It's good that we're discussing the hurdle for someone to get their first
scholarship to participate in Wikimania. In addition to the suggestions in
the other thread, I'd like to lead an initiative to help future applicants
who want their first-ever Wikimania scholarship.
As a successful Wikimania 2017 scholarship applicant, I'm publishing
on-wiki all my answers to the scholarship application form, except personal
information:
https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Deryck_Chan/Scholarship_appli…
I encourage all other successful scholarship applicants to do the same. If
you kept a draft of your application form, redact any personally
identifiable information and publish it on wikimania2017wiki. This will
help future scholarship applicants get a feeling of what the reviewers are
looking for.
Deryck