Overview

Elegibility

The competition is open to students world-wide who are in their last year of secondary school or their first year of college. The winner will be decided on the strength of three essays and an Other Information section, one teacher/professor recommendation, financial need and academic scholarship. This scholarship will be awarded directly to the student and may be used to pay tuition or other related educational costs (e.g., books, housing).

Please note: If we secure additional funding, we will either increase the amount of the scholarship or offer monetary awards for the runners-up.

-be in last year of secondary school or first year of college;

-demonstrate academic excellence and financial need;

-exhibit the characteristics of excellence, caring for others and self-improvement

Rules

Essay Prompts

2. The entrant will also complete a section titled Other Information. In this section, he or she will provide details on financial need (combined parent income/number of people in family/etc.), academic scholarship (class rank/standardized test scores/GPA/etc.) plus any other information that will allow the judges to better gauge the entrant, such as long-term goals, career objectives and so forth.

3.  The entrant must ask a current or past teacher/professor to write a recommendation.  This recommendation must show personal knowledge of the entrant's academic excellence and, if possible, address the entrant's life outside of the classroom in terms of excellence, love of learning or working on behalf of others.

4. All entry materials will be sent via email to competition09@dorothymalaga.net no later than midnight (GMT -4), Sept. 26, 2009. Any entrant who is missing required materials after this time will not be considered. The finalists will be notified a week after the deadline. The winner will be notified a week later.

2. In the past 5 years, what person or group has most impacted your life in a substantial, beneficial and enduring manner? What did this person or group do and why did this make a difference in your life? What do you imagine prompted this person or group to do it? How are you different now?

3. Imagine you have just died at the age of 93. Write your obituary from the viewpoint of the reporter. How will the reporter describe your life? Using your current goals and ambitions, write an article that will describe your life as you would like it to be seen in retrospect. What will be your accomplishments, large and small? Whom will you have helped along life's journey? How? How did you work to improve yourself throughout your life?

Note: While creativity is important in essay 3, it should be realistic. It should be closely connected to the information in the Other Information section.

Tips

Formatting and Other Requirements

2. Other than the stated requirements, there is no limit on what may be written about in the Other Information section. Use this section to show personal qualities. Give a well-rounded picture of yourself.

3. Impacting the lives of a group of 30 is not necessarily more impressive than substantially influencing the life of one person.

4. Don't rule out what you have done for others because the action was not successful. Analyze what you did and discuss how you might have done things differently. Or maybe you have haven't stopped trying to accomplish the goal. Discuss your ongoing efforts.

5. Essays will be judged on how well the entrant wrote about all aspects of the prompts, use of language and creativity.

2. All margins should be 1".  Type should be Times New Roman 12 point.

3. There should be a header on each page that contains the entrant's name, city, state (if applicable) and country of residence.

4. The name of the document should be the same as the information in the document header.

Example of header: Pedro González  Bogotá Colombia

Example of document name: Pedro González  Bogotá Colombia.doc

5. We have available a sample document with all the essay prompts and headers properly formatted. All the entrant has to do is fill in the blanks and change the info in the header/title.

Download this file by clicking here.

6. Instructor's Recommendation: For the recommendation there is no requirement for a specific program or formatting. However, the instructor must send his or her recommendation from his or her work or personal email account. It may not be sent from the student's account.  It would be helpful if a work or personal phone number were included if there is a need for additional information. The header and title of the document should be the same as for the student document plus the words "Recommendation for"

Examples:

(header) Recommendation for Pedro González  Bogotá Colombia

(document) Recommendation for Pedro González  Bogotá Colombia.doc

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