The advising office will run its scholarship application workshop again next month, after last year’s first edition was followed by a doubling in completed applications from MU students.
The two-session workshop walks students through finding scholarships they are actually eligible for, building a realistic application calendar, and writing the personal statement — the stage where, advisers say, most applications quietly die.
“The money is real and much of it goes unclaimed,” said adviser Miriam Adeyemi, who runs the sessions. “The biggest barrier isn’t qualifications. It’s that students look at a blank statement box, decide they have nothing to say, and close the tab.”
What the sessions cover
- Session one: finding scholarships, reading eligibility rules, building a deadline calendar
- Session two: the personal statement — structure, drafting, and a peer-review exchange
Last year’s participants were also offered a follow-up statement review, which Adeyemi credits for much of the increase in completed applications. “A deadline calendar gets people started. Knowing someone will read your draft gets people finished.”
Senior Lea Fontaine, who attended last year and won a regional academic scholarship, put it more simply: “I had opened the application form four times before the workshop. The fifth time, I submitted it.”
Both sessions run in the advising centre; dates and sign-up are in the student portal under “Workshops”. Attendance at session one is required for the statement review.
The myths the workshop exists to kill
Adeyemi keeps a running list of the beliefs that stop students applying, and the sessions are structured to dismantle them one by one. The most stubborn three: that scholarships are only for the top of the class (most regional awards weight circumstances, activities or essays as heavily as grades), that applying is a full-time job (the calendar exercise shows most applications need under six hours spread across a month), and that an unsuccessful application is wasted work (statements are reusable, and last year two students won awards on second attempts with revised versions of rejected essays).
The workshop’s materials — the eligibility checklist, calendar template and statement outline — are published in the portal afterwards for students who cannot attend, though Adeyemi is frank that the documents travel worse than the sessions: “The template is ten percent of it. The room where everyone admits they’re finding this hard is the other ninety.”
