How to prepare and pass scholarship examinations: According to Wikipedia, a scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further their education. Scholarships are usually awarded to students as a reward of outstanding academics excellence and also, as a student who wants to go outside your country to study or who needs financial aids, getting interested in and applying for a scholarship is one of the best solutions seeing as many are available to students of various levels especially for the universities and colleges.
Students are shortlisted for scholarship examinations based on their application, then they are selected and awarded the scholarship based on their performance in the scholarship examination.
A scholarship is not like a regular school examination where students are tested on limited and well revised knowledge i.e on the things that they learn in school. Rather scholarship exams tend to check the all round knowledge and intellectual soundness of students or the applicants and how they can apply this knowledge in various areas ranging from current affairs to verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, sciences and many other aspects of learning.
There can be exceptions to scholarship exams where the scholarship is based on a particular area like sports, music or arts but more often than not, questions asked in scholarship exams are multifaceted and the preparation for this examination cannot be left to fate if the candidate has the desire to really win it. Consequently, some of the ways to prepare for and pass scholarship examinations will be shared in this material.
How To Prepare And Pass Scholarship Examinations: 9 Tips
1. Apply on time: Before a person begins to think about writing and passing scholarship exams he or she must have applied for the scholarship. To apply for a scholarship a person needs to research and find available scholarships, then very importantly, he is to check if he is among the category of persons viewed as qualified for the scholarship.
After these steps, early application is very necessary for some reasons being that, firstly, early application helps a person to thoroughly follow through and fulfill all the requirements of the scholarship application as opposed to a rushed application where the applicant may miss out some of the necessary requirements for the scholarship thereby losing the opportunity from the first stage.
Secondly, it has been seen generally that those who apply early for scholarships mostly get shortlisted for the scholarship examination and finally, early application gives the candidate ample time to do the relevant research and gather study material which he will use in studying for the examination and also, such candidate has more time to study for the scholarship examination than those who apply on emergency, towards the end of the application date.
2. Develop the right mindset: Most people go into scholarship applications just because their friends are applying or for some other reason, and not because they really want it or believe that they can get it. This is a wrong mindset because, such persons will not take the scholarship seriously and this will affect them.
Scholarships are a serious business, a competition and anyone who goes into wanting to be awarded the scholarship must take it as such and prepare for it like the whole world depends on it.
3. Source information: A candidate cannot just read every study material in the world, there is need for a guide of sort. This can be done by looking for mentors in the person of ex candidates for the scholarship, especially those who made it and ask how they went about their studies for the scholarship,the topics that they were examined on, the time the exam took, whether they can preempt topics that the examination will be based on now, what type of questions they were asked and the best way to apply knowledge in answering those questions.
Also, to get a pointer as regards the topics that the examination will be on, the candidate can send an email to the scholarship program and ask for suggestions on what topics to study for the examination and get a reply since they have the responsibility to provide basic information about the scholarship.
4. Study and attend tutorials: The candidate for the scholarship must begin to study seriosly after he must have gotten the necessary materials on likely topics that the scholarship examination will be based on and for any areas of difficulty which the candidate cannot decipher on his own, he should go for tutorials on such topics or get a private teacher who can come and put him through and also help monitor his studies and general preparation for the examination.
Also, after studying the materials gotten, it is necessary to solve problems on the topics studied, as much as possible as a way of making what you have studied to stick.
5. Get and answer scholarship past questions: Past questions are very necessary as they help to direct the readers mind and serve as a means of assessment of progress in studies and this is no different in scholarship past questions. It is necessary to get and practice past questions as many times as possible before the scholarship examination.
Practice questions under time limit: Merely getting past questions to study for the scholarship examination is not enough as such tests or exams are usually time based and the success of the candidates is not only based on answering the questions correctly but on answering the questions correctly within a few minutes. Therefore, in preparing for scholarship exams, an applicant must practice the available questions under time limits repeatedly for as many times as possible until he is very good in his speed accuracy.
6. Practice and learn current affairs: Another area where scholarship exam questions can be based on is current affairs. If the scholarship is being organised within a country then the candidate will only have the current affairs of that country to deal with but if the scholarship is an international one then the candidate must be prepared and well abreast with the major and latest news in hot and happening countries of the world on sports, business and trade, politics, religion, entertainment, music and so forth.
7. Be confident: A very important step which most people tend to push aside, is the mental state of the candidate. It is very necessary for a candidate to be confident in himself and in what he has been able to study as this will be a boost for him. The opposite of confidence is fear and a candidate who is scared of the exam, may fail it even if he is well prepared because he will fidget, possibly forget all that he has studied and waste most of his very scarce time trying to calm down and get coordinated.
8. Study intensively and extensively: The combination of intensive and extensive pattern of studying is the best way to study for a scholarship examination. For the best result, it is not recommended to adopt either of the patterns disjunctively. Studying extensively means to study voraciously thereby trying to cover large extent of topics within a time as short as possible without reading the topics in an in-depth manner.
On the other hand, studying intensively is the opposite. Studying intensively is a pattern where a student takes a longer time to critically and mindfully study topics specifically in order to grasp the in-depth contents of the text. Both pattern of studying must therefore be combined in preparation for scholarship examination. The candidate must strive to cover as much as possible (extensively) and as well internalize as much as was covered. So let’s put it this way “Study intensively and cover extensively”.
9. Subscribe to the scholarship host website: In preparation for a scholarship examination, information is of utmost essence. One can go about this by subscribing to the website of the organizers of the scholarship examination.
This does not cost a penny; it is done visiting the website and entering in the specified box your Email address in order to be getting direct updates about the scholarship examination which you have applied for. You can also visit the website occasionally to look out for new information. This will save you occasions for disqualification and untimely information coming by surprise.
In conclusion, any student who is to be a scholarship candidate and is in contact with this material has gone a long way already, because the steps discussed here are an almost assurance of how to get shortlisted and pass scholarship examinations. But even if you try using these tips and still do not get it, do not give up but rather go again and try for as many scholarships as possible and you will eventually be awarded.
