By Unigo
We are very excited to announce the winner of the 2018 Unigo All About Education Scholarship. The question was, “How will a $3,000 scholarship for education make a difference in your life?” Check Caroline’s winning entry and scholarship tips.
Winning scholarship entry
Steve Jobs once said, “The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.” If he’s right, I will change the world. I will make the world a better place, not because of childhood dreams, but because I’ve been served a healthy dose of reality.
$3,000 is enough to make a dent in college costs. It’s enough to feed a family of four for multiple months. Yet often, $3,000 will not cover one dose of cancer medication. The pharmaceutical world is racked by high costs, and for cancer patients who require frequent treatment, medication is often cripplingly expensive. Insurance might help, but with clinical trials and experimental treatments, insurance companies often shy away, looking to save themselves money. These costs need to be lowered or subsidized, to offer patients more affordable options.
I didn’t know about these issues until I lost my mother last year to a rare form of bone cancer, which spread to her lungs. I didn’t know about the sheer number of experimental medicines out there, but that these treatments are often hard to access, and harder to pay for. But as her days came to a close, I imagined what I could do, and how I could change the world. $3,000 would help pay for a college education that will start me on a path of scientific research, to help me create a world where such treatments are more affordable, more accessible, and more successful.
4 Scholarship tips from our winner
1. Apply to lots of scholarships! There’s a lot of them out there, and oftentimes it doesn’t take too much time to apply!
2. Use your words wisely. It might seem easy to just spit out the word count for a required essay, but proofread and make sure that your essay addresses the prompt neatly and effectively. (Also, check your grammar and spelling!)
3. Be genuine. Essays are more convincing when they actually represent you, so take the time to make the essay uniquely yours. You want the judges to get a sense of your voice and style, so don’t use a cookie cutter essay.
4. Be patient. If you apply to a scholarship with a lot of applicants or with a deadline that’s still a little ways out, don’t worry about waiting to hear back. If you get it you get it, and if not, there’s nothing you can do about it! In the meantime, go apply to some more scholarships!