Jahmyl Williams Essex

Name of the Scholarship/Opportunity (and its benefits):

The Barry Goldwater Scholarship provides $7500 financial support to students pursuing research careers.

What are your future career goals?

Next year I’ll be working towards a Ph.D. I am particularly interested in researching chemical evolution and the origins of life.

What motivated you to apply and what were some of the challenges?

This scholarship stood out to me because its focus is on research. It comes more naturally to me to discuss and present my research than to reply to prompts of typical scholarship essays. The only real challenge I encountered was that I had to rush because I found out about the scholarship last minute. In addition to scrambling to gather the application materials, I had to ask for recommendation letters last minute. I would have preferred to give my recommenders plenty of time to write letters. Still, they were all very accommodating, and I managed to get everything submitted in time.

What advice would you give to future applicants of this scholarship or any scholarship?

I think the most important thing is to give yourself plenty of time to work on the application.

What would people be surprised to know about you?  

I’m a musician, and I love to read and write stories. I’m a huge fan of the classics, especially Dostoevsky and Camus.

For more information on The Barry Goldwater Scholarship: https://goldwater.scholarsapply.org/