Undergraduate / 'like a zombie' - Standord intellectual engaging supplement essay [14]

I'd avoid the current essay for any application, if I were you, unless you have made serious changes to it. After reading Simone's comments, and rereading the essay, I can see why it might appeal to some people. However, 2/3 of the people who read it and who have commented here so far have reacted extremely negatively on their first reading (which is all any application essay is ever likely to get from the admissions officers). You tried something a bit different, and I suppose you deserve a certain amount of credit for the effort, but you need your application essay to appeal to a very wide audience, for obvious reasons, and this clearly does not do that.

Undergraduate / "chances of me getting into Yale are slim" - Yale Supplemental Essay - Unique [6]

If you want an approach that stands out, write about something that means a lot to you, even if it doesn't necessarily tie in to the application process the way such essays normally would. Since it is a supplemental essay, you can hope to get away with this, and if you infuse enough passion and humor into your writing, the essay will end up saying something good about you anyway, even if it isn't explicitly about you.

That said, if you have good grades and high SAT scores, I see no reason why you shouldn't take a more standard approach, and sell yourself for all you're worth. After all, why would you assume that you wouldn't get in? What possible benefit do you gain from such an assumption?

Writing Feedback / 'money and riches' - What Is the Purpose of Higher Education? [5]

You have no thesis, beyond the vague notion that more people having a higher education is good for society. You simply pile up statements about various things that are (mostly) tied to education in some way. Your approach seems especially odd because the obvious interpretation of the question would be "What is the purpose of higher education for those who enroll in it?" rather than "what is the purpose of higher education for society?" You can't really make the second question make sense without rephrasing, as you seem to have done, interpreting it as "why should we encourage more people to aspire to attain a higher education," which seems a bit different from the question that was intended. Some questions to think about as you start over:

1. What do you understand by the term "higher education?" University? Community college? Any educational program undertaken after completing high school?

2. If the latter, do you think those who enroll at a university have the same purposes and expectations concerning their degree as those who enroll in community college?

3. One of the obvious differences in various forms of higher education is that some seem aimed at training people for a vocation or a career, whereas others seem aimed at providing people with a certain set of intellectual skills that are meant to make them better people in general. This might benefit them in terms of job-hunting, of course, but this doesn't seem to be the main purpose of it. Which type of education do you think is better? Or do you think it depends on the person? If so, what characteristics do you think suit a person to one sort of education over the other?

Hopefully these questions will get you thinking along the right lines as you take a second shot at this topic . . .

Writing Feedback / esssay -global warming&natural disasters [8]

The statements that aren't patently false can stand, though you should probably elaborate on them and provide suitable qualifications that allow you to avoid dramatic oversimplifications. To this end, you might want to cite more than three sources. You should probably consult a variety of sources from a variety of perspectives, at least some of those sources should be actual books, rather than online sources (though you can use Google Books to access full texts online). A research paper is only as good as the research it draws upon, and you don't seem to have done enough to be able to discuss the issues in sufficient detail.

Undergraduate / (A cheating incident I was involved in) is essay topic is OK? [9]

Peer pressure can indeed be a powerful force. However, it does depend rather strongly on your acceptance of the notion that the people around you are in fact your peers. If you don't view the people around you as your peers, for whatever reason, their opinions will have little to no power over you. If you actually meant that you don't believe in peer pressure (rather than merely trying to say that you don't believe that giving into peer pressure is a valid excuse for behaving badly, which might well be what you actually meant), then it may be that you have rarely found yourself in a group that you identified with strongly enough to feel much pressure to conform to their standards and norms.

Writing Feedback / Moral and ethical standards and effective leadership--GRE issue [3]

Why do you mention business leaders? The prompt specifically asks you to discuss public officials.

I think you mean to say that leaders need to hold themselves to strict ethical and moral standards when acting in a professional capacity, but that they need not do so in their personal lives in order to be effective as leaders. If you want to argue this, you need to consider how scandals in a politician's personal life can undercut public confidence in him. You might also ask if morality is something that one can have in one arena and not another, or if morality is something one either practices or does not. Also, you might look at whether the moral and ethical standards have to be those accepted by "the public" or if they can be any set of standards, so long as they are internally consistent. For instance, it seems likely that Bill Clinton might not have viewed his dalliances as immoral by his own personal moral code. Indeed, it is quite likely that the Clinton's marriage, like everything else about them, is a political arrangement that has little to do with romantic attachment or anything that might compel sexual fidelity. Also, if you mention Bill Clinton, you will have to show that he was effective as a leader because he held himself to high moral standards in public office, if not in his private life. This could get tricky, given the ease with which he betrayed his principles for political expediency, as in his acceptance of the "don't ask, don't tell" military policy, and the accusations surrounding travelgate, whitewater, etc.

Undergraduate / (A cheating incident I was involved in) is essay topic is OK? [9]

The willingness to admit to a serious error in judgment is a strength, not a weakness, especially if you can show that you learned something from it that would prevent you from making the same error again. Simone is also right that the fact that you were supplying, rather than receiving, the answers, makes the topic much safer for you. I don't know if there is any ethical difference, but in practice receiving the answers indicates dishonesty, laziness, and probably an inability to do the work oneself. Giving the answers shows intelligence and a misguided sense of loyalty to ones friends. I guess, then, that in this particularly case, it really is better to give than to receive.

Student Talk / Challenges for Chinese to Study English [20]

Indeed, a thread dedicated to grammar might be useful for people of all cultural backgrounds trying to master English. There is a distinct difference between learning to write well in general, and learning to write at all in a second (or third or fourth) language. The former task assumes a basic mastery of grammar and spelling, whereas in the second mastering grammar and spelling is often one of the main goals.

Undergraduate / Money or Health [10]

Is this an admissions essay? If so, what does it have to do with you, as a candidate? If not, why have you put it in that category? Also, this seems less like an essay than an introductory paragraph. The topic seems like it might be one where you would take the time to explore the relationship between money and health. For instance, middle-class and wealthy people tend to be healthier than poor people. Better nutrition, careers that involve less physical labor, exposure to harmful chemicals, etc. Money is also very good to have if you need medical treatment, especially in the U.S. On the other hand, few people would be willing to inflict serious illness on themselves for any amount of money. Think about the topic more deeply, and see what you can come up with.

Writing Feedback / princeton summer- I practiced soccer with my cousins [4]

What is your thesis? That is, what main point do you want the essay to make about you, that the details of your summers would support?

Grammar, Usage / When to use "to+ -ing"? [9]

This is one of the most confusing aspects of English. Some verbs or verbal phrases are followed by the infinitive, others by the gerund. As far as I know, there is no single rule, or even set of rules, that determines which is which. You just have to memorize them. You can find lists online, though they aren't comprehensive.

Sometimes, verbs even use both:

It has started to hail.
It has started hailing.

There are some general rules you can memorize, though, that will make it a bit easier to keep track of which are which. Simone's rule about prepositions, for instance, is a heuristic you can use that covers a lot of different situations.

Undergraduate / Common Application Essay - What lead me to my goal? [24]

Oh dear. The essay has become worse. You are being perhaps a bit too honest and detailed, here. The problem is that precious little of what you say makes you seem like a good candidate for admissions, which is what you want this essay to do. You say you considered a lot of different careers, which is not unusual, but your process of settling on training to be a doctor seems sort of childish. You started out being inspired by a movie based on a comic book, narrowed down your focus after you felt your teacher didn't believe in you, and picked your ultimate specialty because of a bad pun. You also mention that you have tried other things, but given up on them after seeing that they didn't appeal as much as you expected. This doesn't inspire great confidence in you, and seems off-topic given that being a fashion designer is in no way related to being a doctor. Try starting over, but this time, decide what you want the essay to say about you. What quality or set of qualities do you want the reader to see in you after they have finished reading it? Then, figure out the best way to make that happen.

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

You might also want to talk more about what you hope to accomplish by working in Internal Medicine, exactly. What are your research goals, career goals, etc.

Writing Feedback / Old saying; 'experience is the best teacher' -Review for CLEP [11]


Um, a civilization is by definition a relatively advanced society that has developed at least some agricultural practices and begun to form permanent settlements as a result. As such, they tend to have certain political and religious institutions that govern these settlements. A civilization without any institutions at all is a contradiction in terms. The tribes you reference later on wouldn't in fact be considered either civilized or part of civilization, unless they were governed by some other, non-tribal culture. You may want to consider starting out your essay with something less clearly erroneous.

Undergraduate / "You must be the change you wish to see in the world"; Community Problem Solving [7]

Yes, we can, inasmuch as we have the ability to do so. To the question you probably meant to ask, namely "will we do so," the answer is "no." As our terms of service make clear, it is our policy to leave old threads for others to learn from.

Btw: I like your essay. You were involved in a genuinely meaningful, impressive project, which is likely to go down well with the admissions officers.

Writing Feedback / esssay -global warming&natural disasters [8]


You should be sure to explain what glacial ice caps you have in mind, here. A lot of the Arctic ice is melting at the moment, but this doesn't raise sea levels, anymore than a melting ice cube raises the amount of water in your glass (the ice already displaces water equivalent to its volume.) Some of the Antarctic glaciers have been crumbling, and the melting of the Antarctic ice caps would raise sea levels (because that ice is on land, and so is not already displacing sea water) but the glaciers that crumble on the southern tip are so far not enough to offset the additional ice building up elsewhere in Antarctica. That is, the total amount of ice in Antarctica is increasing, not decreasing. I believe there is an icecap in Greenland, though, that could influence sea levels if it were to melt, and that is actually shrinking, though you'd have to do some research to verify that. Also, warmer water expands, so if sea temperatures rise, one would expect sea levels to rise also. You might also want to look at where sea levels have been in the past, to determine if a rise would be an abnormal freak of global warming, or a return to traditional norms.


Bad choice of example. We know how to eliminate malaria, as evidenced by its disappearance from North America and Western Europe. The world has chosen to permit the disease to continue to exist, by banning or severely limiting the use of DDT. Western environmentalism has trumped the world's concern for developing people's health, but that isn't an effect of global warming. I'm sure you can find other tropical diseases that would be spread by global warming to mention, though, that would be less ironic in a piece written from an environmentalist standpoint.


A mixture of oversimplifications and outright falsehoods. Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. They are not caused by global warming, or anything affected by global warming, and not even the most dedicated global warming doomsayers make such claims. Some do argue that a variety of human activities have eliminated the plant life that would normally act as a barrier against tidal waves, and so have made the effects of tsunamis worse than they would otherwise be. A warmer earth presumably would lead to droughts in some places, but it would arguably extend the growing season in many others. Indeed, global warming would likely benefit large sections of Canada and Russia, for instance.


In the long-term, we're all dead. In the short and medium term, the massive benefits of modern technology greatly outweigh the environmental drawbacks. Most cost-benefit analyses show that it would be far cheaper to adapt to global warming and continue our current lifestyle than to try to prevent global warming. Geoengineering solutions are also being taken increasingly seriously as scientists realize that, if climate change really is a problem, then the only long-term solution that will work, given that the climate has always, from the beginning of the planet, been in a state of constant flux, is to turn the climate into something that is wholly controlled by human technology.

Overall, your essay, especially for a research paper, needs a lot more depth. You do little more here than regurgitate green groups' talking points that you could have picked up without doing more than a cursory internet search on the topic. Your thesis is defensible, but you will need to show that you have read about your topic in far more depth, and write about it with a great deal more nuance, than you currently do.

Undergraduate / 'like a zombie' - Standord intellectual engaging supplement essay [14]


Assuming you'd been studying for a math test, this is funny. Good job.

That said, write a new essay. This one doesn't work at all with prompt. Falling asleep while studying doesn't show your intellectual vitality, nor is it an experience that stimulated you intellectually. Actually, it is the opposite of all of this. It shows that you don't plan your study time well, leave it until the last minute to cram for your tests, and find academics boring enough that you fall asleep over your textbooks. If I were an admissions officer, after reading this essay, I not only wouldn't consider you a good applicant, I would actively think of you as a bad one. Start over.

Scholarship / "Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th." Rhodes Scholarship Essay [7]

You have a series of paragraphs that say different things about you, but they don't really connect. Your first paragraph seems like the introduction to a "person who influenced you" essay. Your second paragraph reads like the opening to a "how did I decide on my major" essay. Your third paragraph seems to be the beginning of an "accomplishment that I am proud of essay" and so on. You need to decide what you want this essay to say about you, settle on a single, clear thesis statement, and tie everything else you say back to it.

Undergraduate / Help with making my common Apps essay concise and error-proof. [6]

What word count limits do you have? You say you've been trying to cut it down, so I assume that you have to be under a certain amount, but I don't know what that limit is.

Beyond that, the essay is honest and thoughtful. I worry it may put you in a bit too much of a negative light, though. For instance, you conclude taht


But these are people you are supposed to respect, something you must have already known rationally, even if you didn't understand the truth emotionally. If you were talking about how you learned how you had to respect even people you disagreed with, or people from different cultures, or some other group of people that one might be inclined to identify as "other," then you'd be on solid ground. But learning that you should respect the people you care about and those who have direct authority over you seems less impressive.

Writing Feedback / GRE Argument ---antibiotics study results [7]

Overall, this is a fairly strong GRE essay. I'm going to disagree with Simone, though:


Actually, I liked the critique of what the study didn't say, and thought it was the strongest part of your essay. Blindly trusting the authorities in any area to do the right thing seems anathema to critical thinking. One would hope that a reputable medical journal would insist on proper sampling procedures, but maybe it doesn't. Or maybe the editors overlooked an error on the part of the researchers by mistake. Or maybe the researchers were such big names that the editors didn't review it as closely as they should have. Or maybe the lead researcher was the editor's brother. Or maybe the report supports a view that the editors have a vested interest in believing, and they didn't scrutinize it carefully because it conformed to their own preexisting biases. Who knows? Certainly not the reader, who knows only that, for some reason, crucial information about the study wasn't included in the report.

That said, Simone is right that you should also focus on the "all" part. Even if it is true that secondary infections are a serious problem in increasing recovery time, presumably only those who actually develop such infections should be treated. Giving healthy people antibiotics is a great way to render those antibiotics utterly useless in a couple of years. Also, different sub-groups of the population may have been helped differently. So, for instance, the antibiotics may have dramatically slashed recovery time for, say, elderly males, while having no noticeable effect on teenage girls. Even if the composition of the two groups was the same, if each group contained a representative sample of the overall population, the average decrease noted might have come entirely from certain demographic groups.

Undergraduate / Common Application Essay - Mark Twain [7]

Better. A couple of things, though:


But greater equality is an advance made by civilization. You might want to discuss briefly the sort of myths Twain believed in that would allow him to ignore this.


This, like most of the other parts of your essay I'm about to quote, is a good starting point. But, you need to go on to explain what you have seen in your own life that would confirm this belief. That is, you should illustrate the general with the specific.


How exactly will you do this? Will you give up all the comforts of modern civilization to go and live among the residents of a poor African village where there is no running water? And what would you do when you get there? Rejoice in the spiritual joy of living in material poverty? Or attempt to help the villagers find ways of meeting their material needs? Etc. Again, you need specifics.


Italicize novel titles.


What sorts of prejudice did you suffer from? How did you overcome them? How does this tie in to Twain?


And you offer as proof of this your experience of . . .

Writing Feedback / TOEFL Subjects like art should be a part of child's education, it's a beneficial and necessary trend [13]

Yeah, for the TOEFL it's fine. For just about any other essay, you'd want to elaborate on it at least a bit, though.

Undergraduate / "I eat fish" common app + uc app essay [8]

The essay overall is good -- a bit lighthearted, fairly original. However, you might want to continue on to talk about how the lesson you learned inspired you to do something more serious and university-ish. An engaging narrative about your childhood alone isn't enough -- you need to say something good about yourself in a way that makes you an attractive candidate for admission.

Research Papers / Cysteamine HCl [3]

You might want to turn your nice list of facts about cysteamine HCl into a paragraph on the substance. So, combine some of your sentences, try to avoid using the same structure for each one. It would really help to know why you are writing this, though.

Undergraduate / Why do you want to attend Pratt? (personal statement) [7]

"but never imagining how much I would one day aspire to create those images and tell those stories."

Actually, after finishing your essay, I'd say you should try revising the entire essay to say everything you do now in about half the word count. Combine sentences, cut out wordy constructions, replace weak verbs with strong ones. Then repost.

Undergraduate / RISD SHORT ESSAY [16]

Hmmmm . . . The first option is probably the best. The second one you should avoid, as everyone is influenced by their parents, and so many students use just that example, making anything you write likely to be dull and trite. The third one could be interesting, but is far too vague as it stands. Maybe you could describe your first visit to the gallery, or some such.

Book Reports / Paired Text Essay: Their Eyes Were Watching God and A Farewell to Arms. [4]

It sounds like a promising topic to me. You have a clear thesis. I don't know if you want to go with the adage, though, as it doesn't really seem to mean what you want it to mean. But the overall idea that war and love share many elements is solid. That there is no explicit war in one of the books isn't necessarily a great problem. Maybe you could simply rephrase your thesis to say that love is always a type of conflict, and as such can be compared to conflicts such as war . . .

Undergraduate / Life's test and lesson - UF ESSAY ANALYZE! [7]

The topic could be good -- you just need to make yourself seem a bit less passive, and show that you learned something from each setback.

Writing Feedback / TOEFL Subjects like art should be a part of child's education, it's a beneficial and necessary trend [13]

Just pointing out that you should be suspicious of any study claiming causal connections between two things. Causal connections are notoriously difficult to prove, especially when it comes to studies dealing with aspects of human behavior, where there are so many variables involved.

Undergraduate / 'Corruption in schools curriculum' - Issue of importance - my history teacher [35]

Part of your problem in this essay is that you don't really show that your teacher was biased. You show that she had a set of political beliefs, as did you when you were her student, and that those beliefs were different from yours. That she was clearly a conservative Republican does not, in and of itself, make her any more biased than being a liberal Democrat makes you. On the other hand, she let the class hold political debates, and gave you scope to argue your side, apparently without docking you marks or otherwise punishing you for your beliefs (as I feel sure you would have mentioned this had it occurred). And in taking the opposite side from you, she forced you to look up the policies of the party you supported (which you admitted not actually knowing beforehand, leading one to wonder why you supported that party in the first place -- bias picked up from your parents, perhaps?) and taught you to question the sources you used for information. This makes her seem rather more like an astute and competent teacher than a blatantly cruel oppressor.

In fact, you say you ended her class learning to respect your ideological opponents and to give equal time to all sides, presumably because those were the rules she enforced. Perhaps you should give her more credit, and not be so quick to assume that everything you learned was learned in spite of her? Alternatively, you are going to have to supply more details about her supposed bias and cruelty if you want the reader to sympathize with you at the outset of your essay.

Writing Feedback / Appearance and society values--An GRE issue [9]

The prompt here is sort of confusing, as it starts off talking about what dress styles reveal about the individuals wearing them, then shifts to talking about what dress styles reveal about society in general. However, these are not necessarily the same thing. That woman wear veils in countries where not wearing them means harassment by the police does indeed say a lot about that society, but not necessarily about the women's own views. You therefore need to make it clear which half of the prompt you are dealing with in any given paragraph, and alert the reader when you are switching tacks, or else the essay will seem, as it currently does, a bit confused.

Undergraduate / Trying my best to explain myself to you in 1800 characters; Stanford/Future Roomate [18]

Yep. You don't need to hit your reader over the head or anything, but you should make sure your main qualities come through readily during a very quick skim of the essay, which is likely all the admissions officers will be giving it.

Writing Feedback / GRE: Knowledge and Rejection of Authority [5]


This is patently false. That the world was spheroid was known for centuries before Galileo, and in fact the belief predates the Catholic Church, which never subscribed to the theory of a flat Earth. Galileo subscribed to Copernicus's heliocentric theory at a time when most people still held to the geocentric one, however. Galileo believed he could prove heliocentrism through the study of the Earth's tides. The Pope at the time would have let him get away with it, too, as long as he had included a caveat that it was only a theory, which, at the time, would have been a perfectly accurate statement. In fact, the only real reason to prefer the heliocentric view at that time was that the maths needed to describe the model were somewhat simpler than the ones required for the geocentric one, whereas anyone looking at the sky would have sworn that the geocentric view of the Earth was true based on direct observation (the relativistic effects of motion were not so well known back then). However, in his defense of the theory, which took the form of a dialogue, Galileo portrayed the person who defended the Pope's personal views as a bumbling fool. The Pope was not amused, and ordered Galileo dragged before the Inquisition.

Beyond that, you might want to reference more specific examples in your second body paragraph. Also, overall, you need to include a more in-depth exploration of what exactly the relationship is between technological advancement and authority. The development of the atomic bomb, for instance, was funded by various governments, as was the development of most early spaceflight technology.

Undergraduate / "horrible accident" - UC Undergraduate Admission TRANSFER PROMPT 2 [13]


This part's fine, on its own.


Yep. That hit the proverbial nail. Also, bear in mind that the experience you are describing must have been far rougher for him than it was for you. The way you tell the story should acknowledge that. Which brings us to


By showing that you can imagine your friend's suffering, and that you acted out of that empathy, you show the reader how compassionate a person you really are. By being able to craft the narrative in a way that acknowledges that you were a helping character, rather than the protagonist in the tale, yet still being able to reveal much about yourself, you show both your skill as a writer and your ability to delicately handle complicated social situations. It is sort of a balancing act -- if you focus on your friend too much, the essay stops being about you, and becomes about him; if you focus on him too little, then you seem to be seeking credit for something that should not have been done to win you credit. Your job is to find a middle path, and the comments you have so far include suggestions as to how you might do this.

Undergraduate / Penn State Personal Statement - 'activities or experience' [5]


"Fabricated" doesn't quite work here. Revise.


This is a dangling modifier, unless you want to say that they, in treating their own needs, also treated you as an adult. I suspect you mean, though, that you, in treating their needs, found that they responded to you as an adult.


This sounds a touch arrogant. Perhaps you could rephrase, avoiding the use of the word "ecstatic."

Undergraduate / from africa to usa (how to start my personal statement?) [7]

Decide what you want your personal statement to say about yourself. Then try an think of a narrative anecdote based on your personal experiences that would allow you to say it.

Undergraduate / Green Bay, Help with UC-Berkeley Admission Essay [15]

Yeah. We now know that babies are born with an awful lot of stuff built-in. The capacity for language acquisition comes to mind. Your general idea that babies are largely raw material that get molded by their environment is fine, but the term "blank slate" refers to a specific philosophical concept that doesn't really work.

Graduate / Law School Personal Statement (seeking enrollment in Harvard Law School) [4]


Then you certainly shouldn't imply otherwise. Maybe you could say that while you found the subject fascinating and were good at it, studying it just didn't give you the satisfaction you had expected.


So say this. Explain that you have found that it is possible to earn a good living while doing something meaningful to help others.


I know. You could also say "combating the lack of." I just wanted to point out that you absolutely did not mean what you had actually written, before you submitted it to Harvard.


It struck me as a strong essay, but then I am not a Harvard admissions officer, and so make no predictions.

Undergraduate / Green Bay, Help with UC-Berkeley Admission Essay [15]

Well, you didn't get to choose the composition of your genes, anymore than a clay pot gets to choose the trace minerals in its own substance. And like the pot, you were shaped without much say in the process. The problem with elaborating on this metaphor, though, is it doesn't give you much room to talk about you as an actor in control of your own life. In fact, you can't talk about yourself like that at all without breaking away from the metaphor. But, you don't want to portray yourself as entirely passive. Something for you to think about.

Writing Feedback / 'Given name from God' - UNC- Chapel Hill College Essay [4]

Usually, you would use this sort of essay to talk about experiences you have had or qualities you possess that make you a strong candidate for admission but that you didn't have room for in your other application essays. This allows you to make your other essays more focused while still covering anything. But, this essay should itself be as focused and tightly written as your others, and not treated as a dumping ground for random facts about yourself. Decide what you want your essay to say about you, then pick the best details you can to demonstrate that point.