Now that you know how to think like a scholarship winner, it’s time to start writing like one. But we can’t just start writing, which is a big mistake I think some students make. Like anything important in life, you shouldn’t just jump head first into it. You need a plan.

As we learned in the previous article, you need to market yourself in a way that is conducive to the scholarship judges. So we need to learn how the judges are thinking, find what they are looking for, and emphasize those relevant qualities and experiences we have into our essays.

So how do we know what the judges are looking for?

Read the Scholarship Criteria Carefully

This should be obvious, but there are still students who don’t study this carefully enough. Most scholarships provide at least a few points or brief summary of the type of students they are looking for, both on the application form and on the website.

For example, the Loran Award states that their overall criteria are leadership, service, and character. In the application form, two of the three essays ask you to talk about a community service and leadership experience. As a result, most students just answer the questions normally, and hand in the application.

But hold on, there is a third criteria: character. In fact, the organization specifies the idea of “moral force of character”. What does this mean? If we do a bit of searching, we find a few character traits that are relevant: “honesty, integrity, courtesy, tolerance, maturity, and compassion”. Knowing this, we can then plan our essay to include specific experiences that emphasize some of these character traits, which is much superior to an essay which neglected them. These three criteria for the Loran Award were here for a reason, and ensuring that all three criteria were met in your essay answers is imperative.

So read the scholarship criteria carefully, and take advantage of all the information available. Make sure you address all of the criteria in your essays.

Read the Profiles of Past Winners

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By the time I had graduated from high school in 2006, I had won over $200,000 in scholarships. In the end I decided to accept the TD Canada Trust Scholarship for Community Leadership worth up to $60,000 over four years. In addition to that award, I was offered the Millennium National Scholarship, as well as the most prestigious scholarships from York University, Queen’s University, and the University of Western Ontario. All of these scholarships required applications and essays, and most of them also required interviews.

Before we delve into specifics about writing a great scholarship essay, it’s important that you understand the mindset of a winning scholarship student. The reason I was successful is largely due to my attitude and overall approach to the process.

It’s Not About Luck. It’s About Maximizing Your Chances

Most people would say that you need to be really lucky to win a major scholarship. So I guess you could say that I was extremely lucky to win so many. And it’s true, luck plays a role in winning scholarships – but it’s no different from the role luck plays everywhere else in life.

But it wasn’t just luck that allowed me to win as much as I did. It would be extremely unlikely for me to have been that successful on luck alone. It wasn’t coincidence that I was meeting the same students at a lot of my interviews. And it wasn’t chance that I know several students who won numerous major scholarships like I did.

And if you keep relying on the attitude that you need to be lucky to be successful, then you’re simply giving yourself an excuse from finding ways to improve your chances.

There is a Science to Writing a Winning Scholarship Essay

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It’s amazing how much free money is out there for graduating high school students if you just look. Although there are literally hundreds of scholarships out there for Canadian students, I will be focusing this article on the background for some of Canada’s largest scholarships. That is, scholarships with a value of at least ~$5,000 x 4 years (this means $5,000 per year for 4 years = $20,000 in total). The main reason I am doing this is because these are obviously the most difficult to win (because so many students apply) and have the most intensive processes (which would probably require more advice).

The great thing about one of these major scholarships is that often if you just win one (or two), you have your entire undergraduate education paid for. How amazing would that be?

The focus of the article is just to introduce you to Canada’s largest scholarship programs. Knowing what scholarships to apply to is the first step – and unfortunately, many students don’t even get this far. There are many deserving students who do not know about these scholarships, so it’s my hope that you’ll now have the opportunity to give many of them a shot.

Advice on applying for these scholarships will be provided in future articles. This article is simply an introduction to help you learn about the great opportunities out there.

Major Scholarships are Almost Always Application-Based

There is an unfortunate stereotype in a vast number of schools that scholarships are completely mark-based. It’s true that most universities hand out automatic entrance scholarships only based on grades (i.e. all graduating high school students who go to York University with a 95% average will receive a $3,000 x 4 years scholarship automatically). There are also some fairly large scholarships that are completely mark-based (e.g. York University hands out President’s Scholarships worth $5,400 x 4 years to the 18 students with the highest entrance averages).

What most students don’t realize (because they don’t look!), is that York University’s largest entrance scholarships are not mark-based. And this is true for almost every university.

Most Canadian Universities have their Own Major Scholarships

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