College Funding Accelerator
Welcome to Module 3!
Click here to watch your training video.
In this module, we will explore how to write strong scholarship essays using information that you gathered and organized in the previous modules. We will focus on the most popular scholarship essay prompts.
How have you demonstrated leadership ability in your school or community?
Strategy: In order to understand the strategy behind this prompt, you must first understand the importance of this prompt to scholarship providers and judges. Your ability to influence a group of people to accomplish a common goal (definition of leadership) is crucial in your personal as well as professional life. Scholarship judges agree and will support those who can show their leadership abilities with scholarship dollars.
Task: Refer back to your College Funding Accelerator. Find every leadership opportunity. Note a common theme between your experiences (Did you focus on a specific population of people? Was there a common problem that you helped to solve?).
Please use the outline below to fill-in-the-blanks with your leadership experience, lesson learned, insights, and how this leadership experience will impact you in your future career.
Introduction: Successful leaders believe in leveraging the strengths of their team members, serving as a coach through a challenging moment, and being open to critical feedback as well as praise (or choose three values of a great leader from your College Funding Accelerator questionnaire). Growing up, I was so shy that I always avoided taking on leadership roles inside and outside of school. I had great ideas for how to improve things at school, but I was too afraid to act on my ideas.
Body: Surprisingly, in (insert year of high school), I was disappointed with (insert project) in my neighborhood. I complained to my friends and my parents when they finally told me to be the change. I knew that (talk about leveraging the strengths of a team member) was great with speaking publicly, so I asked her to join the team.
There was a specific incident that almost crushed my desires to (insert purpose of leadership experience), but I was determined to not give up.
I knew that I needed to use feedback (positive and negative) to make the necessary changes to (insert purpose of leadership experience).
Conclusion: As a leader of (insert name of club or organization), I learned that (insert biggest takeaway from leadership experience that you discussed previously). This scholarship will allow me to continue to develop as a leader throughout college by (insert one or two ways that you can continue to lead on campus) in preparation to serve as a leader in my career as a (insert career).
What impact has sports had on your life?
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What are your future career goals and why?
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Share your community service experiences.
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Tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from it.
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Who has been the biggest influence in your life and why?
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How would you solve X in the X field?
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Why do you deserve this scholarship?
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What is your intended college major and why?
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How will this scholarship help you?
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Scholarship Essay Writing Do’s and Don’ts
- Remember that your supporting details to the scholarship essay prompts must stand out. Think of ways that you can shed a new perspective on an everyday situation like being the president of honor society.
- Always share the impact on your future from a personal and professional standpoint.
- All spelling and grammar rules apply. (This is one of the quickest ways to have your scholarship essays tossed into the pile with everyone else. Double check and double check again.)
- When choosing which opportunities to include with your scholarship essays, select experiences that are related to the mission or purpose of the scholarship provider. (You can review the scholarship provider’s mission and purpose on the About Us page of the organization’s website.)
- Never be afraid to ask for help. If you’re feeling stuck, don’t wait until the last minute to get assistance. You can submit your rough drafts to our scholarship essay coaches to get feedback. Take advantage!
Are you feeling stuck on how to get started with adding your experiences to your scholarship essays?
Use a mind map to help you organize your thoughts. How does it work? You put one category of experiences (leadership experience, for example) from your College Funding Accelerator in the center (Main Idea). You put the details from the specific leadership experience opportunities branching out from the main idea (serving in the soup kitchen, working with homeless, etc.).
Module 3 Tasks:
Write your first rough draft using one of the prompts and outlines above.
Coming Up Next
After you complete your first rough draft, you will learn how to take it to the next level in Module 4.