The difference between a college essay and a scholarship essay

A college essay is largely about who you are and whether you'd contribute to a campus. A scholarship essay usually has a second job: convincing a funder that money spent on you produces something.

That means scholarship essays generally benefit from being more explicit about plans and outcomes than college essays do. Saying what you'll do with the education is not crass here; it's the point.

You can absolutely adapt one into the other, but adapt rather than copy. Submitting an unchanged college essay to a scholarship usually leaves the funder's actual question unanswered.