How to Create a Scholarship Application Portfolio
Although earning a college degree has always been a dream of mine, one thing has always stood in the way: cost. Rather than solve this problem with an even bigger one (student loan debt), I decided to try my hand at applying for scholarships…a lot of them.
Applying to so many scholarships could feel overwhelming and time-consuming, but as I applied for scholarships by the dozen, I quickly developed a system that helped me submit more high-quality applications in less time, less effort, AND less stress! (After all, between college applications, school coursework, and extracurriculars, students don’t have much free time as it is!) The key to it all? My scholarship application portfolio.
What is a Scholarship Application Portfolio?
A scholarship application portfolio (just one important section of a scholarship binder) is an expanded resume of your extracurricular activities, volunteer hours, awards and achievements, and more. After all, besides an essay, one of the most frequently requested items on any scholarship application is a list of your extracurricular activities, honors, and awards. However, constantly trying to recall these activities and their details off the top of your head can become tiresome and frustrating, especially when you have to do it with each and every application… this is where your scholarship application portfolio comes in!
Accumulating all of these items into a singular portfolio essentially creates your “cheat sheet”–a reference guide to all of your accomplishments–that can easily be copied and pasted into any of your scholarship applications…quickly expediting the time spent on an application. This decreased time per application means that you can apply to more scholarships in less time, thereby increasing your odds of receiving one. Although creating a comprehensive scholarship application portfolio takes a lot of work in the beginning, it saves time in the long run, making the application process a lot smoother!
How to Organize Your Scholarship Application Portfolio
Your scholarship application portfolio should be divided into following 5 sections: Extracurricular Activities, Volunteer Services, Honors and Awards, Leadership Positions, and Academics. When compiling these items, start at the high school level unless you earned something at the state, national, or global level prior to high school. Along with listing each item, you will need to provide a thorough description for each one, giving scholarship judges every detail they need to know about the activity.
1. Extracurricular Activities
This first section of the scholarship application portfolio is extracurricular activities that you have participated in throughout high school and college.
It is important to not only name the activity in the portfolio, but provide a full description, as many scholarship applications will give you the option to describe what the activity was. When this option is given (even if it’s optional) you need to do it. This is your opportunity to brag about yourself and communicate to the judges why the activities you participated in were important. After all, you should never assume that the scholarship judge is familiar with a particular award or extracurricular activity, so you need to communicate that importance. A strong description can put you ahead of the competition.
How to Write a Successful Description for an Extracurricular Activity
When writing descriptions for extracurricular activities, it is important to note these items in your description:
- The amount of TIME dedicated the activity
- Ex. 1 meeting/week, 10 hours/month, etc.
- How LONG you participated in the activity
- Ex. 1 semester, 4 years, etc.
- WHAT the activity was
- Was it an extracurricular activity where you developed a specific skill (such as Spanish Club), an activity with competitions (such as Debate Team), etc.?
- What were your RESPONSIBILITIES?
- Were you required to complete a certain number of volunteer hours as part of the activity? Did you have to prepare for competitions?
- Did you have any LEADERSHIP POSITIONS?
- Whether you were president, responsible for recording minutes, or something else, any position where you were held to be an authority figure can be considered a leadership position. Make sure you note this in your description, as scholarship organizations are often looking to sponsor students who display leadership skills or leadership potential.
- What did you LEARN from it? How did you GROW?
- You may have participated in an extracurricular activity, but what did you gain from it? Did you learn something? Did it help you give back to the community? Did it provide career insight? Whatever it may be, make sure you note it in the description for each activity, as this part alone will help you stand out from other applicants.
While these descriptions may sound tiring, they will help you stand out from other applicants and will make it worth it in the end. I recommend writing a thorough description for each activity once, then copying and pasting it into each scholarship application, making updates as needed. This means that you do the majority of the work only once, saving yourself time in the long run.
Examples of Weak and Strong Extracurricular Activities Descriptions
When writing the descriptions of your extracurricular activities, you should never assume that the scholarship judge is familiar with that particular activity (no matter how well known it is), so you need to communicate its importance. A strong description is what can put you ahead of the competition.
For example, let’s say there are two candidates for a scholarship, each with similar credentials. On their application, one candidate lists the name of the organization and a brief description of the activity, like this:
Beta Club (Grades 9-12)
I was a member of Beta Club, an honor organization where I had to maintain a good GPA and perform community service hours.
The other applicant lists something like this:
Beta Club (Grades 9-12)
I have been a member of Jefferson High School’s Beta Club since the 9th grade, and it has truly been an honor to participate in it. Beta Club has not only pushed me to maintain a high GPA and serve my community, but it has also allowed me to grow as a person through the lessons that I have learned when interacting with my fellow Beta Club members and the non-profits I have volunteered my time with. One of the non-profits that I have volunteered with through Beta Club is Jefferson Pet Rescue, in which I volunteered 20 hours assisting with tasks such as walking the rescue dogs and cleaning kennels.
Which student do you think is going to get the scholarship? The second one, of course!
2. Volunteer Activities
Scholarship organizations love to see students volunteer, as volunteer work develops character while also giving back to the community.
Even if you haven’t volunteered with a community organization, volunteering can also be an act of unpaid kindness, such as shoveling snow from an elderly person’s driveway or tutoring a kid from your neighborhood. As long as you were giving back to the community in a selfless way, you can list it in your volunteer services section.
How to Write a Successful Description for a Volunteer Activity
For the description of volunteer services, be sure you note the following items:
- The TITLE of your role and RESPONSIBILITIES
- Were you a dog bather at the Humane Society? Did you wash dishes for the soup kitchen? Give them the details of everything you were responsible for!
- WHERE you volunteered
- This doesn’t always have to be super-specific, but if it’s a major non-profit you will want to mention it by name.
- How many HOURS you volunteered
- Whether you volunteered 1 hour per week or just once, you’ll want to note how much time you spent volunteering with the organization.
- How volunteering affected OTHERS
- This is a major point you’ll want to discuss in your description. Let them know how important your role and responsibility was and the positive effect it had on others.
- How volunteering affected YOU
- Describe how you felt during and after volunteering. Maybe you discovered something new about yourself and your community, or maybe it re-defined your career goals.
For example, in a volunteer activity where I picked up trash at a riverside park, I described my title (trash picker), my responsibilities (cleaning up trash from the area around the river), where I volunteered (the Ohio River), and how much time I volunteered (2 hours total).
In addition to the basics, I wrote about how much trash I had found, how my actions positively affected the environment, and how volunteering in the river clean-up made me more aware of the need to take care of our environment.
Once again, after creating a thorough description of each volunteer activity, it becomes something you can copy and paste into each scholarship application.
3. Honors and Awards
In this section, talk about the honors, awards, and recognition you’ve earned throughout high school and college. It is also the section where you can list something you earned before the high school level, as long as it was at least at a state or national level.
How to Write a Successful Description for a Honors and Awards
With each honor/award you earn, you will want to list the following information:
- The NAME of the award
- WHEN you earned it
- Year and/or grade level
- WHO the honor or award was from
- Was the honor/award presented by your school? A local non-profit? Be sure to specify who presented you with the award!
- The recognition LEVEL
- Was the award earned at the school, community, state, or national level?
After listing the basic info, you’ll want to write a description. It is okay to repeat the basic info you listed as an introduction to your description, then list what the award is and why it is important.
For example, I might list something like this in my portfolio:
Academic Achievement Award in Science (9th Grade, presented by Jefferson High School)
I earned Jefferson High School’s Academic Achievement Award in Science in the 9th grade due to my strong work ethic, frequent class participation, and hard work ethic throughout the school year. This award is extremely meaningful because it is only given to one student in my school each year. I was the student chosen that year due to my display of interest in science and my dedication to learning more about the field, including my participation in the science fair.
When you write your description, be sure to write why you earned it and its importance. It would be easy to list “Academic Achievement Award in Science” on a scholarship application and leave it at that, but without providing further context, the scholarship judges don’t know the importance of that award. For all they know, it could have been given to every student who passed science class!
That being said, always include a description for honors and awards, especially since awards with the same name can have entirely different meanings between schools and communities.
4. Leadership Positions
Scholarship organizations are looking for many qualities in their applicants, but one of the main qualities they’re looking for is leadership. They want to fund a student who is going to make a positive difference in the world.
What this means for you is that you need to tell them any and all leadership positions you’ve held in the past or are currently holding as this can give you a huge leg up in the competition.
How to Write a Successful Description for Leadership Positions
When you are describing the leadership position, you’ll want to include the following information:
- The NAME of the position
- Ex. President, Vice-President, Service Project Coordinator, etc.
- The YEAR you held the position
- This can be listed as a year (2019), a semester (Spring 2019), or as grade levels (9th-12th grade)
- The ORGANIZATION you held the position with
The description of a leadership position is much like that of the previous examples, but this time you should focus on the responsibilities you had, how you helped others, why your position was important, and what you learned.
Although saying you learned something for any of these categories is great, it is especially good for leadership because it shows that you not only earned your leadership position, but that you continued to grow and learn while holding the position.
5. Academics
This part of your scholarship portfolio is where you want to keep track of your GPA (weighted and unweighted), your honors and AP classes, dual-credit classes, etc. You will likely also need to list your standardized test scores, such as the ACT, SAT, and AP tests.
Scholarship applications will only ask you to list this information, making this one of the easier parts of an application. From my personal experience, the only time they may ask for a description related to your academics is an (optional) question as to whether there was something holding you back from performing better (such as a difficult home situation, illness, etc.). If this is applicable, you could have a pre-written statement prepared that is copied and pasted across applications, as needed.
Although this information is part of your scholarship application portfolio, I recommend keeping your academic information in a separate area of your scholarship binder. Don’t forget to check out my post on how to organize your scholarship binder.
Final Notes on Creating a Scholarship Portfolio
Although I’ve given you a lot of information on how to create a scholarship application portfolio, there are a few last details that I want to touch on:
Occasionally, You Can List It Twice
On some applications, you can list the same honor, award, or activity twice, as long as it’s in two different sections. For example, I often list my community service in one category and the extracurricular activities that I did them through in another. Similarly, you can count having a leadership position as an honor and therefore list it once in the Honors/Awards category and another time in the Leadership Positions category.
The reason why you can sometimes list the same honor, award, or activity twice is that there might be multiple judges looking over a single application, with each judge looking at a different section. This means that a judge in charge of scoring the extracurricular activities section of your application may not know that you did Beta Club, even though you put it in the Community Service section, because s/he is only looking at the section they were assigned to judge. Since some items can fit into two different categories, it is definitely something to consider.
However, if you’re unsure about whether you should do this on your scholarship application, reach out to the scholarship organization and ask.
Use Adjectives and Elaborate
You need to become a storyteller on your applications, rather than a robot reciting one thing after the next. When judges are looking through dozens of applications, hearing the same basic information over and over again gets old quickly. However, if you tell a story, they will remember you and that will work to your benefit.
For example:
- Description without adjectives: Through this position, I grew as a person.
- Description with adjectives: Through this leadership position, I have not only grown as a person, but I have also grown as a friend, student, and global citizen.
Additional Resources for Applying to Scholarships
Applying to scholarships can feel overwhelming and time-consuming, especially with the limited amount of time students have between homework, college applications, extracurricular activities, and jobs. However, creating a comprehensive scholarship application portfolio can save students hours of time and quickly decrease the amount of time it takes to apply to each scholarship.
For additional information on how to create a comprehensive strategy for applying to scholarships, be sure to check out the following posts:
