How to get scholarship?

Here's the first thing to remember: EVERYONE needs a scholarship. College is expensive. So the key to applying for scholarships is to move past the question of need and get to what makes YOU a good candidate.

I used to sit on a scholarship committee for my program, and we'd sift through a hundred applications for scholarships. The essays always talked about how college was expensive and paying for it constituted a hardship for the students and their families. And that's absolutely true. The trouble is that, when one hundred applicants are all saying precisely the same thing, whether it's true or not, it becomes useless as a way of making a choice.

So the first step is to think about yourself beyond those terms. Think about yourself as an individual. Start at the beginning. There are countless scholarship opportunities out there, offered by schools, businesses, foundations, and so on. They usually have fairly specific criteria for who can apply. They may be trying to fund a certain sort of major, like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). They may be targeting a particular demographic, such as Latino students. And they'll have a particular threshold for things like GPA. So you want to identify funding opportunities for which you qualify. There are countless scholarships that go unclaimed every year, because nobody did the research necessary to apply for them.

Once you've found some opportunities (and I'm using the plural there because you should be applying for more than one), you need to concentrate on distinguishing yourself from everyone else applying for them. You know who you are. Your friends and family know who you are. But all the scholarship committee will know is what you tell them. Some of that will be factual data. Your GPA, for instance, is a piece of data. It's pretty clear cut.

The key is to effectively use the other part, the essay, to make yourself stand out.

Scholarship committees already know you need the money. That's not enough. They want to know the people they're awarding. They want a story; a picture of the person who's applying. That story needs to be compelling and it needs to describe a certain sort of person.

Who are you? What are your goals? What are your challenges? How are you going to overcome them? What's your plan? Paint a picture of someone who has things they're working toward; someone who has worked hard to get where they are and will continue to work hard and put that scholarship to good use. Make yourself a good investment. Scholarship committees want to know that they're distributing their money wisely.

All of this requires some solid writing. So don't be shy about getting help with that part. Your essay needs to be a solid combination of strong writing and YOUR VOICE. Even if you get help with the grammar and punctuation, the message needs to be YOU. Work with someone at the Writing Center at your college. Or a friend or relative who's a good wordsmith. Use the resources available to you.

Getting scholarships is work: 1) Think about who you are, 2) do your research, 3) WRITE.

Good luck. And don't get discouraged. You're not going to get every scholarship. And you don't need to. Does that make sense?

Hi Kartik! Are you a high school student or college student?