Reusable Materials 25: Changes for Scholarship Essays

Thursdays we discuss how reusable materials help you WOW committees and save time

Angela became very frustrated applying of scholarships. The results of her search engine profiles generated a list of 300+ possible scholarships, contests, and essays. Her excitement at the number of scholarships quickly turned to frustration as she started applying for the money. She described her frustration with the constant number of dead-ends, bogus offerings, and red herrings she constantly encountered.

Changes in Essay Topics

Scholarship committees frequently change the topics they require as part of your scholarship application. We’ve listed several topics in past blogs, but wanted to update the list with some questions we’ve seen this year. For example, the University of Georgia asks four short essay questions:

• Choose an intellectual or creative opportunity (for example, community involvement, a summer program, a unique project, travel abroad, etc.) from your high school years that you have enjoyed and highlight how you have grown personally because of the experience. Answer this question with your themes
• UGA's First Year Odyssey Program offers more than 300 seminar courses for new freshmen.  Some examples include "The History of Horseracing", "Einstein and the Theories of Relativity" and "The Zombie Plague".   If you could create your own seminar course at UGA in any subject area that interests you, what would it be? What would the course be named and what would you hope to learn?
• Tell us an interesting or amusing story about yourself that you have not already shared in your application. Answer this question with one of your themes
• Incredibly, you have just won a $100 million lottery.  To receive it, you must first earn a college degree.  How does this change your college experience?  How does it change your life after college?

Changes in Essay Requirements

We’ve seen several changes in essays:

• Another reduction in the required length of essays from 500 words to 200-350
• Most want you to paste them into a field on the application rather than post a PDF
• Continued emphasis on correct grammar, punctuation, and capitalization

Saturday we share a tip about timing for submitting your applications for scholarships

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