Catching The Dream

HOW TO FIND AND WIN SCHOLARSHIPS
By Dean Chavers, Ph. D.

Name and Date First Second Third Date Address Due Contact Contact Contact Sent Results Amount

WRITING YOUR ESSAY

Now that you have found the scholarships, you are ready for the hard part. The easy part is finding them, which is only mechanics. The hard part is talking them out of the money. To do this, you are going to have to think. The essay is going to count about 75 points out of 100. The other 25% will be your GPA and your ACT/SAT scores. (Never report the raw score only. ALWAYS report both the raw score and the percentile or NCE score.)

How do you talk them out of the money? It is called an essay. Students should go the CTD website in advance of writing, download the CTD application, and review the Essay Outline that is part of the application.

If you have a 3.8 GPA and a score of 25 or higher on the ACT, you should win almost all of the scholarships. But if you send out an essay which is at the C- level, you will be lucky to win 25%, even with your high grades and high ACT score. If you have a GPA of 3.0 and scored a 20 on the ACT, you can still win scholarships, provided that you have a strong essay. A strong essay can overcome grades and test scores that are a little bit weak, but high grades and high test scores cannot overcome a weak essay nearly as well.

There is no “cutoff” for GPA or for ACT/SAT scores. We have awarded scholarships to students with a 2.6 GPA (which is unusual), and have denied scholarships to students with a 3.3 (which is also unusual). We look at the whole student, not just GPA or ACT/SAT scores. Most scholarship organizations do the same thing.

The essay is the most important part of the application process. The essay will have the following characteristics:
LENGTH: five pages.
SIZE OF TYPE: 11 points.
NUMBER OF PARAGRAPHS PER PAGE: eight.
MARGINS: 1.5 inches on all four sides.
GRADE YOU WILL WANT TO GET ON IT: A+.
NUMBER OF TIMES YOU WILL WRITE IT: As many as it takes to get an A+.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE ESSAY: What you are going to do in this world before you die to make it a better place. If you have not thought about this yet, right now is an excellent time to start.

The essay is not about you. It is about a problem that is affecting some people in the world, and what you are going to do about the problem. It is possible to win scholarships without having a problem identified, but your percentage will drop dramatically. The student who applied to us so he could have a good job, buy a house, have a nice family, and have a nice car, got turned down. Hardly anyone is interested in giving you a scholarship to help only yourself. Many people spend their time raising money for scholarships so they can make the world a better place.

The essay is about insight into a real world problem. It is about leadership. It is about compassion. It is about dedication. It is about persistence. It is about determination. It is about mental toughness and the ability to see a difficult task through to completion.

Students should start with a five-page essay. Then when they have gotten that essay to the A+ level, they will boil it down to a two-pager. And when they have that two-pager done, they will boil that one down to a one-pager. If the scholarship application calls for 250 words, that is one page. If it calls for 500 words, that is two pages. If there is no page limit spelled out, send them the five-pager. If they do not ask for an essay, and also do not say not to send them an essay, send them one of the three. It can’t hurt.

Often Native students are disappointed in their ACT scores. The student who expected to get a 25 (70th percentile) instead gets an 18 (45th percentile). The 3.8 student who is valedictorian expects to get a 32 (99th) but instead gets a 22 (50th). Is there that much test bias in the ACT and the SAT?

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