申请文章在申请奖学金过程中所起的作用远超过托福和GRE。要保证您的读书计划和推荐信独树一帜，获得奖学金评审委员会的刮目相看，可以参考以下的范例：
Growing up in a modest village in China, I hardly ever had the chance to see many examples of modern technology; people who dig wells by hand to obtain drinking water and use ox-driven plows to cultivate their fields don’t have much use for televisions and personal computers. But when my father gave me an old radio to play with, I wanted nothing more than to take apart the contraption and see what inside made such interesting sounds. Sitting on the floor with a confused grin, surrounded by wires and metal, I looked up at my father and asked where the noises were...(有删节)
合理地阐述了申请者学习电子工程的动机，学习动机是评审委员非常看中的。同时，读了这段文字，会使读者沉浸在对童年往事的美好回忆里，借此打动评审委员的心。
另外一篇修改过的文章开头用诗一般的语言写道(有删节)：......I first read this paragraph from Madame Curie as a 14-year-old child, and I still remember how wonderful I felt. I remember thinking, "What esteemed men they were! How hard they worked!" As I grew older, this paragraph became a source of encouragement in the face of adversity. I begin to feel a magical blue light twinkling in my heart, kindling a love of science, and encouraging me to charge bravely into the unknown world.
结尾呼应了开头，阐述了作者为什么要去美国读书：
I never forgot my adolescent idol, Maria Curie. As I re-read the book, another passage leaped out: "She was now 24-an age when some of her great contemporaries were to be on the brink of major discoveries... Maria took the train from Warsaw to Paris, the intellectual Mecca."
For me, the intellectual Mecca is the United States. ... I hope to continue my study and research, as detailed below. One day, I hope to find the pure esthetics of biology and reach its luminous summits.