My Adobe India Women In Tech (WIT) Scholarship 2021 Essay and interview Experience
With tips for new applicants
By Priya Srivastava
The Adobe WIT scholarship is a scholarship opportunity for pre-final year femal students in a formal technology 4-year BE / B.Tech education program or an Integrated ME/MS/MTech program at an Indian University or Institute at the time of applying. Should be pursuing a Major or Minor in the following streams: Computer Science/Engineering, Information Science, Data Science, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Math, and Computing. Source: Adobe WIT India official page.
It comprises of essays and interview as its two rounds of process.
Adobe India Women-in-Technology Scholarship
Essay experience:
The essay questions consist of questions on your inspiration to join tech, your interests, any challenges you have faced or anticipate facing, your role models etc. Some things to keep in mind while preparing the essay are:
Make your first draft without any filters, write everything you think about the given topic and express it in the most honest way possible. At this stage you should not be thinking about the word limit. From my experience: Don’t try to write things that you think the selectors might want to hear, don’t mould your thoughts to match some standards, write \your** story.
Remember, essays are for the selection committee to know you, so make sure you do a good job telling about yourself. What inspires you? Why technology? Ask yourself such questions and answer for yourself.
Now that you have your draft ready, it is time for editing! Check for grammar, spelling errors. Don’t go for advance english and complicated words. Try to point out important lines and points and then trimming down your draft to match the word limit. You wrote everything you could write on the topic, your mind is very clear so you know how to shorten it down to a crisp, beautiful essay ;)
Tip: You can include a short video about yourself focusing on your interests, achievements and why do you deserve the scholarship.
Some reviews I received and shared were:
State the fact with supporting examples like I did this, built this using this tech etc.
Include why you chose engineering, tech you are working on right now, what do you want to do after graduation. For example, was it your childhood dream to be an engineer or someone inspired you. These days what tech do you feel I want to build if I had all the neccessary knowledge.
Ask yourself these questions, you’ll then be able to answer the essay honestly.
Also I recommend get someone else also reveiw your essays and resume, better to seek more inputs.
Don’t sound very generic. Write things about yourself so that they get to know you as a person for eg. everyone applying is hard working, you need not mention it specifically, a better way to put it however can be a story from your life. Maybe take your JEE preparation as an example, tell them about how you spent time, faced challenges and then got into your college. That story makes you unique, you get the idea?
Interview Experience:
I received interview invitation after my essay submissions. The interview was set up on 2 November 2021 with a technology specialist from Adobe. The interview was conducted on MS Teams by one of Adobe’s Research scientist.
My interview was more focused towards my projects and the tech stack I used. I shared my screen to show the hosted projects. I explained my inspiration for building the projects and the challenges I faced in the process. Other questions were based on the technical questions on the tech stack I mentioned. How will you implement a particular feature… and similar questions. Another question- what is the future plans for my projects?
You can cover your work experience, project and your interests for your introduction. PS: This is your first impression so prepare well.
Know well about your projects. Why and what of the technology. Why did you build the project are some questions you can expect.
Prepare behavioural questions and also know your essay very well. You can keep a printout of your resume and essay for your reference.
Be confident and own your accomplishments. Don’t take it as something to fear about. The interview is just a conversation about your interests and how well do you know about the skills you mentioned.
Ask questions at the end of interview. Use this chance wisely. You could talk about your interests, work culture of the company, any research activities or innovations etc. You can take a look at the LinkedIn profile of your interviewer and discuss about their expertise. For eg. my interviewer was into ML, so we had a good discussion on the same at the end of the interview.
So close yet so far💔
Though I didn’t ultimately receive the scholarship, I feel extremely grateful to have made it this far in the Adobe WIT scholarship. I will definitely keep developing my technical skills and knowledge. There is no substitute for knowing technology at a deeper level.
To all the young women in tech reading this, I encourage you to keep pushing your boundaries and doing wonderful work in the technology space. Keep applying, be proud of your achievements and apply to all the opportunities you get. Feel free to reach me on Twitter @ shivikapriya for any queries. Happy to help 😄🤝