5 secrets of successful scholarship winners. ( from www.earnmydegree.com )

5 secrets of successful scholarship winners. ( from http://www.earnmydegree.com/ )
Posted by huntsmanic on Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Link:
http://blog.earnmydegree.com/5-secrets-of-successful-scholarship-winners/

Do they still count as secret if there’s an article about them? No, but they were never truly secrets to begin with—they’re guidelines. Winners of multiple scholarships get through the application process using very similar methods. Let’s look at five, all of them closely related.

1. APPLY EARLY: You may have a greater chance at having your essay thoughtfully reviewed if you get a head start on the competition, and the reviewer doesn’t yet have a huge stack of applications to deal with.
Also pay attention to deadlines: make a record of when the scholarships that interest you are due, and start early. Now, it’s possible that right now you’re looking at the deadlines for specific scholarships and thinking, These due dates are coming up soon. This rule doesn’t apply to me. But yes it does. Perhaps not at this very moment. However, if you’re going to have success at this, you have to

2. BE PERSISTENT: To win numerous scholarships, you’ll need to apply regularly. Remember, winning funds to get you started in school is just the first part of the goal; the second part is to get the funds to keep you there until you graduate.

3. APPLY FOR MULTIPLE SCHOLARSHIPS: We’ve been talking in the plural—scholarships—already, but this bears mention in more detail. The fact of the matter for almost everyone is that the hardest part of the scholarship process is getting started: you have to do research to get even a rough idea of what’s out there. And that can be intimidating.
Don’t let it be. If you’re already enrolled as a student or have been accepted, your school will have dedicated student advisors. They can ask you some questions and get you matched up with different scholarships on offer. If you’re not currently enrolled in a specific college,

4. APPLY TO A FEW SCHOOLS AND DEGREE PROGRAMS: Then, while you’re waiting to find out what college you’ll attend, work the funding angle. Type “scholarships” into a search engine: the first several nonpaid results will be free online services that match you up with scholarship offers based on your specific goals. Get deadline information and applications for all those that interest you.

5. STAY POSITIVE: Our focus so far has been on the approach to the application process, and not the content of your specific applications. For that, there are many different sets of guidelines available on the web, so let’s focus on the broadest, most important one: stay positive.

If that sounds a little grade-schoolish, well, it is, almost—it’s grade-school-teacherish. Just as the best school teachers keep students constantly involved in positive ways, a successful scholarship essay is compelling because it focuses positively on what you’re excited to learn, and how you’re excited to apply that learning in the professional world. And hey, wouldn’t you be excited for those things, if you had just won scholarships to pay for college? Write as though you already have.

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My comment:-
I found this article interesting. And relevant too, since I was able to get a $20,000 scholarship myself. Unfortunately, I chose not to accept that scholarship as I wanted to go to another Business School. I gave up my spot and the scholarship as early as I could, so that some other needy student could benefit from it. My best wishes the person who got my seat and to the person who got my scholarship.