Writing a personal statement for a scholarship should explore your research, field of study, and goals. Avoid listing accomplishments and explain challenges overcome. Show community involvement and link fellowship to aspirations. Avoid grammatical errors and awkward syntax.
Writing a personal statement for a scholarship should be an exploration of your research, why you chose to enter your particular field of study, and what you hope to gain from the scholarship. Almost all types of scholarships require applicants to submit a well-written and thoughtful personal statement with their application. Learning to avoid the usual mistakes when writing a personal statement is also part of making your grant application the best it can be.
Begin your statement by explaining your credentials. This section should include your educational background and field of study. Explain your research in more detail, highlighting any specific achievements or challenges you overcame while conducting the research. Avoid turning these highlights into a full list of accomplishments, which can bore the fellowship’s admissions staff and dilute the emotional impact of your personal statement to a fellowship. The main purpose of explaining your research and its challenges is to demonstrate how you worked with colleagues or used your creativity to overcome a specific situation.
The Fellowship’s admissions team will be curious to know why you decided on this particular issue. Rather than choosing the common explanation of a childhood interest or talent in the subject, try to find a reason that shows how involved you are in your community at large. For example, if you’re in the sciences and you’re writing a personal statement for a fellowship, you might look at how specific instances of a scientific endeavor helped people succeed in some way. Writing about how your field has impacted others and how that aspect has caught your attention could be a much better way of expressing yourself than simply recounting the fact that you’ve had an interest in the field since your early years.
You should probably include a few sentences about what you would like to get out of the fellowship. This section is there to test your knowledge of the fellowship and what it offers. Do your research on different scholarships. Find ways to link the unique aspects of the fellowship to your aspirations and goals, whether personal or academic.
In addition to thematic mistakes, you want to avoid other pitfalls when writing a personal statement from a fellowship. Grammatical errors must be detected and eliminated. Difficult and awkward syntax should be edited into clear, easy-to-read sentences.
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