12 Tips for Writing a Winning Scholarship Essay: Write an Essay like a Pro

A scholarship can be your ticket to a more secure college or university experience as well as a path forward to a great career and an impressive future. But the dreaded scholarship essay stands between you and your scholarship dreams. In today’s competitive scholarship environment, hundreds or even thousands of students are competing for the same small pool of money. So what will set you apart from the crowd and help you get a better chance of achieving the scholarship you deserve?

In this article, we’ll take a look at twelve tips for making your essay as strong as it can be so you can help give yourself every advantage as you compete for scholarship money and a brighter future.

How to write a Scholarship Essay in 12 Steps:

#1 Know your audience.

Before you start writing your scholarship essay, research the organization sponsoring the scholarship so you can tailor your essay to reflect the ideals of its mission. Show them why you are the embodiment of their ideas. Read about past winners to see what types of traits appeal to the organization.

#2 Use specific examples.

Anyone can make an assertion, but great writers provide specific and concrete examples to help demonstrate why these assertions are true. So, when you talk about your accomplishments, provide detailed examples that show these accomplishments rather than simply listing what they were like on a resume.

#3 Be unique.

Your essay shouldn’t simply rehash what previous winners have written. Instead, your essay needs to be unique to you. Write about your own experiences in a way that reflects the true you. Personalize your essay and your writing style to highlight what is important to you so your reader understands the real you, not a generic person.

#4 Understand the essay question.

Most scholarship application essay questions are quite broad and have a lot of room for interpretation. But these questions also have key themes that you can extract and highlight in your own essay. Be sure you understand each element of the question and can articulate the major themes before you start writing.

#5 Use keywords from the essay question.

Show the scholarship organization that you understand what they are looking for by using keywords from the essay question in your own response. Use words that best match the themes. The narrative is very important. If you match the narrative, you have much better chances.

#6 Begin with an engaging hook.

Every essay needs to grab the reader from the very first line. Think about what will pique your audience’s interest and start in a way that is immediately compelling to get them interested in seeing your essay through to the end.

#7 Follow all formatting guidelines and technical requirements.

Stick to the word count and follow all of the requirements for submission. This might include spacing, font and font size, margins, and other technical requirements. Be sure for electronic submissions to submit in the specified format so the organization can read your essay.

#8 Use emotional appeals—but sparingly.

The scholarship organization wants to know the real you, so appeal to their emotions and use elements of pathos to help them understand how you feel. But don’t overdo it. Emotion should be applied sparingly for effect, not at every turn.

#9 Maintain a positive tone.

Nobody likes a complainer. Keep your tone positive and upbeat, or at least aspirational. While a positive tone is best, if you are writing about a tragedy, try to emphasize positive qualities like resilience or compassion. 

#10 Develop a strong conclusion.

Leave your audience with a memorable final thought that can tie your essay together and provide food for thought to keep you in the organization’s memory after they have finished your essay. Don’t be surprised if writing a conclusion will take half of the time of writing the whole paper before that. 

#11 Proofread carefully.

No essay is finished just because you completed your first draft. Proofread every word carefully and then proofread it again. You want to make sure that it is as close to perfect as possible. The scholarship organization will notice any errors, so try to catch them all.

#12 Ask for help.

Don’t be afraid to get help when you need it. If you are in school, take advantage of your writing center to get another perspective on your writing. Ask friends or family for their opinions, too. However, remember, that people like to give advice, and sometimes it is based only on their desire to say something, not on a professional opinion.

How to Beat your Rivals in Pursuit of a Scholarship?

When writing a scholarship paper, you may follow all the required steps, answer all the questions, and come up with a quality piece of writing, which still will fail. Unfortunately, we cannot share some magic ideas with you, which will ensure that you win the desired scholarship.

However, we want to get you closer to the reality of the admissions world. Most of your competitors use external help — tutors or professional writers. The latter are more preferable, as they can solve your task much faster and have experience with this kind of assignment. Another reason to address a professional writer if you want to impress an admission committee is our inability to write well about ourselves. We see ourselves differently, and it affects our self-presentation. 

If all else fails, you can also get mentorship or professional help from an academic essay writing service like SmartWritingService. This online custom writing service can write papers for you, including a scholarship essay for your application. The team of academic writers who work for this website provides reliable and fast scholarship essays that can give you the advantage you need as you write your own paper from scratch.

When you see how an expert would approach your essay question, you can jump ahead of the competition with a professional approach that can help to set you apart from the competition. In today’s cutthroat essay-writing environment, such help can make the difference in securing a top scholarship.