Duke MQM program essay
Hello everyone. My name is Tao and I am applying for Duke MQM program. Please give me kind suggestions about my essay. Thank you!
1.I was born at the Mid-autumn festival, a traditional Chinese festival celebrating the day when the moon is full.
2.My grandparents, my parents and I were all born in different provinces in China, so I could speak 5 dialects fluently.
3.During my childhood, my father was always on the business trip and absent in my life. So I loved to build Lego towers that were even taller than me, and put three little toys besides them representing my parents and me.
4.I grew up dressing like a tomboy and I had my first skirt last year.
5.During the year I was in SUNY Albany as an exchange student, I taught two international friends, an American boy and a Korean girl, to speak Chinese. But I was not a good teacher since in the final test I found them only remember those Chinese slangs in our first class.
6.During my exchange year, I took community service courses every semester. My volunteer hours count to 160 in total.
7.I have a pretty deep voice compared with other girls. Many people can easily recognize me by hearing me talking.
8.I played a jump-ball at my first time playing pool.
9.I was keen on cycling and successfully rode with no hands after one-week practice.
10.I started learning sketch at 6. My sketch teacher could never remember his students' names. But I was his exception, for I continued studying in his class until 13. My teacher told me that I am the most persistent student he met.
11.The first English song I heard was "Yesterday Once More" from the Carpenters. My dad always put this song in his old cassette player. When it played, he would sing along: 'sha-la-la-la'. He always sung off keys and I loved mimicking him. Later on, no matter when and where we heard this melody, we chorused together.
12.When I was 5, I saw Machu Picchu in a cartoon about travelling around the world. After then, Peru became the place that I would most love to visit. The main reason is that I was hoping to take a photo with Alpacas there.
13.Playing cards is my favorite entertainment, especially playing 24 game. When I was in middle school, there was a crazy period that my classmates and I sneaked to the corner of our playground and played until the end of the school.
14.The first time I heard Mein Herz Brennt from Rammstein, I am deeply attracted by the power of German and learnt it ever since.
15.The most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen was in Key West, when I was riding bike on the seawall at dawn with the boy I had a crush on.
16.Math is the most troublesome subject for me in high school, but I performed best in it in my National College Entrance Examination, even better than my classmates who taught me how to solve math problems. I found that Math is much more fun than I imagined.
17.In order to conduct internship at Dell, I started a new live in a completely strange city for two months on my own.
18.Before I came to the U.S. as an exchange student, I had no idea about how to cook. When I came back from America, I could even make fried chicken, since I spent a lot of time in the kitchen to feed myself.
19.In order to celebrate Earth Day, I participated in a benevolent activity of gouache painting with other one hundred people. Our final paint was long enough to enclose our 800-meter-long playground.
20.During the winter in Albany, my roommate and I spent the whole afternoon fixing a snow blower in our garage totally by ourselves. We were so excited that we no longer needed snow shovels.
21.There was a mountain near my home. In the summer nights, I often took a walk there with my dad and I was always lucky enough to see fireflies. But my dad didn't have such a good luck when he went there alone.
22.I am a big fan of Eminem, especially loving the song When I am gone. I always follow him when hearing and look forward to performing this song like him one day.
23.We could choose from different sporting activities for PE lessons in my freshman and sophomore year. I was the only student in my college that chose Chinese boxing twice. In the second year, my coach recognized me and always invited me to do demonstration for other students.
24.I am the person in charge of all electronic devices in my family. My service includes setting up a router for my parents, doing antivirus for their laptops and even installing navigation map applications on their phones recently.
25.I am a good gardener. Once I found that grafting can be applied to spider plants, my balcony was quickly colonized by them.
Holt Educational Consultant - / 14,797 
4780 Tao, there are number of problems with your presentation that holds back this essay from being complete and informative. Let me point it out to you by number.
1. What is the relevance of the Mid-Autun festival to your birth? Does it hold a significance of any sort? You should explain that significance in order to give that trivia an important meaning and worthy of being in the list.
2. Indicate the provinces and what these 5 dialects are.
3. Change this information. It is irrelevant because the trivia is not about your father. There is no clear reason to define why the Lego towers with 3 toys are relevant to the trivia list.
4. What is the significance of getting your first skirt?
6. What is the significance of the volunteer hours? Why did you have to do this? The reason behind its importance as trivia about you is unclear.
8. Why should I be interested that you played jump-ball when you first played pool?
9. Why were you keen on cycling without hands?
14. Indicate that this is the German "language" and what level of German proficiency you have at the moment.
* Please try to replace the trivia that refers to your father. Each time you refer to your father, the trivia becomes about him instead of about you. That should not be the case. So either make the trivia about you in relation to your father or do not mention your father at all. I am sure there are other trivia that you can use about yourself in place of that.
