A scholarship essay is an essay that is sent in when applying for a scholarship at a particular educational institution. It serves to explain the applicant, their candidacy for the scholarship, why they’re applying, etc.
For the most part, the scholarship essay is the first portrayal of the applicant that the institution sees. In other words, all they know about the applicant is the essay that they have read.
And when you look at it like that, it’s easy to appreciate just how important it is to make the essay impeccable in every sense. Therefore, it should be grammatically perfect, readable, organized, and unique. Writing a unique scholarship essay requires effort. In this post, we’re going to look at some tips you can follow.
Tips For Writing a Unique Scholarship Essay
Checking an essay for plagiarism is perhaps one of the most basic steps that a reviewing committee can be expected to take. That is why making sure the essay is unique is so important.
For the most part, the trouble that people can face with keeping their scholarship essays unique is due to accidental and unintentional plagiarism. In other words, they can commit plagiarism in their essay unintentionally, which then robs it of its uniqueness.
Keeping the above in mind, here are some tips you can follow to write a unique scholarship essay:
1. If you want to use a template, use it for the pattern
Obviously, when you’re tasked with writing a scholarship essay, the first thing that you probably wonder is, “How is a scholarship essay written?”
With that question in mind, you may look for templates and pre-made essays on the Internet. And there are a lot of those that you can find.
If you happen to find one that matches the program for which you are applying or the institute where you’re sending the essay, etc., you may be tempted to just use the template itself. It sounds easy and simple, but it’s actually just a really easy way to commit plagiarism.
This is something that you want to avoid doing. Sure, you could be confused about the style or format of the essay. But the style or format is all you can and should take from an existing template. You should not take the content, especially using it verbatim; otherwise, you would be plagiarizing.
2. Make the essay personalized and tailored to the specific institute you are applying to
A good way to make your essay “textually” unique is to include information that applies specifically to you.
For instance, if you tailor your essay to the institute you’re applying to and if you personalize it for the specific program you are applying to, your essay will be unique since the subject material would be one of a kind.
When we say that you should “tailor your essay,” it means that you should refer to the specific institute you’re applying to, and you should talk about yourself wherever it seems appropriate. By talking about yourself and the university you are applying to, you won’t have to worry about plagiarizing anything.
3. If you want to use content from a source, you have to give credit by citing the source used
If you want to add some content to your scholarship essay from somewhere, such as a fact or figure, cite the source you retrieved the information from in order to give proper credit. Plagiarism occurs when content is used without providing the right accreditation. And when plagiarism occurs, the essay doesn’t stay unique.
You can simply add citations for the content you borrow in the form of the standard citation and reference style. You can add an in-text citation right next to where the borrowed content appears, and then you can expand on it using the detailed references at the end.
4. Take care to check and remove plagiarism
While you can take all these measures to make your essay unique, there is always the chance that you could write something similar to already existing content without being aware of it until and unless you run a plagiarism check on the essay.
Right before you send in the essay as your submission, you should run it through a plagiarism checker. If the results come back showing plagiarism, you can either remove the bad parts altogether, or you can reword them so that they are unique.
There are plenty of plagiarism checkers available on the Internet that you can use. You can find them by doing a simple online search.
Conclusion
A well-written scholarship essay can get you the scholarship you need. A good essay is one that is grammatically perfect, to the point, compliant with guidelines (if any), and unique.
We haven’t discussed the rest of the aspects in the post above, but we have clarified how you can ensure the uniqueness of your essay. Hopefully, these tips will help you out the next time you have to write an essay for getting a scholarship.
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