Video: Tips for the Scholarship Application – Millennium Excellence Awards

Posted by
November 20, 2008

Series: Tips for the Scholarship Application
Name: Millennium Excellence Awards
Length: ~31 minutes
Requires: Adobe Flash Player
Important Links: Scholarship Website, Application Form

NOTE: It may take a minute or two to load depending on your browser.

Additional Info. on the Challenging Task / Project Essay

I had a bit of a brain fart when thinking about good examples to use for this section during the video (see the pause when I start talking about “designing a machine” =P). But to be clear, I’m not saying that you need to have discovered a potential treatment for attacking cancer cells or anything to that degree to do well in this section (I surely didn’t have an example like that!) – it was just an example of a science project that was in my head at the moment. Any type of science fair project or business you’ve created would be good examples, along with many other things.

The key thing to realize is that you want to talk about a challenge that is relevant to the Millennium application – so your challenge should deal with leadership, innovation, and/or community service. So while a personal hobby like learning to play the guitar might technically answer the question, I don’t think it would be a strong answer. The reason why a science project, for example, works better is that although conducting a novel science project is also a type of hobby, successful science projects are usually original and innovative to some degree – so it is at least relevant to a criteria of the Millennium scholarship.

Questions?

If you have any further questions about the Millennium Excellence Awards, please leave a comment, and I will do my best to answer them!

Related Posts:

High School, Scholarships, Video

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  • Alice

    That was very helpful. Please keep up all this excellent work!

  • Joshua

    Thanks Alice =) I'm glad you found it helpful!

  • teel

    thanks again!

    this question is a little unrelated but:

    you mentioned that they called back your referee. I have a clear idea of the person (referee A) I would like to choose for this application. However, for a past scholarship application, I didn't think this through AS WELL and although I chose a referee who knew me well (referee B), I don't think referee B knows me as well OR is as capable of articulating ideas as referee A. Do other scholarships call back the referees? If so, is there nothing I can do now about the past scholarship application?

  • Joshua

    Hey Teel,

    The Millennium is actually the only scholarship I know of that may call your referee.

    So I wouldn`t worry too much about the other application. Which one was it though, if I may ask?

  • Natalie

    Hey Josh!

    Very helpful video, I'm typing up the application right now…and doing my best to *impressively* fill up the boxes. The 'novel science project' was a really good idea; I have a similar example, and wouldn't have thought to write about it if you hadn't mentioned it!

    Oh and uh… I was having some literal difficulty in filling out the activity boxes. The boxes have no formatting, and adobe (at least my version) can't change the font size. Is there a smart way to fill them out neatly that I'm missing? It seems impossible to keep the #/position/years columns straight.

    Btw, I burst out laughing when the phone started ringing.

    "Uh- sorry about that, just ignore that."

    -ring ring!-

    *Josh tackles phone*

    =P Thanks again, and keep up the amazing work!

  • Joshua

    Hey Natalie,

    I don't think you can format the boxes, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Your activities are going to have different lengths for each of the columns, so you can't really get the columns all the same size. It's not a big deal though, and my columns were all random sizes because of that.

    Yah the phone part was funny =) You always know stuff like that is going to happen, but you don't think too much about it. I have no idea who called, I just picked up the phone and hung up. I always figure that if it's really important, they'll call back!

  • Ben

    I sent in my application on Friday, JUST before the post office's closing time. I hope they don't count it against me because I sent it last minute!

  • Joshua

    Hey Ben,

    Congrats on being finished! =)

    Good luck!!!

  • http://laurenzlong@gmail.com Lauren

    Hey Joshua,

    I just stumbled across your website, and you have done some very excellent work with your scholarship tips and videos. I just wish I had seen this video before I sent in my application. Fortunately I did do very similiar things as what you suggested.

    I just have one question. Are all finalists for awards contacted for a phone interview? If not, then what determines if you will get an interview or not (is it based on the level of award they are considering you for or whether there's something unclear in your application) Finally, do you remember the approximate dates for the interviews? Also, do you have any tips to offer for the phone interviews?

    Thanks a lot! I wish you all the luck in your med school interviews!

  • Joshua

    Hey Lauren,

    I'm not sure if all finalists are contacted… I think all student being considered for provincial and national awards have phone interviews for sure. I'm not sure about local award candidates though.

    I think the phone interviews occur sometime in the middle of March, but I'm not really sure. As for the phone interview, the questions were pretty straight forward, and mainly about your application. It was pretty short – maybe 10 minutes.

    One good tip is to keep your application or any extra notes you want by your phone, so that if you ever get called, those things are there if you need them.

    Thanks for the support! =)

  • Kazik

    Hey Josh,

    Did you hear that the Millenium foundation is closing next year? This means they won't be giving out scholarships to next year's graduating class. This is really disappointing to me because I'm going into grade 12 next year and was hoping to apply to this Scholarship. =(. This was one of the easier ones too because it didn't require an interview.

    Other than that, thanks for all the help on this site, although it's too bad I can't make use of this video =P

  • Joshua

    Hi Kazik,

    Yah I heard something like that. The Millennium scholarships were originally set up to only last a decade or so – so it's not like they suddenly decided to end it. Unless the government decided to renew the program (which they unfortunately didn't), it was expected to end next year I guess.

    Sorry you won't have the opportunity to apply, but there are still a bunch of other ones you should definitely apply for!