Writing and Mary Gates Leadership

Tips for a Successful Leadership Application
Apply When You're Ready
Most students who are successful in the leadership scholarship application process are those who are beyond the "idea" stage and have begun planning or implementing their ideas. Planning may include activities such as making contact with involved persons, scheduling and organizing meetings, recruiting volunteers or participants, writing a mission statement, or getting elected to office. The scholarship committee members need to be able to imagine you in action.
Focus Your Essay
Below are some questions to think about as you develop your application essay. Use these and other questions you identify about your own learning and leadership goals to help you develop an integrated statement. Essays that are merely a list of separate answers to these questions will not be competitive.
Leadership
• What does leadership mean to you?
• What experiences have informed these understandings?
• How will your activity and your role in that activity deepen your thinking about leadership?
Project
• What activity do you propose to undertake with this scholarship? (Be specific)
• What is your unique role in this project - how does you individual initiative and creativity shape your project?
• How does this project or activity provide a way for you to develop as a leader?
Learning
• What do you hope to learn through your involvement in the activity you describe?
• How does your activity foster this learning?
• How does this learning connect to your larger educational and/or life goals?
Outcomes
• What do you hope to know, be able to do, or become as a result of your experience with your proposed activity?
• How will you know you have achieved these goals?
• What difference will accomplishing these goals make in you and your role in a community?
Write a Compelling Essay
The writing of a Mary Gates Leadership essay calls for a balancing act between describing your ideas on leadership and personal