Writing Feedback / To what extent is your society effectively dealing with crime? [4]

First, you have to decide which country you are dealing with ("this country" is a bit vague when you are posting online. You could be in America, China, India, Canada, Australia, etc.) and which crimes you are dealing with. Then, you need to do some research to find out what the crime rates for those types of crimes in your country are actually doing. For instance, if you are in America, you might look at both violent crime rates and property crime rates. A quick check online

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

would show you that violent crime rates have dropped dramatically over the past thirty years, and are now at about half what they were in the 1970s. You would also notice that property crime rates have declined too, though not as rapidly. A quick check of youth crime would show that this too has been dropping steadily (I credit violent video games; the decline in youth crime starts almost exactly around the time that video games became popular, and seems to have been driven by the continual increases in violent content. :-]). In any event, this would make it difficult to conclude that "crime is getting worse." Given that this is the main premise of your current outline, you will have to completely rewrite everything that comes after.

Undergraduate / University of Michigan diversity essay - holiday in Indonesia [10]

Hmmm . . . what does the essay say about you?

1. You're Asian.
2. You've been to Indonesia.
3. You don't want to be discriminated against.

None of these are particularly relevant to your application, nor do they in any way show that you would make the university a better place or imply that you would be a successful student there. This makes it a very poor application essay. Decide what you want the essay to show about you. Then write an essay that shows that.

Undergraduate / How Do You Think Your University Study Will Affect Your Career In The Future [6]

Choose a quality or set of qualities that you want the admissions officer to know about you. Decide what experiences you have had that show these qualities. Write up anecdotes about these experiences and write a new essay centered around them.

Graduate / Really need a good Topic related in Financial Derivative market for master degre [4]

If you have made it to the Masters level, one sincerely hopes you have both the interest and the knowledge necessary to be able to choose a topic on your own. If you don't already have the background information you need, go to the university library and start reading up on the relevant issues.

Undergraduate / 'Strong Mechanical Engineer' - Personal Statement 250 words min. Why Transfer? [3]


I'd start here, and cut the paragraph about your mother entirely. I certainly wouldn't expand on it. If you have a "person who influenced you" topic, you can write about your mother in a separate essay, but her accomplishments don't seem to have any bearing on why you want to transfer, which is the topic of this essay.

Undergraduate / "you guys sing too fast!" j- Short Writing For Common Application [12]

Aye, more detail be needed here. For one thing, it is unclear why you think that the people you were dealing with would consider sniffing, bared teeth, or a stuck out tongue signs that you meant them to slow down, or why, in fact, you would not just mouth "slow down" in the first place.

Poetry / British Romantic Poetry [6]

In the case of the poetry you are studying, reread the poems a few times to understand the story being told (and there is a good chance the poems you have picked are narrative, given the era). Then you can begin to analyze the poem in much the same way as you would analyze a short story, only you'll have an additional layer of poetic devices you can talk about, too.

Undergraduate / Write about someone who has impacted your life and why ("My mother") [3]

Yeah, I'd strongly urge you to pick someone else to talk about. Maybe you have a sibling, friend, or teacher you could choose (none of these are that original, either, but at least they're better picks than a parent). Or maybe you had a chance encounter with a stranger or acquaintance that impacted your life. That would likely be much more interesting.

Undergraduate / What appeals the most to you about our school - My admission essay [8]

You could say everything you do now in about half as many words, and have a much stronger essay. For instance:

"I would say that The P's school website'sappeared at first to me was just like any other school's website. Unexpectedly, moment I clicked on 'Explore P', the interactive tour has immediately represented me the whole different view aboutsold me on P, by showing me that it focuses not only about on its excellence in academics but o n social development as well."

Writing Feedback / Your favorite movie (in IMAX Theater) [8]


This is clearly an essay about why you like IMAX. If you need to write on your favorite movie, why not write about one of the ones that you saw in IMAX. Then, you could praise IMAX in passing while still staying on topic.

Undergraduate / All of a sudden everything is different; it was as if I'm experiencing the plots of a drama; Tragedy [9]

No. Well, maybe. The problem you have at the moment is that it doesn't work with what you have. First of all, you keep using "we" in an essay that really should be using "I" a lot more than it does. Secondly, your claim


is unsupported. Your family didn't die, it simply adjusted to a sudden financial setback. Undoubtedly it was rough, but it doesn't sound as if it was the same as having someone actually die. In fact, nothing much about the changes sounds particularly out-of-the-ordinary devastating. Also, you don't explain in any great detail how the tragedy changed you, and what you do explain you assert without showing.

Undergraduate / 'I went up on the stage and bowed' - Common App - Random Topic [13]


This is probably true. It would also have been true about just about any other topic you picked. Most undergrad applicants are teenagers from fairly similar backgrounds. They all have to write on the same prompts, and do so in a way that highlights one of the same set of qualities. Obviously this will lead to a lot of overlap. The best you can hope for is to write your essay well, with a high level of specificity, and a bit of originality in the slant you put on it. You did all three of these things, so don't worry about it.

Undergraduate / Music, Libra, Science - Common App// Topic of Choice [16]

You want to go to med school. That's nice. Why do you then ramble on about music for the first half of the essay? I suppose a better question might be "what do you want this essay to say about you?" I can think of several possible answers a reader might leap to:

1. You're indecisive.
2. You like music.
3. Your grasp of logic is horrible. (Your syllogism, while actually a nice rhetorical device, makes the rational part of me cringe.)
4. You like to ramble.
5. You're probably very interesting to talk to.

Some of the above are good, some not so much. Absolutely none of them make you a very good candidate for university in general or a degree program aimed at getting you into med school in particular. At most, you might get a bit of credit for #5, from those who, like Simone, appreciate the creativity of your approach. So, do you want to go with an essay that highlights no relevant qualities of yours and that will appeal only to people with very particular tastes, which may or may not be shared by the admissions officers who read it? If, so, great. Otherwise, you might want to try a different approach.

Undergraduate / Another one for Roomies... (So many people are applying to Standford !) [22]

You use "really" far too often. And really, you're writing this as if your roommate really were going to read it, which she's really not. This is a mistake, really. Like any application essay you write, you really want to decide what you want this essay to say about you (something good, preferably) then write it so that the truth of your possession of whatever good quality you pick really comes through. So, try again. Really.

Student Talk / Annie Dillard; What are peoples' opinions on her? [10]

I must confess to having read very little of Annie Dillard's work, so I can't be of much help here. I am curious, though, about this:


What about her ideas don't you like? And what don't you like about them? Do you or find them to be self-contradictory? Difficult to follow? Ideologically offensive? Just a bit dull? I'm guessing it has something to do with her portrayal of people psychologically, given your next sentence, but that still covers a lot of possibilities.

Undergraduate / "I love airports." - common app essay [10]

Try revising the essay so that you capture all of your main points in about half of the words you use now. It will be a good writing exercise, and you may actually have something at the end that can be refined into a usable piece.

Graduate / SOP part for extra co-curricular activity - Ph.D [4]


You don't need the capital letters here.

"I was recognized for Paper Presentation in a National Level Technical Symposium" "Got" is too informal.


You need to revise this sentence. You didn't win academics, and so the structure you are using with "besides" ends up sounding odd.

Undergraduate / "Chinese boy raised in Malaysia" University of Wisconsin Essay [22]

I'll get you started, grammar-wise:

I am a Chinese who was raised in a small village from Malaysia, a place where is isolated from any bustling and flourishing city. This is where we can see There, people are still liveunder in wooden huts. I can always see their wooden huts have been that are often destroyed by the strong winds or flooded by the rainstormsagain and again . The families, especially the elders and children are sufferinggreatlyand dread under such circumstances. I am dedicated to alleviating that suffering. know something has to be done in order to change it.

Essays / Prompt for "Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts" by Perry [9]

Yes, given that this is an assignment for a professor, you might want your response to be a tad less cynical and a bit more about the importance of combining both to attain true understanding of the subject matter. For that matter, you can be cynical and yet still hold this to be true.

Undergraduate / "how we manage these imperfections" - Umich setback essay [18]

How about trying something concrete and specific? I would be so myself, but I naturally don't know the concrete details of your life. You will have to choose something yourself and write about it.

Undergraduate / "My parents focused on helping me" - UCF application [11]

Take your essay, print it off, then crumple it into a little paper ball and throw it into your trash can.

Okay, so that isn't strictly necessary, but just deleting it doesn't have the same bitter satisfaction to it. In any event, you need to start over. Your essay tells us that your parents cared about you, helped you with your homework, and imparted their values to you. I don't care. The admission's officers don't care. Most likely, no one else besides you and parents will care. This is normal for people who are applying to university. It won't apply to all of the applicants, of course, but by and large, one of the main reasons people do well enough in school to be able to apply to university is because they have a family that loves and supports them. You need to come up with some way your family, culture, or environment has shaped you in a way that is a bit (or better yet, a lot) different from all of the other candidates. Was there a particular lesson or value your parents taught you that you can describe through a narrative incident? What is your cultural background? How has it defined you? Where did you grow up? How did that affect you? Brainstorm and come up with a more original approach to this essay.


83.3%. It's a statistic, so it must be true.

Graduate / SOP for MS Computer science [3]

Beyond getting a degree (which I could guess from the fact of your application alone) what is your purpose? The fact that I don't know after reading your statement of purpose is a serious flaw in in it. Post a new draft when you have an SOP that actually does.

Undergraduate / "1...2...BOOM!"- Common app [9]

I like the essay. So will most people who read a lot. You can pretty much count on the admission's officers being such people. Some parts of your writing could use a bit of tweaking, though. For instance:


Really, it seems as if this storm is taking place at night, mostly because you say directly that it is. Nights are typically dark, and, in a city where light pollution washes out the stars, a cloudy sky is unlikely to be much darker than a cloudless one.


I know what you mean, but it seems likely that you were not actually thankful that you discovered that the cable dish had been destroyed. Probably, you were thankful that the television had not been, and upset about the the cable dish, which would explain your attitude later on. Also, "cable dish"? Do you mean "satellite dish"?


I'd list a few more of your favorite titles for each genre you mention.


Again, I know what you mean. However, mini-thunderstorms are usually symbols of depression or anger. Be careful when using metaphors to choose ones whose preexisting symbolic baggage works with, rather than against, your own point.


Your parents can control lightning. Cool!

Undergraduate / quantum mechanics - Why does Brown interest me? [14]


This is sort of humorous, I guess, but still, indicating that you are the sort of student who sleeps through classes you find boring is not a great idea in an admissions essay.

Writing Feedback / "A bizarre charm" - An essay on my most promising bad fortune. [4]

Oh dear. Short, useless comments like this will get your account suspended very quickly. You must give others the sort of feedback you hope to get on your own work. AND DON'T SHOUT!

Now, about the essay:

What is the purpose of this essay? Is it a school assignment, one that asks you to make fun of your own misfortunes? Or are you just writing for the fun of it? In any event, you are too obvious about telling the reader that you plan to be lighthearted for the tone to actually come across that way.

Poetry / British Romantic Poetry [6]

Project Gutenberg is also a good resource for this, as is wikisource. Really, if you were able to find this site online and sign up for it, you should have enough computer savvy to be able to track down plenty of poetry from that era, all of which is in the public domain, and so easy to find and access for free.

Graduate / SOME PEOPLE THINK SCIENTIFIC WORK ON PLANTS AND FOOD IS GOOD OR BAD. DISCUSS [3]

I'd like the essay a lot better if you were to define "scientific work." Does it refer only to purely theoretical research aimed at better understanding plants and food? Or does it include technological advances too? If so, which ones is it most important to discuss? The Green Revolution, the genetic revolution, the attempts at creating a Green Green Revolution?

Without these distinctions, your essay seems to meander down a rough road full of logical potholes. You say, for instance, that pesticides are bad and that more people are becoming obese because of increased fat content in foods. But we only know these things through scientific research . . .

Writing Feedback / CHILDREN SHOULD LISTEN TO THEIR PARENTS AND TEACHER, GIVE YOUR OPINION [4]

Use more specific examples to demonstrate your points, and try to massively limit your use of the words "respect," any of its variants, and "parents." Then repost.

Undergraduate / "how we manage these imperfections" - Umich setback essay [18]

A series of vague and general statements . . . not a great way to go.

Essays / Prompt for "Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts" by Perry [9]

You're on the right track:

Bull -- understanding frames of reference, ideological expectations, methods of questioning data

Cow -- having memorized data

Bull is clearly more valuable than cow, especially in a world where data itself can simply be looked up whenever it is needed. To be able to write the former, you need to be able to think critically and to show awareness of the prevailing paradigms. Cow only requires you to have turned yourself into a biochemical tape recorder, able to repeat back class notes or textbooks verbatim. Of course, bull has its dark side to, not much addressed in the essay. So, in the example given in the essay, the science student can ace the sociology essay because he is smart enough to guess, from the book titles, what the general topics of the books are about. He knows the general biases that govern the field and that tend to slant the teachings of sociology professors. He can therefore guess both what the books likely said about their topics, and what the professors want to see in the essay discussion. The data upon which the books rested isn't really all that important -- it was likely cherry picked and massaged to support the "right" conclusion anyway, as that's what happens when a field is dominated by biased ideologues. Indeed, many professors, especially in the humanities, share the relativistic view of the author of the essay, in which facts aren't facts, but merely things to be interrogated and twisted until you get the result you believe in. Of course, this is generally only held to be true when you don't like the facts. When the facts support your position, then they are inviolable and those who hold contrary views are ignoramuses.

The above should give you an idea of how someone might go about responding to the claim you have to respond to. Of course, your own response might be very different . . .

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

Your first essay is stronger. Your description of your emotional suffering deals with the impact part quite nicely. The second essay tries to hard to connect the experience to your desire to go to college. Hopefully, you have many other reasons for wanting to go to college, so this is unnecessary. Also, unless you plan to major in ethics, it rings a bit false, too.

Writing Feedback / "That government is best which governs least" - CLEP essay feedback [4]

Well, I agree with your stance, but I would say you probably want to take a more nuanced approach. For one thing, you might want to define what you believe are the government's legitimate areas of responsibility. Should the government supply the military? the police? the court system? the school system? nationalized health care? etc. What principles do you apply when trying to decide which areas are legitimate?

Also, lose the Hitler reference. His name is used far too often in places it has no business being. If you were going to use a World War II example, Stalin and the U.S.S.R would be the obvious one anyway. Really, look at virtually any command economy, and the disadvantages of large government become fairly obvious. You might also point out that government bureaucracies, by their nature, must be more inefficient than a private company doing the same thing, that bureaucracies in fact inevitably reward inefficiency and punish efficiency. If you do mention this, you should of course explain why this is so as well.

Undergraduate / University of Michigan diversity essay (a mission trip) [4]


That's about it, really. You say you learned to appreciate your material wealth more and that you learned to feel more empathy for the poor, but you don't really show that. It ends up sounding as if you are merely saying what you know the admission's officers want to hear. It's fine if that's what you're doing, but you have to be convincing in your efforts. Try a more narrative approach to the topic, recounting your experience as if you were writing a short story.

Undergraduate / All of a sudden everything is different; it was as if I'm experiencing the plots of a drama; Tragedy [9]


This makes no sense. If he "mistrusted" other people, he would have avoided dealing with them, and could not have been taken advantage of. I think you mean to use a different word.


Everything up to this, while sort of interesting, tells about your family. This is the only paragraph that talks about you, and you are supposed to be the focus of the essay. So, you need to explain in much more detail how this experience affected you. Also, this seems more like an experience, rather than an "issue," though I suppose you can technically use it.

Writing Feedback / 'saving land for the endangered animals' - toefl IBT issue [7]

For a TOEFL essay, you're clearly on the right track. If you were writing for pretty much any other purpose, you would need to elaborate on your arguments in much more detail, but for a 45 minute job meant to show your basic English proficiency, you're fine. You have a clear thesis and the standard arguments needed to back them up. Your grammatical errors do not impinge on your meaning, although you should still try to limit them:

"With the development of science and technology, human beings have gained more control over the world than they have had at any other time in the history"

Undergraduate / Piano; practicing a classical piece satisfies me, I can feel the tangible results of my improvement [9]

You definitely need to focus on your playing of a specific piece here. Show, through your description of how you play the piece, everything you now currently only tell.

Undergraduate / LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW - "The Mission"; Apa format [4]

Yes, many of your sources seem to come from the JPL website, but as you have the author names for the specific articles, you should use those for your in-text citations instead.

Writing Feedback / IN MOST COUNNTRIES PLANT AND ANIMALS ARE DECLINING ,TELL REASON AND SOLUTIONS [3]

And in most countries where birth control is freely available, birth rates tend to be below the level needed to sustain the population. Most Western nations, for instance, continue to experience population growth only as a result of immigration.

However, your overall thesis is correct -- if in fact the world's population has reached (or already exceeded) its sustainable peak, then the logical solution is to impose limitations on who can have children when. Indeed, we practice population control on a host of other species precisely to keep their numbers at a sustainable level. Simone is right, though -- even the most radical environmentalists tend not to be this honest about matters, especially given the concern on the left with reproductive rights. Depending upon your audience, you may or may not wish to revise your essay to avoid such brutal truth-telling.

Essays / Prompt for "Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts" by Perry [9]

It isn't in quotes in the text, so I don't see why quotation marks would have been added to the quotation, though the term is indeed being used in a very specific sense that is not one of the word's usual meanings.

Undergraduate / LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW - "The Mission"; Apa format [4]

The subject matter is such that others will have to correct your content, but for APA format advice, well, Google will lead you to multiple websites explaining APA format. You can also have MS Word handle it for you automatically.

"I am on the outside looking in when it came to writing this paper."