How did I win $19,000 in scholarships? I am an undergraduate college student who studies UX design and won $19,00 in scholarships in just 4 months. I have won about $70,000 in scholarships in total. College fees are getting more expensive due to inflation, especially if you attend a private school. Today, I would like to share how I managed to win these scholarships with you.
Be unique and different
Focus on what makes you different. So what I normally do is look for scholarships that fit me. I am a Korean-American and a Christian, so I focused on that when searching for a scholarship on Google, so I never applied for a generic one. For example, “Write 50 to 100 words in a tweet, and stand the chance to win $10,000.”. I focused my energy on 5 or 6 scholarships that relate to my unique background. I applied for 5 scholarships in the past summer, and I won 4 of them. I won $10,000 for the first one, $2,500 for the second one, another $2,500 for the third one, and the last one was $2,000. I wanted higher chances of winning the scholarships, so I applied for the ones that required my background.
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Make your search with keywords that fit you
The second thing I did after narrowing down and differentiating the key factors that made me unique and different was to type in every combination I could think of into Google search. For example; Korean-American scholarships, Korean-Christian scholarships, Koreans in New York scholarships, and any combination that I could think of. What I do next is go through the 5 to 10 pages in Google search and check if I am a match or qualify for them. Another way I did this was to do the same thing but translate it into Korean. This works every time and I have had scholarships from it. Note that this has no shortcuts and is time-consuming, but it is worth it. I normally spend about 6 hours a day, 2 times a week doing this.
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Writing your essay
Most of the scholarships that I applied for required an essay. In my opinion, this is the most important part of applying for a scholarship. These essays are usually around 500 to 700 words. I look at it as applying for a general scholarship paper where I write my name, email address, and so on. What makes the essay unique is that it is like your only chance to show your unique background, voice, personality, the reason for choosing your major, and why you are the best candidate for the scholarship. I didn’t win a scholarship on my first try, so another thing I do is search for top-winning scholarship essays and read through them before I begin writing mine. The winning scholarship essays that I have read and written are more like storytelling with strong emotional attachments. It is okay to use the same storyline for all your essays, and that is what I did for the recent ones that I won.
Conclusion
So those are the 3 major things that I adopted that have helped me win the scholarships. Being specific with your background and qualifications that you have is a big heads-up to winning a scholarship. Avoid the generic scholarships and focus on things like your race, religion, and even existing health conditions.
