Reusable Materials 5: Establish Your Themes in Your Master Application

Thursdays we discuss how reusable materials WOW committees and save time

Rachel identified four themes about her life that combined to describe her values, motivations, and accomplishments. She spent a lot of time developing her master application including themes and home run statements. Her themes structured how she described herself in scholarship applications. She failed to include numbers, dollars, and percentages in her home run statements. So, she received very little money from her applications. She changed implied numbers, dollars, and percentages for real ones. She received money from her new applications.

Select Themes That Describe You

Each of you possess certain interests, motivations, and skills that define your personality. Combining some of these interests into one group defines a theme. For example, some people love sports. They get involved in more than one sport. Hence, they may use athletics as a theme. Most people get involved in 3-4 themes.

You should select 3-4 themes that describe you. You may select from the following list or more:

• Academics
• Athletics
• Creative Talent
• Community Action
• Challenges Overcome
• Cultural Arts
• Diversity
• Ethnicity
• Entrepreneurship
• Leadership
• Occupation
• Service
• Survival

Once you select your themes, you demonstrate a depth and breadth to your theme. You add 3 categories to each theme to highlight your breadth. In our example above, our athlete may excel or love football, baseball, and cycling best. A creative person may list her favorite pursuits as dance, vocal music, and instrumental music. We will highlight categories next Wednesday.

You then write three home run statements for each category. Giving you a total of 36 home run statements (four themes X 3 categories each X 3 home run statements = 36). We will teach more about home run statements in two weeks.

Themes Answer the Longer Questions

You copy and paste your themes and home run statements into the questions on scholarship applications that provide a larger field space. For example:

• “Describe your leadership experience”
• “List your extracurricular activities”
• “Outline service you have given in the community”
• “List your athletic pursuits”

Saturday we will share the tip about creating experiences that impress committees