Speaker 1: It's been over two years since I started this channel, of where I first was making videos about scholarships. Over the years, people have told me via YouTube comments, emails, and through social media that thanks to my videos, as well as personally helping them edit their scholarship essays, that they were able to receive $5,000, $10,000, and even full-ride scholarships. These students came from as close as where I live in Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, to as far as Nepal, India, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and the DR Congo in Africa. And over time, I've been able to win a couple more scholarships for myself. However, my scholarship process has changed over the years, from my last three uploads. So now, I'm here to share with you how I'm still winning scholarships, 20 so far and counting, and how you, too, can win. This is a limited short series called The Scholarship Algorithm. Okay, so we're back with another video about scholarships. Okay, so we're just going to go through this real quick. I'm not going to hold you guys too long. So the first thing that you want to say within your scholarship essay is that you want to create a scholarship fund for yourself. Why do you want to say this? Because it shows that you are like-minded to the scholarship committee, because you have to consider your audience. Your audience is people who are over scholarships, so if you were to say that you, too, want to create a scholarship, that shows relatability, which you want to have within your essay and your overall application. And if you don't say something along the lines of wanting to create a scholarship fund, you can also say that you want to create a non-profit, a charity, a foundation, something along the lines that pertains to community service. So tip number two, you want to mention within your essay or perhaps in an email addressed to those over the scholarship board, a thank you letter, a thank you note. It also doesn't hurt to say within your thank you note, whoever is reading this, I hope you have a blessed day, I hope you have a great day, because you want to make it sound personalized to that person. It sounds as if you actually care about their well-being and self. Scholarship number three. Another thing that you want to say within your scholarship application, scholarship essay, is sometimes within applications they have a spot of where you should indicate financial situations that weren't already addressed within your FAFSA. For me in particular, within my scholarship applications, I sometimes address the fact that even though my EFC says this, my actual financial situation within my household is not that because of reason number A, B, C. And your reasonings for that can be anything from like expensive medical situations, a parent who's imprisoned, a parent who recently just passed or is fatally ill with something. It can be something along those lines that FAFSA didn't already account for so that the scholarship committee can know that you have these pertaining circumstances that they should take into consideration. So tip number four. You want to mention within your essay your trials to your triumphs, and by this I mean personal growth, you overcoming a challenge. In my essay, one of my essays in particular, my previous video, if you want to check that out of where I was reading the scholarship essay that helped me win the scholarship from Floyd Mayweather's foundation, and for that I was saying how there was this particular class, this highly advanced news class that I was taking, it was an eight hour class. God, it was eight hours, how did I do it? And I was like the youngest person in the group, everyone was like seniors, graduate students, I felt unqualified to be there in the beginning because I didn't know what I was doing, but after putting ten times the amount of work ethic than anyone else, I ended up getting like the highest grade on the final group project. And it's very hard to get an A in that class because typically with that professor, she said that only like two people per semester get an A in that class, and that if you do, that you're more than ready to actually work in actual newsrooms. So that was my basically the excerpt in my essay of where I was talking about trials to my triumphs. So the next thing you want to mention is number five, your major slash career goals. So of course you want to mention this. So you want to say what it is and why slash what inspired you to pursue it. So for me in that case, my major is broadcast journalism, what inspired me to pursue it. Initially I wanted to be like a reporter, news anchor, however over time I learned that I had a talent and a passion for news slash show producing, so I like to mention that within my essays, especially essays that are addressed to scholarships that pertain to my studies. So if I'm applying for a scholarship from the Society of Professional Journalists or NABJ, the National Association of Black Journalists, I typically like to mention why I was inspired for those career goals. Now when it comes to scholarships that are not necessarily asking for your major slash career goals, like they're not, like the foundation behind it isn't pertaining to necessarily directly pertaining to your field of study. You still want to mention this, but you don't want to be too specific about the rhetoric that you're using. For example, if I'm applying for a journalism scholarship, I'm going to use rhetoric like I made news packages, I made FOSOTs, I made all this stuff, but if I'm applying for a scholarship from, I don't know, some celebrity, some person who knows nothing about the terminology used for news type of things, or if you're applying for a scholarship and you're a med student and you're using medical terminology for a scholarship where they wouldn't necessarily know what you're meaning, don't use it. Try and dumb it down, try and be as understandable as possible. Okay, so next thing. You want to mention within your essay what you have done so far to pursue your career goals. This would mean extracurricular activities you've done, community service that relates to it, clubs and organizations, associations that you're involved in, and of where if you have not just a membership but also leadership roles in, you also want to mention that. And also course slash classwork that relates to your major. Now with this you want to go about it in a way of where it sounds more professional rather than like, oh I was taking this class. You want to make that class sound as if you were actually in the field of your career because, I don't know, I think some people look down upon you mentioning within your essay that, oh I took this class related to this subject. So you want to go about it in a way of where it could supplement for if you don't already have experience with like an internship or something that relates to your career field. I hope you understood where I was going with that. Sorry if you didn't. Sorry to interrupt my video but I just wanted to say that this video that you're seeing here is one of a series. If you want me to send you a PowerPoint PDF version of this entire series rather than a way for each video to upload and take notes from, I can send you that. All you have to do is fill out this form and make your payment. Then I will email you the entire presentation that covers all the videos seen in this series. Also I offer a service called Scholarly of where I personally help people edit their scholarship essays. A lot of the people I work with don't have the best English or grammatical skills so that's where I come in. And prices for that start at just $25. And lastly, I wanted to plug in here my GoFundMe. This is mainly for raising funds for when I study abroad in Tokyo, Japan this summer. But if you want to donate to help with that, my main education expenses, or just to show your appreciation for what I've been doing through these videos, then please do. Also you'll see on there two really cool original songs I made with visual videos that pay homage to mainly Japanese video games and anime that shaped my childhood. Anyways, all of what I mention will be linked down in the description box down below. Okay, back to the video. Another thing you want to mention is tip number 6, how receiving the scholarship will help you. So for this part, you want to make sure that you sound as humble as possible because typically a lot of times when people are writing this section in their essay, they'll say something along the lines of, I deserve this scholarship because I have this financial situation, my family's doing this and that, I'm struggling financially, etc. etc. and that all may be the case, but you have to understand that these scholarship committees, they hear the same exact thing or some variation of it from other applicants. And your job is to make sure that your voice, your essay, your overall application stands out from the others. So you want to sound humble, and a way of sounding humble is to be indirect with how you are going about saying it. For example, I mentioned this in my other video that I made about the scholarship essay that I won from Future, the rapper, but in that essay I said, let's see, let me pull it up real quick, or you could just go to the video and watch it for yourself. So in this essay I was talking about how I've applied for all these scholarships, got denied time after time after time again, yet at the same time, even though it is discouraging to be denied, it is humbling in a way because it reminds me that I am not entitled to any scholarship and that the other person is just as deserving. So you want to sound, again, humble and not entitled, basically. Okay, so the next tip... a-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da... Okay, so the next thing that you want to include within your essay is your life goals. Now this part kind of ties into what I was saying earlier about mentioning somewhere within your essay that you want to create a scholarship fund or a non-profit, a charity, something along those lines. Your life goals can also be wanting to travel around the world, getting prestigious awards, humanitarian services, stuff like that. So the next thing that you want to mention within your essay is your community involvement relating to your career or life goals. Now for this particular element, I like to include the fact that I have my YouTube channel and that of course ties into the fact that I am majoring in broadcast journalism because you know, I'm on camera, deals with video editing, which I have to know as a broadcast journalism major, and communications and all that. So that's basically how I'm serving my community by offering you guys all this free advice that I put on this channel for you. So another thing that you want to say within your essay is your leadership position slash leadership roles and now this, you don't want to just stop at saying, oh I'm the captain of this team, oh I'm the president, vice president of this organization, this association. You want to be specific. You want to elaborate on what exactly that role does. You want to say the duties and the responsibilities that you are over for that particular position and how that ties into the overall prompt of that particular scholarship essay. So the last element that you want to say within your essay is your role model slash who motivated you. So that can be family members, friends, teachers, classmates, or like celebrities, bigger figures like that. So an example of me mentioning role models who motivated me, I didn't necessarily say it in like, this person motivated me because this is why I'm here because of this person. I didn't format it that way. You can also format it in a way of where it's just like an inspirational quote from that person. So an example of that would be in the scholarship essay that I wrote for Future. So in that essay, I said a quote from Will Smith where it goes like, if you're not making someone else's life better, then you're wasting your time. Your life will become better by making others' lives better. And that quote tied into my essay that was talking about my YouTube channel and how much I appreciate you guys and the fact that I've been so inspired by all the success stories that I've heard from people who were able to receive scholarships thanks to the advice in these videos. So yeah, that's what you want to say your role model slash insert a motivational quote that ties into the prompt and overall flow of your essay. Yeah. Hey guys, thank you so much for watching this video. If you haven't already, make sure to like and subscribe to my channel and of course share this YouTube series with those who are looking for scholarships, whether that's students or parents. And also take the time to watch the rest of the series which will be uploading every Tuesday and Friday. And also if you happen to win a scholarship thanks to the advice in my videos, then please let me know in the comments down below or through email or DM on one of my social media platforms. Anyways, bye.