Personal Statement identifying the benefits you hope to gain from this scholarship.
From this scholarship I will be one step closer to obtaining my dream of becoming a doctor without having large student loans to repay. I have always worked hard at everything I have done whether it be getting an A in a college level class or smiling at every customer I encounter at my cashier job at The Fresh Market and I believe my hard work will pay off. I am naturally a very competitive person and can not help my tendency to want to overachieve. I have taken some of the most challenging classes at my school, become an active member of the Center of International Studies Magnet, and achieved Historian of the National Honor Society. My accomplishments have brought me the satisfaction of high achievement and I hope for them to continue to direct me to become a doctor. With the generous scholarship I hope to receive from the Kenard Lang Foundation I will be able to continue my education to the highest level. I will be able to relieve a small amount of the large financial burden my father and I are looking to bear. Most importantly, I will use this scholarship to become a physician and help others in need.
Please help edit this so it sounds appealing... and like you would truely want to award me a scholarship! Any suggestions or advice are greatly appreciated! :D
All of the section reproduced below is off-topic:
"I have always worked hard at everything I have done whether it be getting an A in a college level class or smiling at every customer I encounter at my cashier job at The Fresh Market and I believe my hard work will pay off. I am naturally a very competitive person and can not help my tendency to want to overachieve. I have taken some of the most challenging classes at my school, become an active member of the Center of International Studies Magnet, and achieved Historian of the National Honor Society."
Ideally, you will have covered this material in another essay as part of your scholarship application. If not, you will need to tie this material in to the benefits you hope to gain from the scholarship. So, you might talk about how you have always worked hard, but that you believe it would be easier to focus on your studies if you were not forced to work your way through university. And so on.
With the generous scholarship I hope to receive from the Kenard Lang Foundation I will be able to continue my education to the highest level. I will be able to relieve a small amount of the large financial burden my father and I are looking to bear.
I agree with Sean! And also, the first sentence (above) is GREAT, but the second one makes me think maybe you do not really need the scholarship as much as someone else might.
You know, this prompt question really is kind of silly--obviously the benefit you hope to gain from the scholarship is financial assistance!!! They are silly. Use this question as an opportunity to tell them about the kind of physician you will be... elaborating on that last sentence about helping others as a doctor.
"I will be able to relieve a small amount of the large financial burden my father and I are looking to bear." Now that Kevin mentions it, this sentence is a bit odd. Why would you and your father look to bear a large financial burden? I mean, you might have to bear such a burden, but why would you go out of your way to have to bear it? You might want to rephrase.
Use this question as an opportunity to tell them about the kind of physician you will be...
Don't you think that's a bit off-topic? While I do agree that every response to this prompt is going to be similar, I think discussing post-academic plans in such detail is a bit of a stretch. Hopefully this person will help others in need with the same passion no matter which school they attend (assuming receiving this scholarship will aid them in attending a particular school).
Try staying in more well-known territory with this one -- talk about what you do now that you could expand upon if given the chance with this scholarship. Yes, you've accomplished a lot, but how will that help you in the future aside from satisfying your expectance of achieving your goals (essentially what EF_Sean told you)? You might even want to choose new accomplishments that better convey your reason, rather than restating your academic successes.
What sort of scholarship is this, anyway? Some are predicated mostly on academic performance, some on financial need, and some on a mixture of both. If you are applying to one of the latter two types, then the prompt is essentially asking you to plead poverty. If you are applying to the first type, though, you will need to find someway of tying your academic performance and other scholastic achievements back to the prompt. "I have taken some of the most challenging classes at my school and aced all of them because I study eight hours a day, something I won't be able to do if I'm forced to slave at McDonald's flipping burgers to meet the horrendous burdens of tuition payment . . ." okay, that's a bit over the top, but you get the idea.
thank you i will take all of your revisions and suggestions into consideration and hopefully produce an awesome statement!
Hi Christine, well the thing is... when asking for money it is good to get to the heart of the matter. I feel like this one is less-than-inspiring at the start, because right away it implies that she'll be able to do it either way, but it would just be nice to not have a big debt. And the obvious question is, "Why do YOU deserve special treatment?" So it makes me think it is better to 1.) give a clear plan so they know you are serious, 2.) burden the with the responsibility of knowing that you truly desire make a meaningful contribution as a physician and that your future depends, in part, on their decision with this scholarship.
As for "well-known territory"... I don't know, you might be right. It depends on how the admissions officer thinks, I guess.
Your post made me have the insight that it is relevant to talk about post-academic plans in this kind of essay only to the extent that you successfully convey the idea that winning a scholarship will effect post-academic plans.
If you don't need the scholarship, your post academic plans will be affected very little by whether or not you get it. But the way to make them give you the scholarship is to show that it will indeed make a difference, which is the whole point of a scholarship. Ideally, one's post academic plans should be of central interest in determining whether or not they should get a scholarship.
Just remember that you need to convey the idea that you desperately need the scholarship while simultaneously showing the reader that you are a wonderful person who absolutely deserves a helping hand. At the moment, you do a better job of doing the latter than the former, but you could tighten up the latter too. Good luck.