David Oyedepo Foundation Why This Course Scholarship Essay Template

Essay Prompt

Prompt Explanation

This paragraph should explain the personal experiences, curiosity, or observations that gradually drew you toward the course you want to study.

Rather than giving generic praise of the profession, The David Oyedepo Foundation wants to see how your interest developed into a serious academic and career commitment. Explain what excites you intellectually about the field, the problems you hope to solve through it, and why the course genuinely fits your strengths, values, and long-term goals. The DOF wants to see intentionality, curiosity, and direction, someone who is patriotic about their nation and is willing to serve their community.

Winning Structure

Structure Outline (Why Do You Want to Pursue Your Chosen Course?)**

A strong essay for this prompt follows five movements. Each movement has one job.

Paragraph 1

The Observation That Made the Choice Inevitable

Do not open with the name of your course or a description of what lawyers do. Open with real observation of a system failing the people it was supposed to protect. The course choice should feel like the only logical response to what you witnessed, not a decision you made in a vacuum.

What to include in your essay:

• The specific environment or pattern you observed — what you watched happen to people around you.
• The gap, failure, or injustice that your field of study is designed to address.
• A brief pivot: what that observation made you want to understand or do.

Paragraph 2

The Personal Experience That Confirmed It

This is where you bring it home. Move from the general observation to the specific incident, the moment when the failure you had been watching from a distance came directly into your family. One specific story, with enough detail that the committee can feel what it cost you.

What to include in your essay:

• A specific incident involving someone close to you where the system failed.
• What the failure looked like in practice, the powerlessness, the injustice.
• The realisation it produced: what you understood about your country, your field, and your role because of that moment.

Paragraph 3

What You Want to Build and Who You Want to Serve

Now make the case for what studying this course equips you to do. Do not describe the curriculum. Describe the gap you intend to close, the specific space between the law as it exists on paper and the law as ordinary people experience it — and name the kind of professional you are building toward.

What to include in your essay:

• The specific skills, understanding, or perspective your course develops.
• The gap in your country or community that your work is directed at.
• Who you want to serve — not in abstract terms, but in terms of the person or family who needs someone like you in their corner.

Paragraph 4

The Callback and the Commitment

Return to the incident from Paragraph 2 and close the loop. What would have been different if someone like the professional you are becoming had been there? That answer is your closing. End with a direct, specific commitment — not a hope, not a wish, but a statement of what you intend to do and who you intend to do it for.

What to include in your essay:

• A direct connection back to the personal story. What knowledge or presence would have changed the outcome?
• The specific role you intend to play in your community, country, or field.
• A final sentence that closes the essay as a commitment, not a wish.

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