HOW TO WIN FREE MONEY

FOR COLLEGE

BY AIR’N J. MONAHAN WWW.FOCUSEDSTUDENT.COM/SCHOLARSHIPS

Table Of Contents

PART 1: The Foundation - Learn the foundation of the scholarship industry and gain an advantage over other students…

My Story 3 Scholarship Industry Primer 5 Misconceptions 7 PART 2: The Application – Discover the secrets to crafting an award-worthy application...

Being Newsworthy 9

Strategies For Activity Boxes 11

Using Personality Formulas 12 Using Identifiers 14 PART 3: The Essay – Write essays that impress the judges and win you money…

Primary Objectives of Your Essays 16 Ten Deadly Essay Mistakes 18 Short Essay and Short Answer Strategies 21 How A Beer Advertisement Teaches An Important Lesson 23 A Six-Figure Essay 25

My Story Welcome to “How To Win Free Money For College”. The report you are holding in your hands right now has the potential to change your life. In today’s society, a college education has become an increasingly important ingredient to securing a good job and a successful career. Yet it’s no secret that tuition rates have been skyrocketing for some time now, and more and more families are finding it harder to send their kids off to their first-choice schools… or any schools for that matter. Some students decide to attend community college for a couple years to save on costs. Others take out hefty student loans, hoping that their pricey college degree will help them crawl out of debt later. There are no right or wrong answers when it comes to paying for college. Every student comes from a different financial background, and everyone has a unique comfort level when it comes to money. In my case, I preferred not to take out loans or carry debt. While in high school, my family and I knew that financial aid and my family’s contribution probably weren’t going to be enough for me to cover the costs of my higher education. So I began studying the scholarship industry, seeking out a viable way to pay for college. A simple search on Fastweb.com led me to hundreds of contests… most of which rewarded thousands of dollars to its winners. It was then that I made the decision to win as many scholarships as possible. No matter how much work it was going to take, no matter how many essays I’d have to write, and no matter how many hours I’d have to spend… I decided to do my best. I had the goal of attending a top-notch school, and I wasn’t going to let money interfere with my ambitions. Even though I put my heart into the work, never in my wildest dreams did I expect to win so many scholarship contests. My success rate was over 80%... meaning I won over four-fifths of the competitions I entered. I received money from national contests like Coca-Cola Scholars and Elks Foundation, state contests like the Chicago Tribune All-State Academic Team, and local competitions like my high school Senior of the Year. I was accepted to all the schools of my choice too, including places like Harvard, MIT, Penn, Georgetown, Wake Forest, and USC. Counting college scholarships, I had over $450,000 in scholarship offers. I decided the University of Southern California was the best place for me, and ended up officially accepting a total of over $130,000 in scholarships awards.

Although I had good grades and high test scores, I was by no means some child prodigy who had achieved something extraordinary during high school. I’ve known a lot of students who had better SAT scores, more academic accomplishments, or a more impressive list of skills and talents. Yet, I’ve never met someone who has won so many different scholarship contests. What’s my secret? Well, I have a lot of them actually… which is exactly why I wrote this book. Most students who apply for scholarships have a clouded vision of what contest judges are looking for. Many students are confused about how to approach essays, resumes, and recommendation letters. There are countless misconceptions about scholarships sources, the credibility of experts, and the odds of winning contests. I won’t lie. The competition out there is abundant. Creating a winning application takes time and effort; there’s no doubt about it. But these hardships are exactly what make the industry so appealing. With masses of students writing the same boring essays, listing the same unimpressive accomplishments, and making the same fundamental mistakes, you can easily stand out from the crowd like I did. You have the power to create your own future. The more work you put into finding awards, developing your strategies, and applying for contests, the more money you’ll win. Just use the secrets I’m about to show you and the possibilities for your college funding are endless.

Scholarship Industry Primer Let’s start with an overview of the scholarship industry and answer the common questions that most parents and students have. I will also clear up popular misconceptions here, giving you an advantage over applicants who don’t own this special report. HOW MUCH SCHOLARSHIP MONEY EXISTS? There are literally hundreds of millions of dollars in free scholarship money awarded every year by countless colleges, high schools, churches, businesses, individuals, and other groups. However, contrary to what many scam artists would have you believe, very little of this money goes ‘unclaimed’. Almost all of it is awarded to students. The only way you’ll ever win scholarship money is if you apply for it in the first place. The more contests you apply for, the better your chances will be. I assume you already understand this simple logic so I won’t bother repeating it too many times throughout this book. WHO IS ELIGIBLE TO WIN SCHOLARSHIPS? Just about anyone and everyone. Because there are so many contests out there, anyone is eligible for at least some scholarship contests. High school and undergraduate college students have the best selection, but younger students, graduate students, international students, and returning adults all qualify for many awards too. WHAT TYPES OF CONTESTS ARE THERE? Some contests have very few requirements. Others narrow in on specific age groups, accomplishments, talents, interests, majors, racial backgrounds, geographic locations, etc. As noted before, the scholarship industry is huge! Your piece of the pie awaits… you just need the confidence, motivation, and strategies to pursue it. WHO ADMINISTERS SCHOLARSHIP CONTESTS? This is an important question, because a clear understanding of scholarship providers will greatly improve your chances at grasping the concepts offered in this course. I prefer to split the industry into two main parts:

1. Scholarship awards administered by colleges and universities

2. Scholarship awards administered by everyone else For the rest of this course, I will refer to the first type as “college scholarships.” I will refer to the second type as “agency scholarships.”

The strategies used to win contests greatly differ, depending on which type of contest you are applying for. College scholarships are restricted to the institutions that award them. In other words, a scholarship you win at the University of Florida can only be used at the University of Florida and no where else. Agency scholarships, on the other hand, can usually be used at any college or university, depending on the exact contest rules. This gives students the freedom to attend the educational institution of their choice. Of course, there are many other important differences between these two different award types. The most critical difference is the judging criteria. Colleges give away money for completely different reasons than businesses. Therefore, the basis for judging in these contests is not the same. I will show you how to develop winning strategies for both college and agency scholarships and how you can actually take advantage of their differences.

Misconceptions MISCONCEPTION: Scholarships only go to the few students with fantastic SAT scores or the longest list of extracurricular activities. Fortunately, the diverse nature of the scholarship industry permits awards to go to all sorts of different people with varying qualifications. A large portion of contests don’t even consider academics or extracurricular activities as part of their judging criteria. MISCONCEPTION: Students should focus all their time on perfecting a few scholarship applications, rather than applying for dozens of contests with less time per contest. It is absolutely impossible to predict the results of scholarship contests. Circumstances are largely out of your control. The hidden biases and random nature of the whole thing frequently leads to surprising results. Therefore, putting all of your time and energy into only a few applications is a mistake. However, on the same note, don’t try to apply to so many contests that the quality of your applications is diminished. Instead, learn the time-saving strategies and shortcuts in this book so that you can simultaneously keep top-notch quality and apply for several contests. MISCONCEPTION: The strategies for winning scholarships are the same as for getting into college. Nothing can be further from the truth. Just think about it: when judges are reviewing college admissions applications, they’re looking for the top 10-50%. You can play it ‘safe’ with college admissions, because your goal is just to get into the top tier of applicants. Scholarship contest judges, on the other hand, are looking for the top one, two, five, or even dozen applicants who stand out from the rest. Applicants with great test scores and grades that got into Harvard or Yale can easily lose scholarship competitions. Ever wondered why many winners of huge national contests are frequently from state schools, small colleges, or even community colleges? It’s because they stood out from the competition and appealed to the motives of the judges. Don’t base your strategies for scholarship applications on the strategies you use for college applications. Likewise, don’t use this book as a guide for beating college admissions, because not all of the techniques I’ll show you would work for college entrance. Instead, you’re about to learn exclusive strategies that employ the winning concepts of creativity, risk, and human nature. Knowing the fundamentals of the scholarship industry is KEY. It’s like trying to build a house without a foundation…the plan is doomed from the start. In my book

“Scholarship Secrets, I reveal everything I know about the scholarship industry. I’ll teach you all the differences between agency and college contests. I’ll also reveal everything that I learned as a scholarship judge about the ‘real’ way scholarships are judged and the methods you can employ to keep all your hard work out of the ‘rejected’ pile. Find out more now: WWW.FOCUSEDSTUDENT.COM/SCHOLARSHIPS

Being Newsworthy Even the brightest educators and families usually overlook or underestimate the importance of this motive. This motive applies primarily to agency scholarship contests. College scholarship competitions don’t normally publicize information about the students they award money to (other than basic credentials), so they aren’t exposed to the line of thinking I’m about to describe. Why do you think a company would give out a scholarship award? Since when are businesses and organizations eager to give away their money? Yes, I believe in the genuine goodness of our society, and I believe that many agencies (usually foundations) give away scholarships because they truly care about educating our future generations. However, I also firmly believe that many companies give out scholarship awards for the purpose of publicity. Yes, there are tax breaks and other small benefits, but the media attention resulting from a scholarship competition is a huge motivator for companies to give away money. Agencies get to send out dozens of different press releases for the contest. Their public image goes up with communities. Winners and winners’ families will feel slightly ‘indebted’ in the future for the agency’s kind generosity. Combine these benefits together, and you have a fantastic reason to administer a scholarship contest. (This is also why you see so many scholarship contests that are based on community service involvement. In effect, the agency is aligning themselves with the ideals of education and serving others… the perfect public image combination.) Still don’t see the impact this discussion has on you? Let me show you. When an agency publicizes their scholarship contest, which aspect of the competition do they usually focus on? The winners! Publishing information about winners (talented young adults) is the surest way to get an article published in the most newspapers. Therefore, when a judging committee begins evaluating scholarship applications, one their primary thoughts (intentionally or unintentionally) will be: “Would this candidate appeal in a newspaper article?” In other words, agencies are looking for newsworthy applicants. If you are an average student with average essays and average activities, then you won’t win an agency scholarship. No one wants to write about you!

But if you’ve done something extraordinarily unique, balanced an impressive number of activities and pressures, or had a major accomplishment, then you just might be newsworthy. An important side note here is to remember that agencies will normally prefer newsworthy students whose ‘news’ aligns with the company’s public image and corporate direction. If the scholarship competition is administered by a paper company, then an applicant who hosted a recycling drive or planted trees is a more likely winner than a political activist. Also, you can easily find out which contests this strategy works best on. Simply search for the news stories regarding past winners of different scholarship competitions. When one contest’s winners keep coming up, then this motive is especially apparent in that competition. If a company chose not to disclose information about its winners, however, then this motive is obviously not as dominant. Not all of us have extraordinary accomplishments that are worthy of the papers. Don’t worry. Being newsworthy involves several other considerations. Pay attention to the following pointers for making your application newsworthy: Use numbers, titles, and official names to describe your accomplishments. Now is no time for vagueness. “Recycled 8000 cans” is a much more newsworthy statement than “Recycled a lot of cans.” Think about what the journalist would look for. Be quotable. Including witty, quotable comments about yourself in your essays will boost your newsworthy appeal. Go back and read articles about past winners. You’ll see that many articles end with some quote by the student self-describing their accomplishments or experiences. Be individualistic and unique. Your peculiarities and quirks make you a much more interesting news story. If you seem exactly like everyone else, then no one wants to read about you. When you tackle your applications, remind yourself of what a publicist would look for in a news story. Your goal is to give the scholarship agency ‘something to talk about.’ So go… be newsworthy!

Strategies For Activity Boxes Activity boxes are the form fields included on many applications that ask for your activities, awards and honors, leadership positions, and hours per week per activity. An example would be: Activity Name Activity

Description Honors and Awards

Leadership Positions Held

Hours Per Week

What are you supposed to do with these annoying things? They’re usually way too small to fit in any useful information. Also, some of your ‘major’ accomplishments may not look too impressive when put into these boxes. Unfortunately, the only thing you can do is make the best of it and innovate. When I saw an activity box like the one above on applications, I created my own activity box on the computer, printed it out, and pasted it over the pre-made one. The activity box I created on the computer had small font, and managed to fit in about ten activities. (Don’t do this if the directions don’t allow for it, of course.) One time, I actually made a fold-out activity box that could be folded out on the application to reveal all the activities I was involved in. The judges apparently liked it, because they awarded me $500. By creating your own activity boxes on the computer, you can also fit in multiple awards and honors or leadership positions for a single activity. If you don’t tell judges about an award or leadership position, they won’t know about it. So my recommendation is to find a way to include as much information as possible into these activity boxes. As for calculating “hours per week,” just do your best to estimate. I understand that a lot of activities only take place for a limited span of time, which makes it awkward to assign a specific number. Many times, judges are just trying to find out what activities are most important to you and not necessarily ‘measuring’ you against everyone else. Lastly, be sure to cut down on useless words in activity boxes. Include lots of power-punched action words that accurately describe your activities. Avoid being wordy.

Using Personality Formulas When developing your application, it’s smart to employ “personality formulas.” Your personality formula basically stereotypes your real personality with one or two central themes. It’s a simplified, over-exaggerated version of the true you. The best comparison I can think of is to MTV’s “The Real World.” Have you ever noticed how they over-simplify everyone’s personality? One guy might be the “drunk,” another guy might be the “sex maniac,” one girl might be the “party girl,” and so on. There’s more depth to each person than the show conveys, of course. So why does MTV gloss over everyone? The reason is because they have to. There’s no way to accurately display a person’s true and complete personality in thirty minutes, sixty minutes, or any short period of time. But they want you to remember each person and choose your favorites (or least favorites), so they take shortcuts. Remember, you need to strive to make a good impression for the judges during the first thirty or sixty seconds. The solution to your challenge is to gloss over your own personality the same way MTV does it. Over generalize. Judges will remember you better. Over generalizing is simple when you get the hang of it. The trick is to only convey a specific characteristic or two, and eliminate any unneeded details that don’t strengthen your application. Don’t lose your individuality, of course, but also don’t get sidetracked with ‘extras’ during your essays or resume. If you’ve been interested in science all your life, won the state-wide science fair, wrote your essay about science, and want to study science, then the “9th grade Art club” on your activity list is only going to confuse judges and dilute your message. Meanwhile, you don’t want to sound too lopsided either. That’s why it’s a good idea to consider including two personality characteristics into your formula. The following list offers some ideas for characteristics that can be your ingredients for your personality formula. (Before formally deciding on a personality formula, be sure to read the next chapter, because it expands on this chapter’s principles.) Carefully think about your interests and credentials and develop a formula that makes sense for you. Here’s the list:

scientist volunteer leader intelligent

political activist artist ambitious athlete business-minded entrepreneur journalist super-involved extremely honest politician musician actor

Using Identifiers The single most important secret to scholarship success is to develop an identifier. An identifier is a two to three sentence summary of your application that identifies your main accomplishments, interests, or experiences. The purpose of an identifier is to:

grab readers’ attention show off your major strengths make your application stand out from the pile force judges to remember you in a specific way

The two or three sentence identifier should be placed throughout the entire application- in short answer questions, essays, activity lists, and your resume. Your identifier should be modified for each contest, depending on the judging criteria. Developing an identifier involves careful self reflection and an assessment of the accomplishments you want to stand out in your application. Decide which of your experiences or achievements- athletic involvement, high GPA, starting your own community service project, etc.- has the best chance of winning you scholarship money. Your identifier should also be related to your personality formula… they go hand in hand. For example, you may have the identifier: “I’ve spent over 300 hours volunteering at the local nursing home. Yet, I’ve still found time for my passion for science and won the Wyoming regional science fair.” This example identifier would be an expansion off of the personality formula “volunteer” plus “scientist.” When you’ve got your identifier perfected, your job is to repeat it everywhere in your application. Your identifier is basically your “company slogan.” You never want to miss a chance to reiterate it. You will still tell judges about your other accomplishments and experiences, but your identifier is the ‘label’ you want them to remember. A useful technique is to use the same words over and over for your identifier. There are plenty of different ways to describe an accomplishment, but if you repeat a specific wording your ‘slogan’ is more likely to be remembered. Try to create an identifier that is unique and definite. The goal is to stand out, quickly make an impression (letting the judges ‘sum’ you up in thirty seconds or so), and give readers a way to remember your application.

Here are some sample identifiers to help you brainstorm: “My strengths are intellect and athleticism. I’m the poster-boy ‘smart jock,’ managing a 1450 SAT score, 3.9 GPA, and four years on varsity football and varsity baseball.” “I have dedicated most of my life to playing the flute. Five hours of practice per day, sixteen years of flute playing, seven honorable mention awards at the state fair, and four new flutes finally paid off for me when I was invited to play at Carnegie Hall.” “I’ve lived in three different countries, five different states, and twelve different homes during my life so far. My life experiences in a military family have taught me that I want to study urban planning in college.” When repeated in several different places on an application, the identifier has the power to make your application stand above the rest. So before you do anything else, develop an identifier that expands on your personality formula, highlights your accomplishments, provides exact information, and is catered to the judging criteria of the specific scholarship contest to which you are applying. The rest of this course will assume that you have completed this very important step. If you want to learn more about how you can build a stronger scholarship image, create better identifiers, and how you can ENSURE that you convey your strengths to the judges while hiding your weaknesses, check out my complete course that will take you through all the step-by-step methods for creating a full-proof scholarship application. WWW.FOCUSEDSTUDENT.COM/SCHOLARSHIPS

Primary Objectives of Your Essays During the next lessons, I’m going to reveal to you some of the secrets for creating essays that will win you scholarships. Let’s first discuss the primary objectives of your essay. The ultimate goal is to win the scholarship award, of course, but it’s helpful to dissect that goal into its individual objectives. Each objective will act as a vehicle for helping you get to your final destination. OBJECTIVE 1: Convey Your Identifier. Your two or three sentence identifier (see the last chapter) should be loudly conveyed in your essay. Scholarship judges want to learn about you when they read your essay. Don’t try to create some artistic essay that strikes an insightful metaphor between current congressional legislation and your quest to be a politician. If you want to be a politician, then say, “I want to be a politician.” The only judging committee that might be impressed by metaphoric ramblings would be an Ivy League admissions committee… but they don’t give out scholarship awards, so it doesn’t matter for our discussion here. You have thirty to sixty seconds to blow the judges away. Get straight to the point and show them what you’re made of by drilling your identifier into their brains. OBJECTIVE 2: Stand out. To make your essay stand out, you’ll need to use unique words and phrases and an eye-catching layout. Your writing will need substance. Humor helps, but trying to act ‘cute’ will only hurt you. We’ll be discussing techniques for standing out in your essay in the upcoming chapters. OBJECTIVE 3: Leave a positive overall impression. If the judges remember you (which means you accomplished the first two objectives), then you’ll want them to remember you in a good way. You want your name evoke positive feelings and images. This is achieved by leaving a positive overall impression. You can leave your positive impression the same way you’d leave a good impression in personal relations. Zero your conversation (essay topic) in on positive experiences or subject matter. Avoid expressing dislike for too many things or people. Radiate optimism and exude confidence. Caution! Although it’s not polite to do so in everyday conversation, you must talk about yourself and brag considerably in your essays. As long as you avoid showing contempt for others (which makes you sound snobbish and egotistical), writing about yourself will be a key ingredient to helping the judges get to know you better.

OBJECTIVE 4: Make your essay easy to read and your content simple to follow. Since there’s no guarantee that your essay will receive the attention it deserves, it’s important to structure your material in a way that is inviting to readers. Be sure to connect your thoughts logically, avoid boring your readers, minimize word count, and use reasonable font sizes. Do everything within your power to present judges with an interesting and professional essay that conveys your accomplishments and ideas in an engaging manner.

Ten Deadly Essay Mistakes Students, to no fault of their own, frequently make the following ten mistakes in their essays. These mistakes are usually caused by a simple lack of understanding of judge motives. Also, many students get too caught up in the pressures of deadlines and paperwork that they forget the ‘big picture.’ Be sure to change your essays if they’ve made any of the following ten deadly mistakes: MISTAKE 1: Creating an essay that does not convey important information about your strengths, accomplishments, and qualifications. MISTAKE 2: Creating an essay that does not convey important information about your strengths, accomplishments, and qualifications. MISTAKE 3: Creating an essay that does not convey important information about your strengths, accomplishments, and qualifications. This mistake deserves triple your normal attention span, because it is excessively made by students everywhere and because it has the potential to completely prevent you from winning scholarship money. Our previous discussions of personality formulas and identifiers should stop you from ever making this deadly mistake. The committee wants to get to know you. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to create an intellectual, stuffy-sounding essay! Even if you could impress judges with a stuffy essay, you wouldn’t be chosen as the contest winner because you didn’t provide the committee with concrete reasons to choose you. MISTAKE 4: Being a thesaurus maniac. Thesaurus maniacs aren’t fooling anyone. First, using a thesaurus makes you sound really dumb if you use a thesaurus word out of context or confuse its meaning. Second, even if you use a thesaurus to find words to which you know the meaning, your essay will lose its ‘flow.’ Contest judges know that students aren’t walking around using words like: “edifice,” “contravene,” or “idiolect.” Unless you are absolutely certain that your readers are well-educated and that your ability to write an intellectual essay is part of the judging criteria, scratch all these silly thesaurus words out. Instead, consult “‘Gun To Your Head’ Essay Strategies” for comprehensive lists of words and phrases that are proven to stand out but are also common in usage. MISTAKE 5: Conveying a snobbish attitude.

There’s one simple way to prevent this mistake: don’t compare yourself to others. Let the judges do the comparing. Convey your accomplishments and principles in the strongest manner possible… just avoid talking about fellow students’ principles or actions. MISTAKE 6: Offending judges. Don’t say anything racist, rude, or potentially insulting to your judges. I believe in expressive and mostly uncensored writing, but I also believe in calculated risks. You won’t be newsworthy, quotable, or likeable if you berate others. MISTAKE 7: Demonstrating low self-confidence or low self-esteem. Your low self-confidence will in no way give judging committees the confidence to give you large sums of money. They may ‘feel sorry’ for you, but that won’t win you money. Be strong and confident. Never say things like, “I know I’m not qualified for your scholarship.” MISTAKE 8: Making simple errors. If you rush your essay (which you shouldn’t do), be sure to quadruple-check for simple errors in punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Most judges will get distracted by an essay riddled with errors and they’ll lose sight of the points you are trying to express. MISTAKE 9: Focusing on negative or ‘losing’ experiences. A lot of students will attempt to create an essay that demonstrates how they overcame hardships, but end up with an essay that screams, “This one’s a loser!” The classic example of this is the over-used theme of public speaking. Here’s how it goes: The student begins the essay with reflections of how he or she ‘bombed’ during a public speaking venture. The essay talks about all the things the writer did wrong during the speech. Then the writer tells the judging committee about how he or she overcame the ordeal and grew strong enough to be a great public speaker. Because your essay will probably only get about a minute of reading, and because judges will be more attentive to what you say at the beginning of the essay rather than at the end, the essay I just summarized is not a winner. It leaves the reader remembering the simple fact that you really messed up on stage. Essays about losing school elections fit this same mistake category. I seriously doubt that your identifier is, “I lost a school election.” Why would you focus your essay on that topic then? Losing a school election means that you weren’t successful in leading your peers or gaining their respect.

You need to demonstrate yourself as a winner at all times. Pay close attention to your essay structure when writing ‘overcoming hardships’ essays, because those are the most conducive to this mistake. If you must include information about a previous failure, just refer to the failure objectively and briefly. Then get back to bragging. MISTAKE 10: Boring the reader. We’ve discussed the obvious disadvantages of this mistake at length already. If you’re still struggling with writing a compelling essay, be sure to study “‘Scholarship Secrets”. Get it here: WWW.FOCUSEDSTUDENT.COM/SCHOLARSHIPS

Short Essay and Short Answer Strategies For a short essay or short answer question (100-200 words), you’ll want to focus your answer on a single accomplishment or experience. Skip any useless introductory sentences and just get straight to the point. For obvious reasons, good word usage is increasingly important in short answer questions. Use the word lists from my book “Scholarship Secrets” to maximize the efficiency of your writing. Spend an adequate amount of time planning for short answer questions. Some students make the terrible decision to just ‘wing it’ and start writing. Conveying an important personal strength in one hundred words is by no means easy, so go through at least two or three drafts before finalizing your answer. A special secret I’ve developed for short answer strategies can be used when the topic of the short essay is very important to you or when the topic is directly related to your application identifier. In these cases, you’ll want far more than one or two hundred words to answer the question. The secret is to use a ‘lead-in’ as the answer to the short essay question. In other words, your short answer should ‘lead’ to a longer (more detailed) essay that you’ve written for another prompt on the application or even an additional essay that you’ve attached to the application as supporting material. When using the lead-in secret, your short answer essay should include the bare-bones details and highlights of your accomplishment or activity. Then it should clearly state that more information is available in another one of your essays. Some judges will immediately read the longer essay to find out more. Others won’t read it at all, which is why it’s important that you include the primary strengths of your accomplishment in the short answer essay. (Your short answer essay still has to be able to stand by itself.) To use the lead-in technique and increase readership of the longer essay, you’ll want to arouse curiosity about your activity and give judges a specific reason to want to read your longer essay. Use phrases like:

“I describe the most important part of this experience in essay #2.”

“...but that only scratches the surface. More information is available in the additional essay attached to this application.”

“You just learned my first secret. I’ve never told anyone my second secret

before… until now. My second secret is the topic of my ‘hardships overcome’ essay in this application.”

“For more information, check out my other essay...”

The lead-in secret is really just the adaptation of the mentality that your application is one cohesive representation of your strengths and accomplishments. Your essays, resume, and short answer questions are all connected together. The lead-in secret is only needed on an occasional basis, since most short answer topics don’t coincide with students’ identifiers. If you encounter this problem, though, you’ll have a distinct advantage over other applicants who didn’t read this report…

How A Beer Advertisement Teaches An Important Lesson

Claude Hopkins, nicknamed the ‘father of advertising,’ told an intriguing story in his ground-breaking book “Scientific Advertising,” written in 1923. He was asked to help a beer company with their marketing campaign. In those days, beer was always advertised as “pure.” Every beer company spent millions of dollars to brag about how their beer was the purest. The company that came to Claude Hopkins was finding it difficult to thrive in the beer market amid so much competition. Hopkins spent a day at the company headquarters and observed the process in which beer was created. He was fascinated. Hopkins told the owner to explain the brewing process in full detail in the company’s next advertisement. Hopkins said that sales would increase. The owner was puzzled. After all, every brewer used the same exact process to create beer. His company did not take any special action when creating beer. They simply adhered to the industry standards. The owner reluctantly agreed, however, and created an advertisement that explained in full detail the brewing process his company used. The advertisement pictured a plate glass room where beer was cooled in filtered air. The advertisement illustrated the filter of white wood pulp through which every drop of beer was cleared. The ad explained how bottles were washed four times, how pure water was extracted from 4,000 feet underground, and how 1,018 experiments had been conducted to perfect the beer’s matchless flavor. The advertisement was recorded as the greatest marketing success in the beer industry. It yielded enormous sales volume and thrust the company into a number one sales position. Why did the advertisement work? After all, any beer company could have made the same exact claims. The reason the ad was successful was because it told consumers something they had never heard before. Instead of screaming out, “PURE BEER,” this company explained how the beer was created. The end focus was still on purity, but it was presented differently. This story offers a compelling lesson for scholarship applications. Students everywhere are guilty of just trying to scream, “PURE BEER” the loudest. Instead of bragging about pure beer, they’re bragging about awards, SAT scores, and GPA.

If you’re struggling to pinpoint how you stand out from the crowd, maybe you should consider a different approach. Tell the committees something they haven’t heard before… even if many students could make the same claim. For example, instead of emphasizing your 3.9 GPA, maybe you could just share with the judges a story about how you skipped lunch every day in order to keep good grades in biology. Or tell the committee how you sacrificed leisure time to study three hours per night. Instead of focusing on the games your football team won, write an essay about the strength and commitment it required to practice four hours a day in the hot sun. Write about the gains you witnessed in the weight room over the period of nine grueling months. If your strengths are not unique among the thousands of qualified applicants, don’t try to shout louder. Just shout something else, while still maintaining your application’s emphasis on your strong selling points.

A Six-Figure Essay The following is a real-life essay I submitted with my scholarship applications. I say “six-figure” because this essay single-handedly contributed to me winning over $100,000 in awards. It tells the story of how my name originated. The purpose of this essay was to show my personality and sense of humor, while also conveying my ambitious attitude and willingness to take risks and “make things happen.” Here it is:

Call me Air'n. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- I was born to two parents who were completely out of their minds. They named me Erin, which, of course, is the girl's spelling of the name. My parents claimed that they were upholding our distant Irish heritage, because in Ireland both boys and girls use the E-R-I-N spelling. Being a practical person, I didn't like the spelling of my name. One day during third grade, the nurse called me down to the office for a routine scoliosis check. When I got there, she refused to believe that I was Erin Monahan. I insisted, but she was equally stubborn. Finally, she sent me to the principal for fraudulent behavior! I wasn't "picked on" or "made fun of" because of my name. But it just wasn't my style to be walking around with a girly name like Erin. So at age ten, I decided I would change the spelling (not pronunciation) of my name. After a ten-year identity crisis, though, "Aaron" seemed way too ordinary. I needed something different, something more creative. So I decided to make up my own spelling. Using my masterful phonetic skills, I took the word "Air" with the pronunciation of the letter "n" and joined the two with an apostrophe. Voilà! Air'n. I immediately introduced my creation to my parents. "No way."They seemed pretty firm in their response, so I figured I'd let them get used to the idea before I argued too much. In the meantime, I decided to gradually bring the name into existence by signing my school papers with "Air'n." The story of my name climaxed when I was twelve years old. There was a girls teeny-bopper magazine service that had kept sending me subscription offers for years. In this particular instance, though, the service sent me a complimentary gift- tampons! I was furious. As a twelve-year-old, I wouldn't stand for such blows to my manhood. It turned out that my parents finally came around after that. They adopted their normal attitude. "It's your life, do what you want… just be safe about it." Armed with ambition, I immediately took action. I got a legal defender and a court date. Legally changing my name was actually much easier than I had

expected. The judge just gave me one of those oh-my-God looks and then said okay. On March 3rd, 1996 I was officially Air'n Joseph Monahan. "You're going to regret that for the rest of your life, you know. When you get older, no one is going to take you seriously." Those were the fateful words that I heard from my friends, my neighbors, my teachers, and even my grandmother. Everyone seemed to think that I had made a big mistake. Well, I decided that I needed a backup plan, just in case everyone was right. Since my middle name is Joseph, I began to use the name "Air'n J." instead of "Air'n." I was "Air'n J. Monahan" not "Air'n Monahan." The way I figured it, I was never going back to Erin. If I grew dissatisfied with Air'n, I could simply informally change my name to "A.J." By using "Air'n J." all the time, changing to "A.J." wouldn't seem too drastic or strange. To this day, I have never once regretted the name Air'n. The "J" lingers here and there, but A.J. is out of the question. With a name like Air'n, it is easy for people to remember me. I always have a gateway into conversation. And my name has served as the subject of some successful campaign slogans (VOTE FOR HOT AIR'N, NOT FOR HOT AIR). "Air'n" represents my unique attitude and creative personality. As for my Irish roots, the last name "Monahan" suits me just fine. Changing my name to Air'n was one of the neatest, most successful things I have ever done.

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