How to reuse essays for great scholarship applications

Writing an essay or personal statement for college applications takes a lot of work. So does applying for scholarships! But did you know that you can recycle your essays and use them for scholarship applications? 

Recycling essays is a great way to save time and help you get money to pay for your education. Here are my top tips for repurposing your college application essays or personal statement for scholarship applications. 

1. Read the scholarship essay prompt and guidelines
2. See which essay is most closely aligned 
3. Edit the essay so it’s specific to that scholarship 
4. Make final revisions

Writing a college scholarship essay is really similar to writing an essay for a college application (sometimes known as personal statements). You have to respond to a prompt, or essay question or topic, with your experience or ideas. An example can be “Tell us about a time you overcame an academic challenge” or “How have you shown leadership in your life?”. You would respond with examples from your life. 

Yes! You can definitely reuse essays you wrote for college applications for scholarship applications. Reusing your essays is a good idea for many reasons (I talk about these in the next section). Keep reading for my tips on how to reuse your essays in the best way. 

Recycling your personal statements for scholarship applications is a good idea for several reasons. Most importantly, reusing college application essays will help you apply for more scholarships. This is because it will save you time. Many scholarship applications require an essay and many have similar prompts to each other. Imagine writing a new essay for every scholarship application! That would take a lot of time. Reusing your essays will save you time so that you can apply for more scholarships and get more money. 

Reusing college application essays is also a good idea because it allows you to use already good content. You probably edited your college application essay several times and had someone review it. If you reuse it, you’re using already revised content and can work on making it better. If you write a new essay, you’re starting the writing and editing process from scratch. You may be more likely to make mistakes you have already overcome.  

You should also reuse your essays because the prompts for scholarship application essays are often similar to each other or similar to college application essays. Why try to come up with a new topic if you basically already wrote the essay?

So how to reuse college essays for scholarships? It’s pretty simple. Here’s how to do it: 

First step is to read the scholarship essay prompt and writing guidelines. Understand what the prompt is asking you to talk about. Is it asking you to give an example of how you have overcome challenges in your life? Or is it asking about your opinion about a certain topic? Knowing what the prompt is asking for will help you know whether you have already written something similar or if you have to start from scratch. 

Now that you know the prompt, read your college application essay(s) to see which ones respond to the scholarship application prompt. If the scholarship essay prompt is essentially the same as your college application essay prompt, that’s an easy choice. But if its not, you’ll have to read your essays to identify which one responds to the prompt most closely. 

In each essay, you probably talked about a life experience that serves as an example of a skill, value, or talent you have. These experiences are what you should identify when picking which essay to reuse. Say you wrote an essay about a time you had to work in a team to overcome a challenge. Maybe your scholarship application prompt asks about a time you showed leadership, but you can reuse the teamwork essay here too. That’s because it’s likely you showed leadership when working in a team to overcome a challenge. Even if the prompt is not the same or similar to what you have written, you can still reuse an essay.

You’ll have to tailor your essay so that it’s aligned with the scholarship application requirements. You may have to take some sentences out so that you fit the word limit. You may have to add a bit so that you can dive deeper into the topic. Or, you may have to adjust what you wrote so that you answer the specific prompt you’re working on. Editing your essay will ensure that you don’t write something that’s off-topic. 

Another important edit to make is to try to align your essay to the scholarship provider’s values. This is important because scholarship providers are looking to essentially invest in you. They have reasons and motivations for providing scholarships, so try to align to that. You may reuse an essay for a scholarship for working parents and another for students who have shown leadership. Both may have the same prompt, but trying to tie to the provider’s values can give you an extra boost and raise your chances of getting the scholarship. 

Most importantly, revise your now edited essay. Make sure you’re answering the question, are within the word limit, and are tailoring what you’re writing to the scholarship provider. As always, read your writing out loud, slowly, to make sure what you wrote makes sense and that you don’t have any glaring mistakes. 

There are certain things you should avoid when writing a scholarship essay. Make sure you don’t include a different scholarship provider or college’s name! It will be obvious you reused the essay and that may hurt your chances of getting the scholarship. You should also avoid talking about a completely unrelated topic. That will also show you reused your essay. Finally, avoid some of the most common mistakes I’ve seen in application essays. Here are the top 3 college application essay mistakes I’ve seen in my career, and what to do instead. 

Reusing your college application essays for scholarship essays is a great way to help you save time and apply to more scholarships. There’s nothing wrong with it as long as you follow my tips on how to recycle personal statements for scholarship applications. Hopefully these tips will help you save time and get more money!