How to Answer Popular Scholarship Questions: Handling the Classic “Tell Us About Yourself”

Whether it’s a short writing supplement to your application or a scholarship interview question, the “Tell us about yourself” phrase is as daunting as it is pervasive. You know you will be asked that at some stage, so instead of dreading it, why not take the time to prepare for it?

Sure, it isn’t easy to talk about yourself, especially about your strong sides and achievements. It almost feels like bragging, and modesty prevents many of us from showing off our skills and competencies. Yet, if you want this scholarship, you must prove that you are a worthy candidate.

Despite the question being open-ended, the answer expected from the candidates usually follows a specific formula. There are topics you should cover and qualities you should demonstrate in your short and sweet response. In this post, we will outline some of the crucial aspects you should address in your answer.

Things to Cover with Your Answer

Answering the “Tell about yourself” question allows you to present yourself as a deserving candidate for the scholarship and an asset to the academic community. That is why your response should be half autobiography, half forecast, where you connect relevant details of your life and your personal traits with your future goals.

Let’s look at a generalized outline of your answer. Here is what the scholarship granting committee wants to know:

1. Introduce yourself and give a brief background

You might want to tell where you grew up: whether you lived in the country or a big city, stayed in one place, or moved around a lot. You don’t have to be very detailed, but with quick brush strokes, paint a picture of your past and its relevance to your life goals and academic interests. For example, you can tell how growing up in a big family, you’ve helped your siblings with their homework and realized you want to become a teacher.

2. Your education status, and what do you plan to study

Tell about your major and any courses, projects, or extracurriculars relevant to your application to demonstrate that you are already working towards your goals. For example, you can mention that you are tutoring children in your community or working as a free essay writer helper with college hopefuls.

3. Your unique personality traits

Connect everything to your personal strengths (roughly three) with the help of a story or a personal anecdote. How these traits helped you on your way to achieving your goals? You can turn negative into positive by telling, for example, how you experienced difficulties with business law research papers relevant to your work in the community, but you set aside an hour each day to work through the hurdles. This will demonstrate your determination, application, commitment, and planning skills.

4. How this scholarship helps you to achieve your educational and career goals

Then you can segue into stating your need: why do you need this scholarship, and how it will help you. For example, tell how this scholarship will allow you to attend a course you need to grow professionally and learn new skills.

5. What you can contribute to the community and academia, if your application is successful

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To cement the impression, tell how these new skills and knowledge will enable you to effect positive changes, serve your community, create, or contribute to your academic field. Make sure this picture aligns with (or at least does not contradict) the scholarship provider’s vision. For example, if the scholarship or grant is intended to support women in science, stress your academic and research goals.

Coming prepared will set you up for a successful response. Consider which formative events in your life have shaped the person you are today, your strengths, interests, and how it all matches with the scholarship qualifications and your academic and career goals. Practice your answer in front of your family, friends, or just in front of a mirror. Although you don’t want to sound too rehearsed, you need to be confident and compelling.

Things to Avoid

Now that you know that despite being vague on the surface, the “tell us about yourself” question actually mines for concrete answers. That means some things that formally fit the inquiry can be irrelevant or even detrimental to your application. Here are some examples of the things to avoid in your response:

1. Hobbies and activities irrelevant to the scholarship

You might be proud of that gigantic Millennium Falcon model you’ve built from LEGO pieces in your parents’ shed, but unless you are studying to become an engineer or plan to design similar sets for a living, this feat is probably irrelevant. Better wait for a specific question about your hobbies and pastimes.

2. Focusing on other people too much

While social connections define us and mentioning influential figures and role models is absolutely fine, don’t talk too much about your friends and family. Remember that you are the candidate the committee wants to know more about.

3. Things that give away your lack of interest

Research the scholarship and the foundation that awards it thoroughly. You must know not only what qualifies you as a candidate but also what granting institution’s mission and values are, what they seek to achieve, and what they look for in the successful candidate. It will also help if you have a detailed plan of how you will dispense of the scholarship if your application is successful: research plan, courses you will take, etc.

Don’t worry if your answer lacks dramatic overcoming adversity stories and other impressive features. Suffices if it is authentic and paints a true picture of who you are as a person. Anyway, it’s just a little piece of your entire application, so don’t overstress yourself about it. You might want to check out my other posts on popular scholarship questions to come prepared. Stay positive and good luck!