After you apply for a Scholarship, you will be required to come for a scholarship interview where you will asked some basic questions about yourself. Below you will find the top 50 scholarship questions you should expect during your scholarship interview.
These interviews help those sponsoring the scholarships to determine those that are eligible for the award. While some scholarships tout academics, others offer certain extracurricular pursuits, and lots of them pay attention to characteristics like service, leadership, or application to a particular program of study.
Ensure that you rehearse the questions below and answer the questions aloud to yourself to avoid being taken unaware at the interview center.
While a thoughtful pause is okay, not being prepared to answer lots of the common questions could draw a blank. Thus, your best bet is to go through the list of the scholarship questions below and utilize our suggested response.
Surprisingly, some of the scholarship questions featured on lots of scholarship interviews are very simple and also easy to answer. Get acquainted with most of the questions below that are very likely to appear in your scholarship interview.
NOTE: Most of the scholarship questions you meet during scholarship interviews are aimed at ascertaining your core behaviour and personality. Your answers will help the interviews determine if you are the right candidate to represent the scholarship’s ideal.
50 Popular Scholarship Interview Questions & Answers Examples
1. Tell Me About Yourself.
At first, this may appear as a simple question but it could be very difficult if you are the type who finds it hard to describe yourself. To make things easy, you can ask your friends and people you relate with to describe you. Ensure you pick out the positive points about yourself when they are describing you. Don’t just dwell on the negatives.
ANSWER (Good Example): “I am very social as well as a good communicator,”
ANSWER (Bad Example): “I’m a chronic womanizer.”
ANSWER (Good Example): I enjoy playing and excelling at sports.
ANSWER (Bad Example): “I pay more attention to movies than my classes.”
2. What Is Your Greatest Strength?
While answering this question, ensure that you choose one (1) or two (2) qualities that you have that may be ideal to the scholarship. Don’t be shy to talk about it.
ANSWER (Good Example): “I can be decisive and can easily ascertain when to take the lead as well as when to follow the leaders. This is one of the qualities that has helped me dispense my duties smoothly and has also help me and my many team members achieve common goals.”
3. How Would a Family Member or Friend Describe You?
You can easily ask your family members or friends to give you a sincere and honest description of yourself. Ensure you don’t feel offended if the description doesn’t paint you as a god or go the way you want it to. Just pick only what’s valuable that will help you describe your best qualities.
4. What Is Your Greatest Weakness?
Virtually all humans have their weaknesses. This question was not included to see just your bad side, it’s rather used to see if you are self-aware and also know the areas where you need improvement. You can turn your weakness into a strength if you can mention the measures you’re applying to work on your flaws.
ANSWER (Good Example): I know my greatest weakness is speaking in a large gathering. I’m always worried about how I’ll be perceived and that makes me nervous when speaking in front of others. Nevertheless, I’m taking classes and joining various debate teams in school.
5. What is the Biggest Mistake You’ve Made in the Past and What Did You Learn From It?
The mistake is not the main gist, what the interviewer is concentrating on is how you corrected and recovered from your mistake, as well as the lessons you learned from it.
6. Describe a Situation Where You Were Faced With an Adversity Or Obstacle and Overcame It.
Your response should be similar to the one above.
7. Leadership Experience is Very Important. Can You Tell Me About Your Experience?
If you have direct experiences in leadership like being the captain of any team or a class president, then it’s time to share the experience. But if you don’t, you can still mention how you were a role model to students or your siblings, or you could even list out some of your leadership qualities with examples.
8. Have You Been Involved in Sports, Clubs, or Other Activities in Your Community or School?
Don’t bore the interviewer with a long list of activities, you can just provide some of the major activities you’ve done in your community or school. Try to list activities that show leadership, service, professionalism, teamwork as well as academic interest.
9. What is Your Favorite Movie/Book/Song?
10. Describe a Proud Moment or Personal Achievement.
Ensure you choose one that brings out your good qualities or one that relates to the scholarship’s ideals.
11. What Teacher, Class, Or Book Has Changed the Way You Think? And How?
Try to be as positive as you can in your response.
12. Who Do You Look Up To As Your Role Model, and Why?
Feel free to mention anyone who inspires you. Someone you professionally or personally feel connected to, just say something that reflects your aspirations and your best self.
13. What Lessons Have You Learned From Someone Who’s Very Different From You?
This question is included to see how flexible you are in your thinking and how you can possibly learn from anyone. You need to figure out an answer to this question beforehand.
14. What Are Your Opinions On Topic X (The ‘X’ means the topic they decide to provide)?
Avoid being on the controversial side except it appeals to the ideals of the scholarship. Be wise.
15. What Languages Do You Write? Speak?
16. Tell Us About an Event Or a Person In Your Life that Helped Shaped You Somehow.
It’s up to you to choose a negative experience that changed you for the better or a positive experience that suddenly changed you.
17. Have You Been Outside Of Your Country Of Birth? Where Have You Visited?
Go ahead and share the experience you had in another country. Concentrate more on the things you learned from there like the linguistic, historical, cultural, or other elements. Figure out what could be more ideal with the scholarship.
Should in case you’ve not travelled abroad, you can still share things you hope to learn when you travel out someday.
18. What Do You Think Is The Most Urgent Problem in the World Today? Why?
Don’t dabble into political or controversial topics except they fit the ideals of the scholarship. Should the interviewer expresses an opposing opinion, all you have to do is listen carefully without arguing and listen with empathy.
Your Career and Academic Aspirations?
Students with a tendency to succeed in college are what interviewers want to grant scholarships. Most of them may get to the extent of trying to see your past high performance academically as well as leadership activities. It’s important you consider the questions very carefully before developing an answer that properly addresses the situation.
19. Which Meaningful Class or School Experience Have You Had?
There are many things you are left to choose from. But the most important thing is that you relate the experience with one of your good qualities, service opportunities that you enjoyed giving, as well as something that encouraged personal growth or change.
20. What Was Your Reason For Choosing this School, University, or College?
First of all, while pointing out the reason for choosing their institution, try not to say any negative thing about other institutions. Also, ensure you mention something specific to their institution, things like their values, class sizes, their programs, or their career placement services, instead of just mentioning things in general such as location.
This will let them know you have quality knowledge about their school before applying for the scholarship.
21. What Was Your Best Subject in School?
It’s always important to pick a subject that is related to the field of scholarship. An education major can benefit by selecting either education classes or you can choose classes in their speciality area.
22. What Made You Choose Your Planned Program Of Study?
ANSWER (Good Example): For instance, the scholarship is for doctors, you can easily respond like this “I hate to see people in pains ever since I was a child. I always tried my possible best to offer a solution that will relieve anyone facing an ailment or pain, and that’s the reason I’m taking this part.”
23. How Do You Intend To Use Your Degree In The Future?
Most young adults already know how they see themselves using their degrees. So, it’s time to share with the interviewer exactly how you intend to live your life.
24. Apart From The College Degree, What Else Do You Intend To Gain From Your College Experience?
ANSWER (Good Example): “I want to make a lot of friends.” This happens to be one of the commonest answers to the question. It’s also important that you expound on the thought with answers like: “I want to make lots of friends who could become great connections all through my career and life.”
25. Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years Time?
Your answer can be similar to the answer you provided in the career goals question in number 23 above.
26. What Are Your Highest (Important) Academic Achievements?
If you have any academic achievements then you can easily talk about any of them such as when you became a Valedictorian. Explain to the interviewer how you were able to achieve this goal (In order to make it a lot more meaningful).
Should in case you don’t have any obvious achievement like the one mentioned above, you can talk about how you started doing well in a particular subject area, or how you overcame a learning disability, or how hard-working you were despite some personal challenges.
27. What Do You Think Will Make You Successful In College?
ANSWER (Good Example): “My dedication to my field of study and my excellent study skills”. You could include some past academic performance.
28. What is a New Experience or Skill You Hope to Leave College With?
The answer to this question can either be directly or indirectly related to a career. Lots of interviewers can easily relate to developing light (soft) skills like “overcoming inferiority complex to becoming a bold and better communicator,” your chosen field doesn’t matter.
29. What Do You Like and Dislike About Schools, and How Would You Change It?
There are several ways you can answer these questions. The most important thing to do is to ensure that you don’t bad-mouth any school or person, even if you deeply disliked your Maths teacher. There are lots of polite ways you can express what you dislike as well as what you like.
30. What Is a Meaningful Academic Project, Class, or Some Other Experiences?
Your answer should move beyond your academic achievements down to how you were impacted by it, and how much you were either surprised or learned from it.
31. How Do You Intend To Contribute to Your University or College?
This question gives you the opportunity to cover both professional and extracurricular activities while volunteering and working at the school.
32. How Do You Spend Your Free Time Outside Of Class?
Answer Tip: Think of a positive thing you do with your free time that properly aligns with the ideal of the scholarship or, and school.
What Makes You Think You’re The Best Candidate for This Scholarship?
There are usually lots of applications from scholarship applicants who may most cases have similar paper achievements. But, the scholarship interview is what makes all the difference, and it’s an opportunity for you to stand out from the crowd. The trick is to give the interviewer answers that are in alignment with the goals and ideals of the scholarship.
33. Why Did You Apply For This Scholarship?
Your need for financial support is just a part of the formula to this scholarship question. You also need to discuss the impact of the funds on your life and the level of your need. For instance, if the scholarship concentrates more on Engineering students, your answer should focus on what getting an engineering scholarship can mean to your career and life as a whole.
34. What Do You Know About This Scholarship?
You don’t have any excuse for not making research more about the scholarship. You have to both read more about the scholarship paperwork and also utilize the power of the internet. Find out if the scholarship was named after an organization or person, what they do (or did), what they stand for, as well as their ideals.
35. What Are You Going to Do If You don’t Receive This Scholarship?
Suggested Answer: “Actually, without this scholarship, I may not be able to afford school at the moment, notwithstanding, I’ll exhaust every possibility to ensure that I earn money that will help me attend college”
36. What Makes You Think You Deserve This Scholarship?
I know there are lots of deserving students, but my leadership skills and ability to learn very fast (Ensure the qualities you mention should better represent the scholarship’s ideal) give me an edge over lots of other scholarship applicants.
37. How Would You Practice The Ideals Represented By This Scholarship?
Try to research what the ideals of the scholarship are and try to rehearse how you will practice it during your school days and beyond.
38. What Awards Have You Won?
Mention awards that show your accomplishments. The relevant it is with the current scholarship, the better it is.
39. What Is Your Financial Need?
Answer Tip: You just have to be honest with your answer.
40. How Do You Intend To Spend The Scholarship Money, If Awarded?
While some scholarships may go straight into tuition, others could come in the form of direct deposit or check. You can decide to use the money for supplies, tuition, transportation, or whatever the specific scholarship allows. Ensure you read the application in order to provide the appropriate answer.
41. How Do You Intend To Serve Your Community?
Lots of Scholarships are usually associated with ideals that include service, therefore, community service is usually included under the “best candidate” section. Your community can be defined as your college, hometown, a special group of interest, etc.
What Would You Like to Know?
This section of the Scholarship Questions is where the interviewer inquires if you have any questions or things you would want to know about. Ensure that whatever question you are asking should be related and relevant to the specific scholarship. Also, ensure that you carefully listen during the response – Never interrupt the interviewer while he/she speaks.
The first question you could ask includes:
42. Would you like to add anything, or do you have any questions for me?
43. What are my chances of receiving the scholarship?
The question above is usually the best lead question to ask an interviewer. But should in case the interviewer does not ask for questions, you can still ask a few questions, except time is of the essence.
44. What is the next step I need to take?
45. How and when will I be notified of my position about the scholarship?
46. Would you like to see my portfolio of work, if it matches with your field?
47. Scholarship are they cash awards, or will it paid directly to my school?
48. Will the scholarship last for a year or more than a year or are there any criteria for it to be renewed?
49. How do I seem to fit the most important criteria of the scholarship?
50. What other information would you love to know about me so as to consider me as your top candidate.
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(Scholarship Questions): Preparation For The Interview
If you have reviewed these questions and developed and practised the answers well, then you are 100% set for almost any scholarship interview! just to add to these items, you will likely get field-specific questions, although you will get those types of questions in college or job interviews than in scholarship interviews.
“THANK YOU” is all that is left that is important. At the end of every interview, you must say a “THANK YOU”. You can send it the following day as a letter or an email. Ensure you also follow up on the status of the award after a few weeks, if you feel it’s appropriate. If you are sent a second invitation then you will be more ready to repeat the process all over again.
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