Add Letter of Recommendation for Scholarship Electronically Signed with airSlate SignNow

Esign letter of recommendation for scholarship

Okay, so you have a scholarship application and you need a reference letter. So what do you do? The first thing is to determine who you're going to ask. And the the best person to ask is someone who knows you well, and can speak to your character. So this the scholarship application will probably have requested a list of activities, so they'll know the types of activities that you've been involved in. The reference letter is really to have someone vouch for your character, so you want somebody who knows you quite well and can speak about your character. So we're talking about things like being reliable, hard-working, mature. And someone who can speak to your your integrity, basically. So ideally it would be great if this person could give some specific examples to back up some of those characteristics that they're talking about so, for example, if one of your references (your referee) is someone who you have, let's say, helped coach a U10 soccer team or something like that, then maybe they could bring up an example... like the time that you...maybe you talked to a player who is having a particularly difficult time dealing with a really close loss, and so you talked to that player about being a good sport when you lose, and that that sort of sportsmanship side of things. So if they could, you know, back up some of these statements with examples, then that would be great. And as a general rule you want someone who has known you for a year or more, and someone who has known you quite recently. So don't ask you know a Grade 8 teacher who you haven't seen in four years. Someone preferably you know from grade 11 or 12. So once you know who you're going to ask then your job is to make sure that they have everything they need to give you an excellent reference. So you need to give them things like a copy of the scholarship application so they know it's about and they know who the funder is, some clear instructions on what they're supposed to do for their letter or the form that they're supposed to fill out. So don't make them dig through all of that information, provide that for them. And give them a copy of your activities list or, you know, a basic resume or something like that, that they they can kind of look at and get a better picture of things. So here are two tips to kind of "up level" that reference letter and get you, you know, the really top one. You could provide an example for your referee. So give them an example of a time that you went above and beyond something, you know, above and beyond the role that you were in. So you might want to (using the example that I just mentioned) you might want to say, "Something I thought might be good to mention is that time when, remember last fall, when I talked to that player about sportsmanship when we had lost the provincials (or something like that) and I had a talk with them about that? Maybe you could mention something like that." Jogging their memory in this way might be really helpful to the person because they might be kind of struggling, you know, with an example to use, so they might really appreciate you you doing that for them. The other thing is to ask your referee to put their letter on letterhead, if possible, and to address it specifically to that particular scholarship grantor. So the more personalized that letter can be the better. So what you want to avoid is the generic "To whom it may concern" sort of photocopied letter that you just got twenty copies of, or something like that. The more personalized it can be the better. And I'm just going to bring up one final reminder on this topic, and that is around the fact that you're asking someone to vouch for you, and you're also asking someone to kind of, you know, kind of put their reputation on the line for you, to vouch for your character so I would like you to make sure that you go through your social media and make sure that there's nothing in your feeds that could possibly embarrass yourself, and embarrass your referee. Scholarship committees do sometimes look at social media, your social media accounts, and your referee may do that, or someone may you know bring up something to them. Please be conscious of the fact that you are asking someone to vouch for you. So that's just a little thing. And of course let your referee know what happened one way or the other, and send them a thank-you. And especially let them know if you are granted the scholarship, because they do really care and they would really like to know that. So if you would like step-by-step instruction on how to write your best scholarship application you can sign up for my online program it's called "How to write winning scholarship applications" and it's at mycampusGPS.ca.courses. Thanks for listening!