Scholarships are financial escape plans to students running their degrees at one point of their career or the other. Scholarships could be financially based and sometimes might be not. Notwithstanding, whichever way you put it; expenses are involved.
Organizers request for it to your capability. Many organizers use this to shrug off zealous and intelligent students from the armatures. Some organizers look forward to knowing if prospects have been following the scholarship radar for a long time or it’s just a coincidence at the moment.
And as procedures and approaches to life evolve, writing scholarship essays in 2025 has taking a new turn. Gone are the days essays sound like a personal CV. Essays have been branched to different sections.
Types of Essays
1. Personal Essays
This involves self-descriptions. You’re to give details about yourself and your entire identity. This may sound like writing a CV to you but you’re far from the truth either. It goes beyond the nominal ways of writing a CV. Everything has to be strategic.
You’re expected to give succinct information about yourself, what you’ve accomplished and what you’re aiming at. And, a proposal to earning your degree through the scholarship will follow the procession.
In this kind of essay, you’ll be I-centric. In situations you want to appreciate another organization for your previous successes, you don’t have to sound recursive. Neither should you sound emotionally repressed if the scholarship you’re aiming for choose not to award you the scholarship eventually. Why? This shows you aren’t playing psychological drawdown at anyone’s intelligence.
2. 2nd Party Essays
This is a YOU-centric essay. The scholarship organizers ask participants to write a topic about them. At least, a scholarship essay I once wrote was organized by the Security Exchange Commission (SEC). That was many years back.
The organizers intended to know our foundational knowledge in the finance industry as they look forward to influencing the masses in buying into investing in stocks, bonds, securities.
Also, they intend creating awareness throughout the federation as their aim back then was to promote essays of successful applicants i.e. in making such prospect(s) their brand ambassadors. This would require you to writing your details also but not too intently. Check the example below:
As a child of immigrant parents, I learned to take responsibilities for my family and myself at a very young age. Although my parents spoke English, they constantly worked in order to financially support my little brother and I. Meanwhile, my grandparents barely knew English so I became their translator for medical appointments and in every single interaction with English speakers. Even until now, I still translate for them and I teach my grandparents conversational English. The more involved I became with my family, the more I knew what I wanted to be in the future.
Since I was five, my parents pushed me to value education because they were born in Vietnam and had limited education. Because of this disadvantage, I learned to take everything I do seriously and to put in all of my effort to complete tasks such as becoming the founder of my school’s Badminton Club in my sophomore year and Red Cross Club this year. Before creating these clubs, I created a vision for these clubs so I can organize my responsibilities better as a leader. The more involved I became, the more I learned as a leader and as a person. As a leader, I carried the same behavior I portrayed towards my younger cousins and sibling. My family members stressed the importance of being a good influence; as I adapted this behavior, I utilized this in my leadership positions. I learned to become a good role model by teaching my younger family members proper manners and guiding them in their academics so that they can do well. In school, I guide my peers in organizing team uniform designs and in networking with a nonprofit organization for service events.
Asides from my values, I’m truly passionate in the medical field. I always wanted to be a pediatrician since I was fourteen. My strong interest in the medical field allowed me to open up my shell in certain situations— when I became sociable to patients in the hospital as a volunteer, when I became friendly and approachable to children in my job at Kumon Math and Reading Center, and when I portrayed compassion and empathy towards my teammates in the badminton team. However, when I participated in the 2017 Kaiser Summer Volunteer Program at Richmond Medical Center, I realized that I didn’t only want to be a pediatrician. This program opened my eye to numerous opportunities in different fields of medicine and in different approaches in working in the medicine industry. While I may have a strong love for the medical field, my interest in business immensely grew as I soon discovered that I didn’t only have to take the practical approach in the medical field. With this interest, I plan to also become a part of a medical facility management team.
In the future, I hope to pursue my dream of becoming a doctor by attaining an MD, and to double major in Managerial Economics. I intend to study at UC Davis as a Biological Sciences major, where I anticipate to become extremely involved with the student community. After graduation, I plan to develop a strong network relationship with Kaiser Permanente as I’ve started last year in my internship. By developing a network with them, I hope to work in one of their facilities some day. Based on my values, interests, and planned future, I’m applying for the NCS Foundation scholarship because not only will it financially help me, but it can give motivation for me to academically push myself. I hope to use this scholarship in applying for a study abroad program, where I can learn about other cultures’ customs while conducting research there.
3. 3rd Party Essays
Yes, this isn’t you talking about yourself in details or about the company or organizers. You might be stubbed to write about an entirely different subject. The company might choose to do this for different reasons.
Basically, this requirement comes with you providing your CV in another space. How you write this type of essay is different from the conventional way you write the previous ones.
Oftentimes, it isn’t essential you input your personal details on the essay. Literally, you write this kind of essay as you’ve been taught from your childhood days on how essays are written about another subject matter.
Explain something that made a big impact in your life.
“If you can’t live off of it, it is useless.” My parents were talking about ice skating: my passion. I started skating as a ten-year-old in Spain, admiring how difficulty and grace intertwine to create beautiful programs, but no one imagined I would still be on the ice seven years and one country later. Even more unimaginable was the thought that ice skating might become one of the most useful parts of my life.
I was born in Mexico to two Spanish speakers; thus, Spanish was my first language. We then moved to Spain when I was six, before finally arriving in California around my thirteenth birthday. Each change introduced countless challenges, but the hardest part of moving to America, for me, was learning English. Laminated index cards, color-coded and full of vocabulary, became part of my daily life. As someone who loves to engage in a conversation, it was very hard to feel as if my tongue was cut off. Only at the ice rink could I be myself; the feeling of the cold rink breeze embracing me, the ripping sound of blades touching the ice, even the occasional ice burning my skin as I fell—these were my few constants. I did not need to worry about mispronouncing “axel” as “aksal.” Rather, I just needed to glide and deliver the jump.
From its good-natured bruise-counting competitions to its culture of hard work and perseverance, ice skating provided the nurturing environment that made my other challenges worthwhile. Knowing that each moment on the ice represented a financial sacrifice for my family, I cherished every second I got. Often this meant waking up every morning at 4 a.m. to practice what I had learned in my few precious minutes of coaching. It meant assisting in group lessons to earn extra skating time and taking my conditioning off-ice by joining my high school varsity running teams. Even as I began to make friends and lose my fear of speaking, the rink was my sanctuary. Eventually, however, the only way to keep improving was to pay for more coaching, which my family could not afford. And so I started tutoring Spanish.
Now, the biggest passion of my life is supported by my most natural ability. I have had over thirty Spanish students, ranging in age from three to forty and spanning many ethnic backgrounds. I currently work with fifteen students each week, each with different needs and ways of learning. Drawing on my own experiences as both a second language-learner and a figure skater, I assign personal, interactive exercises, make jokes to keep my students’ mindset positive, and never give away right answers. When I first started learning my axel jump, my coach told me I would have to fall at least 500 times (about a year of falls!) in order to land it. Likewise, I have my students embrace every detail of a mistake until they can begin to recognize new errors when they see them. I encourage them to expand their horizons and take pride in preparing them for new interactions and opportunities.
Although I agree that I will never live off of ice skating, the education and skills I have gained from it have opened countless doors. Ice skating has given me the resilience, work ethic, and inspiration to develop as a teacher and an English speaker. It has improved my academic performance by teaching me rhythm, health, and routine. It also reminds me that a passion does not have to produce money in order for it to hold immense value. Ceramics, for instance, challenges me to experiment with the messy and unexpected. While painting reminds me to be adventurous and patient with my forms of self-expression. I don’t know yet what I will live off of from day to day as I mature; however, the skills my passions have provided me are life-long and irreplaceable.
4. Information-Test Essays
Such essays are written in ellipses. The sub-objectives are in form of tests and you’re asked to fill in the spaces. This kind of essay is pre-written and often found to be dash-filled on the internet to see your level of discretion and astuteness to current pieces of information around you.