Though mostly used to cheat, there are many other, much more wholesome, ways AI can help your scholarship journey. From generating flashcards to personalised messages, there is a range of uses for AI from scholarship research to interviews that streamline, energise and add depth to the process. Find out how to integrate AI into your scholarship search, and score that offer.
Integrating AI
Mention AI in an academic setting and everyone’s mind jumps to its most ubiquitous use: cheating. From ChatGPT-written essays to machine code coded by machines, it seems there is a new “AI for Evil” story every minute.
While these stories are excellent cautionary tales, AI can, and should, be used to help you in a healthy way. This is especially true in your scholarship journey. As the process of researching, applying and then interviewing can be gruelling and stressful, some AI-powered shortcuts will go a long way to cutting through the unnecessary, providing inspiration, and even help with the application process itself.
Research and Shortlisting
Where you may take hours to search for information, AI can provide you with sources, recommendations and links with just a click. Even a cursory line to ChatGPT can generate as many relevant answers as needed.
Write your prompts well with these steps:
- Give the AI an identity. In this case, you might give the AI the identity of a fresh graduate like yourself, or a career advisor or even your parent.
- Add background. To generate a useful answer, make sure to include as much detail as possible. Asking ChatGPT for “local scholarships” generated more answers, but asking for “local scholarships in the healthcare sector” generated more targeted ones.
- Direct the length of the response. AI tools provide as much or as little detail as requested. If you want a cursory look at an industry you might want to get into, be sure to tell the AI so you’re not bogged down in information!
- Ask the AI to ask you. One of the most helpful things you can do is ask the AI what more information it needs. Often, this helps pinpoint things you might have missed.
AI is also a great brainstorming tool, and can really help you think outside the box. When searching for scholarships, students tend to only focus on those in the field they wish to make a career in. However, many organisations actually offer scholarships for fields outside their ‘expertise’. The PA Scholarship, for example, is available to students pursuing any discipline except Architecture, Dentistry, Law, Medicine, Pharmacy. AI can help you ferret out these lesser known options or point out overlooked knowledge gaps.
Writing the Application
AI-powered writing assistants such as Grammarly and ProWritingAid are your best friends when it comes to keeping your applications error-free. In particular, Grammarly provides advice on style and word-choice, ensuring your tone is appropriate for a scholarship application.
As an additional note, responsible AI use can also help you in networking. Use GPT for Sheets add-on or Zapier Central to generate personalised outreach messages to contact teachers, outreach leaders, volunteers and others when requesting testimonials.
However, always remember that these tools are to aid you in writing, not do the writing for you. Your own authentic voice is the most important part of the scholarship application, and must come through clearly in your writing.
Interviewing
AI-powered interviewing tools such as Interviewer.AI and Huru are mostly geared toward job interviews, but can still help you prepare for your scholarship interview. This is because they will help you practise answering and listening to questions in a formal setting, which reduces the stress and anxiety many experience when interviewing. Practising with these tools will help you deliver confident, polished answers during the actual run.
The questions can help you prepare as well. Both job and scholarship interviews often ask for strengths and weaknesses, or examples of success. Using AI tools, you can plan these answers and ace the real thing!
Your Application, Your Voice
While AI can streamline your scholarship search, inspire your topics, and proofread your writing, it should never be used to replace you. AI-generated content is easy to spot, and an instant fail if it is discovered in your application. Also, many applicants are already using AI to help them, some more dishonestly than others, so you need to stand out.
Personalise and humanise all your submissions, and cut through the noise to shine in your scholarship application!