If you have received a scholarship, then first of all, congratulations are in order!
One of your next steps should be to write a thank you letter for the scholarship.
This is a way of letting the people who contribute to the scholarship that you acknowledge and are grateful for their help.
This article will help you do that.
When should you write a thank you letter for a scholarship?
You should always write a thank you letter if you have received a scholarship.Some scholarships may actually even come with some guidelines about how to write the thank you letter. This might be the case if the organization that awards the scholarship uses thank you letters to help them in future fundraising endeavors.
In this situation, you should follow those guidelines closely.
However, if there are not any guidelines or you are wondering about points that aren’t addressed in the guidelines you have, you can use the suggestions below.
What should you put in a thank you letter for a scholarship?
You should try to make this letter as personal as you can. In other words, be specific about who you are and your plans and ambitions. Be enthusiastic, but also be sincere.
Start by thanking the person or people you are writing to for the scholarship.
You may want to review the difference in “grateful to” vs. “grateful for” as you are writing this part of your letter.
Include the name of the scholarship, but don’t directly mention the money.
Talk about how the scholarship will help you reach your goals.
Your letter should remain under a page, but you don’t have to aim for the same conciseness that you would in many other types of formal business letters.
It’s okay to let yourself get a little carried away by your enthusiasm and discussing your future if that fits your style.
At the end of the letter, offer another thank you.
You can find ideas for various thank-you phrases that you can use in the article “A Huge Thank You.”
Reinforce that you will make the most of the scholarship.
It is always important to proofread a formal letter before you send it, but in this case it is especially important.
Imagine how it would look to the people who gave you the scholarship if they received a thank you letter than was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors!
For this reason, it’s a good idea to have a friend or family member who’s good at those things read over it for you too.
It can sometimes be easier for other people to catch your errors than to see them yourself.
What should the tone of your thank you letter for a scholarship be?
While this is a formal letter, you shouldn’t be stiff and distant in it.
It’s not just okay but actually desirable to let your enthusiasm show through.
Don’t use text spellings or slang, but it’s fine to give your letter some personality.
Be gracious, humble, thankful and warm.
What should the format of your thank you letter for a scholarship be?
As you would do when you need to write a perfect thank you letter to your mentor, you should take the trouble to send your thank you letter for a scholarship as an actual letter in the mail instead of by email.
Follow typical business letter formatting.
This means either writing it on your own letterhead or putting an address block at the top with your name and address in it.
Skip a line, then put the name and address of the scholarship body that you are writing to followed by the date.
If there is a contact name or a single donor, you should use their name in the salutation. Call them by their last name: “Dear Mr. Brown.”
If it is an organization, you can address it to the entire organization: “Dear Springfield Rotary Club.”
It’s important that you address this letter to the right person, and this part can be a little bit confusing.
Sometimes you will need to write to a donor. Other times, you will need to write to an organization.
If you need to get some guidance from the organization awarding the scholarship to make sure you are writing to the right person, do not hesitate to do so.
Try to keep your paragraphs fairly short if possible, no more than four or five sentences long.
At the end of your letter, you can sign off with a word like “Sincerely,” but this is also the type of business letter where it would be appropriate to use other types of phrases too.
For example, you can use yours truly in business correspondence or a phrase like “Warmly” or “Gratefully yours.”
There should be a space where you put your signature, and after that, your name should be printed underneath.
Example 1 of a thank you letter for a scholarship
123 Achievement Street
Springfield, California 99999
Amy Wilson
Springfield Student Scholarship Fund
456 Academic Drive
Springfield, California 12345
March 5, 2022
Dear Ms. Wilson,
I want to extend a sincere thank you to you and the Springfield Student Scholarship Fund for the generous support. I am deeply honored to have been chosen as the recipient for this year’s scholarship.
Ever since I was a child, it has been my dream to become a doctor someday. Getting my bachelor’s degree is the first step in this dream, and this scholarship will help me achieve that.
I’m hoping to specialize in the area of pediatric medicine. As a child who had several health challenges to overcome, I experienced the care and compassion of doctors and other medical professionals who made what would have been a much more traumatic time bearable, and I hope to do that for other children.
Thank you again so much for your generosity. I hope to “pay it forward” myself someday when I am working as a doctor.
With gratitude,
Rebecca Miller
Example 2 of a thank you letter for a scholarship
123 Elm Street
Chicago, Illinois 55555
Marsha Benson
Benson Family Scholarship Fund
555 Constitutional Drive
Washington, DC 99999
February 4, 2022
Dear Ms. Benson,
As the recipient of this year’s Benson Family Scholarship, I am writing to thank you for your generous support. It will allow me to complete my senior year of college without having to work, giving me more time to concentrate on my studies. As someone who has worked throughout my previous three years in college, this will make a huge difference for me.
I want to tell you a little more about myself so that you know what you are supporting. As a kid, I always loved looking up at the sky and wondering about the names of the stars and where their light was coming from.
This has led me to pursue an undergraduate degree in astronomy, and I hope to go on to graduate school, get a doctorate, and work for NASA. This scholarship means I can fully focus on getting the most out of my final year in college and prepare myself better for a rigorous graduate program.
Scholarships like the one offered by the Benson Family Fund can be life-changing, and this is certainly the case for me. I will endeavor to make the most of the opportunity you have given me.
Warm regards,
David Ayad
Hey fellow Linguaholics! It’s me, Marcel. I am the proud owner of linguaholic.com. Languages have always been my passion and I have studied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics and Sinology at the University of Zurich. It is my utmost pleasure to share with all of you guys what I know about languages and linguistics in general.