10 Suggestions for Putting Together an Excellent Application
Research relevant information: Your time is valuable during your senior year. Decide on those scholarship applications whose descriptions most clearly match your skills and abilities. Stop and access. If the scholarship program states that all of its applicants can juggle and you have never attempted this activity, then the application may not be worth your time.
Deadlines: Give yourself plenty of time for the many applications you will complete. Create personal deadlines and stick with them.
Accuracy: You’ve been asked to be accurate since you entered 1st grade. This is the time to put that competency into action. Every application is different. Read the instructions!
Personal Survey: Give some time to thinking about who you are. Your job is to get a message across to a committee who has not met you personally. Make a list of 10-15 adjectives that pertain to you and use them in your application.
Feedback from those who know you best: Ask people who know you well to add to your personal survey. You may not think of yourself as competitive, but if everyone else who describes you uses that word, you need to give it some thought!
Skills: How can they set you apart from the other thousands of applicants? This is the time to toot your own horn. Be scrupulously honest but consider that the committee only knows you by reading your application and recommendations.
Recommendations: Ask people to write for you who know you personally. Your choice of a recommender also says something about you.
Essays and short answers: should provide the scholarship committee with examples of ways in which you have been successful.
Proofread, Proofread, Proofread: Ask your counselor or teacher to proofread your work and make suggestions.
