The Bare Essentials
Essays are a very important part of the application process for nearly all nursing scholarships. How you present yourself in your essay is the best way for the scholarship awards committee to form an opinion about you and improve your chance of winning the award.
It is helpful to first make an outline. There are three parts to an essay, the introduction, body, and conclusion. Your thought progression must be clear and flow easily through the essay. The introduction is where you introduce the main topic of your essay and get the attention of the reader so that they want to continue reading. The body includes several paragraphs that expand upon the topics of your essay. You can incorporate information from sources related to your topic, interesting quotes, and details you feel your readers will find intriguing. The conclusion is used to restate the topic of your essay. The conclusion is also where you would want to write about your future goals and ambitions in nursing.
It is often said that the way to think about the three parts of an essay are this: (1) Tell them what you’re gonna tell them [the intro] (2) Tell them [the body] (3) Tell them what you told them [the conclusion.]
While writing the nursing scholarships essay you must keep in mind the importance of proper grammar, addressing the specific requirements of the essay, and originality. The nursing profession isn’t specifically noted for their literary abilities, but it is still important to present yourself as a knowledgeable and unique individual and obviously you must able to put words together in a meaningful way that illustrates your competence. Know the background and interests of the scholarship for which you are applying and incorporate how your goals could benefit their organization. Above all, be original. The scholarship committee will read numerous essays and in order to win the award yours must stand out amongst the rest.
When you have completed your essay you should have others review it to check for mistakes and clarity. They may see something you missed or point out a part that is not easily understood as it is written. Take a deep breath and place it in the envelope….then let the breath back out.In the next part of this series, I’ll give more in-depth posts on writing each element of the essay. Stay tuned.
Writing an effective intro for your nursing scholarships essay.
Essays are a very important part of the application process for most nursing scholarships. How you present yourself in your essay is the best way for the scholarship awards committee to form an opinion about you and your chance of winning the award. It is helpful to first make an outline. This is mainly used just for your benefit. It helps you know ahead of time where you plan to take the essay. It is like a mapped out route for a road trip. It helps to know the destination so that your planned route will eventually get you there. There are three parts to an essay, the introduction, body, and conclusion. I am going to discuss the writing of the first part of the essay, maybe the most important part, the introduction. Why do I say it is possibly the most important? The introduction is where you introduce the main topic of your essay and get the attention of the reader so that they want to continue reading. If you don’t grab their interest initially you may have lost them totally and they will not want to finish reading the inspiring things you have yet to tell them…. The introduction should be short. It is an introduction after all and the purpose of it is to get the reader to the most vital part of the essay, the body. It should be at least three sentences long, but no longer than six. It is important to present the purpose of the essay in the introduction, but it is not necessary to tell all your secrets at once. The point of the introduction is to make the reader (AKA person with free money to give you to go to school) want to actually read what more you have to say. It might be effective to open with an anecdote. An anecdote is a story that will provide the setting for your topic that illustrates a point. Be sure your anecdote is short, to the point, and relevant to your topic. After the anecdote, provide a few sentences about the main topic of your essay. Put yourself in the mind of the reader. What is it you would want to see? What is your motivation? You need to match your topic to something they would be looking for. Also, the reader as many essays to review. Make sure yours is not placed in the circular file (i.e. the trash can) by making it personal and unique. Next time, we will go over the meat of your essay, the body.
Writing the body of your nursing scholarships essay
Today we will look at the next step in writing an essay for nursing school or nursing scholarships. The step after the introduction in an essay is the body. This is the meat of your essay. This is where you get to tell everything that needs to be said in your essay. The body of a traditional 5 paragraph essay is made up of 3 paragraphs. Each paragraph should contain one main point of your essay. The first sentence of the paragraph introduces the point and then you can make three to four statements that elaborate on this point. The paragraphs in the body should follow the same flow. Start the paragraph with an introductory sentence explaining your main idea. Then write a sentence for a supporting point and follow that with some elaboration of at least three sentences. Each paragraph in the body should relate in some way to the other paragraph. You might want to use transitions words for each body paragraph, such as “First” “Second” “Third” , or “In addition” “Furthermore” “Moreover”, or “Therefore” “Consequently” “Accordingly” Then end with a supporting sentence for the conclusion of the paragraph to tie it all together. In the last post of the series we will look at writing the conclusion for our essay.
Nurse Corps Scholarship Program
Wrapping up your nursing scholarship essay
The Third Step to Great Nursing Scholarships Essays The last step of your fantastic award winning scholarship essay is the conclusion. A conclusion is the summation of your essay. There should not be any new points made. It should reiterate what you wanted to get across in the previous paragraphs without restating your ideas word for word. You should be able to show in your conclusion that all your main points were answered as you expected them to be. You may want to pose a provocative question or use an inspiring quotation to end your concluding paragraph. Give the reader something to think about as they pick up the next (not nearly as good as yours) essay. Remember what we talked about in our first post in this series. In the introduction you “tell them what you’re going to tell them.” In the body you “tell them” and in the conclusion you “tell them what you’ve told them.” Despite being a short paragraph, the conclusion can be the most important part of your essay. This is where you should leave the reader with a call to action. If this is an essay seeking acceptance in a nursing school you might say “For the preceding reasons, I believe I have much to offer your program and ask that you accept me.” If this is an essay for a scholarship you might say “Based upon the previously mentioned items, I ask that you award me this scholarship so that I might [bla bla bla].” When you have completed your essay you should have others review it to check for mistakes and clarity. They may see something you missed or point out a part that is not easily understood as it is written. It helps to read the essay aloud or have someone read it to you so that you can hear how it might be interpreted by others. Make sure that you run a spell checker and also have someone proofread it carefully for spelling or grammatical errors. Take a deep breath and place it in the envelope….then let the breath back out. Now that you know who to write a great essay, put it to use. Apply to a program or nursing scholarships!
Different courses of nursing like bsn nursing program, LPN nursing programs etc are available in the form of choices to the students and nursing scholarships as well as rewards are offered to the registered students in all of these programs. Now, students can learn the lesson of nursing as the bsn nursing programs are offered to the students online by many online nursing schools of foreign countries.
Types of Grants offered to students
In online bsn nursing programs, the students are able to gain benefits of mainly two types of bsn nursing scholarships and grants viz merit based scholarship and need based scholarship. Students are able to enjoy numerous grant opportunities from their nursing universities after qualifying himself or herself for the scholarship. In the bsn program, grant programs are available for all prospective students who’re eager to get registered and become a part of this online bsn nursing training. In fact, the Government based scholarships and grants makes the nursing programs valuable whose benefits can be easily accessed from anywhere.
Need based Scholarships
Other forms of nursing scholarships i.e. the need based scholarship is provided to the students on the basis of their financial status and family background. University students whose families are suffering from any sort of finance related problems can easily apply for need based grants while studying in bsn nursing program. This bsn nursing scholarship is mostly offered to those students who belong to the ethnic classes like African- American, Japanese, Hispanic or Arabic. The grant is offered to the qualified student on his or her financial family background and it also works for different healthcare applications thereby giving amazing opportunities to the families of students to get better treatment of any ailment without paying any extra penny.
The federal government possesses the right to give nursing scholarships directly for the committed student nurses. In fact, the US Government offers such form of scholarships for the National Health Service Corps. The decisions for the grants are fairly done by scholarship board and everyone can apply for it comfortably.