Your scholarship essay is one of the most important parts of any scholarship application. The people who will review your application can learn a lot about you from your essay, so it’s important to make sure the essay is as close to perfect as you can get it.
That may sound challenging, but these days, there are many ways you can ensure that your essay is polished and edited before you submit it. You can always pay someone to do this, but that can get expensive and, unfortunately, the person you hire may not always do the best job. What you really need is a tool that will work perfectly every time. That’s where Grammarly comes in.
How Grammarly can help you with your scholarship essay.
Grammarly is a tool that can help you to improve your grammar and spelling, along with much more. There’s a free version and a premium plan as well.
The free version helps you to correct spelling and grammatical mistakes. It’s worth pointing out that it does a much better job of this than the built-in spelling and grammar checks in most word processors. That’s because it’s much better at spotting when you’ve used the wrong word.
As an example, if you wrote the sentence “I like my hamburgers roar,” the regular spellcheck in a word processor wouldn’t notice a problem because each word is spelled correctly. Grammarly would tell you that you used the word “roar” when you probably meant “rare.” This makes it far more effective at catching spelling and grammatical issues.
The free version also offers two other features that really make it stand out. First, it has a “tone detector.” It can tell you if the tone of your writing is casual, formal, businesslike, angry, etc. Essentially, it analyzes your word choices and helps you communicate more clearly and in a manner that’s appropriate for the type of writing you’re doing. This is a huge help, and it will dramatically improve your writing.
The other standout feature is its suggestions for concise writing. You always want your scholarship essays to be as short as possible and as clear as possible. Grammarly will suggest ways to shorten sentences and communicate your ideas with fewer words. This, too, will dramatically improve your writing.
The premium version of Grammarly takes those features and makes them more robust, with more detailed suggestions. It also offers additional features like fluency suggestions, formatting suggestions, and a plagiarism detector.
The fluency suggestions are primarily useful if English is your second language. Often, the direct translation of a word into English won’t mean the same thing as you intend, and Grammarly will help you write as clearly as possible in English if it’s not your first language.
Formatting suggestions can help you keep your sentences just the right length, including helping you start new paragraphs where appropriate. The plagiarism detector searches the web to ensure that your writing is unique and original.
Should I get the premium version of Grammarly?
Frankly, the additional features of the premium version are unlikely to be useful on most scholarship application essays. However, they will become very useful in college, and you might as well go ahead and get it. It isn’t expensive and it’s something that will help you a lot both in your education and later in your professional career.
Can’t I just use spellcheck?
Every word processor comes with a built-in spellchecker, but none of them work as well as Grammarly, and they don’t offer the other features Grammarly has either. The suggestions it offers to make your writing more concise and to catch when you’ve used the wrong word are invaluable. This can make all the difference in your scholarship application.
Don’t overlook the tone of your writing either. Grammarly can spot when your essay has become too casual or too formal. Simply put, Grammarly makes it easy to communicate what you want clearly and accurately. Using Grammarly is a surefire way to make sure your essay really stands out.
Since it offers suggestions for different word choices and sentence structures, it also teaches you to be a better writer as you use it. After a while, you may find that you no longer need it, and by then, you’ll be a skilled writer. That will serve you well in college, but it will also become important in your professional life after you graduate. Even something as simple as a skillfully written email will make you stand out to your employers.
Takeaway.
Using Grammarly is an easy way to confirm that your essay is free of spelling and grammatical errors, while also improving its quality and tone and keeping it concise. While we think the premium version is well worth the money, the free version will still make a huge difference in the quality of your essay.