About Yourself Scholarship Essay Examples

Essential tips to master writing a "tell us about yourself" scholarship essay. We’ll show you some scholarship essay examples about yourself, along with writing tips to guide you along the way. Includes 3 example essays of 100, 250, and 500 words!

A popular scholarship essay prompt is “Tell us about yourself.” This question is relatively open-ended, which may make it difficult to answer at first glance. What should I tell them about myself? My struggles, my goals, my passions…? These may all be fitting topics, depending on the scholarship. We’ll show you some scholarship essay examples about yourself, along with writing tips to guide you along the way. What They Want to Know about You As you prepare to write, think of the topics the scholarship committee would be interested in. These may include:

• Your current degree, as it applies to your overall career goals. You can explain why you chose your current educational path and what you want to do with that.

• Your short-term and long-term professional goals. Frame your answer as if to say “Where will you be in 5 years? Where will you be in 10 years?” Scholarship committees like to reward people with defined aspirations.

• Past experiences that sparked your passions. You could talk about an influential person in your life, but make sure most of the essay focuses on you. After all, you are talking about yourself.

• Something about you that relates to their organization. With any scholarship essay, you should try to connect yourself with the organization providing the funding. Don’t force a connection. Find one that naturally fits. Mention hobbies, experiences and goals that match what the review committee is looking for.  

• Something unique that sets you apart from other applicants. This may be volunteer experience, career specialties, situational differences (growing up in an area that didn’t encourage education), etc.

Note that you do not have to throw all this information into one essay. Choose the elements that best fit the scholarship. If you were on the review board, what would you want to learn about each applicant? What would make you choose one applicant over another? Keep this in mind as you develop your thoughts.