Speaker 1: Every year, there are literally millions of dollars in scholarships that go wasted. And I don't care how old you are, where you're from or what your background looks like. I guarantee you that there are some merit based scholarships that you can apply to today. And ultimately, that's what this guide is about. Today, I'm going to walk you through step by step. So let me first tell you why I should have entrust this video and not the hundreds of other ones on YouTube that I've seen. The reasons why are one, I'm 18, I'm a senior. I actually applied to these scholarships and won them. So I know the behind the scenes, the secret sauce behind how you win them rather than running some prep company and giving a bunch of generic advice. Also, I have experience. I won $120,000 in merit based scholarships, allowing me to pay for my first year of Harvard. And that being said, I also do have some finesse strategies, which you'll see towards the end of this video. So do be sure to stay tuned. So first of all, we kind of have to talk about making a list. And I know don't forward yet because a bunch of people are going to think, Hey, I just have to search up scholarships or I already have some sort of list online. I guarantee you a lot of these end up being scams. Unfortunately, you know, these organizations, they won't take your money directly like nitro college dot com or niche dot com, but they do sell your email information. So they make these no essay scam scholarships, right? It's basically a lottery. There's going to be like a million seniors applying and then they'll give the money to someone. That's true. But, you know, they're going to take everyone's emails with it and sell it for student loans and stuff like that. And so your chances of winning realistically are like, you know, basically a lottery. So it's a waste of time and they ultimately actually profit off of this stuff. So I would not recommend that. But there is a way I'm going to walk you through step by step on how to construct a good list of scholarships. And this is truly very, very essential. I mean, back in my freshman year, I tried doing this, but I wasn't that experienced with it. And so ultimately I ended up making a list. But like 50% of them, it wasn't worth my time to apply to them. So I'm going to teach you step by step on how to do this. I have a free template. It's a Google doc in the description down below, you know, completely free. So the first thing in my template is actually to consider who you are and your background. Many of these scholarships, they have eligibility requirements. And so you're going to want to focus on ones that you're actually eligible for. You don't want to, you know, work on an essay and then later realize that, hey, there's this requirement. And so I actually go through in this template to fill out all of these characteristics like, you know, where you're from, what you identify as, what your race is, things like that. Now, the second thing is how to choose good scholarships. This is really the bulk of this section in the video. This is so, so important. And so if you just search up on Google, you know, scholarships, whatever. A lot of times there, if there's ones by reputed organizations or companies, those are the ones you should go for. Things like the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, Cameron Impact. Right. But if you hear things like, you know, National Society of High School Scholars, blah, blah, blah. Those often sound legit, but oftentimes they aren't. And so how do you, you know, get across this? You can't just spend hours and hours, you know, looking at all this stuff. Well, the way to do it is actually to ask ChatGPT. And I know this sounds kind of crazy, but here's what I would highly recommend you do. You basically make this table. You ask ChatGPT, construct a table of scholarships with scholarship name, due date, what do I need, time, prize, et cetera, in the columns. And then say, I am an 18 year old from Portland, Oregon. I'm male. I'm STEM focused. I do have some experience in service. These are the organizations I was a part of. And that will inform ChatGPT to come up with the best list for you. And once you have that table, it will have some good ones in there. It'll also have some bad ones. So then you need to manually go on each of those and find the scholarships that are worth over $100 per hour and put them in the list. And some of my friends, people who have watched my past videos are like, Rishabh, why would you put some sort of monetary value on this of $100? Where are you pulling that from? You can alter that number based on what you think your chance of winning it is. Let's say something, you know, it's it's really meant for students who are becoming engineers, but you're in computer science. You think maybe I have a shot, maybe lower that a little bit and reevaluate that. Hey, this one, I'm only earning actually $50 per hour. So let me focus on this scholarship. And so that ultimately helps you weigh your time, because this is ultimately very time consuming. And so it's important to take that into account. And that being said, want to save your time? I did come up with a really high quality list. A lot of these scholarships I've applied to and have won. There are ones that I've manually vouched and I've made guides on how to win them specifically. This full thing, it's a full package. It costs just $5. If you use the code P16, I have it in the description below. So ultimately, it's going to save you like one or two hours of time. So I'll give you 10 seconds to decide whether or not you want to spend $5 to save a few hours of time. Plus, my guide also does come with some secrets that I don't tell you in this video and some bonus tips. So honestly, I would highly recommend it. It's something that I spent quite a bit of time on. I think it's really cool. And it's something that honestly, I would have wanted to see before I was applying. You know, I don't try to do video sponsorships anymore because I do want to just provide stuff like any monetary thing that is actually worth it for you guys that provides value. So that's why I have this here. Anyway, if you're interested, please check it out. If you're not, let's continue on. Part two, filling these out. So the biggest part of filling out a scholarship application is writing essays. Ones that are no essays are usually kind of suspicious unless there's some sort of project or something associated with it. Right. Or like video entry or something. And so when writing essays, I'm going to give you some really, really valuable, actionable advice here. So I'm going to read you out this this little snippet. Halfway up the mountain, I heard faint hissing. And as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a striped snake blocking the path. I froze as a pint of adrenaline seemed to rush into my veins. OK, so I know this sounds super random, but this this passage, you're actually hearing it for an essay that I wrote about service. But this gives you a bit of an idea of, hmm, this is a different approach to write an essay about service. Right. And the reason why is because I'm telling a story. I'd say it's like it's a little bit of an interesting hook. And it's something that might stand out. OK, the second tip, this is a little bit more specific. And this is my X factor tip. So a lot of people ask me that, you know, you apply to all these scholarships. But if the chance of winning is like point one percent or point zero one percent, how do you win so many of them? Is it because of your awards? Is it because of like what is it because of? And yeah, you know, awards, GPA, all of that stuff can play a role in those competitive scholarships. But I'd actually like to say that the essays are really, really important. And having an X factor in your essay is really good. So here are two aspects of the X factor that I like to consider. One is being genuine. So at the end of the day, we are high schoolers or I don't know, there's probably some middle schoolers watching this or parents, right? You want to be genuine. So for a second, even or one sentence, even behave a little bit informal. It adds a nice touch, maybe towards the end, break into a little bit of more informal just to leave a more genuine impact. You know, sometimes I'll even toss in like a smiley face. And I really like to get passionate when writing my essay. So that comes across that being so genuine about it. The second piece of the X factor I have for you is humor. And so a lot of people think they have to crack a joke in their application. You don't really have to do that. Oftentimes you can just be a little bit sarcastic or ironic. An example line of this that I used in my essays was, I know, I know a liter of dopamine is flooding your head right now. And it was I'm not going to explain the context, but it was basically something sarcastic. And so ultimately, I think that does help because it helps you stand out a little bit. It makes you seem a little bit less formal, a little bit more genuine and shows your personality. Let's talk a little bit about hooks. And so everyone knows that you need a strong hook. But how do you actually put that into practice? I think that's something that's just not discussed often. So let me demonstrate. Let me read out a hook for you. 50 young boys stood in a single line defense ready to wage war. The prompt for this essay, guess what it was? You know, you're probably thinking, like, tell a story about something. I don't know. The prompt for the essay was describe how your leadership and service has made a positive difference. OK, so, wow, like, you know, the hook, the introduction I have there has pretty much nothing to do with the prompt. But that's the point. It's it hooks the reader in. It's something that they haven't really seen. So they get hooked and they're like, hmm, this might be an interesting essay. And they actually pay attention to it. They actually, you know, will read through the full thing instead of just skimming it like they will do for thousands of other, you know, scholarship applications. And so I think this type of hook definitely helps me stand out when I'm writing my essays. And I would highly suggest you try to create a hook, create a story for your hook, right, that helps you stand out, not just some quote or some fact that you toss in at the beginning of your essay, but really a story. I think that's the best way to do this. So there's more there's more to it than just write like writing an essay. I think just if you're considering a scholarship and you're like, I need three rec letters and I kind of have three teachers in mind, but like, do I want to ask them like, will it leave a bad impression? Forget it. Just go for it. Like, trust me, after you ask for it, you'll realize it wasn't as big of a deal. And those teachers can later reuse those rec letters for your college applications or vice versa. And so it might not even be too much additional work for your teacher. And if you win, you might actually win some money for your teacher or your school. And that always is really, really rewarding. OK, so we're on to part three, which is the finesse strategies, the icing on the cake, as I like to call it. And so most of these scholarship ones, the competitive ones, they're going to have an interview. And so for this section, this slide right now, I'm going to talk about two scholarships in particular. The first was a medical center scholarship, which I won. And it had an in-person interview with around five to six people. The second one I'd like to talk about was a scholarship committee for the Coca-Cola scholarship. And so that's a very, very competitive one, you know, where there's something like a zero point, whatever percent acceptance rate. And so how do you stand out in those ones? How do you set yourself apart from the crowd? So I think one of the things people often say is be really confident when you walk into the room, when you join the Zoom call. And oftentimes when students are being confident, this is what their face looks like. It's not very happy, it's very poker face esque, it's very serious. Yes, of course, you want to be confident to lower your level of nervousness and to show off what you've done. But at the same time, you want to be positive. You want to be happy. If you're happy and if you smile when you enter the room and your interviewer smiles back, that's just a subconscious connection that both you and your interviewer will have. And it makes your interview easier. So please smile. Please be happy when you do these interviews. The second tip I have for you on these interviews, people will say, be passionate, right? And these videos you'll watch on YouTube, they'll say, be passionate. But what does that mean? Like, how can you do something to show your passion? People often they'll be passionate for something. But how do they showcase that for the scholarship committee? Well, you're in luck because you're watching this video. So I'm going to tell you, talk a lot. There's no structure to this. And that's the benefit of having a passion is you don't have to have a structure. You get to define what you're talking about. And so talk as long as you want. In my Coca-Cola scholarship, when I talked for like three or four minutes for certain questions, it was really, really long explaining everything in depth. And I ended up winning it. And so don't feel like you're going to bore out your scholarship committee if you're being passionate, if you're excited about something, but you're talking pretty fast and you're saying a lot. It shows your passion. OK, now, that being said, what's an extra brownie point tip? Well, something I realized after applying to a lot of scholarships is that some of them expire, right? Like they do it for a couple of years and they won't update their web page. And so I would highly recommend sending an email to your organization or company that's doing the scholarship before and or after making sure that the scholarship exists, making sure that they received your application and in the, I don't know, minute chance that the person checking the email is also on the scholarship committee. There you go. You just earned yourself extra brownie points because they're going to remember your name and know that, you know, you're really excited to apply and have the opportunity. OK, the last thing I have for you is crafting a vision statement. And don't skip past this, because it's one of the most important things that I'm going to talk about here. And so basically your vision statement is it's something that you want your audience. It's something that you want the scholarship committee to leave with. They want to leave that interview with. That is that person's vision. You know, for some people, they'll talk about their ECs. They're going to talk about all the work they've done. And then at the end of the day, the scholarship committee will be like, OK, this is a great student in the STEM fields. OK, that's great. But where's the specificity in that? There's going to be a bunch of other students like that. So to truly showcase your personal vision in my template, I have like it's not shown here, but in the Google Doc template that I have completely free. Once again, you will fill out your personal statement. I have an example of it. And so let me read you mine. I am a curious and creative learner who loves to explore new ideas and solve problems. I will inspire others. This is who I am. And scholarship committees will take away that Rishabh Jain will inspire people throughout his life through learning and knowledge. And hopefully this YouTube video and the things that I do on this channel I'm inspiring other people and helping them gain additional learning and knowledge. My point is that if that vision statement is truly true for you and you are able to reflect that in your scholarships, in those interviews, in those essays, you're keeping this cohesive statement all around. It's constantly through in your essays, in your activities that you did and in your interview, and they will take it away. You don't have to explicitly say that, hey, my name is Rishabh Jain and my passion is to blah, blah, blah. You can just make sure you have this vision statements. Then when you do your application, it comes across in that way. OK, so once again, I have this full guide. It's just five dollars if you use code P16 at checkout. I hope it's really helpful. You know, I spent quite a bit of time putting it together and it has some extra video guides and some PDFs and extra materials. So be sure to check that out in the description below. And with that, I'll see you next time.