App Logo

Doc template · Students

Scholarship application

Make your case for funding. Made from one message, so you can get your own in minutes.

Scholarship application

The Quiet Side of Harlan County

Cedarline Foundation Community Health Scholarship · Application Essay

The grandfather who stopped answering

When I was fourteen, my grandfather Yusuf, who has farmed 640 acres outside Tillman, Nebraska for fifty years, stopped answering questions at the dinner table. He nodded, smiled and said "mm-hm" in the wrong places. It took our family almost two years to say the word *hearing*, and another five months to get an appointment, because the nearest audiologist is 94 miles away and her waitlist was full.

I later learned he was not unusual. In Harlan County, hearing loss is often treated as an ordinary part of aging, or as a private embarrassment. People stop going to church suppers and stop picking up the phone. They do not call it a health problem, so no one counts it as one.

What I built

I started by learning. I read every audiology book in our library, which took one afternoon, and then I emailed a visiting audiologist, Dr. Lena Pruitt. She agreed to supervise a volunteer screening program, which I named Clear Signal. It is not diagnosis. It is a ten-minute check that tells someone whether it is time to see a professional.

I ran all of this while ranking 3rd in a class of 118 with a 3.92 GPA, and while working Saturday shifts at my uncle's feed store. I mention that not to impress anyone, but because it is why I know how much time a rural family can actually spare.

What a screening cannot do

Make your case for funding

The prompt

Create a Doc scholarship application essay for the Cedarline Foundation Community Health Scholarship, which asks: Describe a health challenge in your community that you have worked to address, and explain how your education will help you continue that work. I am a first-generation college student and high school senior from a farming town in rural Nebraska, headed to study communication sciences and disorders and my achievements include founding a free hearing-screening program that has screened 212 residents, training 14 student volunteers, building a loaner hearing-aid battery bank for 38 households, and graduating 3rd in a class of 118 with a 3.92 GPA. About 500 words, specific, sincere and tied to my future plans.

Make it yours

  • Change the details in the prompt to fit students.
  • For example, change it so that I am a nursing applicant from a coastal Alaska village who started a mobile flu-shot day and the scholarship asks about overcoming a barrier to care.
  • Ask for edits in plain words: tone, colors, length, layout or data.
  • Share the result by link or export it when you are done.

More doc templates

Browse all

Platforms

Your agent, wherever you are.

  • Web appAny modern browserAvailable
  • Chrome extensionChat with any pageAvailable
  • Desktop appmacOS and WindowsSoon
  • TelegramYour agent on the goSoon