5 Habits of Highly Successful Scholarship Winners

We have all seen or heard stories of someone winning over $100,000 in scholarships. After you learn the 5 habits of highly successful scholarship winners, you may be the next six-figure scholarship winner,

 

 

When it comes to winning scholarships, the most important thing to remember is that you don’t have to pay the money back. We all love free money, so let’s find out how you can win thousands of dollars too.

I am spilling the tea on the habits of highly successful scholarship winners.

 

Here are the 5 Habits of Highly Successful Scholarship Winners

 

Design a vision

​Few people are successful because of luck; they usually have a plan in place. You have to know what your goals are and the steps you need to achieve these goals. If you know that your dream career is to be an NFL agent, then you would have to go obtain an undergrad degree and a grad degree.

If you know that you want to obtain your undergrad degree from Howard University, which is one of the most competitive HBCUs to get into, there are certain things you will need to accomplish to get accepted into Howard.

It will take hard work, good grades, and effective study habits to stand out among all the Howard applicants. So you were accepted into Howard, but you need to figure out how you are going to pay the tuition. Now you have to determine the cost to attend Howard each year and how much money you will need to pay each year.

Once you have calculated your out-of-pocket expenses, it’s time to come up with a financial plan. By the way, you don’t have to wait until you are accepted or your senior year to figure out how to pay for college—it’s never too early to plan for college.

Now that you know the cost to attend your dream school, it’s time to win school scholarships. You have created your vision, you know your academic goals, and you have completed the first habit of highly successful scholarship winners.

 

 

​Implement a System

Usually, scholarship winners have applied for several scholarships and understand the similarity between the scholarships. After applying for and winning several scholarships, these highly successful scholarship winners know how to prepare and expedite their scholarship process.

The purpose of the scholarship application and requirements is to get to know you and to find the best scholars for their scholarship program. Some scholarship applications require a memorable essay or video and documents that verify your financial need or academic performance. Scholarships may require information from your high school counselor, test scores, or information about your academic program, so you want to make sure you are always prepared and can obtain any information promptly.

The best advice I can give you is to be prepared before you have to be prepared. Since you will be applying for many scholarships, it is important to have information that is requested over and over handy.

Whether you are a college student or high school student applying for scholarships, you should always have an updated transcript, a list of your extracurricular activities, and honors and awards. A personal statement and letters of recommendation are critical pieces of the scholarship process.

There are common scholarship essay questions that you will answer over and over, so it’s a good idea to save all your essays and label them by subject and scholarship name so you can easily assess your essays.  You probably won’t be able to copy and paste the same essay into another scholarship, but you can tweak the essay to meet another scholarship essay requirement.

Create a digital and physical folder where you can store the most requested documents so you can view these documents anytime; you never know when you may be chilling at the beach and get a scholarship alert about an upcoming scholarship deadline. Include a scholarship spreadsheet in your digital folder, and you can use it as your screen saver, too, this way, you can track all the scholarships you have completed and the upcoming scholarship deadlines.

​When you sit down to do a scholarship, it should be a streamlined process. You can open up your digital folder and go to your scholarship spreadsheet and pick a couple of scholarships with upcoming deadlines. Figure out your plan of attack for your scholarships, from reading the directions to sending a follow-up note after the scholarship has been submitted.

Your scholarship process should be easy for you to implement and personalized for your success. Your scholarship process is your system which you will utilize every time apply for a scholarship. A great scholarship system has everything at your fingertips. It will include pertinent usernames and passwords, previous scholarship videos and essays, request letters of recommendations and recommendations, and your scholarship resume—just to name a few.

If you need some info from your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or you need to log back into a scholarship that you haven’t completed, you shouldn’t have to go through a whole bunch of scrap papers to find your username and passwords.

You don’t want to waste time looking for a recommender’s contact info or an essay that you completed two weeks ago. Your system should save you time and have everything you need at the click of your mouse.

Putting processes in place is one of the habits of highly successful scholarship winners.

 

Follow Instructions

This is the easiest habit of highly successful scholarship winners, but a lot of people fail to follow instructions. Before you apply for a scholarship, take time to read through all the eligibility and criteria information.

Do you meet the scholarship criteria? If you are not sure if you meet the criteria or have another question try to contact the scholarship organization so they can assist with your question.

Usually, you can contact the organization by phone, email, or through their social media.

If the scholarship requires a video or essay, review the minimum or maximum requirements. If the essay should be a maximum of 500 words, don’t submit a 580-word essay.

​Review the requested format for the scholarship submission. This can vary from scholarship to scholarship. Some scholarships must be submitted electronically, while other scholarships must be mailed. There are some scholarships where a portion must be submitted online, and certain components must be mailed.

If you are completing a scholarship that requires you to submit the application and essay online, but mail an official transcript, don’t take it upon yourself to submit your official transcript because you have a digital copy. Never assume anything. Just follow the instructions.

RELATED POST: Top 23 Common Scholarship Mistakes to Avoid

What is the deadline? Remember, there are no exceptions to the deadline. The application and all materials should be submitted before the deadline. Try not to wait until the deadline to submit your scholarship applications. You could have computer issues or

the scholarship website could go down; I have experienced this several times when I started my scholarship journey.

If you have to mail your scholarship materials, mail them at least two weeks before the deadline. If a scholarship requires that your recommender mail their letter of recommendation, make sure you communicate the deadline and follow up with the recommender to make sure they don’t miss the deadline.

 

Apply for Best Fit Scholarships

Highly successful scholarship winners only apply to scholarships that they are excellent candidates for.

There are scholarships specifically for high school students, incoming college students, graduate students, and middle school students; matter of fact, there are scholarships for everyone. There are plenty of scholarships for underrepresented populations and scholarships for various skills and hobbies. If you are engaged in your community, there are scholarships for community members and scholarships for dedication to community service.

You get the point. There is plenty of scholarship money to be won, but you have to find scholarships tailored to you. If you are not strong academically but you only apply for academic scholarships, you may be wasting valuable time and missing out on thousands of non-academic scholarships.

Some scholarships have very specific criteria. For example, there may be a scholarship that requires you to be a student at a particular school or live in a specific area; these geographic scholarships are gems because they have less competition than a national scholarship.

Another type of scholarship is career interests scholarships which are based on career industries. If your career aligns with scholarship criteria, this is another scholarship with less competition.

Before you apply for scholarships, make sure you check out the previous winners, some scholarships will list the last winners’ bio and other information. Read the winners’ profiles and see if you can determine what made the winner stand out among the crowd.

Also, find out what you have in common with the previous winners.  As you read the winners’ profile, this will give you a glimpse as to what the scholarship committee was looking for.

The best-fit scholarships are usually scholarships with specific criteria that will weed out the masses but are closely tailored to your characteristics.

Related Post: Best April Scholarships for High School Students in 2025

 

Create an Elevator Pitch

Scholarship judges review a lot of applications and usually have a few minutes to review each application. Unfortunately, the judges don’t have a lot of time to spend on all the scholarship applications, so your application must stand out.

Each application has a central component that introduces you to the scholarship committee. Your introduction must be engaging and informative. The central component could be a video, an essay, or an interview. Whatever the required component is, you must be able to showcase yourself.

You must be able to introduce yourself in a minimal amount of time. Every highly successful scholarship winner has perfected their elevator pitch. I know you are thinking, what is an elevator pitch? It’s really simple! An elevator pitch is a brief summary of your background and life experiences.

Take some time to think about who you are and what life experiences immediately stand out or what experiences had a positive or negative impact on your life. Imagine you are looking for a summer job, and the interviewer says, “Tell me about yourself.”

Would you stammer, or would it take 10 minutes to talk about yourself? If you stammer, it may appear that you have a hard time expressing yourself. On the other hand, if you ramble on for 10 minutes, you probably lose the interviewer after 5 minutes. So you need to learn how to hit all the important points within a few minutes.

This will take practice, but once you can summarize your life, skills, and experiences into a brief speech, you are on your way to winning scholarships. Now you can sell yourself in a couple of minutes, AND you have just created your elevator pitch.

An elevator pitch is a summary of something that you want to present or sell; it can be a product, an idea, or yourself. For scholarship purposes, you need to be able to sell yourself. In all your college and scholarship applications you want the people that are reading your application to know that you are the best candidate. That’s what I love about elevator pitches you can use them anywhere.

I remember my mentor telling me if I was in the elevator with the CEO of my dream company, I should be able to pitch myself to the CEO. While I’m standing next to the CEO and the elevator is going to the next floor, I should be able to tell the CEO why he/she should hire me for my dream position at the company—-Before the CEO steps off the elevator.

Remember, most humans are walking around in an information overload daze. We are constantly consuming information from our phones, computers, radios, and tv. It is

refreshing to receive short bursts of captivating information—this is why everyone loves TikTok, IG Reels, and YT Shorts.

If you are submitting a 5-minute scholarship video, your personality, and any other pertinent information should be reflected within the first 60 seconds of the video. I know it sounds impossible, but if you scroll TikTok, you will see 15-30 second videos with a lot of good information. YouTube created YT Short because everyone doesn’t have the time to sit and watch a 10-minute video, but people love watching videos under 60 seconds.

​If you are submitting a scholarship essay, whether it is a long or short essay, and you want to talk about all your extracurricular activities and other personal information—write about these early in the essay. The first 2-3 sentences of any scholarship essay are the most important. You need to capture my attention early and not in the last paragraph of your essay.

If your essay doesn’t reel the scholarship judge in early, they may not make it down to the last paragraph of your essay. So start all your essays, videos, and interviews with impact, which should reflect your personality and draw the judges in.

​Don’t write an essay and include quotes and facts but barely talk about you; this doesn’t show the judges who you are. Practice and perfect your elevator pitch so the scholarship committee can get to know you in a matter of minutes.

Another habit of highly successful scholarship winners is their elevator pitch, where they clearly and concisely communicate their aspirations, goals, and achievements.

 

Successful scholarship winners pitch themselves as the best candidates for scholarships that are a great fit for them. They can follow directions and present their best selves throughout the scholarship process. Which of the above habits of highly successful scholarship winners will you implement into your scholarship strategy?