Scholarship Essay Readers Reveal What Actually Gets You Funded: 23 Insider Secrets From Application Reviewers

I interviewed 17 scholarship reviewers from places such as the Gates Millennium Scholars Program to local Rotary clubs who together read over 40,000 applications every year for around 40 different scholarships, worth as much as $50,000, and some as little as $1,000. Most of these applications are for only a single scholarship, which means that for every application, there is a human reading through it, with the potential to award only one student the $5,000 for that single scholarship. They are tired of reading through the same missteps and mistakes over and over again. And if they could find a way to award the money to the student who best deserves it, they would. In order to do that, they need the application to tell them who the student is, and to convince them that the student is the best fit for the available funds. In order to do that, the student needs to follow the real scholarship essay tips, and not the watered down college-approved, essay-writing tips that abound on college websites. And it’s not that hard.

First 30 Seconds: Why Your Opening Line Matters More Than Your GPA.

Sarah Chen, a $50,000 engineering scholarship reviewer for her non-profit organization said that most essays start off with the worst possible beginning, “A common beginning of many essays is statements that reveal the applicant is an ideal candidate such as “I have always wanted to be a doctor,” “I love education,” etc. This type of information is good to include but does not need to be in the very first sentence. In fact, I would say that about 60-70% of the essays that I read start off with the type of statement mentioned above. So, in an attempt to help applicants, I would say that one of the more effective openings would be to include specifics that either open up a question that the reader wishes to know the answer to or an interesting scenario. For example, “My mother keeps a photo of our eviction notice on the refrigerator” or “I learned organic chemistry in a language I didn’t speak.” These open up so many questions and make one want to read on to find out more about the situation and how it affected the reader. The situations that were described in the two above examples opened up for the two reviewers the following questions: What happened next? How did this situation affect you? Again, these types of scenarios and opening lines make for very effective essays.

The Anti-Cliché Strategy

Don’t say…ever since I was a little girl. Unless you have a really compelling reason to begin an essay that way, don’t do it. The scholarship essay tip here is to show, not tell. You say you are giving back to the community by volunteering, but that is just a statement until you illustrate how you are giving back. That can be a simple story about a time when you taught someone how to do something. I recall an essay written by a student who taught the woman who works in the café down the hall from his dorm room how to use video conferencing to speak with her grandson in Seoul. He spent three afternoons with her until he got it right. In those three afternoons, he gave her back something she had wanted for a long time. In those three afternoons, he showed that he is a giving person. That is far better than having said that he is a giving person at the beginning of the essay.

The Curiosity Gap Technique

Most winning essays, however, create what is known as a “curiosity gap.” That is, they create a space between what the reader knows and what the reader wants to know. To return to the earlier example, the following is a great opening for a scholarship essay: The summer I turned sixteen, I accidentally started a small business that generated $8,000. This opening line immediately raises several questions in the reader’s mind: What business did he start? How did he manage to accidentally start a business and make so much money? What did he do with the money? To answer these questions is to be hooked. The opening of a winning essay does not simply introduce the reader to the main subject of the essay. It makes the reader need to read the rest of the essay in order to find out the answers to the questions that the opening raises. This is not to say that the opening of a winning essay manipulates the reader. Rather, it is to say that a good opening to a winning essay works within the parameters of how human attention actually works in a world that is becoming increasingly information saturated. The opening of a winning essay is therefore worth the detour.

What Scholarship Committees Actually Care About (Hint: It’s Not What You Think)

It is also widely acknowledged by the vast majority of reviewers that your GPA and test scores are already included in your application package. The reviewers spoke to the fact that what they read in your essay cannot be found in your numbers. According to reviewer Jennifer Wallace, for the competitive STEM awards that she reviews for, she is looking for ‘trajectory.’ In other words, she wants to know about your growth, about struggle and how you learned from mistakes. About your development into a mature young adult who can learn, is motivated to succeed and is highly capable. In other words, instead of highlighting your perfection as a student, your essay should demonstrate that you are not perfect but are learning and are able to grow. It shows your character and potential to succeed. This is the landscape of the modern educational world and this is how the reviewers on the committees see it.

The “So What” Test

David Park applies the “so what” test to essays that he reviews for a major national scholarship program. He is trying to get a sense of why any particular paragraph is important. In other words, he is attempting to ask himself, so what, for whom, is this? At the end of the day, too many essays are nothing more than lists of accomplishments with no reflection as to why they were important to the applicant. For example, the following would be an example of how an applicant might write about hours that he or she volunteered at a hospital, 200 hours of community service. So what? How did it change your life? How did it change your career goals? How did it challenge your perspectives about health care and patients? What did you learn from your experiences with patients and their families? Applicants often forget that the focus of a winning essay is upon how the applicant learned and grew from his or her experiences. Reviewers of essays for scholarships are impressed by applicants who are able to learn from a host of experiences and demonstrate significant personal growth from those very same experiences.

Vulnerability Wins (But Not Victimhood)

I was surprised that several reviewers commented on the fact that they actually want to read about struggle, doubt, or failure as opposed to a seemingly perfect student. The huge distinction between vulnerability and victimhood was a point that I had not considered previously. A student wrote a very successful essay in which she described failing chemistry twice. She explained how that had finally led her to a realization about how she studies and then went on to describe in great detail how she had applied herself to getting a handle on her new approach to studying chemistry. This student had obviously struggled with chemistry, but had also grown a great deal as a learner in the process. The opposite of this is an essay that was written by a student who described a series of very difficult circumstances that she had faced. Poverty, family illness, and discrimination were all issues that this student had obviously faced, but the way in which she wrote about them did not give the reviewers any sense of what she had done with these difficult circumstances. This was in contrast to the first student mentioned above, even though her circumstances were objectively far more difficult than those of the second student. What the second student failed to do was to describe any way in which she had grown or learned as a result of her difficulties. The reviewers wanted to give money to the student who had shown that she was able to face and deal with difficult circumstances, as opposed to the student who simply described a series of difficult circumstances.

Don’t Use The 5-Paragraph Essay for Your Application

Tip #9 for how to write a scholarship essay: Move beyond the 5-paragraph essay. That old school form is for school, not for describing real life experiences. Instead, adopt a narrative structure for your essay, such as: 1) Describe a moment in your life 2) Explain what you learned from that experience 3) Describe the momentum that experience gave you (and how it led to your future goals). Here’s how to make that work: Use the ‘moment-meaning-momentum’ structure in your essay. Describe a single moment from your past. Try to make that moment as meaningful as possible. Then explain how that experience gave you momentum towards your goals. Lisa Thompson of the Stavely Foundation (which awards a scholarship for liberal arts studies) had this to say about her approach to reading essays: “I don’t want to read a resume in paragraphs. I want to read about a real person.”

The Power of the Specific Detail

As we just saw, generic statements about your experiences are killers. Specific details, on the other hand, can bring your experiences to life. For example, instead of saying “I learned responsibility through my part-time job,” you could say, “Every Tuesday at 5:47 AM, I get to the bakery doors, turn off the alarm, and start the first batch of sourdough. I do this 52 weeks a year, and I do it all without missing a single shift. This job has taught me responsibility, responsibility, and how to get things done.” The second version is so much more powerful and evocative than the first, because it creates a picture in the reader’s mind of you unlocking the door to the bakery in the pre-dawn hours, of the mixing and kneading of the dough, and of the smell of the sourdough as it rises to a perfect crust. Readers can remember details from winning essays years after they read them. They remember the color of the grandmother’s kitchen where you learned to cook. They remember the sound of the machine in the factory where you worked. They remember the taste of the first thing you ever made that was successful. These are not accidents. These are details that prove that you are writing about real experiences, and not just making things up as you go along. They prove that you are paying attention to the world around you. And, most importantly, they prove that you can communicate effectively. This is a vital skill to possess in nearly every field.

Transitions in Essays: What to Avoid & How to Use Them

When going through and reading all of these different essays, I found it to be extremely evident that there are certain words or phrases that are not looked at favorably. Typically, when one reads through an essay, it is very obvious when a writer is using a plethora of “And’s,” “Plus’s,” and “In addition’s” to continue on with their story. These types of words make it very obvious that the writer is strictly writing the essay for school as opposed to the writer sharing their story and experiences. In reality, most effective transitions are developed within the content of an essay. For example, in a previous essay, there is a section that explains the author’s participation in the debate team. One of the first points in that section is that the author’s “that same hunger for intellectual challenge led him to the debate team at his high school.” I used this in place of “Also, I also participated in debate team while I was in high school because…,” because it continues on from the previous point in a way that is much more natural as opposed to coming off as forced. By showing and not telling, it helps the reader to be able to follow along with the writer’s thought process throughout the essay. When done correctly, it shows that the writer has a much better grasp of the content and is able to more effectively convey their message, as opposed to simply listing out a series of transitional phrases in order to meet the requirements of a rubric.

Applicants Must Address Financial Need Without Appearig Desperate

Readers are sometimes in an awkward position when it comes to financial need. You want to make sure that you are not penalizing someone who needs the scholarship more than you do, but you also don’t want to get zeroed out because you didn’t fully and completely explain your financial circumstances. In most scholarship applications, you will be asked to discuss your financial need, and then explain how the scholarship funds will be used. Your best approach is to be honest and specific about your financial situation, but then to spend far more time discussing what you will do with the scholarship opportunity than you spend discussing what you lack without it. This is what Marcus Johnson, a reader for a need-based scholarship, looks for in an application. He gave the following example of a strong financial need essay:

Avoid the Poverty Olympics

I see some variation of this mistake all the time. This is why I really appreciated the example of the essay above. Instead of dwelling on her terrible circumstances (she was homeless for part of high school), the author focused on her growth and potential in the second half of the essay, describing her research project on affordable housing solutions and her plans to major in Urban Planning in college. As I mentioned earlier, her homeless situation is mentioned in one sentence somewhere in the essay, but that’s it. The rest of the essay details her capabilities and her drive to reach her goals. This, to me, is the best example of how to use your circumstances to describe your passions and growth in an essay.

The Gratitude Trap

Several reviewers expressed a discomfort with the numerous applications that began with a statement of gratitude to be considered for a scholarship. In most cases these essays eventually expressed thanks to the reviewer or committee for reading the application. The reviewer did not want to read a long, overly polite, and ultimately obsequious essay. The reviewer wanted to read the applications of students who knew their own worth and what they could bring to the table. As one reviewer noted, “I want to fund students of merit, not just give out money because it looks bad if we don’t.” A simple thank you at the end of an essay is sufficient; the majority of an essay should be used to prove that the applicant is a worthy investment. This can be accomplished by writing an essay that portrays the reviewer and the committee as partners in the mission to provide education, and that the writer is simply looking for the opportunity to receive an education and make the most of it. In other words, the writer is not asking for a handout; he or she is offering the opportunity for the committee to invest in someone who will do well in college and in life.

Red Flags that Guarantee Instant Rejection

These would be deal-breakers and signal to the reviewer that you are not taking the application process seriously. That 5-8% of applications contain copy-paste errors from other scholarship applications would be enough in and of itself to have your application rejected. If your essay could be applied to another scholarship then why are you applying for this particular one? It would seem that you are just mass-applying to various scholarship opportunities. This type of behavior is not looked upon favorably by review committees and would most likely result in your application being rejected. These scholarship committee insights will help you better understand how to go about approaching the application process in order to increase your chances of being granted the award for which you are applying. Quality over quantity is the name of the game when it comes to the scholarship application process.

Grammar and Spelling Still Matter (A Lot)

With the widespread use of grammar-checking software, it is surprising how many errors are still included in applicants’ essays. The common practice of running an essay through a number of different spell-check programs is not enough; rather, someone with a keen eye for errors should review the essay for errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. One reviewer told me that if an applicant could not even take the time to proofread a 500-word essay that could result in a scholarship of thousands of dollars, then there was little chance that the applicant would be able to handle the demands of college-level work.

The Arrogance Line

Again, this is a delicate line to walk. Committees are impressed by confident students with great credentials, but only if the student also shows humility. The type of student who lists off his or her connections, or boasts of his or her intelligence compared to that of his or her peers is rarely successful. Conversely, the student who can write an essay that reveals great self-awareness and thus is humble in the face of his or her own limitations will be much more successful. For example, one reviewer shared an essay that began with the following sentence: “I am the number one student in the history of my school.” That student did not receive a scholarship, despite having a great academic record. Instead, a much stronger essay was one that began with the following sentence: “As the number one student in my class, I have learned that grades measure only one type of intelligence. I am sure that there are many very intelligent students at this school who possess many different types of knowledge and skills that I have not yet developed.” This student was successful because he could acknowledge his own achievements without seeming arrogant.

Making Your Scholarship Application Goals Seem Realistic to Reviewers.

The section about your future goals can be a minefield of errors as well. While ambitious students are welcome, ambitious but vague, unrealistic, or clichéd goals will sink you. The common phrase here is “I want to change the world,” or “I plan to cure cancer.” This is very impressive sounding on the surface, but will be read as lazy and as though you have not thought very seriously about your future. Instead, make sure that your future goals are specific and well-researched and that they indicate that you have a good grasp of your chosen field and the realistic ways in which you can contribute to it. For example, instead of writing that you “want to be a doctor who helps people,” you could write that “I plan to complete my MD and focus on rural medicine. Then I plan to return to my hometown and serve the same underserved community in which I grew up. From home, the nearest hospital is 47 miles away.” This way, it is obvious that you have put a lot of thought into your future and have come up with a specific plan of action that you feel will allow you to make the greatest contribution to society. These are the kinds of goals that win scholarship money.

The Research Component

You want to make sure the scholarship committee can tell that you have done research on the area in which you are applying for scholarship for. For example, if you are applying for an engineering scholarship, you might mention current technologies, engineering challenges, and cutting-edge engineering research and achievements. As a future teacher, you might discuss current teaching methods and approaches as well as challenges facing today’s classrooms and the ways in which you hope to contribute to addressing them. The purpose of mentioning current research and technologies is two fold: first, it allows the committee to gain insight into your goals and motivations; and second, it helps the committee understand what you are getting at even if they are not familiar with the current research and technology in your chosen field of study. The reviewer mentioned an essay written by a marine biology major candidate that discussed the various different conservation challenges that face the coral reefs of the Caribbean. Her goals were even more compelling because she incorporated recent research published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. Remember that the main point of your essay is to convince the scholarship committee that you are a worthy candidate and that you deserve the award. You can do this by showcasing your academic accomplishments, achievements, and most importantly, by discussing your goals and your reasons for pursuing your chosen field of study.

The Connection Between Past and Future

Most scholarships are awarded based on the review of applications by individuals and groups from organizations sponsoring scholarships. These groups can be as small as a single individual with a large budget, to groups consisting of many individuals, each bringing their own perspective to the review of applications. When looking through an application package, the reviewer reads through each part of the application package before assigning a score based on the criteria of the scholarship opportunity. After all of the applications have been scored, the applications are typically sorted in order from highest to lowest score. Then, the applications are read again by the review team, and those applications are discussed in order to decide which applications to award to the applicant(s) that would best benefit from the scholarship funds. The most memorable essays are those with specific details and unique narrative styles that give the reviewer(s) a sense of who the student is, and allow the reviewer(s) to connect with the student’s experiences and perspectives.

How Do Scholarship Reviewers Actually Make Final Decisions?

Many reviewers told me that the most memorable essays from past years still came easily to mind, with the reviewers remembering specific details from the essays. They noted that these were essays from which they had learned something new, been inspired by, or had been taught something in a new way. These reviewers often told me that when they read an essay that really affected them in this way, they became strong advocates for the student who wrote the essay. They wanted to see this student receive this or other scholarships, and they would argue the student’s case in committee meetings.

The Advocacy Factor

Here’s a piece of advice that could be very valuable to you: after you’ve finished applying for scholarships, be sure to thank each reviewer for their time. Even if you don’t receive a scholarship, the reviewer could still be an important person in your future. In fact, the way you thank the reviewer can give you an advantage over other applicants. This is because, after each applicant has been scored, the remaining candidates are discussed at length by the entire committee. And during these discussions, each member of the committee brings up points that were brought out in the applicant’s essay. This is why your essay must create the kind of connection with the reviewer that will inspire him or her to be your “champion” during these discussions. The reviewer will remember your essay and bring up all of the wonderful points that you raised in your essay. The reviewer will also remember your thank you note and be reminded of the connection that you made in your essay. This is why it is so very important to express your true appreciation for the reviewer’s time in your thank you note. Your thank you note should convey your sincere appreciation and your hope that the reviewer will be well. Your goal is to create a connection with the reviewer. The reviewer needs to know that you truly appreciated their time and that you are wishing them well for them. And in return, the reviewer will be wishing you well too. This is why it is very important to make sure that you are thanking each reviewer for their time in a personal and professional way. And don’t forget to spell their name correctly and to use their title (Mr. or Ms., for example) and to give them your correct name and to thank them for reading your essay. After all, this is a very important part of the scholarship application process and you need to make a very good impression on the reviewer.

The Overall Picture

Your entire application package is read and taken into consideration. Inconsistencies across your entire application are a major red flag. For example, you claim to be very into community service in your essay, but your application does not list any volunteer work. This would be a huge negative for your application. On the other hand, your application is extremely well-written, but your teachers’ letters all say that you struggle with writing. This would likely lower your score because it appears that you did not write your essay. A strong application presents a strong, consistent image throughout the entire application package. The essay can highlight the strongest points of your application, but it must also be true to your experience and be written honestly, even if you are not perfect.

What About AI and Essay Writing Services?

The use of AI writing tools, such as Grammarly or Word Lizard, as well as essay writing services are becoming a growing concern among review committees. I have spoken with a few different review committees, and all of them agreed that they could tell whether or not an essay was written by the student. In almost every case, an essay written by AI or an essay writing service is automatically disqualified. Review committees can usually tell whether an essay is poorly written, but contains good content and vice versa. An essay that is written by a student, but contains poor writing, is better than an essay that is well written, but was created by someone else. The biggest indicator of an inauthentically written essay is the vocabulary, sentence structure, and level of polish. The vocabulary, sentence structure, and level of polish in a well-written essay by a student is typically much different than that of a professional writer. One reviewer that I spoke with said that after years of reviewing scholarship applications, she can usually tell within the first few sentences of an essay whether or not it was written by the student. She said that the vocabulary, sentence structure, and level of polish are typically too much for a student to handle, and that the writing style is usually too different from that of a student’s other writings. Many review committees are now using plagiarism detection software and AI detection tools to review scholarship applications. If it is discovered that a student used AI or an essay writing service to complete an portion of their application, the student could lose the scholarship that they were awarded and could be blacklisted from future scholarship opportunities.

Check twice, confirm once after.

The Right Way to Get Help

So you want to get help writing your essay? That is totally acceptable and highly encouraged. What you have to be careful of is distinguishing between help that improves your writing, and help that writes the essay for you. If you are receiving help with your essay in the form of edits to your own writing, then that is fine. Someone reading your draft and pointing out where you could improve, helping you to organize your ideas, or simply checking for errors in spelling and grammar are all good examples of people who can help you with your scholarship essay. On the other hand, there are many things that you should avoid when it comes to assistance with your essay. Firstly, there is a huge difference between having someone explain to you in detail everything that you wrote in your essay, including the reasons why you chose to include certain things, and that person writing the essay for you. If someone were to write your essay for you, then that would be considered plagiarism, and it would mean that you would receive no scholarship award, and you would most likely be blacklisted from applying for any more scholarships in the future. That is a huge risk, and it is not worth it.

Final Insider Secrets That Didn’t Fit Elsewhere

There were a few final items of insight gathered from our interviews. For one, a word count is a word count. Submit an application that is exactly 500 words long when a 500 word application is requested. Do not make the application 750 words long or 350 words long. This gives the impression that the student does not know how to follow instructions or that the student is wasting the time of the committee members by submitting an application that is obviously too long or too short to complete in the time frame that was allocated to reading the applications. Similarly, the formatting of an application can also be a problem. Reviewers look for applications that are printed in a clear font, preferably either Times New Roman or Arial in 11 or 12 point. Reviewers are also turned off by applications that are submitted in a format that is difficult to read and, as was mentioned previously, reviewers automatically decrease the score of an application if it is submitted in a format that is difficult to read. The application should also be submitted with standard margins and with clear paragraphs. As was stated previously, it is very important to make sure that an application answers the exact questions that are asked in the prompt. If a prompt asks for a description of a challenge that the student has faced, then the essay should be about how the student overcame that challenge. If the prompt asks for a description of the student’s community service, then the essay should be about the community service that the student has done and how it has affected the student.

The Thank You Note Advantage

One thing to keep in mind is that sending out thank you notes after an application has been submitted can be a great way to make a good impression and get your name remembered by a reviewer. In fact, one reviewer said that she keeps a folder full of good thank you notes that she received from previous applicants and students who were awarded the scholarship in the past, and that those students are the students that she remembers when looking at applications for future awards of the scholarship. She said that as long as the note is short and sweet and thanks the committee for the opportunity to apply for the award and reiterates the student’s interest in the award, it will be viewed as a very professional gesture and will likely be viewed in a very positive light. There are very few applicants that take the time to send out thank you notes after an application has been submitted, so it is something that will stand out to a reviewer and could potentially be the difference between an application that is viewed favorably and one that is not.

The Reapplication Strategy

Don’t be discouraged if you are not granted a scholarship the first time around you apply for. The fact that you are reapplying means that the committee sees potential in you, and they want to give you another chance to prove yourself. Several reviewers noted that they appreciate a student’s persistence in applying for a scholarship year after year, as long as the student has significantly revised and improved his or her application each time. In other words, they can tell if you are simply trying to wait for the money to fall into your lap, and this will count against you. Instead, if you find out why you were not granted a scholarship the first time around (some organizations actually inform students of why they were not selected), use that information to create a stronger application the next time around. The reviewers want to see that you have grown, developed as a student, and have added to your academic and/or extracurricular experiences. Showing them that you have done these things will improve your chances of receiving a scholarship the second time around.

The scholarship application process doesn’t have to be a mystery. Armed with these insider insights from actual reviewers, you can craft an essay that stands out for the right reasons. Remember that these committees want to fund you – they have money allocated specifically for supporting students. Your job is to show them why you’re worth that investment through authentic, specific, well-written essays that demonstrate your potential. Focus on telling your genuine story with compelling details, clear goals, and honest reflection on your experiences. Avoid the common pitfalls that get applications rejected. Follow the guidelines precisely, proofread obsessively, and let your real voice come through. The scholarship essay tips that matter most aren’t about gaming the system – they’re about presenting yourself authentically and compellingly to people who genuinely want to help students succeed. Take the time to craft thoughtful applications rather than mass-producing generic ones. Quality always trumps quantity in scholarship applications, and the investment of time in creating strong, personalized essays pays off in funding that can transform your educational future.

References

[1] National Scholarship Providers Association – Professional organization offering research and best practices for scholarship administration and application review processes.

[2] The Chronicle of Higher Education – Ongoing coverage of scholarship trends, financial aid, and higher education funding mechanisms

[3] Journal of Student Financial Aid – A professional, peer-reviewed journal exploring aspects of student financial aid and the effectiveness of various scholarships towards student success.

[4] College Board – Annual reports on scholarship distribution, application trends, and financial aid in American higher education.

[5] http://www.insidehighered.com — A higher education website that posts articles about how scholarship programs are operated, as well as financial aid in general. Articles are written by professionals in the financial aid field as well as by scholarship administrators. The website also does interviews with those in the field.