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Winning Essay Tips: The $500 Mistake

It’s official: The deadline for the Bank of America Student Voices Essay Contest was June 22nd and our judges are in deep, editing the more than 4,000 essays we received.

There are some great entries, but we also noticed some frequent mistakes students make that can instantly disqualify you from an essay contest.

Here, an example of what NOT to do in an essay — and some tips on making yourself a better candidate for scholarship cash.

Here’s one of the essays we received for The Bank of America Student Voices Essay Contest:

“To be able to hold onto your money you have to know how to manage it. Money management is a complicated process. As teenagers we often have no idea how to manage money and we end up wasting a lot of it. But in a bad economy most of us have had a crash course in what happens when you don’t manage your money properly. We have had to delve into a world foreign and unfamiliar to us and solve our own money problems. The most successful of us have managed to still have some semblance of a social life without going over our small budgets. The keys to doing this successfully are actually quite simple.

You have to get creative. You are not always going to have the time to sit there with a calculator crunching numbers so create small ways to keep thing balanced without having to. Send yourself easy phone reminders about a few of your expenses. Always bring your school id with you because a lot of places will give students discounted rates. And finally, just remember where your money is going it will help.”

So, what was wrong and what was right?

One thing the essay writer did correctly was to stay within the word count for the contest. The Bank of America Student Voices Essay Contest stated that essays should range from 250-350 words and this essay comes in at 349 words. Good job! Another positive is that the writer stayed on topic and answered the question that was presented.

However, even though the writer did stay on topic, the response took a meandering approach and didn’t take a strong or memorable stance. In short, the “meat” of the essay wasn’t there. Think of it this way: sum up in one sentence what you want the reviewer to know and remember after reading your essay. Did you get that across in a clear and concise way?

Each essay should get across at least one breakout idea (aka the thesis statement) and the rest of the essay should focus on selling that point. If it’s a new, creative or off-beat idea, focus on selling and explaining that. If it’s a common idea, focus on trying to say it better than anyone else.

Here are a few more examples of what the essay writer did wrong:

• Misspellings – Misspellings are the fastest way to ensure an essay is disqualified. When combing through a stack of essays, a judge will first rule out the essays with simple misspellings. Long story short: run a spell check and have someone else you trust look over it. It’s always best to get a second set of eyes.
• Incomplete sentences — Remember, each sentence should have a subject (someone or something) and a verb (action). Wondering if your sentence is complete? Here’s a hint: A complete sentence tells a complete thought.
• No capitalization – it’s bad enough not to capitalize words at the beginning of a sentence, but at the beginning of a paragraph it stands out even more! Yikes!
• Missing punctuation — In this example, the writer does not have proper command over the use of commas — namely they are missing in places they should have been added and added places they are not required.
• Poor grammar and sentences that don’t make sense— The essay writer uses poor word choices, improper grammar and mistakes such as having too many spaces between words. Another example of poor grammar is the confusion of grammatical persons — in the beginning of the essay the writer uses the first person plural (we) and toward the end, the writer uses the second person (you).
• Run-on sentences— In this essay, one sentence has 72 words. As a rule, try to keep sentences no longer than 35 words each.

Keep these tips in mind the next time you write an essay. Remember, you don’t want to give the judges any reason to disqualify your essay right off the bat.

And, stay tuned for the announcement of The Bank of America Student Voices Essay Contest winner to be announced on FastWeb on Monday June 29th! The final winning essay will be judged by FastWeb’s own Financial Aid Guru, Mark Kantrowitz.

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