Speaker 1: Scholarship application essays carry a ton of weight when it comes to choosing a winner. Even if your student meets all the criteria perfectly, there will be other applicants that can do the same. And so how do we stand out? Your student will stand out with their essay. And so that is why it is so important to make sure that it is strong and well-written, but also we want to make sure that it does not do certain things. So in this video, I want to share some of the biggest don'ts when it comes to writing a scholarship essay. Now make sure you hit subscribe because every single week we release a new strategy when it comes to paying for college. Hey there, my name is Jocelyn Pearson, founder of The Scholarship System. So scholarship essays is what we do. We focus on how to help families secure scholarships to help pay for college. And in fact, our families have secured well over $10.5 million to date. In fact, the most recent month, they got over $155,000 only in a matter of 30 days. So we've seen quite a few essays and we've seen quite a few mistakes. And so that's why we want to help you and your student avoid those. So the essay provides scholarship committee is the opportunity to learn more about your student's life, a deeper insight into what they've experienced, who they are and where they're going, whether or not they're worth the investment. This is again, also where your student can really shine. Now I have a whole video on how to structure an essay called how to write a winning scholarship essay. We'll link to that in the description or somewhere here on the screen. So check that out after this video. But just a very quick summary, when we're talking about writing an essay, there is somewhat of a correlation between a scholarship essay and a written paper that say they do at school where we have the introduction, we want it to be dynamic, attention grabbing. We have a body where we can really draft out and sketch out a few key points and have proof or some kind of story that shows our argument. And then we have a conclusion where that's our final opportunity to really make a lasting impression on the reader and on the scholarship committee and make it memorable. Now before I get into the don'ts, if your student is not finding scholarships that require essays, or if you're just wondering where to find more scholarships that require essays, then make sure you check out our free scholarship training. You'll find it again, linked in the description or somewhere here on the screen, I will give you the exact steps on how to build a legitimate scholarship list. Because if it's legitimate, nine times out of 10, it will require an essay. Okay, let's get into the don'ts. One is don't let your student get too emotional. We do want the essay to be personal, but that's different than making it too sappy or kind of victimized. Instead we want to focus on perseverance and determination as we overcome the challenges. So while we can get sappy and sad for a little bit, we want to focus on more how we learned and grew from that experience. Number two is don't disregard the requirements or the rules. You would be amazed at how many times we have read essays. In fact, through the scholarship system, we give out thousands of dollars every single school year and they are required to write essays to win our scholarship. So we've seen, I think just this last year, over 700 essays. So that said, we've seen a lot of this where there are certain word counts and the students don't meet them. Or maybe we ask a question and the student just totally misses it. They don't answer it. You can tell usually that happens when they're reusing an essay and forcing it to fit. Or maybe we ask for one example of something and the student just goes on and on with a million examples. So paying attention to that topic, paying attention to that word count, and then most importantly paying attention to that deadline. So missing the deadline is a sure way for a student to have their application thrown out. And I would hate for them to focus on and spend so much time writing an amazing scholarship essay just for it not to even be considered because they simply missed the deadline. You've got to remember that there are going to be tons of other students that applied that did meet the deadline. So the incentive to let a student submit late is not really there unless they haven't received any applications. Now the third one is to think outside the box. So we had, and if your student wrote about this, it's okay because again, we've seen this over and over. But one of the examples this past year was that our team read so many essays about perseverance or resilience. Those two words by the end of the week when we were done reviewing, a lot of the stories just kind of blurred together because we saw that keyword so many times. I think COVID really blew that keyword up and it just, and for a student to know that everyone else is writing about it, the only way to know that is if you're following someone like us at the scholarship system and we're telling you guys this insight. But that said, we want to avoid cliche words or hardworking is another one. So these are ones that we see over and over. We really want to try to pick something that's more unique, try to dig a little bit deeper, try to have stories that go with it because again, we want to stand out. And if we're choosing a keyword to describe ourselves that everyone else chooses, then pretty much our essay, there's no way we're going to be able to stand out unless we really have a unique story around it. Next one is to not use filler words or words that just are deemed unnecessary. It really takes away from the essay. I know students like to use them to get to their word counts. I think there's funny memes out there about when I'm writing an essay paper and it says he starved, but then the essay paper is without food, he withered to hunger, right? It was like a 10 word version of saying something that could have been said in two words. So by doing, by creating that fluff, we are wasting word counts, okay? And just taking away from the opportunities to tell more story, to better describe it, to use more examples, et cetera. Some examples could be clearly, obviously, somewhat, perhaps, I believe, I think. These are words that really, if you removed those from the essay, the essay would still continue on just fine. Another one that falls into this or another category could be transitional words, things like in conclusion, first, the next point is. If we really need to create a transition, we can, but I would be careful with these as well as we could, they can also be a big waste of word count. Now the last one that we really, really need to remember is to make sure that we don't neglect having someone else proofread the essay. So don't skip that step of having someone review the essay. And while parents, if you are, if you feel qualified, then that's great. But really we want someone that has experience in creative writing. Maybe it's a teacher, a professor, or if you're a creative writer as a parent, that's great. But as someone who just understands basic grammar, corrections, and structure, that's really not enough when it comes to scholarship essays. We really need them to be creative and captivating, memorable. So this is something actually through the scholarship system for our course members in the scholarship system online program, where we actually have one-on-one reviews that families can take advantage of because again, we focus on the crafting of the essay, not necessarily capitalize this, dot your, dot your I's, cross your T's kind of thing. It's much, much more than that. Now, did I mention any don'ts that you can think of? If so, comment below. What do you think are some essay don'ts that come to mind? I would love to see what your family has found to not be helpful or to sabotage your students' chances of winning. Comment below with those. Now, we're also, we are linking to an amazing resource in the, from our blog in the description, and it is scholarship essay examples that won money. So if you want to check out actual essays that have done well, you can check out that resource. Again, all of the free resources I mentioned are linked in the description, including that free training where you can learn exactly how to build a legitimate scholarship list with your student. So that said, essay writing, it's time consuming, but if we put the time up front to write a well-written, compelling, strong essay, then we can often reuse it with just minor tweaks. So really the amount of time and effort we put up front, we benefit from it every application thereafter usually. If not the same essay prompt, we usually can at least pull the same stories. But we want to remember that if a scholarship is legitimate, most likely they will require an essay. So we want to make sure that we're not doing these don'ts that I covered. Now in the scholarship system course, we do cover exactly how to write essays. We have two different main frameworks that teach students how to write quickly, but then also how to write creatively. We also share, we have a specific lesson on how to reuse essays, what tweaks to watch for, and how to make sure that we don't get caught kind of thing. So that's all inside the scholarship system course. So you can learn more about that at the free training. Also don't forget to hit subscribe. I'll see you in the next video.