Google Women Techmakers Scholarship: Essay Questions
A step-by-step guide on how to write the right essay answers!
Hola!🌈
If you are a woman seeking to apply for the WTM scholarship, you’ve landed at the right place!
Since the day I put the announcement for being selected as the Google WTM scholar for the Asia Pacific region’20, I’ve naturally been receiving a downpour of messages asking me the very golden question ‘How to write different/good/stand out essay answers?’
To tackle the very art of forming the right answers, I decided to break down the process for you, into small doable steps!
STEP 1: Ideate, Think💡
Before you start answering your essay questions, I would suggest to sit down and complete the following tasks.
Have a conversation with yourself. Talk to yourself. Read about the scholarship, dig in more! Have a concrete reason in the first place to apply to this wonderful initiative.
Reason out and read a few blogs about this, or maybe watch a video or two! There are so many initiatives that past scholars carry out for the very purpose of speaking up about their experiences.
Researching would get you pepped up for applying to this scholarship and make you ten folds more excited about it.
This way you’ll get hold of an idea regarding what kind of people the WTM team is looking for.
Bonus: Look out for the various talks and workshops past scholars are holding, around your region. If not, why not arrange for it yourself :)
STEP 2: Draft Soon📝
I know you probably want to perfect your answer, and want absolutely no error while writing your answers for the first time, which is ultimately leading to a lot of procrastination.
The better road to perfecting your answers is- Review ←→ Edit
Rather than sitting at once to write your application for straight 3 hours or so, and then hustling to find people to review your essays, this is a more modular and structured approach.
The plus point being the elimination of the need to perfect your answer on the very first try itself. You’ll see your answers evolve and would have a much more open-minded take on changing your answers drastically.
My first application draft was nowhere close to my final application! Accept mistakes, take suggestions and decide what aligns best with your application.
STEP 3: Support System❤️
Once you’ve written your first draft, you can subsequently oscillate between your friends, seniors, classmates or pretty much anyone you can get a hold of, to proof-read your answers, suggest any edits or indentation improvements.
These edits mostly do not require context and can be suggested by anyone with a good hold of the language.
This would ensure that when actual scholars review your application they can work on the things that matter and suggest improvements on the quality of your answer rather than picking up syntactical/grammatical errors.
STEP 4: Connect Early🤝
The process of getting your application reviewed can be hectic.
You need to find the right people and approach them at the correct time to get your application reviewed.
This is the step where your network steps in; I can safely say that the community, especially the WTM scholars’ community is uber supportive!
You can easily find them on LinkedIn, community groups, WTM website.
However, past scholars would be bombarded with applications as you start moving closer to the deadline.
Therefore, there are high chances that your application might be lost in that sea of appeals, or the scholars might not even have the time to look at your application straightaway.
To avoid a last-minute rush, follow Step 2!
STEP 5: Cherry on Top!🍒
After you are satisfied with your application, you can add value to it by creating hyperlinks over your project repo (if any), any relevant links, your blogs, etc.
If the reviewer finds time to hover around even 1 or 2 links it furthers your claim and proves that you’ve done the work you’re talking about.
Consider adding a picture, if you have any, it could be you participating in a hackathon, collaborating with people, doing community work, or simply working on a project.
SOME GENERAL GOOD PRACTICES TO FOLLOW:
- Stick to the word limit: It is required of you to stick to the word limit exactly. Do not try to sneak in an extra paragraph or two because it directly results in information overload and does not leave a good impression on the reviewer.
- Clean, Simple: Make sure your application is easy to read, doesn’t have any twisted words or hard to comprehend statements. You have to be very direct and play smart with your in-hand word limit.
- Avoid Filler Phrases: Completely strike-off redundant achievements, claims or anything which isn’t necessary. Every line in your essay should complement the lines around it. Every statement that you type should have an important role to play. Your answer should feel incomplete without the lines you choose to keep, this is how you prioritise to keep some things in your application over the others.
PS: Feel free to reach out to me at akankshatanwar@womenwhocode.com, in case of any further queries or assistance.
