arrowoblio

Hi all, I've just been blessed with admissions to my top choice school, Columbia for admissions in the spring. This is ideal for me because I dont have anything going on or a job to keep me until fall. Here's the only tiny snag-- they offered me $10k in scholarship money, and I'm going to need a lot more. Anybody have advice on scholarships to apply for that don't have the caveat of 'fall admissions only' that you've come across? All the funding opportunities I seem to find are focused around the 'normal' admissions cycle. Thanks!

Nah, I dont think that will help you at all.

I'm having the same dilemma. My thought is, if you're going to open with a story, it has to be extremely well-written and relevant. I think the overarching point is to make sure the adcomm gets to know you, and if you can do that in a straightforward way without a story or 'hook', they wouldn't respect you any less, I would think. Any story I begin with tends to come off as editorial and ultimately irrelevant to the question. My prompt is fairly basic, in essence: Why do you want your degree here, and what are your research and career interests? If you're like me and after months of thinking on why you are fascinated by authoritarian regimes and civil society development, it might be better to just jump right in.