Reusable Materials 6: Home Runs Enhance Master Applications

Thursdays we discuss how reusable materials WOW committees and save time

Nora attended our scholarship workshop. She chose not to meet with our coaches, but to do it on her own instead. She sent us a harsh email about 18 months later stating that she had applied for 178 scholarships and had not received a single penny. We responded asking her to send us her master application so we could review it and possibly find a reason for her rejection. Our review revealed that none of her 36 home runs included a number, dollar, or percent. Her statements ran more similar to paragraphs than 2-line statements. She made the corrections and started receiving money.

Home Runs Demonstrate Depth

You include home run statements in part C of your master application. You write three statements for each of the three categories of your 3-4 themes (4 themes X 3 categories X 3 home runs = 36 home run statements). While categories demonstrate your breadth in each theme, home run statements indicate your depth.

Home run statements are short, concise statements that include $, #, %s to add sparkle. For example:

• “As chair of our school’s sub-for-Santa, I supervised 26 students. We raised $12,000 and provided Christmas for 255 disadvantaged families”
• “At John Burroughs High School, I maintained a 4.0 grade point average in math for 4 years including 2 AP and 2 concurrent college classes.”

How to Prepare Home Run Statements

Use a baseball diamond to visualize your home run statements:

• 1st base: describe where you did what you did either a position or organization
• 2nd base: describe—very briefly—what you did
• 3rd base: outline the results
• Home plate: apply it to them as needed “Is this the kind of excellence you seek to reward?”

Preparing home run statements requires 5 steps:

• Jot down the ideas for each statement “Sub-for-Santa”
• Write them in complete sentences
• Substitute implied numbers for real numbers (“several students” for “26 students”)
• Refine the sentence with better syntax and words
• Ask someone to edit them

Saturday we share the tip about eliminating useless offerings from your lists