College applications and college scholarships all are looking for a good essay, an interesting story and a catchy topic. As a 4-Her who was has been active for 9 years in El Sereno's beekeeping project, I had lots of options to create a buzz with.
Writing college applications, I was able to talk about the environmental contribution our bee project had. This included helping the local environment by increasing bee populations, and donating the money we earned from our honey sells to help the endangered Mountain Gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. On top of this, I was able to write about the leadership opportunities 4-H provided me.
When it came time for scholarships, all of the knowledge I had acquired from my leader Steve Demkowski, in conjunction with all the photos I had of me doing 4-H beekeeping, gave me lots of material to answer scholarship applications with. Here is an example of my scholarship project for Tulane University's Deans' Honors scholarship:
The prompt for this scholarship was “To give further evidence of your depth of thought, analytical skills, imagination, and creativity, use this box to explore an idea or academic area of interest. While your project should reveal something you are passionate about, you should not be the project's main focus or subject.”
My efforts led to numerous college acceptances and scholarship offers. Many of the acceptance letters cited my work with bees, and I credit 4-H for helping my essay topics stand out. The whole college and scholarship application process really made me appreciate all 4-H has given me. Best of all it exposed me to something I want to study in college – Environmental Biology, which I'll be doing at University of Puget Sound on the full-ride Matelich scholarship!
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