Please help me to answer on the following questions: 1. Who you are is intricately linked to past experiences and who you’ve known. Thinking about your life and your experiences, explain what motivate
A significant endeavor is the outcome of identifying a need and taking the lead to create a meaningful solution that impacted (or continues to impact) your community, society, or school. This is not a question for a homework forum. There is no right or wrong answer. Purchasing answers to this question will result in disqualification. If you don’t have a significant endeavor, perhaps this isn’t the scholarship application that is the best fit for you at this time. The endeavor essay is over 50% of the weight in the judging process – it is the centerpiece of the application. All other parts of the application should tie into the endeavor, and the letter of recommendation should expressly speak to this endeavor and your leadership throughout the project. Asking someone to write your recommendation letter who doesn’t understand your project or isn’t familiar with it will weaken your score.
When reading a scholarship application, judges often ask what the need or problem was – why did the student undertake a specific project or endeavor? The endeavor could involve an intellectual challenge, research problem, ethical dilemma, barrier, or something that impacted the student personally. It may be rooted in community/service learning, research, the arts, journalism, advocacy, public affairs, etc. Judges do consider originality, initiative, degree of difficulty, results, and any benefit to society as a whole. Generally speaking, judges are looking for students that go above and beyond – students writing about getting into college or working while going to school don’t make much of an impression. After all, many community college students face the same struggles with finances and families, and they’re all making it work while taking action on other issues they identify on their campus or in their community. For some students, these endeavors are a result of a lifelong passion; for others, it’s a new obstacle or issue they’ve just become aware of. Endeavors come in all shapes and sizes and can have local or global impact.
Judges are looking for evidence of how you created the solution to the problem you identified and how you involved others. They are especially interested in how you exercised your leadership skills in this solution. This is a personal statement about how you are using your college education to bring about change around you. If your endeavor was part of a group project, write about your impact, what YOU did. We have forums and recognitions for chapter projects and college projects – they’re called Hallmarks. This is a scholarship application – this is not about your chapter or the work you’re doing as a group. This application is about you, your accomplishments, your leadership, your skills, your story.
Students oftentimes overcome tremendous obstacles to their education. These obstacles can be used as the basis for a pity party, or they can be used to propel the student into action so that they can leave behind a legacy, helping other students avoid the obstacles they had to overcome or providing tools, resources and assistance for other students facing the same issues.
When reading scholarship applications, judges want you to describe how and why you identified this need; the steps you took to arrive at a solution; who was involved in this project; what type of impact data and numbers you have that quantify your outcome; and how you applied your academic or intellectual skills to this endeavor.
EXAMPLES:
Writing an essay about giving a persuasive speech in your Oral Communications class to overcome your fear of public speaking IS NOT a significant endeavor. Although it might have resonated with your professor and/or your class, it did not help anyone overcome the same fear you had, nor did it have a lasting impact on those around you. Creating a workshop designed to help other students overcome their fear of public speaking and teaching that workshop to students is a significant endeavor because you are leaving something behind that others can use to overcome an obstacle.
Teaching a swimming class to a group of students after you almost drowned during a school picnic is worthy of an essay. Because you recognized that others like you had a need or could lose their life because of the difficulty of obtaining this training is worthy of the essay. The more lasting the impact, the better the story.
Tutoring is another worthy way to impact those around you, but merely tutoring doesn’t really leave a legacy for others. Yes, it impacts the students you are working with directly, but after you stop tutoring, the benefit is gone. Setting up a mentoring/tutoring center after identifying a lack of resources for students who struggle is a great example of a significant endeavor.
