Project essay
Describe your project, your growth as a leader, and the support that will get you there.
In your essay, please:
- describe the activity or project you propose to undertake, and how the experience will challenge you and let you grow as a leader;
- discuss why this initiative matters to you, what you expect to distinctly contribute, and your goals for developing your leadership potential — and explain how you'll carry the project out across your two quarters of award;
- say what you need to learn about leadership and about being a leader yourself, and how you'll keep track of and evaluate what you're learning;
- consider how your mentor and the context of your project — collaborators, partners, other resources — will give you the support to meet those learning goals.
Essays should be a maximum of three pages (double-spaced, 12-point font, 1-inch margins), with in-text citations counting toward that limit. You may add one optional page for references, images, or figures, which is not counted in the limit.
Focusing your writing
Questions to help you build a coherent narrative, not a checklist to answer line by line.
As you develop your materials, the questions below can help you focus. Rather than answering each one separately, use them to craft a coherent narrative that lets reviewers get to know you and your project.
Leadership. What does leadership mean to you? What experiences (extracurricular, community, academic, personal) have shaped that understanding? How will your activity, and your role in it, deepen your thinking about leadership?
Project. What activity do you propose to undertake, specifically? What is your unique role — how does your own initiative and creativity shape it? Who do you collaborate with, both your mentor and any partners or others? How does the project give you a way to develop as a leader?
Outcomes. What do you hope to know, be able to do, or become through the experience? How will you know you've achieved it? What difference will accomplishing it make to you and to your role in a community?
Impact. What do you hope to learn? How does the activity foster that learning? How does it connect to your larger educational and life goals?
Writing a compelling essay
Balance your thinking on leadership with a concrete, achievable plan.
A leadership essay is a balancing act between your ideas about leadership and personal development and the project you're using to move that development forward. A few important aspects to consider in making a compelling essay:
- Write in your own voice — a clear, consistent voice that lets the reader sense how you think about leadership and how you see yourself as a leader, grounded in your own experiences.
- Lay out a clear plan and timeline, with a description of the project that gives reviewers confidence you've thought it through, have the support to carry it out, and have taken on something challenging but achievable — organized so it reads as a whole rather than something cobbled together.
- Convey your enthusiasm and commitment by showing how you'll know you've accomplished what you set out to do and how it connects to your longer-term goals, leaving the reader eager to meet you. And describe how your mentor supports your role: how you chose them and why, and how that partnership will evolve as the project unfolds.