Write down key words and phrases from the scholarship essay question and the sponsoring organization's website and mission statement. In your own words, write down what you think matters most to this organization and what its scholarship officers are most likely looking for in a scholarship recipient. Keep this statement nearby throughout your writing process.
Brainstorm several possible angles for answering the essay question. Let's say the essay asks you to demonstrate your dedication to promoting social justice in your community. You may write about the effect your gay cousin's death had on you, what your parents' bankruptcy and your brief homelessness taught you, the memorable interaction you had with someone different from you or the book you read that changed your perspective on justice completely. List as many ideas as you can.
Narrow down your ideas by testing each against the sponsoring organization's mission. If their mission involves offering literacy support to homeless people, for example, choose a topic that most closely relates. Your experience with homelessness or the life-changing book you recently read, for example, would both relate to the organization's mission. Choose the topic that you find most interesting of those that relate; if you are bored planning your essay, let alone writing it, chances are good that your reader will be bored reading it.
Outline your chosen topic to ensure your essay will have a logical flow. "Too many application essays are written in a stream of consciousness style," according to FinAid.com. Although wonderful writing flows naturally, natural flow comes from well-structured sentences and paragraphs rather than unedited free writing. Start with a few bullet points you plan to cover in your introduction and then list the key commitments and experiences you plan to illustrate in each of your two to five body paragraphs (depending on length requirements). If you already have an idea for your conclusion, note it.
Draft your introduction, which is the most important paragraph of your essay. Your goal is to grab the scholarship officer's attention and convince her to care about you and your scholarship essay. Do not summarize the points you will cover or use stock phrases such as "my essay will demonstrate" or "I am writing this essay because." Instead, to make your essay exceptional, engage the reader's senses and emotions with a vivid description of a memory or a vision. Perhaps, for example, you describe the sensory experience of sleeping in a homeless shelter with your family or the way you lived one day noticeably different from the one before it after encountering the book that changed your life. When introducing stories involving other people, focus almost exclusively on yourself, your challenges and your growth.
Use your outline to write the body paragraphs, linking each to your introduction and to the paragraph before it. Use transitional phrases such as "in addition," "therefore" and "in contrast" and reuse sensory details and concepts you introduced previously. A wonderful scholarship essay moves like a poem, with image integrity and consistent tone, but it must also move like a well-oiled machine, logically and interconnected. Every sentence should belong in the essay, meaning it should link clearly to the sentence before and after it.
Write your conclusion paragraph, which is the second most important paragraph in your scholarship essay. A wonderful conclusion looks backward and forward, and it makes the reader excited about you. Reintroduce a detail from your introduction and link it to your future goals. If you hope to improve homeless conditions through studying community health, remind the reader that you remember the scratchy, musty blanket from your time in a shelter and the overcrowded room with beds lining every possible foot of space. Make your last one to two sentences optimistic and memorable, stating a vision or expectation for the future.
Proofread your scholarship essay several times for mechanical errors. Ask two to three people whose feedback you respect to proofread your essay for you. Ask your readers not only to correct errors and check that your essay answers the question but to also give you feedback on your essay's style, originality and creativity. If possible, tell them briefly about the sponsoring organization and ask if your essay appeals to the organization's mission and stated commitments. Sometimes it takes an outside reader to help us see the sentence or detail that would make a fine essay truly wonderful.