What does it mean to write a biographical sketch about yourself for a scholarship application?Answered
I've been writing my response like a narrative-type Common App essay, but I just looked up "biographical sketch" and it seems like it might describe more formal writing (like listing my accomplishments.) How would you interpret this prompt? What is the scholarship committee looking for? I don't want to sound too informal or like I misread the prompt, but I also don't want to sound boring and void of personality. For context there are two other prompts "describe educational, professional, and other goals" and "list and/or describe participation in extracurricular and leadership activities" and they all have a 3000 character count.
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Yeah, for scholarships, it鈥檚 definitely more cut and dry. It鈥檚 not a fun writing activity鈥擨 find it to be the worst writing task. It鈥檚 more so an opportunity to flaunt your resume鈥攜ou aren鈥檛 trying to stand out beyond what you鈥檝e done. I鈥檝e written nice ones that say why I鈥檓 deserving with a story, then I鈥檝e written ones that just are near bullet points of accomplishments/contributions. Got nothing for he first, but too many scholarships for the latter (I had to write them to reassign scholarships to someone else). I think when it鈥檚 reviewed they want to just side past successes you鈥檝e had as a meter of potential investment worth in the future.
depending upon the scholarship type specifically I recommend adjusting your focus. So if it鈥檚 like a community scholarship focus and highlight most time on volunteer work and community involvement. If it鈥檚 related to education, obviously academic successes, gpa, test scores, awards, etc. Regardless, I always had what my end goals are here. Ex. How will a scholarship enable me in the future to build on my success in that area. School related would be degree and career, community based could be ideas of volunteer work you want to do, etc.
Hope this helps!
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Is there a place I could find an example of these types of scholarship essays? Would it be damaging to write it in that Common App style and have the others be written more formally or should I just ditch what I have? Oh, and btw these essays are for a specific school and I think the scholarships are awarded based on academic merit, but I'm not sure.