Undergraduate / The cruel and the heartless/ Significant risk or Ethical dilemma [8]

I actually sort of like the essay, with the notion that a childhood incident that haunted you was eventually revealed to have been utterly forgotten by the other person involved, who had actually transferred for completely unrelated reasons. You could probably redeem the essay as an admissions worthy one if you spent a bit longer focusing on what you learned from the main experience, which seems to be the more recent conversation with the student, rather than the initial anecdote.

However, the other posters have a point -- this essay is supposed to focus on an ethical dilemma, and the dilemma itself is a fairly simple one that you encountered when you were very young. If you revised the essay to make it a good admissions piece, you would have to shift your focus away from the opening narrative even more than you already do, and it would no longer suit for this topic. So, while you might be able to use an edited version of this essay elsewhere in one of your applications, you should probably pick a different incident to talk about for this prompt.

Undergraduate / ~Why I chose to attend UCF~ A Knight in Shining Armor [10]

"is" and "has" are weak verbs. Simone is saying you should replace them with stronger ones, and she is quite right.

Before: "It has to be a place that not only provides me with the tools to succeed academically, but also to be a well-rounded individual in society. It is also important that the college is a place that has morals. It has to be a place where I can feel like I am part of a family. These things are important to me because I live in a society where I've learned to appreciate people and the way they perceive the world that we share. It has allowed me to get an understanding of life from many aspects. I put much time into finding a college that possesses these characteristics."

After: My ideal college must provide me with the tools to succeed academically and to develop into a well-rounded individual. It must also be a moral environment, one that makes me feel like part of a diverse family. I value this because I believe that intellectual growth can occur only through ongoing attempts to understand different perspectives. Therefore, I have spent much time seeking a college that possesses these characteristics.

The revised version is much better stylistically speaking. Of course, it still doesn't make much logical sense, and consists of vague generalizations that weaken your essay, making the best revision this one:

Still, as you write something better to replace this, bear in mind the stylistic tips you have been given.

Undergraduate / "help me weigh these testicles": common, significant experience/topic of choice [16]

Wonderfully written essay. Very engaging and detailed. One thing that struck me though -- you refer to these slides as "clues" holding DNA samples. You also said that you cut your fingers repeatedly on these slides. The word "contamination" springs to mind . . .

Writing Feedback / "We found no sign of my mother" - I thought what happened at the night was my allusion [10]

The paragraph you have now functions well as a hook. You will of course need to add more paragraphs in order to fully answer the prompt. Depending upon what you write about, you intro may seem weaker or stronger after you have finished the rest of your essay.

Scholarship / How to get scholarship to study abroad? (architecture) [7]

This would be the sort of place you could post drafts of scholarship application essays for feedback once you have done that research and found scholarships to apply for. Also, do try to avoid shouting in your posts.

Undergraduate / UCF Admissions Essay: I Am a Bird [11]

Better yet, pick a specific bird. So. "I am an eagle (or hawk or wren or sparrow or bluejay, etc.).This will allow you to add another layer to the metaphor, and have better resonance than the more general term "bird," which has a couple of slang associations that you probably don't mean, even if they are both applicable to you.

Book Reports / Shakespeare's Sonnets, Analysis [6]

The use of the first person is generally frowned upon in formal literary criticism for the reason it is usually frowned upon in academic writing -- it is generally unnecessary. We already know that the thoughts you are expressing are your own, without your saying things like "I think" or "in my opinion." In fact, if you are presenting ideas that are not your own without proper citation, you are guilty of plagiarism. Also, your interpretations should preferably be grounded in textual evidence, which makes a much better touchstone for the validity of your interpretation than, say, the events that occurred on at third birthday party, howsoever much said events may have influenced your worldview. Eventually you can throw the "I" back in. At higher levels, it is sometimes easier to explain how you plan to structure things by use of the first person, for instance, but even then, it is often a sign of lazy thinking.

So, in the example you gave, if you believe that the last couplet is a joke, you can simply write

"Shakespeare's final couplet functions as a literary joke" followed by a detailed breakdown of the couplet that explains how this is true. We already know that the idea is yours, because you haven't cited any secondary source from which you may have taken it. Nor will hedging with phrases such as "I wonder" do as a substitute for the analysis that should follow the assertion, or allow you to avoid providing it in any way.

Writing Feedback / Offering Incentives - IELTS Essay [14]

I don't see that the "have" is particularly necessary or even desirable here, but to be fair to your teacher, the grammar overall is rough enough that making sense of your writing requires a bit of effort.

Undergraduate / UCF Admissions Essay: I Am a Bird [11]

Why combine them? Usually you want each essay to focus on a particular quality that recommends you as a candidate. By writing two separate essays, you can highlight two different qualities in depth . . .

Essays / Thesis Help: History of race in the South of America [7]

Under no circumstances is your first sentence phrased correctly. The "of how" construction requires another verb at some point, and "profound" isn't one.

Essays / British Lit theme essay on Beowulf [6]

Well, why not write up your ideas as best you can and post your draft here? It is difficult to give you specific feedback when we don't know what you want to say beyond "religion is a theme in Beowulf," which is really too vague to comment on.

Undergraduate / "How on earth did you get interested in opera?" Common app essay (option 4) [9]

If you are going to keep the essay for this topic, I would condense the essay to focus more tightly on "Das Reingold," as the prompt asks you to focus on a particular work. You could use it as a topic of your own choice essay, though it would then overlap approach-wise with whatever else you wrote for this one, which seems like a bit of a waste.

Writing Feedback / Offering Incentives - IELTS Essay [14]

It would depend on the time relation you wanted to emphasize, though in this case, without context, either could be correct. Normally, though, the sentence without the 'have' would be preferred for a stand alone statement.

Essays / What History Means to Me [6]

That's okay. The questions weren't rhetorical. Although, I have to question if laws against genocide are really meaningful. Most countries already have laws against murder, and genocide is murder on a massive scale. As such, the laws you reference seem more to be a way for the countries that made them to engage in a form of catharsis of their own guilt for the genocides they carried out in the past, than a way of ensuring that genocides no longer happen.

Undergraduate / "How you?"; my first two words to my first teacher in the US -- Common app essay [8]

The essay is well-written, and proof enough that you have mastered English. And that seems to me to be the main problem with the essay -- its main point is that you mastered English, but you don't really need to tell the admissions people that. Your writing style proves it. If you went on to talk a bit more about how this experience inspired you to study X, or altered your worldview to Y, it would be a lot stronger as an application essay.

Undergraduate / "How on earth did you get interested in opera?" Common app essay (option 4) [9]

The essay is very well-written. However, the prompt asks you to talk about a specific work, which I'm assuming is "Das Rheingold." I can't help but notice that paragraphs 1, 2, 4 and 6 don't really talk about it at all. (You do mention it in paragraph 2 at the very beginning, to say that you ignored it for a while). Well-written though it may be, I have to wonder if writing a six paragraph essay in which only two paragraphs deal with the prompt topic is wholly a good idea . . .

Graduate / Graduated from Marketing. SOP for masters in Communication [8]


If it doesn't make a difference, why do you bring it up?

And Simone is right. You should prefer the specific to the general, and be as detailed as possible in describing your ambitions.

Student Talk / What grade will i get in my exams? [6]

Yeah, your question is sort of vague. Presumably you want to know how to write a coherent, well-organized, and grammatically correct essay, but we can't really tell you how to do that, because we don't know how much of the process you already know, where your weakness are, etc.

Writing Feedback / Education career. Everyday you deal with kids and their challenging behaviors. Why put up with that? [4]

Meh. This is fairly dull. Why not recount a narrative about a student you taught, so that we can see the joy of teaching through your eyes, instead of merely telling us about it as you do now.

Undergraduate / "been there for my friends" - Transfer essay [5]

You might want to explain who Jane is a bit more clearly at the outset of the essay. The anecdote needs to be a bit more fleshed out and self-contained before you move on, though the general structure is an excellent idea.

You also have minor grammatical errors you should pay attention to. For instance "It wasn't until my parent's divorce"

Perhaps our nitpickers will show up to help you out more with this.

I firmly believe everyone should strive to be as selfish as possible, and I know at least some other forum members believe that everyone does, whether they realize it or not. That you have learned that helping others is often in your self-interest seems like a perfectly reasonable lesson to share in this sort of essay.

Essays / What History Means to Me [6]


Really? What laws exist now that didn't exist before? Have there really been no genocides since? Or does your description of it as "the first" incidence of industrial mass murder indicate that in fact there have been others since?


Yes, because America is now blessedly free of segregation, and no longer has schools and neighborhoods that are essentially all black or all white . . . oh, wait, never mind.


Exactly. Genocide, for instance, clearly works. Compare how much more stable contemporary American society is as a result of the European settlers' genocidal treatment of the Natives to how unstable Israel's situation is because they insist on containing, rather than exterminating the Palestinians. Clearly the lesson is that it is better to eliminate a people you are going to displace . ..

Okay, I'm being deliberately provocative, but my point is that your essay lacks any real depth. Your examples are generally trite and overused, and you seem to have no awareness that history is largely a tapestry of fictions put together by those who hope to influence the future by the way they describe the past. Worse, you completely miss all of the wonderful tensions and ambiguities that arise as people try to make sense of history by reviewing varying accounts of it, and that make the subject so fascinating.

Essays / Choose your own topic essays? [9]

A good introduction will make it clear what you are writing about by presenting a strongly phrased thesis statement and a summary of what you plan to talk about, so this shouldn't be an issue . . .

Writing Feedback / Interacting with the same kind of people in work on a regular basis [10]

What does your question have to do with essay writing? Do you have to write an answer to this question in essay format? If so, you should brainstorm your own answer to this question and post a draft here so that we can help you formulate your own ideas.

Book Reports / Shakespeare's Sonnets, Analysis [6]

Tsk tsk. The notion that interpretations could be wrong went out around the time postmodernism came along and doomed the humanities in general and English in particular (unless the field be saved again by a counter-trend).

That said, some interpretations are more valid than others, to paraphrase Orwell. If you want to quickly get used to reading Shakespeare, why not try translating him into modern English. This is feasible for his sonnets, at least.

Writing Feedback / Should we tell the truth always in order to preserve our friendship? [8]

Again, it would be helpful to know why you are writing this. If it is a TOEFL topic, for instance, you absolutely don't need to worry about the other side. If it is an essay for school, though, you probably should.

Graduate / PhD - Social Work Research [13]

Ah, I see what you were trying to do now. Try this:

I know all too well how common some of the long-lasting, negative effects of an insufficient education are, such as teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and chronic poverty.

Student Talk / What's the biggest writing fail in your writing? [26]

This does sort of raise the question of why you want this information. It could be a very interesting thread, though, if you can convince people that their posts won't find their way onto other sites.

Graduate / Research Exerience and Plans [4]


You need to add more to answer this question. Your current answer is too boilerplate. Other than that you seem to be on the right track.

Writing Feedback / [toefl] topic (dis/agree) There are times when lying is acceptable. [4]

The essay's okay, mainly because it is a TOEFL essay, which means you have fairly low standards to begin with. Some things to consider:


She would be happier being a laughingstock for wearing an ugly dress?


How do you do this, exactly? I can't think of a way of letting someone know little by little that someone else is dead.


No, you can't say that one should always be honest and yet lie sometimes. That's a direct contradiction.

Writing Feedback / GRE: Corporate executives' responsibility [4]

You might also look at whether or not the goal of making money is really one that excludes other social concerns, or whether the best way for a corporate managers of making money on a long-term basis involves paying attention to other goals too. Also, the "as long as they stay within the law" is an interesting clause that deserves more attention than you give it. This would presumably include environmental regulations, for instance, and consumer protection laws. Does this imply that non-financial concerns are the primary responsibility of government rather than of corporate executives. That is, does the existence of regulations provide a framework in which other social concerns are presumed to have been already addressed?

Essays / Celebrating Nerdiness - Tom Rogers [8]

Your friends are right. The article is about celebrating nerdiness. Nerds are essentially how society labels intelligent, successful people. The term should not therefore be one of opprobrium.

Book Reports / "the count of monte cristo" - i need help on a thesis paper [4]

First, you should not leave your assignments to the last minute.

Second, you would start by deciding what you want to say about the book. Brainstorm about the themes of the book. What do you think the themes are? What do you think the author is trying to say? What textual evidence gives you this impression? Your answers to these questions will guide you to a thesis.

Book Reports / Shakespeare's Sonnets, Analysis [6]

I have no doubt you will soon learn to "get" Shakespeare. It is mostly a matter of practice, of reading him enough to get used to the grammatical inversions and odd vocabulary. A lot of it is just getting used to reading poetry,which is what all of Shakespeare, including his plays, actually is. You are certainly intelligent enough to be able to master this.

If you want to use wedding vows, get a copy and cite them, quoting normally. This might cause a problem, though, if you are not allowed to use outside sources.

Some hints to guide you in your thinking about the sonnet:


Yes, but love, at least within marriage, is much worse than that. It's through all the alterations of old age. So, for such love to last, it must be the case that "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / Within his bending sickle's compass come: / Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, /But bears it out even to the edge of doom."

"If this be error and upon me proved, / I never writ, nor no man ever loved." = If I am wrong, and this is ever proved by own inconstancy in love, then I have never written anything and no one has ever really loved. In other words, This is not an error and I will never be inconstant in love.

Graduate / Personal statement fot Residency (Medicine) [6]

That is key to writing these sorts of things. You want to be as specific as possible about what you want to do and why.

Undergraduate / Who has made you who you are today (my uncle) [6]

Hmmm . . . I can't really picture your uncle after reading this essay. It is also not clear why his asking of routine questions would make him a great influence on you. Finally, you say he is a con man, er, sorry, "medium," which immediately makes me think that he is a poor choice of role model, and makes me question your judgment in holding him up as a positive influence. You will need to write a much more detailed narrative that shows his positive influence on your life if you hope to impress the admissions officers.

Writing Feedback / Should we tell the truth always in order to preserve our friendship? [8]

You might start out, as you already sort of do, by deciding why truth-telling is important. You might then look at how this determines when, if at all, it is right to lie. You need some general principles you can refer to to justify your examples.

So, would it be okay to lie in the following circumstances:

1. You have let things slide a bit at work, and are going to miss a deadline. Do you admit to being lazy, or do you blame it on a bout of flu or a computer glitch?

2. You are writing an application essay for university. You do not have a compelling personal narrative of the sort they want. Your political beliefs also differ from those you expect the admissions officers to hold. Do you write up the most interesting experience about yourself you can think of and stay true to your beliefs in doing so, or do you invent a story that expresses the 'correct' values?

3. A friend asks you if you like her new haircut. You actually hate it, but you recognize that this is a subjective, rather than an objective, opinion. Do you hurt your friend's feelings, or lie about it.

4. A man you suspect of being a suicide bomber asks you directions to the local mall. Do you tell him how to get there, or send him towards a relatively unpopulated area while planning to call the police.

Would you lie in all of these situations? Some of them? Which ones? What principles would guide you in your decisions?

Writing Feedback / Mistakes make success--GRE Issue [5]

At least try to get basic agreements right.

"Moreover, making mistakes can be seen as a chance to develop our sense of never giving up"

"Successive mistakes contributed to his strong character and finally helped him attain achievements."

Writing Feedback / Taking standardized tests to prove learning progress - Toefl IBT writing essay [6]

Taking regular standardized tests is bad, you say. Students should be tested regularly (twice a semester) to make sure that they are learning? Um, pick a side and stick to it. Or is it that you are in favor of testing, but not standardized testing? You could mean this, but it seems more as if you are okay with testing so long as regular means "twice a semester, but no more." I know this is a TOEFL essay, and so logical arguments aren't too much of a necessity, but really, you need to think things through a bit more here:

1. Are you against standardized testing, or testing in general?

2. If against standardized testing, what about standardizing the tests is bad?

3. If against testing in general, how else do we make sure students have learned anything?

At the moment, it sort of seems as if your actual thesis is that regular standardized testing is good, but should not be used too often. If this is the case, then reorganize your essay to support this concept.

Graduate / PhD - Social Work Research [13]

If you add more about your military experience, be sure to tie it back in some way to social work. You did a good job of making the details you include more relevant to your application in this draft -- be sure you don't undo that good work in your next one.


Teen pregnancy is more common than insufficient education? Huh?

Writing Feedback / Qualities to be a good and complete student [11]

Yeah, this sounds an awful lot like a TOEFL prompt. Also, bear in mind that grammatical mistakes are worse when they alter your meaning. So:


This literally means that there is some quality, possibly dedication or honesty, lets say, that is active in the community. Whereas, you want to say that willingness to be active in the community is another key quality that successful students possess.