<p>I’m applying for the Davidson Fellows Scholarship and my essay/portfolio, which is a literature piece, has to qualify as a significant piece of work, as defined by at least one of
the following criteria:
• exceptional creativity
• a new idea with high impact and/or broad implications
• an innovative solution with regional, state and/or national implications
• an important advancement that can be replicated and built upon
• an interdisciplinary discovery with the potential to effect positive change
• a prodigious performance </p>
<p>I’m going with first two.
But how do I explain how my essay is creative? I feel arrogant… What if they don’t think it’s creative?</p>
<p>If they don’t think it’s creative you probably won’t get the scholarship. That’s all, they won’t come after you with sticks or anything. Sometimes there can be a fine line between arrogance and selling yourself and your achievements properly. Just say what you have to say about it and don’t sell yourself short either. Give it a shot and what happens, happens but don’t drive yourself nuts about it.</p>
<p>That’s up to the readers/judges to decide. My son had an essay that was panned by the GCs, and by me, as well. It read like term paper and did not, to me or to other readers, give any peek into the person he was. It was purely a research paper with a few lines at the end making a bit of a connection. But it was really the only essay on file to fit one of the ivies that needed an extra essay which was an 11th hour add on. So it was written, it was there, so he used it rather than write another one. </p>
<p>The Adcoms there loved it and specifically mentioned it and he even got a call from a prof about research opportunities in the field. He hit the jackpot in that the reader was very interested, so interested in the topic, that he sent the essay to a department for reading. Who would have guessed? It could have just as easily been a yawn, and that would have been it. Frankly, it was not easy to read for most people and not particularly exciting, but, hey, if you get, say a runner to read an essay about running, out of pure luck, you’re in the gravy. There is some luck involved in this.</p>