<p>Or a balance between the two? Because I'm honestly not on the "competitive" side when it comes to stats and EC's, so I feel like my only shot is with my short answers/essays.</p>
<p>For Danforth and Moog I believe it is all the above. You need top grades, top test scores, great ECs and well written scholarship responses. It is VERY competitive.</p>
<p>What about the other scholarships?</p>
<p>Any scholarship which gives any significant amount of money will be extremely competitive. The full and half tuition ones being the extreme examples of such.</p>
<p>The general rule of thumb (from what I’ve gathered from those that read essays for these scholarship programs) is that if you would not get into WashU on your own merit, you will not get a scholarship. In other words, fantastic essays will not make up for lackluster grades/scores - there are already thousands of other applicants with just as fantastic essays AND their stats are high.</p>
<p>That is not to say don’t try (you never know, and what you consider “not competitive” may actually be - you didn’t post), but don’t expect to wiggle your way into a scholarship via your essays.</p>
<p>thank you, onecot, for answering my question. I don’t intend to make my essays do the heavylifting, but I’m not competitive, meaning my test scores and GPA/class rank are exactly in the middle or through the doorstep, not like the “recommended 75th percentile” for unhooked applicants.</p>