Writing Feedback / My Essay on Disappearances in Pakistan. Help [3]


Already I have a horrible feeling about this essay. Of course Pakistan has been shaped by its history, every place is.


Better. At least the content is substantial. But it's also a sentence fragment.


You are going to need to define what you mean by bad governance, here.


Again, some explication and nuance might be in order. Surely you are not going to be ethnocentric and judge a culture negatively just because it oppresses over half its population. Fiend!


This seems like a gross oversimplification. Dictators oppress their people and terrorize their opponents. That's sort of their nature.


LOL! No, the best option would be for God to reach down and smite the wicked rulers of that nation. It's about as likely to happen, too, as what you propose. Naivete is not a great attribute in a poli. sci. student.

Overall, your essay seems a bit shallow and naive. Your main idea is that Pakistan doesn't respect human rights and that this is bad. Both parts of that are perfectly true, but it doesn't really require a full length essay to convince anyone of it. Moreover, all of your sources come from one end of the political spectrum, ("The Guardian," "Amnesty International," "Asian Human Rights Commission," etc.) This perhaps explains the confusion of your ideas, and why, in an essay on Pakistan, you manage to work in a "George W. Bush and America bad" paragraph.

Don't get me wrong, Pakistan is a U.S. ally, and has been able to get away with a lot of abuses without facing much criticism as a result. You probably could even make a case that the U.S.'s actions in the War on Terror have undermined its moral authority to criticize such abuses, and even made it easier for friendly dictators to engage in them. But you don't make this case. You simply repeat political talking points picked up from a handful of websites.

If this were a paper for an English class, you'd be fine. I would hope, though, that a poli. sci. prof would have higher standards for an essay on this subject. Try reading more books and journal articles on the subject, and at least get an idea of why the notion of the U.N. Human Rights Council forcing Pakistan to do anything is laughable.

Writing Feedback / Hills Like White Elephants Essay (man and girl frustration) [2]

You are on the right track. One concern I have, though, is that the prompt asks you who you think is "more" manipulative, implying that both of the characters are in fact trying to manipulate each other. You don't argue that. You argue that the man is manipulative and that the woman is not. This is difficult to sustain, even with the quotations you have picked. For instance:


This is a classic form of manipulation via the guilt trip, with the comment meant to provoke the man into providing emotional reassurance and support.

Indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of the conversation is that the characters each want the other one to take ultimate responsibility for the decision. Jig can convince the man to "go through with it," but wants him to say they should keep the baby. The man can convince Jig to terminate her pregnancy, but wants her to say she's okay with the decision to do so. This is psychologically realistic, as this is obviously a couple whose entire lifestyle is dedicated to having fun and avoiding responsibility as much as possible. It is perfectly fine to say that the man is the more manipulative of the two, but to argue that he alone is manipulative is a much more difficult task.

Letters / Does my resume look alright to you?? any help would be great! thank you soo much [3]

You have included more or less the right sort of information. You should probably expand on some of your entries, but which ones depend upon what job are you applying for. Usually, you try to tailor your descriptions of your experiences to match whatever you think your prospective employer is looking for.

You need to put your resume in a better format, too, but that is impossible to do on this site. You can find resume templates, though, in MS Word, or online if you use another word processor.

Grammar, Usage / Citing a printed Word document... [5]

Well, you have a title and an author (the school district). That should be enough for some sort of citation. Is there a date, too? Also, can you find a copy of the document online? If so, you can site the website according to the proper conventions. As to what those conventions are, that depends on what citation scheme you are supposed to be using.

Writing Feedback / Personal Essay: A Dog's Best Friend. [5]


Nice image.


The diction seems off here, the tone incongruent with the rest of the essay.

The last three paragraphs of your essay seem excessive, perhaps because what you are saying is so obvious. You lost a beloved pet, you still miss him, and always will. Stretching that out to three paragraphs just isn't necessary. A more concise conclusion might be in order.

Undergraduate / "The future / Community service" - U of I Short essays [6]

These are stronger. You could make them even better if you tried replacing some of the weak verbs you use with stronger ones. You still have a tendency in sections to rely too much on "was" and other forms of "to be."

Also, the notion of cheating comes up a bit too abruptly in your first essay now, as you do not make it clear how John losing his house connects to cheating. Did John get cheated? Did he try to cheat someone? Are you blaming the economic downturn itself of cheating? You meaning is unclear.

Faq, Help / Is it safe to post my essay here? Or should I be worried about Plagiarism? [175]

Unless of course by "help with writing papers" you mean sites that offer to write papers for you for a sizable fee. Using such sites is indeed unethical, not to mention stupid, since in using them you only cheat yourself out of the education you (or possibly your parents) are paying for.

Undergraduate / Drugs Are Cool (University of Pittsburgh Undergraduate Application) [8]

Strong essay overall. One thing:


I don't know that the parallel structure works here. A drug can give you hallucinations, but we would normally say it can cause depression and other side effects.

Undergraduate / Pomona supplemental essay/Does the essay capture the experience vividly enough [6]


Perhaps you could start here, and work in some of what you have before this in a sort of flashback. This would focus the essay more tightly on the experience of dressing up as Geisha, and allow you to reduce the length somewhat, never a bad idea in an application essay, howsoever well-written. That said, this is well-written and interesting, and should stand out from the crowd, which is what you want.

Undergraduate / My Life according to Edward Elgar- Common App! [11]

This seems like a very promising topic, moving and original. However, it seems likely to get rather long. Perhaps you can keep the same spirit but in a more condensed form? Interesting as it may be, the essay is still going to be one in a pile of hundreds, so keeping the length under control will work to your benefit.

Grammar, Usage / whats the difference between somones and someone's ? [17]

"Someone's" is the correct form. I'm not quite sure why the spellchecker recognizes "someones" as a word.

Writing Feedback / Toefl---TV good or bad? [4]

"Television was one of the most influential inventions of the 20th century"


This is a great point, but it would sound better if you reversed the ages. So, "suppose a person starts watching television at this rate at the age of ten, and continues with this habit until he is sixty-five."

One sentence conclusions are actually fairly common in TOEFL essays. Simone was probably talking about real writing. The TOEFL isn't a test of good writing, but of the author's basic grammatical skills and ability to express an opinion coherently. Also, it has to be written in 30 minutes. Thus, TOEFL essays don't get judged by the same standards as most other essays. In any event, you have clearly got a good TOEFL essay here. You've made a few minor grammatical mistakes, but they don't make the essay difficult to read, and your arguments are very strong and well-thought out.

Writing Feedback / Cbest Essay - Missing Opportunity in Life [5]


could not forget?


Your over-reliance on a single, weak verb is bad. Combined with an almost uniform sentence structure for each of your thoughts, and it is much like reading something written by an elementary school student. Vary your sentence structures and lengths, and use stronger verbs, not just in the this paragraph, but throughout the entire essay, and then repost.

Undergraduate / "UCF is my first choice" - just need some advice. [4]

I must say, up until just a month ago I was not imagining myself in the group of peers who are expecting to move right into dorms and college life. I wasn't even excited about college, because I wasn't planning to be experiencing anything beyond going to community college and living at home for the next two years.

Then use the extra room to talk more about what specifically excited you about UCF. Yes, it offers programs in elementary education and art, but I'm guessing this is true of many other universities. Also, you can travel around most campuses on foot or by bike. And you must have been aware of both of those things before going to visit your friend, so what changed?

Writing Feedback / Are you bored doing the same tasks over and over again? - Definition Essay [2]

Hypo stress is the type of stress one would encounter if they do a job that does not require much thought and is very repetitive. People that encounter this particular type of stress would be those who are uninspired, bored and or unchallenged. The effect it has on a person is a lack of inspiration and or restlessness. It can also be defined as someone who is under stressed; they need more stimuli and varying activities in their lives.

Wow! Look at all those weak verbs. Revise the above, and then the rest of your essay, to eliminate as many weak verbs as possible. Then repost. If you need help figuring out how to eliminate weak verbs, read this article:

Writing Feedback / the parallels of " The world on the Turtles back" and "The Genesis" [3]

"It's amazing to see the way different cultures and religions believe our world came to being, "


Unless of course you were familiar with the concept of archetypes.


Actually, this is a really good point. Great job.

The content of your essay is strong, but you use weak verbs and forms of "to be" too often for it to make enjoyable reading.

Writing Feedback / "Get an A, but no brain" - Cheating and plagiarism [12]

While we get a fair number of aspiring freeriders here, the default assumption for anyone new should be that they are going to try their best to be a productive member of the essayforum community. Initial breaches of etiquette should be corrected gently and helpfully. Also, people should avoid *trying* to take offense. For instance, someone who says s/he needs an essay to be perfect, and then requests help, is not necessarily asking for us to make the essay perfect, S/he may only be explaining why s/he felt it necessary to seek help. Always assume goodwill until you have a strong reason to do otherwise.

Writing Feedback / President Bush's September llth Address to the Nation [7]

Your analysis of the speech seems a bit shallow. For instance, in the quotes you gave, his focus on "We" and "our" seem more important, as he tries to bring the nation together in common cause. His appeal to religion continues this, in a sense, given that the vast majority of Americans profess to believe in a higher power. It also lays the groundwork for an "us" versus "them" scenario, in which God and the right are on America's side. This is eminently useful, if you are entering into war. Good people will kill, rape, and torture "the enemy" with abandon, when they would never dream of using violence against another human being normally. And if you are going to go to war, you need to be willing to fight it totally and utterly if you expect to win. I suspect the religious references were also chosen to resonate with the Bible's apocalyptic prediction of a war in the Middle East between the forces of good and evil, though that could be overreaching a bit. In any event, those are some of the more obvious things that come to mind just reading the bits you quoted. I'm sure an analysis of the entire speech could go into a lot more depth.

Student Talk / Six "W" on transcript! [8]

Well, most university applications have an optional essay you can use to explain just this sort thing if you are worried it needs explaining.

Undergraduate / "How did you get caught?" - University of Chicago Supplemental Essay [3]

The prompt as you have phrased it makes little sense, so I don't know what you are supposed to be writing on, but overall the essay is well-written. I have two main main concerns, though.

First is that you don't really go into that much detail about how she "caught" you. You may have been a better person for knowing her, but wanting a cell phone and a higher allowance are not, in and of themselves, warning signs that a teenager is on the path to dire poverty. On the contrary, coming from a house that can provide such things is one of the best guards against such a fate.

Second is that you describe this person very sympathetically and term her a friend, yet you also compare her to a fictional donkey and say you will make no effort to keep in touch with her or to find out if she has ended up on the street, much less to try to convince your family to save her from that fate. As a result, at points I felt you were . . . condescending? contemptuous? insincere? I'm not really sure how to describe it . . . as if you were writing about this person because you knew that praising the underprivileged is Good, and Something the Admissions Officers Will Like, without really meaning it. I'm not saying that is actually the case, only that at points your writing gave me that impression.

Undergraduate / Initial Florida State Essay - content only [3]

Delete it all! You start out saying nothing much, and continue in like vein throughout. Pick some specific narrative incident that *shows* that you possess one or more of the three things you need to write about, and craft a new essay centered around that.

Writing Feedback / Reserve Readings - What did I do wrong in this essay? [7]

You have the right sort of structure. The grammar needs polishing, though, and many unnecessary phrases can be cut to tighten up the writing:

HIPPA is a plan that attemptsaims to mitigate problems associated with continuation of coverage, lesse n the coverage barriers imposed by many insurance carriers to pre-existing conditions , and eliminate privacy breaches especially associated with the current information technology age . As much as the general intention ofWhile HIPAA looks good on vast piles of paper, it does not go far enough or have sufficient teethin the details to be a viable and effectivetool for risk management tool.purposes, and the lack of enforcement is testimony to its short-comings.

Writing Feedback / toefl -- needed land / protecting environment [5]

I can't help but notice that many of your comments on other people's threads have been a bit brief recently . . .

Undergraduate / Yale Supplement Essay - My Little Sculptors (tentative title) [6]

The first paragraph is fine. So is the Spanish. But, you need to talk more about how the experience relates to you as a potential Yale student. So, since you end up translating the Spanish anyway, you have something you can get rid of to make space for the extra stuff you need to add.

Undergraduate / Overcoming Domestic Violence - UC Transfer App [8]

Actually, the overall essay is very strong. You could tweak a few things, I suppose:


The "it was" is weak, and "pertinent," although not nonsensical, seems the wrong word tone-wise.


"miniature person" = "baby." Unless of course you were being attended by sprite as a nurse.


Which attributes, specifically? What skills? What joy? Prefer the specific to the general.


This part is a bit jarring. In theory, there is nothing wrong with any of this, and the reader should be very sympathetic. In practice, a lot of people are going to hear "I'm a crazy person who's off her meds, and who in fact refused to go on them." Since you don't explore this aspect of your experience in detail anyway, you might want to omit it and talk directly about how you found a support group to help you through a difficult time in your life. There's no point in risking triggering common biases in your reader if you don't have to.


What insight? Again, prefer the specific to the general.


If your grades were solid enough to easily support a university application, you should say so here. Otherwise, leave it as is.

Undergraduate / The meaning of 'community' - what this UPenn prompt is asking? [5]

Note too that you are asked about both academic and social communities. So, for the former, you would look at what academic subjects appeal to you, your potential majors and minors, and draw on them when deciding which academic communities to talk about. For the latter, you might look to your extra-curricular activities, political affiliations, and cultural and ethnic backgrounds for inspiration.

Essays / I'm confused about how to understand an essay question or topic sentence [13]

From your first body paragraph, I'm guessing you meant to say in your introduction that friends who are similar to you will support you instead of mocking you when you do something embarrassing or humiliating. This is quite different from what you actually said, which, as Simone pointed out, is not at all the sort of thing you want to say in this sort of essay.

Undergraduate / Overcoming Domestic Violence - UC Transfer App [8]

I normally heap ridicule and scorn on those who avoid using "man" to refer to generic human beings on the grounds that it is sexist, given that the word referred to people in general long before it referred to males specifically. However, I have to agree with Simone that, given the particular context in which you are using it, the quotation seems horribly ironic. You can still keep it, though -- just paraphrase. So

"To paraphrase William Faulkner, I believe humankind will not only endure, it will prevail." Or, of course, you could simply switch genders altogether, and go with "To paraphrase William Faulkner, I believe woman will not only endure, she will prevail." Depends, really, on whether you want to end on a claim of the endurance of the human spirit in general or of the female spirit in particular. Either would be fine.

Undergraduate / MIT: 'Armageddon has arrived' - What for pleasure? & What to major in? [6]


Actually, it's worse than that. It could be read as saying you believe you should strive to bring about Armageddon, a worrying goal for someone trying to improve his engineering skills . . .

Writing Feedback / Narrative essay / the street artist [5]

The story is too pat to be realistic. Also, the theme of the etching, according to the website you posted, is "love brings forth art," which isn't really the theme of your piece, as near as I can tell. He loves his wife. He creates art. But you never really connect those two things. The notion that he starts drawing images of his wife to remember her could be on topic, but again it is just one more detail that you don't really do anything with.

Writing Feedback / the main purposes of a country's education system [6]

Start by learning about parallel structure and reviewing the correct usage of articles in English.

Continue by using specific examples and concrete language to ground your discussion of abstract concepts.

End by reposting your revised essay here for more feedback.

Undergraduate / FSu Essay "Vires Artes Mores" and how they reflect your life [7]


Delete your first paragraph. The admissions officers will have read near identical ones in almost every single essay they've encountered before yours.

In fact, start over entirely. Pick a single narrative anecdote that shows that you possessed one of these characteristics, and describe it in great detail, rather than just telling us things in the form of broad generalities.

Undergraduate / "the day she became my mother" - Personal Statement help [3]

You need to write a much more focused essay. At the moment, you do a good job of introducing yourself, but you don't really do so in a way that makes you seem like an outstanding candidate for admissions. For instance:


So? Had you survived a childhood in an abusive home, a war zone, a house blighted by death and illness, or some combination of these things, then I would be impressed. Simply still being alive after a regular childhood isn't really that gripping.


Great detail to include if you applying to a music school.


Anyone who goes to school learns these lessons. I don't care about this. Neither will the admissions people. Say something important and different about who you are instead.

And so on.

Undergraduate / Yale Supplement Essay - My Little Sculptors (tentative title) [6]

I don't know if it is necessary to include the original Spanish. It's sort of interesting to read, but the space might be better saved for a discussion of what you learned from this experience and how you can use that to make Yale a better place.

Writing Feedback / Toefl Topic -- "A person you know is coming to your town" [5]

You're not doing too badly for a TOEFL essay. You should reorder either your paragraphs or your introduction, however, so that they match. At the moment, you talk about the points you mention in your introduction in the reverse of the order in which they appear, which makes the essay seem less coherent.

Undergraduate / Ethical dilemma or risk - "Money solves all problems" [19]

Yes. If your mother had called the police instead of you, that would be a problem. As it is, you should be okay, and your willingness to honestly admit you started off making the wrong decision is a plus, in my book.

Undergraduate / Macaulay - some issue or concern essay [20]

It's very topical, and could easily lead to a cliched essays full of misunderstandings and misinterpretation. It could also lead to a carefully reasoned analysis of an important issue. Depends upon your level of skill in thinking and writing.

Writing Feedback / Narrative essay / the street artist [5]

"he was screaming at the nurse"

Good story. You say it has to match the tone, mood, and theme, though. Do you mean it has to match the tone, mood, and theme of the etching, or only that they should work together in the story? If the latter, you are solid ground. Otherwise, you might want to examine the picture more closely.

Undergraduate / "Most conversations with my classmates" - Umich short answer [3]

"I could not bring myself to admit this "

"I learned that even though I excelled in certain areas, there were others who were just as smart as or even smarter than me. I accepted the fact that no one, not even me, knew everything." "others" seems to refer back to areas, which throws the sentence off.

And yes, you need to dedicate a bit more time to discussing the second half of the prompt at the end of your essay.

Undergraduate / Emigrating from India, my parents insisted that I work; COMMON APP - TRANSFER [6]

A fairly straightforward essay that explains a weakness you probably should address. You might want to end by letting the reader know if your decision paid off. Did you pass calculus with proverbial flying colors?