Every day’s studying institutions requires a lot of money as for an ordinary student. Have you already started saving money? Do you consider having a second job to be able to pay credits till future graduation? Do you try to spare money on everything? Slow down and take a look on other ways of financing your study. Every year millions of dollars are being transferred to successful scholarship holders for their study. No, they are not genius, they just presented themselves to a scholarship fund and got an opportunity to study for free.
Want to be one of them? Then read up on it and start acting today.
Choosing a Desirable Institution to Apply For
Before you start a scholarship investigation, the first step will be to make sure that you will have researched everything about the institution by the time you are planning to enroll. Merit-based scholarships are provided by a lot of colleges as well as other organizations.
Get acknowledged with requirements and conditions of your future grant. It has to draw your attention as soon as open a new page with the information and is a core part of your process of searching. Some scholarships provide study at certain colleges, others orientate your financial background, ethnicity, athletic achievements or even personality.
Do Not Hesitate to Ask for Consultation
Once decided for a scholarship you may already start preparing. The best option would be to start a year before the closing date. Of course, it strongly depends on a type and duration of a scholarship (it can be a 2-years university grant in or a 5-day conference in another country).
Usually teens are a bit shy and think that directing their questions to a scholarship committee would be too abusive. However, if you really have any inquiries which are not stated on their site, neither can be guessed a priori, do not hesitate to ask for a consultation. Moreover, the coordinators will be glad to help you as their main task is to make you everything clear and not to puzzle their brains over your papers.
Generally, the contacts of representatives are written on their website of college or scholarship fund, there are can find their telephone number, fax, address and email link. Remember not to bother them with obvious questions, specify your problem and always ask for help!
Prepare All Necessary Papers
Taking as many mock tests as possible will be very helpful to learn faster and more efficient.
You may be also asked to write a motivation letter on why you want to get a scholarship and what you will contribute back. Here are tips for mentioning in an essay:
- Be honest about your skills and achievements. It is true that we all want to be more professional than we sometimes are, but overexaggerating some aspects of your resume will just make an illusion that can be torn apart once you come to an interview. This bitter experience is better not to have. Emphasize your strong sides instead, describe your best skills in their best light and a few remarks about other.
- Boast yourself but do not go too far. Your main goal is to show your best professional skills but not your overexaggerated self-esteem.
- Be reasonable. Clarify why you want this scholarship, what it will give to you and most important how you can contribute to it. Persuade the election committee that their money will not be wasted.
Check, Proofread and Edit as Much as Possible
The dumbest and, by the way, most common obstacle for getting a scholarship is either incomplete package of documentation or simply grammar and lexical mistakes. Now, face it, we often delay the application till the day of deadline, do everything in a hurry at the last moment and, quickly looking through, pressing “Send”.
Never do that. To become a successful holder of a stipend, you must be ready to meet deadlines and in particular have your papers accurately written and attentively checked. Such a mistake as misspelling the name of your desirable institution can cost you money you would get as this is what needs to be done perfectly.
If you are preparing documents in a foreign language and not sure about any lexical or grammar aspects, ask a person you know to be a professional in it to help you. You will have your papers proofread and everything done properly.
Before sending your application and having great time eagerly waiting for respond you need to do the following:
- Check your application for all filled blanks. Do not leave an empty blank if you have a chance to write about yourself.
- Make your documentation neat and affordable to read. Think of people who will read it.
- Never send the same motivational letter to a few funds. Every application must be unique and show different sides of your professional skills.
- Use online programs to check your application on any blunder.
- Sign it up and put a date, even if your application is electronic it is highly important to make it a bit more personal, so your own sign will show that you are a person and increases your chances.
Keep Copies of Everything
Our own tips for making your application process run faster and easier. If you’re applying for a scholarship online, save copies of your work on your computer. Later you may want to apply for another grant, which usually requires a similar package of documents so you will not waste time again on finding, scanning and translating it again.
As an additional tip, we will advise you to have it also on any cloud storage service (online file storage provider) such as: Amazon Drive, DropBox, CloudMe, Google Drive etc.
This service allows you to upload your files per Internet and get access later with any electronical devices through logging in with a personal account. In that case your files will not be lost if your laptop suddenly gets lost or gets under the wheels.
Stay Positive
Failures can jeopardize your self-confidence. Thus, do not take it close to heart. Moreover, do not let it make you down. We cannot win a scholarship right away. Usually it requires hard work on your CV, personal and professional achievements and correction of all your documents. Additionally, you have to persuade the scholarship committee that you are a perfect candidate and they will get a good representative of their fund in your face.
The application process is like an auction. You present your merits and values and they decide whether to buy you or wait for a better candidate. You need to persuade the selection committee and you are that person, who is definitely worth their scholarship as they want it to come to the most outstanding person. So, good luck!
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