The College Scholarship and the College Admission Essay

Many decades ago, the only thing needed to get a decent job was a high school education.  Today, the job market is more demanding and more competitive. Every person who wants a stable job and an advancing career must first obtain a college degree. Sadly, the high tuition fees and other expenses make college almost inaccessible.  But there are numerous College scholarships that are being offered by schools, universities, and various organizations. 

Do these scholarships require an IQ equivalent to those of geniuses? The answer is no. Of course, college scholarships require that the students’ mental abilities are capable of meeting the demands of college courses. This is the purpose of aptitude tests. But it must be noted that the goal of these college scholarships is to help students who are motivated to finish a degree.  This motivation and emotional maturity is tested in the college admission essay.

The college admission essay can be the deal breaker in college scholarships. To ace the essay test is to ensure that college scholarship. But how can a teen write a really good admission essay? There is no single guide that can help a teenager to write a scholarship-winning admission essay. The nature of the essay is often the extension of the writer’s personality. But there are some basic requirements that must be met in the essay. Here are some of them.

The first requirement is the answer to the question asked in the essay.  What is asked exactly by the admission essay? If the question asks for the most memorable moment of one’s life, an essay about positive personal traits is way off the mark. A recommended way to deal with this aspect of the essay is to list all possible answers. From this list, the best ideas are chosen and the rest are discarded. There is no need to have many answers to the essay question. In college scholarship essays, quality is more important than quantity.

The next requirement is the uniqueness of the essay. The words should not be generic or vague. Here is an example of a vague sentence: “I am a very determined person because I like to accomplish the tasks that I’ve set out to do.” But what tasks? Anyone can write this sentence. It is not unique.  To improve this sentence, one must recall the past experiences and use one of them as an example.  The improved version of the same idea can be like this: “It was already midnight and I’m only half-way through the science project. I don’t like to leave it partially done. So I got up to fix a cup myself a cup of milk, did several stretch exercises and got back to work. When the clock struck two in the morning, I was putting the finishing touches to my project. I was tired but I felt good.”  These sentences don’t need words that were taken out of the thesaurus. They were direct but powerful.

Similar to all writing requirements, the spelling and grammar should be checked. The word processor’s spell checker can help but a thorough reading of the final essay must be done before submission. The word processor can only check misspelled words, not misused ones.

And finally, all other requirements about the essay, such as number of words, font size, and paper size must be followed to the letter. A well-written essay can receive a failing mark simply because it did not follow the required length.