Still fretting over those scholarship essays? Well, don’t be scared, because it’s Joshua Liu to the rescue!
As some of you may know, it’s this time of the year again, whether it’s college application or scholarship application, there are maybe like 12903823 essays to write, and that’s not including the ones for school. (Ahm. Extended Essay, Internal Assessments, and World Literature Papers for you IB kids)
Sometimes, you may be lucky and find that one or more of the applications asks for a similar essay, whereas sometimes, you’re not so lucky and they ALL ask for different ones. In my opinion, the worst ones are the ones where the questions incorporate the school or scholarship, like “What makes you the ideal candidate for _____ award?” or “Where do you see yourself in 10 years, and where does ____ fit in?”
While I was having some troubles, I figured lots of you seniors out there might as well, and desperate times call for desperate measures right? Sorry, I’m not sharing some essay archive, but rather, some fairly useful tips from multi-scholarship winner Joshua Liu himself.
He presents his winning essay writing advice in 4 parts:
- Part 1: Thinking Like a Scholarship Winner
- Part 2: Planning the Essay
- Part 3: Writing the Essay
- Part 4: Revising the Essay
Personally, I found it quite helpful and inspirational in some ways. He enlightened me to think in a different mindset and approach these frustrating questions with a different perspective.
A brief bio on Josh from Medhopeful.com:
Joshua Liu is a York University alumni (Bsc 2009) and 4th year medical student at the University of Toronto. Joshua founded SMARTS: Youth Science Canada’s national youth science network and previously sat on Shad Valley’s Board of Directors. Joshua has received numerous scholarships and awards, including the TD Canada Trust Scholarship for Community Leadership and being named as one of Canada’s “Top 20 Under 20″. Most recently, he was the co-lead of a project at UHN’s Centre for Innovation in Complex Care to map out the current state of avoidable hospitalization for complex patients in Ontario.
(Article retrieved from http://www.medhopeful.com/archive/how-to-write-a-winning-scholarship-essay-part-1-thinking-like-a-scholarship-winner/)