The Art of Writing Powerful and Persuasive Financial Aids for Tech Courses
As the world moves faster into the realm of tech, there is more need for youths to get involved in tech. This involvement can come in the form of generating and building interest in tech-related fields. However, interest alone would not be enough to make you really valuable in the tech space. To become valuable, you have to obtain relevant and up-to-date tech skills that can be readily applied in solving problems. Obtaining relevant tech skills can come in the form of upskilling programs from the organization you work with or a form of self-development as your strategy of personal growth strategy to be more relevant in today, tomorrow, and the future of work.
If you are an employee in any well-established organization, your General Manager and Human Resource Manager may decide to pay huge amounts of money to different tech training platforms, to help upskill their workforce. This way, you do not spend money, purchasing courses you would otherwise have to pay for if you are in the pursuit of your personal development. So what if you are unemployed and do not have the money to pay for different training platforms to aid your upskilling and reskilling process?
This article will be extremely important to you if you are serious about upskilling or obtaining relevant tech skills that can position you on good grounds in the future of work. This article is meant for those who really cannot afford to pay the dollar prices of courses, that may help them in becoming what they desire to be in the tech space.
That being said, let us jump right away into the art of writing powerful and persuasive financial aids that get approved all the time. First, what is financial aid?
According to studentaid.gov, “financial aid is money to help pay for college or career school. Grants, work-study, loans, and scholarships help make college or career school affordable”. Simply put in our case, financial aid is helping you pay for tech courses. With financial aid, you can access tech courses, obtain tech skills for free, and get certified by the offering platforms.
Our focus is going to be writing for financial aid for tech courses on Coursera.
Coursera is a global learning platform founded in 2012 by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller with a vision of providing life-transforming learning experiences to learners around the world irrespective of their background. Coursera offers anyone from any part of the world access to online courses and degrees from top, renowned, and highly respected universities and companies worldwide. Over 82 million learners, 100+ Fortune 500 companies, and more than 6,000 campuses, businesses, and governments come to Coursera to access world-class learning — anytime, anywhere. You can immediately tell that Coursera is really one platform to learn and obtain relevant tech skills for your future.
Steps in Writing Powerful and Persuasive Financial Aids on Coursera
- To apply for financial aid on Coursera, you have to register and set up your profile on Coursera.
- Search for a course you would love to take. You can type in the name of the field of tech you want to get into inside the search bar. For example, if you are interested in taking a Project Management course to become a Project Manager, you have to type in “Project Management”
3. Select the course that you like from the list of courses displayed. For this article, we are going to select the Google Project Management course therefore we will click on the Google Project Management course.
4. Click the “Financial aid available” link beside the “Enroll for free”
5. Click on “Continue to the application” in the white box that pops up.
6. On the first Financial Aid page, tick the boxes and type in “I agree to the terms above” and click on “Continue”.
7. On the main Financial Aid application page. You will see a form where you will put in some information about yourself and then start writing your power and persuasive financial aid application.
There are two (2) important questions that you have to answer;
i. Why are you applying for Financial Aid?
ii. How will taking this course help you achieve your career goals?
The answer to these questions must be more than 150 words.
8. Writing the Financial Aid.
Just as the title of this article “The Art of Writing Powerful and Persuasive Financial Aids for Tech Courses”, writing financial aid is an art and it has to be powerful and persuasive.
The answers you provide to the questions above in step 7, will have to be relevant, persuasive, research-oriented, and fact-driven, and also portray passion and an in-depth understanding of the obtainable value to be obtained from the course or being equipped with the skills that you will gain from taking the course.
To make your application relevant and research-oriented, you have to explore what the course “promises” to offer to you after you have taken the course. The About section of the course contains a short summary of “WHAT YOU WILL LEARN” and “SKILLS YOU WILL GAIN”.
You will have to use creativity to spread these keywords in the body of your written application. The skills you will gain from this course include Strategic Thinking, Change Management, Risk Management, Project Planning, etc. While you will learn the foundations of Agile Project Management (Scrum events, Scrum roles, and Scrum artifacts), you will also practice strategic communication problem-solving and stakeholder management through real-world scenarios. Showing an understanding of what you are going to achieve after taking this course creates a sense of value and commitment in the minds of your financial aid application reviewers. The reviewing committee immediately understands that you have done your research and know what you really want.
Also, going through other parts of the courses to fetch out useful keywords or statements of fact also helps in creating a well-researched, fact-driven, and excellent financial aid application.
Now I am going to write a sample of financial aid for this course using the techniques mentioned here (please, do not use this sample, try to write your own financial aid application).
Why are you applying for Financial Aid?
The development of the world is a direct proportion of how many successful projects have been carried out in different fields. Thus, the development of any organization or nation is a direct function of how efficient its project managers and project implementation techniques are.
The paragraph above succinctly portrays how important project management and project managers are in the development of the world. Knowing and fully appreciating the huge role project managers play in the world today, I have decided to embark on the journey to becoming a project manager.
Gaining the skills required to become a project manager would give me the capacity to lead effectively, think strategically, and implement risk analysis for critical projects, and also use project management tools like stakeholder analysis grids and project charters to help me set project expectations and communicate roles and responsibilities effectively.
Gaining an immersive understanding of project management skills will enable me to create effective project documentation and scrum artifacts throughout various phases of a project. Also, the implementation of Agile project management and implementation of Scrum techniques will make me more valuable to any organization and enable me to pay it forward to my community for the development of my world at large.
Above are my goals and true intentions but accessing the resources to embark on this journey of becoming a project manager is quite expensive owing to the harsh economic situations in my country. I would be extremely grateful if this financial aid is granted to me so I can add more value to myself in order to earn an entry-level position and also help others towards becoming project managers in the future.
This is the first part with 275 words. Now onto the next part.
How will taking this course help you achieve your career goals?
My main goal is to get a job and this skill will help in positioning me one step closer to that goal. Being equipped with the ability to initiate a project and see it to its successful execution and delivery is a massive skill that will boost my confidence, knowing I have something of value to offer to any organization.
The knowledge obtained from hands-on practical experimentation with Project Management software, implementing Scrum and Agile Methodologies, undertaking risk assessment and management, working with qualified project managers, and planning and budgeting for a project is highly fundamental to the success of any organization thus obtaining these skills with propel me even further beyond the doors of recruiting organizations.
Moreso, I look forward to becoming a Project Management Consultant; offering my skills and expertise services to different companies in the near future, undertaking this course is a huge step towards achieving that objective.
Finally, giving back to my community is at the core of my existence. I look forward to training hundreds of youths in project management and risk management, business writing, and how to use these skills to get gainful and reputable employment.
This is the second part with 190 words.
9. You can choose to answer the other questions (not answering them will not affect your chances of securing the financial aid).
10. Submit your financial aid application
11. Wait! The review process may take up to 15 days.
IMPORTANT TIP!!!
If you do not want to wait for 15 days before starting the course, you can start the course in Audit mode before applying for financial aid. See the screenshot below on how to achieve this.
First, click on Enroll for free then click on Audit the course. This way, you will have access to the course content but not the certificates and quizzes, and tests until your financial aid is approved.
Note: For Specializations (courses made up of more than one course). You will have to apply for each course under the specialization.
This Google Project Management Course is a Specialization that contains 6 courses. Therefore, you will have to apply for financial aid for the 6 different courses.
The Course section of Google Project Management Course
Tip: You can use the same application for all of them.
Now that you know how to apply for financial aid, you can go ahead and start learning and adding value to yourself for free.
Please, do not forget to drop a clap and follow for more insight in the tech space.
