STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD

The Personal Statement

Your personal statement is the first impression you make on the scholarship funders. It is a brief and focused resume about ones high school career. It will be used as a yard stick by scholarship funders to assess your capabilities of leadership, academics, community service and your interests and goals. It should be short, crisp and clear. With this statement you should present a vivid portrait of yourself, not simply a recitation of your laundry list of activities.  This statement defines who you are, thus your goal is to make yourself stand out from the other applicants. Be memorable, be succinct, and be persuasive.

Start as early as possible on personal statements-the 9^th grade if possible . The younger your child is when you start, the greater the resume, and the more opportunities that will become available. For the most part, scholarship funders only look at activities that you were involved with in high school. The exceptions are ongoing accomplishments such as Eagle Scouts, which build over many years, culminating at high school age.

Make a plan on how your child can gain experiences that are valued by scholarship funders. In general, scholarship committees factor in not only academics, but other criteria including community activities, leadership, and special or unusual talents or skills (such as musical abilities, sports, etc.). In other words, they look for a well rounded student who has at least one sought-after talent or passion.

Look for opportunities

Your child should be the decision maker in choosing a direction based on her interests. But you, the parent, should look for opportunities.  Find that ballet audition, steer him/her to the science fair, rocket club, camp counselor, class president or music competition. Allow your child to explore varied talents and passions outside the classroom, and expose your child to multiple fields of interests. The Rhodes Scholarship, for example, looks for applicants who "show integrity of character, interest in and respect for their fellow beings, and the ability to lead".

Build a personal statement .

Begin by recording all honors or awards won, volunteer time, leadership roles and participation in sports or extracurricular activity. You can also list interests and employment. Do not fret about the length of this personal statement or about being selective of it's content. You will edit the resume down at a later date.When building your personal statement include dates of service, contacts and their phone numbers, position held, leadership responsibilities and a comment about the work done. You never know what information will be requested and it is much easier to have it on file than to have to look it up later.

Paint a vivid portrait of your accomplishments. No matter how impressive your credentials may be, if you present them as a laundry list of activities you will blend into the background. For the scholarship committees to get a true sense of who you are you will need to convey your motivation for each activity. For example: you volunteer to chair the Band's annual fund-raiser. Powerfully convey the importance and success of this duty: say how your fund-raiser brought in 50 percent more money than previous year's events or that you were able to raise enough money to send the entire band to New York for the Macy's Day Parade.

If your child knows their career direction they should volunteer in that field.

For example, my daughter, Heather, wanted to be a nurse.

So in high school she volunteered at a hospital. This gave her volunteering credits for her resume, helped her get nursing specific scholarships, looked great on her nursing college admissions application and opened the door to a future employer.

• Lincoln High School      E. 3020 77^th Ave., Seattle, WA 98116    (206) 353-4066

• GPA 4.0/4.0                                   Letter grade: A                             Curriculum: Advanced

• Class Standing: top 1%             Class rank: 1 of 465                    SAT: 2110 (new SAT/2200)