With the new school year, now’s the perfect time to get serious about searching for and winning scholarships to pay for your college.

Since many scholarship applications require you to write an essay, you will want to write an essay that holds the influence to persuade the scholar board that you are the right candidate.

If done well, your scholarship essay can open a window to a different world. Similar to how your personal statement gives a different perspective to a subject, your essay can showcase you as a dimensional person — a person who is far beyond what your high-school GPA and report can reflect.

After consulting Fresh Essays — a professional essay writing platform, we have prepared the following list full of tips and strategies to help you write a winning scholarship essay.

How To Write an Effective Scholarship Essay?

The scholarship essay is a way to show what you are capable of. It helps you showcase the skills that the high-school GPA and report can show.

However, you can’t win a scholarship on the basis of writing an ordinary essay. The scholarship committee reads hundreds of essays, so making your essay stand out becomes crucial.

How do you do that?

Yes, you need writing skills to pull that off. But more than that, you need a few tips and tricks that will help you create an essay that persuades the readers.

Follow the tips to create a scholarship-worthy essay.

Know Your Audiences

The best way to give what the scholarship committee is looking for is by giving them what they are looking for; it is as simple as that.

Try to find out their ideal candidate is and what they are expecting out of this year’s candidate. Once you know the answer, mold yourself and your essay accordingly.

But avoid catering too much to their expectations. Instead, just work on your strong suits and determine how you can spin them to influence them.

Choose A Topic That You Are Interested In

Your topic can play a major role in how your essay comes out. If you choose an essay topic that bores you, chances are your readers will feel the same. 

Try to choose a topic that you are passionate about and want to write about rather than a topic that you feel you should write about. This way, your personality, and excitement can shine the most.

Create A Strong Introduction

Since the introduction is what draws the attention of the readers and convinces them to keep reading the essay, you must write an introduction with everything you have got.

Instead of starting your essay with a general view, why not give some facts or valuable information that hook the readers? Once your first line is able to hook the readers, give a second sentence for the readers to expect something out of the essay.

Keep A Good Structure

After the introduction, it is important to make sure that your readers can follow along with the essay without any problem. This can only be achieved by outlining your essay and planning every section.

To create an outline, first, start with organizing your thoughts. List down the points that you want to cover. Next, organize those thoughts into different sections.

Lastly, ensure that all your thoughts and ideas follow a logical order in the essay. And if possible, add some more detail under each point.

The Words Must Express Your Emotions

Connecting with audiences through words only can be challenging. They are just text and do not carry any emotions. However, if you can try a little hard to use different words with different meanings, you will be able to showcase your emotions in your writing.

Showing emotion in your writing will help the reader to see you as a person and not some faceless author. Yes, showing emotions might show your vulnerabilities. But, as humans, we are not perfect. So, don’t be afraid of them.

Stay Away From Boring Conclusion

You must have heard what experts say to keep your conclusion simple and just paraphrase what you have written in the entire body. Nothing wrong with playing it safe.

If you truly want to create an essay that is on the scholarship level, you need to make every section of your essay unique. This includes conclusions as well.

One way to take your conclusion to the next level is by leaving some questions for readers to answer in the conclusion.

Take Advantages Of Resources

When it comes to writing, you don’t have to do it on your own. Scour through the internet to find relevant resources to use. There are colleges that offer feedback, offer resources and guide their students with scholarship essays.

If your college has such a department, take help from them. They might even have some insightful scholarly essay writing tips that even we didn’t know about.

Proofread The Final Content

As much as we like to feel confident and think we are perfect, we all make mistakes. This is why it is important to take time and proofread the essay.

The best way to find mistakes is to read your essay out loud. This way, you will not only be able to know the grammatical errors but also find errors in how they might sound.

Once you have taken out time to proofread your essay, ask another person to do the same. This takes away all the possibility of errors in the essay.

Final Tip: Seek Out Writing Advice & Feedback

You might think that the essay you have written is the best. Nothing wrong with that. But it is always a good idea to see what others think about it.

Ask your teacher, family members, and seniors to see what they say about your essay. The more people read your essay, the better you can audit your essay.

Feedback on your essay will help you highlight the weak points that you can work on and construct a scholarship-level essay.

That’s it for this article. If you want to know more about essay writing, or have any questions, reach out to us.