Be Specific, Give Examples, Provide Proof

Be Specific, Your Answers should Show you’ve done your Research

Try to avoid giving vague answers and be as specific and detailed in your responses. Even if you’re not sure yet or you change your mind in the future, that’s okay. You can just answer based on what you’re currently feeling or what you currently know.

Question: “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Bad answer: “I want to be a doctor because I like helping people.”

Good answer: “I’d like to be a doctor, specifically an Oncologist. I want to be an Oncologist because Cancer is one of the biggest health problems currently affecting humanity. In 2018, an estimated 9.5 million people died of cancer worldwide. That’s about 26,000 people each day and 1 out of every 6 deaths.”

Question: “what’s a social cause you’re passionate about”

Don’t say: I’m very passionate about the environment.

Say: I’m very passionate about the environment. Specifically, renewable energy sources like Thorium-based nuclear power. Nuclear power has a bad reputation because of nuclear meltdowns. However nuclear energy is one of the most scalable sources of renewable energy and Thorium reactors drastically reduce the probability and severity of a meltdown.

 

If you have any questions or comments about this article, post it on the Reddit thread for this blog post on r/atila, we read every comment and reply to most.

Give Examples

Every claim you make should have an example showing that point. If you say you’re passionate about a cause, give an example of a time you showed that passion. If you say you take initiative, give an example of a time when you’ve taken initiative. If it’s an example that can be shown with numbers, include numbers in your example.

Provide External Proof and Examples

Add links that can prove any of the things you mention in your article or that the reviewer can look at for more information that can’t be explained in-depth inside your application. If you mention that you started a club at your school, add a hyperlink to your social media page and some examples of your posts. If you raised a bunch of money and got media coverage, add a link to the newspaper article that covered your work.

Read Applications of Past Winners

Before you begin writing your own scholarship application, try to find the applications of past winners and non-winners. See what they did well and try to emulate that in your writing.

For example, Lauren shared her application for the Atila STEM scholarship or RBC also shares the essays of the winners of their past scholarships.

This allows you to develop an idea of what is expected from you in your application and can help you draw inspiration from your own experiences.

If the scholarship website doesn’t have winners posted, send them an email and ask if they have applications of past winners which they can share with you.

Improving Your Writing

Use Google Docs to get Feedback from others

It’s important to have a fresh pair of eyes review your writing. However, a lot of people still send offline word documents and PDFs to other people when asking for feedback. Offline documents and PDFs are inefficient ways of getting feedback. A more efficient way of getting feedback is to share a Google Doc (or similar cloud, collaborative word document).

The problem with a PDF or Word document: Make sure you have their contact information on a messaging platform that accepts files. You upload, they download, edit, upload and send back to you. Then you have to manually apply their changes. Then redo the entire process again if you want them to review again.

Meanwhile, with Google Docs: Give them commenting permission and just send them a link to the doc.

Benefits:

  1. If either of you makes a change it shows up in realtime, you don’t have to send them each other updated versions back and forth
  2. All their suggestions show up inline and you can accept or reject their suggestions with one click
  3. You can share with multiple people
  4. They can easily provide feedback from their phone
  5. Google Doc also works offline so you can still access your documents when you don't have internet

Use Grammarly to Sharpen Your Writing

Grammarly has a really good Chrome and Firefox extension that’s free and that provides a lot of helpful feedback on how to improve your writing.

Write Shorter and Simpler

When writing an essay there’s a tendency to make the writing long and full of fluff words to impress the reader. But it’s not necessary. Before you can impress the reader, the reader must understand what you’re saying. It’s easier to understand simpler words than complex words. If you want to impress the users, you can do that by using specific examples and detailed answers that shown you’ve put thought into your answers.

Use Length of Past Winners to Gauge How Much to Write

Good writing should be like the mating flight of bees, as long as necessary, as short as possible. What does this mean in practice? A good way to gauge how much you should write is to see if you can find applications of past winners and calculate their average word length. Then make sure that your writing is around the same ballpark as their writing.

For more information on the correlation between word count and winning a scholarship see this: “What’s The Word Count?”: Analyzing the Correlation Between Essay Length and Quality

Start by writing what you want to Say in Plain English

Since many people know what they say but feel like they need to sound professional. A great way to keep your writing simple without sounding informal is to write exactly what you want to say in the simplest language possible, then gradually make it more formal.

Use Quillbot or Paraphraser to Make your Writing More Concise

There are lots of online tools that will analyze your writing and help you make it more concise. The two best ones we found were: Quillbot and Paraphraser, but feel you can find other tools if you Google paraphrasing tools.

Break Up Long Walls of Text into Smaller Paragraphs with Headings

Like the meme above which says “I ain’t reading all that. I’m happy for you tho. Or sorry that happened.” Long walls of text are intimidating. It’s like trying to eat a sandwich in one bite. Breaking it up into smaller pieces doesn’t change the total amount that the reader is consuming. But it makes it easier to digest. It also helps you break up your ideas. A good rule of thumb is each paragraph should be a maximum of 7 sentences long.

More Resources for Writing Better

Great essay on writing more conversationally: http://paulgraham.com/talk.html

Essay on writing concisely: http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html

This advice was originally intended for government officials, but it’s some of the best writing advice I have ever seen: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/