-to-date, useful, accurate, and thorough. Our reviews and recommendations are based on extensive research, write a scholarship essay, testing, and feedback.
You can find a complete list of our partners here. Writing is an extremely important part of success in high school, write a scholarship essay, college, and life in general. For some students, writing is also an intricate part of who they are and how they express write a scholarship essay. If you are someone who loves English class and is genuinely excited about a new creative writing assignment, then you should keep reading! Writing scholarships, creative writing scholarships, and essay scholarships are great ways to put your talent to use.
Keep on reading to learn about the top scholarships for writers and creative writers including eligibility, award amounts, and deadlines! Are you a writer who loves fiction, poetry, and screenplays? If so, write a scholarship essay, you can put those talents to use by applying for creative writing scholarships. Creative writing scholarships are a subset of writing scholarships that support students who enjoy writing poetry, fictional stories, plays, and generally using their imagination to guide their writing.
Some colleges and universities may also offer specific scholarships to student with a talent in creative writing! Check with the colleges on your list for these college-specific creative writing opportunities! Note that some of these scholarships may have requirements for winning students that stipulate that they take a certain number of creative writing classes when enrolled in the college. Since essay scholarships have a writing component, they tend to get fewer submissions than other scholarships with less stringent requirements.
Luckily, we have created a number of resources to help you write an authentic, successful essay:. Create a Scholarships account to apply and receive personalized scholarships and write a scholarship essay. Advertiser disclosure Student-centric advice and objective recommendations Higher education has never been more confusing or expensive. By Will Geiger Will Geiger is the co-founder of Scholarships and has a decade of experience in college admissions and financial aid. He is a former Senior Assistant Director of Admissions at Kenyon College where he personally reviewed 10, admissions applications and essays.
Will also managed the Kenyon College merit scholarship program and served on the financial aid appeals committee. He has also worked as an Associate Director of College Counseling at a high school in New Haven, Connecticut. Full Bio. Learn about our editorial policies. Scholarships Recommended. Top 26 Easy Scholarships to Apply For in January By Will Geiger. Top 25 Write a scholarship essay for College Students in January By Will Geiger. Top 35 Scholarships for High School Write a scholarship essay in January By Will Geiger. Popular scholarships Easy Scholarships No Essay Scholarships Scholarships for HS Seniors Scholarships for College Students Scholarships for Grad Students Scholarships for Women.
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We all know that exclamation marks indicate excitement! Truthfully, we love exclamation points! And while winning financial aid in the form of scholarships IS very exciting, too many exclamation marks can be overkill. In this case, you can use exclamation marks more freely. Many people falsely believe that an exclamation mark will make a sentence more powerful. But the truth is, empowering statements pack a punch without one. These characteristics are huge on a scholarship essay. Essay readers are not simply looking for the hardest story when selecting a winner, but rather a complete narrative that includes how the student has worked to overcome the challenge.
In addition, we recommend focusing on a central event or experience — which tends to read as more powerful, especially when faced with a word or character limit. That means writing in your own voice and tone. So long as you keep it professional, readers want you to sound like YOU. Keep it clean and clear, but also keep it real! Is this the definition of a humble brag? Your scholarship essay is a great place to share your accomplishments. Your character, dedication, and integrity should come through naturally in your writing. Most scholarship essays are fairly short, so avoid bloating your essay with gratitude and praise for the opportunity.
Use your character and words allotments to answer the prompt thoroughly instead! If you have space, a brief thank you is thoughtful and appropriate. Polite but to the point. So revise, revise, revise! Walk away from your work to clear your mind and then come back to it. Choose a trusted teacher, peer, or friend, and be open to their suggestions for improvement. A well-planned essay has a much higher chance of winning than one you crank out last minute. We recommend giving yourself at least 2 weeks before the deadline of an essay to brainstorm, draft, and revise your essay. Ideally, you should leave a couple of days between each of these stages of the essay writing process. This break will help you avoid essay writing burnout.
If the essay prompts and directions are nearly identical between one scholarship application and another, you can reuse the essay. And this will save you a ton of time! Your answer to both prompts is probably going to be the same, right? Write the essay for one application. Then, reuse and adapt that same essay to fit the word count, directions, etc. of the second application. Coca Cola Foundation in your essay, remember to change the name when reusing the essay for another scholarship application! We sure do. Whether you find them scrolling Instagram or keep them tacked up above your desk, a great quote can be super empowering. I want to attend college so I can become a nurse and change the world. This essay is about you , so famous quotes are just a distraction.
The name of the game for winning scholarships is standing out from the mix. Platitudes are common, overly simplified statements that people use all the time. DO illustrate specifically how things will change if you win the scholarship money. Many scholarship essay prompts ask you to discuss how winning a scholarship would impact you. And this is often where cliches creep in. Cliches are phrases, stories, or themes that are overused to the point that they lose their power and meaning. Many cliches involve a person who, with a little help, turns it all around and prevails. In real life, we LOVE a Cinderella story as much as anyone. But you can imagine why this type of story ends up in scholarship essays a lot! But when it comes to scholarship essays, we want to help you to avoid falling into cliche narratives that dampen the power of your story and hurt your chances of winning.
DO be realistic and specific when talking about yourself, your background, your career goals, your leadership qualities, and your aspirations. Winning this scholarship money would help fund my semester overseas. But you may be surprised at how many people do! Will you actually offend anyone with that kind of conversational tone? Probably not. Plus, we know you can be more creative than that! DO stress your excitement, perseverance, and preparedness for this next chapter without the curse words. You can always use a thesaurus to look up new and exciting ways to say things or use imagery to paint a picture of your experiences. We realize that texting is the way of the world. Your scholarship essay is a great place to showcase your eloquence and professionalism, so unless directed otherwise , write as you would for a teacher or a boss.
This kind of thing is super common and distracting for the reader. You can still use mild humor and even talk like you , but keep it academic and professional. These essays are about you. A thoughtful essay reads times better than your stance on a popular topic of the moment. DO take firm stances on causes that you believe in and articulate how winning this scholarship will help you advocate for them. For example, you can certainly discuss your commitment to advocating for gender equality or against wage inequality. The key is to be mindful of the prompt and to avoid unnecessary detours or tangents that tread into hot take territory unrelated to the prompt.
It may seem like a good idea, but keep it professional. More importantly, you want your essay to be as easy to read as possible, without overwhelming the readers. And this is definitely true when it comes to scholarship essays. An extreme declaration involves only seeing one side of a situation often the negative side and presenting it as fact. See how both of these statements can give the reader a feeling that the writer is not seeing the full picture? DO replace extreme declarations with hopeful and open-minded approaches to the future. But try to reflect a generally optimistic and proactive mindset.
When talking about yourself, it can be easy to get on a roll and include more details than necessary. As an IB ambassador I prepare underclassmen to do the same. Next, I wrote about my experiences of educational inequity in the largest publication in the Carolinas. My writing has brought me to the stage of the largest theater in Charlotte. I have represented my peers on several news platforms. I have spoken on panels with Board of Education members, civil rights activists, local politicians, and leaders of educational organizations such as Teach For America. As a speaker for the local organization Community Building Initiative, I promote partnerships between companies and Title I schools.
All of this work is fueled by my desire to create a more equitable education system. While I am proud to be a representative of my school, I know that most of my peers also have compelling stories to tell. This newspaper has given my peers a place to share their creative writing and art. I also include a student assignment spotlight, to ensure that my peers are getting recognition for their hard work in the classroom. This newspaper encourages my peers to develop their writing skills and identify their academic interests. I take pride in knowing that my contribution has shown my peers that they have powerful voices that deserve to be heard.
Obtaining higher education will allow me to continue uplifting voices and fighting for educational equity in a professional setting. For the OppU Achievers Scholarship, we ask applicants to tell us about what makes them an achiever. She then provides concrete examples of her accomplishments, and she includes links that document them:. The essay is grammatically flawless. It contains no typos. Ian Tapu , a law student at the University of Hawaii, won our scholarship in November I intimately understand that for far too long, underrepresented groups, especially Pacific Islanders PI , have been conditioned to believe our only connection with the law is the criminal justice system. It is not surprising to accept this truism when it is our bodies that are disproportionately criminalized and as a result overly represented in the prison population.
At a time in which immigrants are hotly political and contested, I am an achiever because I was raised by immigrants from Samoa and Tonga. When I started law school, I noticed there were no student organizations that supported or advocated on behalf of PI students and as a response, I founded the first- ever Pacific Islander Legal Association. Within three months of our formation, I organized the first-ever Pre-Law Symposium for Pacific Islanders. The goal of the two-day symposium was to demystify the application process and empower PIs to see they have a space in the field of law. The symposium included two keynote speakers — a Samoan First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney and the first Samoan judge in the United States — a panel of PI law students, a panel of PI legal professionals, a resume and personal statement writing workshop, a practice LSAT exam, a campus tour, and an admissions and financial aid informational session.
What started as an endeavor with the hope of attracting 15 participants, ballooned into a movement with 77 attendees that hailed from a swath of island nations including New Zealand, Marshall Islands, Tonga, Fiji, Pohnpei, Samoa, Guam, and Hawaii. My advocacy for my community then found its way to the state legislature. I organized student participation, set up lobby days at the state Capitol, and testified in front of and held meetings with various state politicians which eventually led to the passing of the law. I have one goal as a gay Pacific Islander — to utilize the law as a tool for empowerment instead of oppression.
Similar to Kaycee, Ian responds to our essay prompt in a way that demonstrates that he meets all of the criteria we use to evaluate candidates. Keniece Gray , an incoming law student at Georgetown, won the OppU Achievers Scholarship in May of This tenacity has empowered me to exceed the mediocre expectations that society has set for people raised in communities like mine, places plagued by high crime and poverty rates and low levels of education and hope. As one of the few people in my community with access to academic and career opportunities in communities of wealth, I feel obligated to push for equity in such spaces. This sense of obligation motivates me to leverage my platforms of privilege to provide members of under-served communities with resources they need to excel in academia and the workforce.
My position as a minority in terms of age, race, gender, or geographic origin in the classroom and workplace has often made me the target of discriminatory behaviors. Instead of allowing the discrimination to decimate my academic success, I employed strategies that I learned from mentors and inclusion training such as focusing on my strengths and seeking professional help to cope. I relied on what I learned about pipeline development while completing seven internships and studying abroad to found Journey to the Board JTTB , an organization providing underrepresented students with critical career skills.
To date, JTTB has sponsored more than 25 student memberships in professional organizations and three passport applications to encourage study abroad. While serving as the International Second Vice President of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Now, I am preparing to attend law school this fall to disrupt the pervasive racial and gender biases in the legal industry and learn how to harness the law for social change. My story is a testament that the power of the mind is not a joke. I hope that my work inspires individuals from similar backgrounds as me to believe that they too can defy stereotypes and optimize opportunities. More importantly, I hope my story influences others to reach back while climbing forward.
Keniece is exactly the type of candidate we were looking for, and her essay provided all the material we needed to see that. She goes on to list all of her accomplishments: seven internships, founded a nonprofit, active in community service. These are impressive enough on their own, but what made the essay stand out is that it captured the passion that Keniece brings to her work advocating for the causes she cares about:. These three essay examples are very different from one another. However, what they have in common is that they all convinced us that the applicant was the right person to receive the OppU Achievers Scholarship. All of the applicants did the work to find the right scholarship. When they submitted their essay, they were competing against many other impressive candidates.
However, their unique qualifications matched up with the qualifications we were looking for. All of the essays responded to what we asked for in our essay prompt. This is critical. The winning essays did this. However, you do need to write your essay in a way that meets the formal standards of composition, which the winning essays did. They adhered to a tight paragraph structure and contained no grammatical errors or typos. They stated a thesis that the applicant is an achiever and supported it with evidence. If these essays were submitted for a class at school, they would all receive an A.
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