Undergraduate / 'The friends around' - UBC PERSONAL PROFILE, WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU AND WHY? [3]

Sharad, your response is good. It showcases how you have grown and developed as a person due to the positive influence of the people whom you spend more time with. You spend more time with your friends rather than your parents and it shows in a positive manner in your writing. You have truly highlighted how these friendships have brought you to another level of confidence and taught you how to trust people. What seems to be lacking in your essay though, is an explanation of how these friendships are important to you coming from the other side. That is, it is important to you because you are also a pillar of strength that your friends lean on when they need help and support. You cannot reduce that to a one liner about how your friend vented about his relationship with father to you. You have to show the reviewer how you help your friends during their times of need as well. Whether it be as a sounding board, an adviser, or a partner in an undertaking. These are the types of facts that will help to develop the importance of your explanation. You could edit the essay content to integrate that reference. Just remove the reference to how your friends introduce you to new interests because those references are a bit shallow and unimportant in the overall presentation.

Writing Feedback / Higher education only to young top students? It has benefits, but I prefer equal opportunity [3]

Uyne, with regards to the writing problems that could affect your GRA score, I would like to call your attention to your use of adjectives. In this essay you used the adjective extraordinary when you should have used the adverb extraordinarily. It is a common mistake among non-native English speakers. I would not worry about it so much in an everyday setting but for the IELTS test, you should avoid making such mistakes in order to retain a higher GRA score. You should also aim for clarity in your essay so try to avoid redundancies such as "whether or not". Whether alone is sufficient since it already indicates the two choices a person is to choose from.

Now, with regards to your prompt paraphrase, you show a clear misunderstanding of the discussion instructions. The original instruction indicates:

Original Instruction: Discuss both view and give your opinion.
Your Response: Personally, I am more convinced that people all have access to education opportunities regardless of their abilities.

As such, the assumption of the examiner will be that all of indicated discussions are coming from your personal point of view, rather than the required discussion instruction that considers the two public points of view prior to the formulation of your personal opinion.

You are not developing the full potential of each paragraph discussion. The lack of clarity in your presentation paragraphs stems from the way that you are discussing 2 points of view per paragraph, without the benefit of a connecting / transition sentence, which works far better in creating a cohesive paragraph than counting your discussion topics. By counting your discussion topics rather than connecting them, you created 2 unblended topic discussions, resulting in a paragraph that lacks explanations and clarity. You tried to get around that problem by using long sentences, called run-ons, which only further added to the confusion of the presentation discussion. Normally, single topic paragraphs work best, specially when done within 3-5 sentences.

Your concluding paragraphs is only a single sentence, which is also a run-on. It should have been a summary conclusion which reminded the reader of the discussion topic, your discussion reasons, and your personal opinion to close the essay. As it is, the essay is open ended, which means the essay is not properly developed nor closed.

By the way, use a timer the next time you write the practice essay. You wrote more than 300 words which, when you use a timer, you will find you will be unable to do. The most you will be able to write is between 250-300 words. 300 being a stretch at this point. Remember,

1. Use a timer to stay within the time limit and write the appropriate number of words;
2. Aim for clarity with every paragraph. Present complete explanations rather than several under explained reasons;
3. Properly summarize the conclusion.
4. Review your essay, revise the essay, edit the essay, before you submit the essay for scoring.

Undergraduate / Johns Hopkins Essay - Collaboration with others, including peers, mentors, and professors [3]

Arnold, your response is correct. The problem, is that you lack the proper English grammar with which you use certain English phrases, idioms, and colloquialisms which make the essay feel unnatural and incorrectly presented to the reader. What you have to do is proof read the essay and revise the aforementioned mistakes to create a well developed response essay. Without the proper editing, the essay sounds like it is definitely ESL written, which you may want to avoid since you are applying to an Ivy league university. The corrections are as follows:

tottering - tee tottering
in leaps and bounds - in mounds
scolding - scalding
pruney - pruned
stood the heat - withstood the heat

I think I caught all of the problem phrases in your essay for correction. Once you apply the proper phrases, edit the excess words by shortening the description of your workplace. It doesn't need to be highly definitive. Shorten Paragraphs 1 and 2 to come in under the word requirement.

Undergraduate / Waterloo; comment e.g. on your exposure to engineering through school-related and other experiences [2]

Mohammed, your essay is dry, boring, and not very informative. You should be focusing in providing interesting responses for each discussion recommendation from the original prompt. What you wrote does not respond directly nor apply to most of the suggested discussion points. Let me correct that, these are not suggested discussion points, these are required discussion presentations. Let's see if I can guide you towards a better understanding of the prompt requirements:

1. Why are you interested in Engineering and the program you applied to
- First mention your engineering proper (electrical, mechanical, etc.) and then indicate an idea you have for a project that has real world applications. That will help explain why you are interested in this major.

2. Interests and abilities
- Focus on the competition you joined and explain why you chose that particular project to create for the competition. Describe how your skills helped you design and build the propeller powered car. Do not discuss the competition you have yet to join because that will not help you highlight your engineering skills and abilities.

3. Career goals
- What is your current position at BAK? How do you see yourself improving your employee status after you complete your studies? How will your studies help you specifically do that?

4. discussions you have had with engineers, teachers, current or past Waterloo students.
- Provide an actual discussion about engineering that you had with your father that inspired you to pursue this career. You need to explain more than how your father aroused your interest by taking you to visit power stations. That doesn't represent a discussion between the two of you that could have influenced your decision to become an X engineer. As for the alumnus discussion, name names. Who did you speak to? What? What was said, how did that factor into your decision to apply at Waterloo?

Your response is too generic. Even with only 900 characters, you should be able to come up with a more detailed response if you focus your attention in writing the correct answers to the questions. I think my guide questions and suggestions should help you achieve a more detailed and relevant response statement.

Scholarship / The passion for excellence is a value that I exemplify and uphold the most. NTU Scholarship [2]

Lorems, your passion for excellence is not clearly explained in this essay. As a student, you are not supposed to have a passion for excellence in only one subject. You must have a passion for excellence in your studies overall. That is because, being passionate about science is not the same as being passionate about your studies. Excelling in only one subject indicates that you will not be doing very well in all the supporting subjects. That is not the image you want to portray as a scholarship applicant. A scholar is expected to meet an overall grade requirement every semester, it isn't just about hitting the mark in the subject of interest to you. Therefore, your passion for excellence centered on only one subject is not necessarily the best way to portray your values of beliefs.

For this type of essay, I would use something more along the lines of academic integrity as a value and belief system since college students are required to take an academic oath. Or maybe I would discuss my belief that if I am good at something , like say science competitions, then I must be the best at it. I would have to do my best to get ahead and perform well in order to become number one.

While your essay touches on some of the aforementioned points, the problem is that while explaining how you want to become the best and how you achieved it, you gave the impression that you do not work as hard on other aspects of academic excellence and that, could be the biggest problem for your application essay.

Undergraduate / Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by environment around [3]

jinzhejian, you have chosen a very interesting topic for this discussion. However, your presentation is off. You are talking about how you perform as an independent traveler when you should be discussing how you function when you travel with a group. This is the point of you saying that you have taken 4 independent trips with different people. Independent trips merely indicates the lack of parental supervision and that you did not travel with family or friends. You traveled with complete strangers. As such, you belong to a "group travel" community, not "independent travel". As a member of the group travel community, you should explain what you experienced as a part of the group. As a member of this community, were you ever given any tasks to perform? Or perhaps you were required to act in a certain manner? Now, I have some apprehensions about this presentation because you may have only been part of a "group tour" during these travels, which most certainly does not make you part of a community. A "group travel community" is defined by a group of people who do not have a tour guide nor any definite travel plans upon reaching the destination country. You only got together with these people as part of a "Travel group" for the experience of an unguided tour of the country. If a tour guide was involved, then this is not the correct topic for this essay.

Don't discuss your individual accomplishments during the travels you took. There is nothing indicating that you were part of a community in this presentation. You were just a member of a travel group, not a travel community. You may want to rethink the presentation in terms of relevance to the prompt requirements. It doesn't read like it suits the prompt expectations.

Research Papers / Analysis of the Relationship between Education and Poverty [2]

@Otsuki Your wuoted information regarding the poverty rate in Japan is null and void for the discussion. The information was taken form 1985 which is over 30 years old. For research papers, information and comparison data presented cannot be more than 5 years old, with 10 years comparison data being the maximum for charting purposes. In your discussion, you also focus only on poverty as it is defined and represented by Japan. However, the prompt indicates that you must use multiple sources for your definition of poverty. Therefore, you need at least 2 other countries for the presentation in order to come up with an accurate personal definition that takes into account all of the international poverty data available, as per your research.

The rest of your essay seems to suffer from a lack of citations as well. I am sure that there are in-text citations required for the rest of the information of the essay but you did not properly identify the sources of the paraphrased information. You will need to do that as the prompt indicates that all other sources of information must be identified in your presentation. That is done through in-text citations and a proper bibliography page. Both are currently missing from your presentation.

Writing Feedback / Describe one of your best artworks. How did you make the image special? [2]

Pierre, will you be allowed to present a copy of your painting with this statement? It is a bit hard to envision the presentation you are making because of the inconsistency in the presentation. I think you need to write a totally new essay that will better help the reader envision what you have painted. Maybe you can approach the presentation this way:

As an artist, I am influenced by my everyday surroundings. One of the everyday places I go to is the train station where I take the R train. Being intrigued by the colors of the train, the clothes of the people and the various emotions on their faces, I decided to put the unique scenery onto canvass. Specifically, the facial expression of one man whose image stuck in mind. Using oil, I began by using thick layers of paint on the canvass. After smearing the canvass with (name colors used), I outlined the images with my palette knife...

Try to establish the description of the image before you go into the description of the painting process. That should help you to better describe the painting process you underwent.

Graduate / Why is the Texas MSBA the next logical step for you? Development during this one-year program. [2]

Varun, you have the wrong approach to the prompt. Remove all references to your professional experience at Deloitte and your "hands-on" whatever. Those are not required in this essay. What is required, is an explanation of how "Predictive Modeling" will help you increase your profile as a Deloitte employee. How will that subject help you develop professionally? Explain its significance to your work tasks. The same goes for Text Analysis and the Capstone course. Those tied-in references and explanations will take care of the professional development part of the response.

What you need to develop, as it is currently missing from this version of your essay is the reference to your personal development. How do you hope to achieve that? Consider the social climate at the university and the diverse student body. What can you do to help increase the "fun" element of learning after classes? How will that help you socially and maybe, even professionally (in terms of networking). The social development is something you will need to think about because it seems that you forgot to consider that discussion when you first drafted this essay.

Writing Feedback / SHOULD HEALTHCARE PROVISION BE FREE OF CHARGE OR NOT? [3]

Phuong, first up, you wrote too many words. You will not be able to write these many words during the actual test. Always practice using a timer so that you will know exactly how many words you are capable of writing within the allotted time and still have a little time left over for the proofreading of your paper. Aim to write between 250-300 words at the most. 275 would be the best number to aim for in this type of timed discussion presentation.

Avoid redundant presentations that blur the discussion you are trying to present. Just say "Whether" rather than "Whether or not" because "Whether" is already indicative of a positive or negative choice to be made. Don't waste your word count with filler words such as "First of all" when simply saying "first" will be sufficient. Personally though, I would avoid counting out the reasons because these appear to be memorized reference words that will not help your score.

With regards to your punctuation mistakes. Please remember that a comma always comes after a conjunction such as when saying "... mentally but". It should be "... mentally, but" to indicate a change in discussion reference.

Your discussion is incomplete. You tried to pass of your personal point of view as a single line in the concluding paragraph. The personal point of view is always presented along with the public point of view discussion as the last paragraph before the concluding summary. Your personal point of view is under developed in terms of discussion presentation and as such, will pull down your C&C score as well as your TA considerations.

All of your discussion points are over the 5 sentence maximum. You are under discussing all of your presentations because you are using the 2 reasoning per paragraph format, which does not work very well for this sort of essay that has a 5 sentence maximum. A single topic per paragraph with a transition sentence at the end introducing the next reason would have helped your essay better because it would have helped increase your GRA score. Instead, you are presenting paragraphs that lack clarity in the discussion reasoning consideration. Aim for clarity in all your presentations. That is why you are told to use one topic per paragraph which you can explain in 3-5 sentences. That is the reason for it, clarity and cohesiveness in the discussion are required in order to pass this test.

Graduate / CMU METALS (EdTech) PS - emphasis on professional experience [2]

@oliveoil I think that the strength of your statement of purpose lies in the way that you have a personal connection with your chosen career. This is not something you chose because you were academically adept at it. You chose it because you have a direct stake in its improvement. You came from there and experienced it. Therefore, you know how to improve it for future generational use. The problem is that the personal background and your personal purpose are located too far apart in the essay. Try to bring them closer together by brining the personal purpose up to immediately after the reference to your personal experience. After that, the focus on the professional aspect will make more sense and allow for a clearer focus within the discussion presentation.

Overall, I believe this is an acceptable SOP that could strongly combine the personal and academic purpose of your learning plans. No worries about that part. You just need to edit the essay to provide more clarity to the content of the discussion.

Writing Feedback / IELTS Writing : Current trend of becoming vegetarian [3]

Lan, look out for the subject - verb agreement contradictions in your essay. The proper term to use when referring to the supporters, is "have" not "has" because you are speaking in terms of the present, not the past. You also should show that you have a strong opinion in the essay by using words such as "must have meat" rather than "has to have meat". The former being the more authoritative and active voice in the discussion. Remember to proofread your work before submission. Simple mistakes such as a repeated word like "a a" could have an effect on your GRA score if done repeatedly in the essay. You also need to familiarize yourself with the singular-plural form of words. There are some words like "nutrition" that have the same word form when indicating both the plural and singular references of the term. Just adding an S at the end of a word does not immediately make it plural. Such a mistake will reflect badly on your grammar abilities.

The first sentence in your first reasoning paragraph should have been merged with your thesis statement at the start of the essay. That is because it lays out the foundation for the overall discussion. The thesis response should have been:

I disagree with this trend because of what I believe are two mistakes that the supporters of this view have.

Since this is not an extent essay, it does not ask "to what degree do you agree or disagree", then there is no need to use an emotional response such as "I strongly disagree". A simple response is all that is required.

Please remember the 3-5 sentence ruling per paragraph. Do not go beyond that mandated format. Your opening paraphrase and concluding summary are both incomplete and do not offer the required elements for the discussion. If you review the sample essays here, you will clearly see that the number of sentences for both paragraphs have a clear bearing on your TA and C&C scores.

While you did write a good number of words at 290, avoid writing more than the 5 sentence maximum per paragraph as you did in your second to the last paragraph. The additional information at the end was totally unnecessary and created an under developed presentation that would have an effect on your C&C score because each paragraph is supposed to have only one topic per paragraph unless properly transitioned within the paragraph with a transition sentence. The included subject must also be fully developed in the same paragraph otherwise it creates an unclear and non-cohesive discussion in that presentation.

Writing Feedback / The issue: useful or passionate subjects for study? [2]

Dam, I do not think that you wrote this essay using a timer. If you did, you would have found out that you cannot write 358 words for this essay. You can only write about 250-300 words. With 275 being the ideal word count because that will allow you to score well using all 4 considerations while giving you enough time at the end of the drafting process to proofread your work. The proofreading is something you have to work on owing to the existing mistakes in your essay.

Work towards always using clear words in your essay. Avoid redundancies such as "basic foundation" because the "basis" which is the root word of "basic" already refers to a start or "foundation". Therefore using both terms successively is a redundancy. Learn to use forceful words when stating such as "must" instead of "has to". That way the statement you are making comes from a sense of understanding of the given topic. Remember, your ability to come across as a person who has a good grasp of English sentence structures will be able to do well in the GRA section of the essay. Losing the redundancies will also help you create more coherent paragraph presentations.

Your prompt paraphrase is incomplete. The prompt indicates "Discuss both points of view and give your opinion." So the thesis paraphrase should be similar to:

There are two schools of thought when it comes to university studies. One group of people believes that students must be given the freedom to learn about any topic they want to study. Others promote the idea that college students should focus their learning efforts only on subjects that will prove beneficial to their future careers. These subjects, as per this group, relates to Science and Technology subjects only. I have specific opinion that I would like to share after I have discussed these two public points of view.

The glaring mistake in your essay is that you turned a 3 reasoning paragraph essay into a 2 reasoning presentation, totally skipping your personal point of view presentation paragraph. You instead merged your personal point of view into the concluding paragraph. The personal point of view, which is a critical analysis of the two points of view that allowed you to come to your own conclusion should be written as a 5 sentence paragraph before the concluding summary. Therefore, your discussion presentation is only partially correct at this point and you will be scored only partially, based on the areas of the prompt that you did provide an accurate response to, which would be only 2 rather than 3 reasoning paragraphs.

Basically, new problems in your essay writing have come up because you are dealing with a different prompt instruction this time. You need time to familiarize yourself with the different discussion styles required of the Task 2 essay so that you will know what type of approach to use for each instruction. Read the sample essays here. I am sure those will help you better understand how to approach each discussion instruction.

Graduate / How do get accepted to the top Design school in the country with a weak GPA from 8 years ago? [5]

The quote at the start of the essay is unnecessary. If you want to irritate the reviewer, kick off your essay with someone else's words. They do not take kindly to this because it makes it appear as if you do not have any idea about what you want to say about yourself in the essay. Use only your words to create an impact. Eleanor Roosevelt isn't the one applying for admission so her words are not important to the reviewer.

Your culturally diverse upbringing has nothing to do with the prompt requirements. Skip that part. All that is important in an SOP is your professional and college background, or any continued education you may have had since graduating from college. That information about your background makes the presentation uselessly long and is irrelevant to the discussion. Simply saying that you traveled to Vietnam to meet relatives and this opened your eyes to your future career goals is enough to explain your cultural and diversified background. Don't discuss the heck out of it. The background being implied in this essay is not your personal background but rather your academic and continued education, along with professional training background. Things you did that will tell the reviewer you will be able to compete and complete the course requirements. Your family background has very little to do with that which is why all SOP's never required a personal background presentation. You could place that in the Personal statement instead if it applies to the prompt for that essay and also, if it is required. If not, then there is no need to mention it.

Your reference to attending Parsons should be discussing what you hope to learn rather than implying that you will put what you learn to good use. Discuss your academic interests and how you will be pursuing it at Parsons (research reference requirement from the prompt). The paragraph immediately after that is also irrelevant. Stay focused on developing your main reasons for wanting to complete the MFA, don't keep changing the focus using events and experiences that don't enhance your application.

If you remove the irrelevant parts as I indicated in this post, you should find that your word count will not only come down to a proper number, but that your essay is also tighter in presentation when compared with the prompt requirements for the SOP. You can then edit the essay to have a more polished presentation prior to submission.

Undergraduate / UBC PERSONAL PROFILE: Tell us more about one activity listed above that is most important to you [3]

Maggie, actually, this is one essay where it is more important to tell than to show. Mostly because the prompt clearly asks you to "TELL" them why this activity is important to you. Therefore, your response is correct and appropriately provides the required response. While you do a good job of explaining why this job is important to you, I feel that you should somehow relate the response to how you developed a sense of maturity when it comes to responsibility, interacting with others, working with a team, and learning from the experiences you come across during the performance of your tasks. The importance of the essay is not only in the reason why this activity is important to you. It's applicability to your college life and conduct as a college student is also of vital importance and consideration to the reviewer.

Tell the reviewer about the important parts and how it has helped you become a more evolved person, ready to face the challenges of college life. Don't show. This is not a show essay. The prompt is clear about that. You will be explaining, not re-enacting in this essay. It is a discussion, it is not about story telling.

Undergraduate / NYU Personal essay - Duty Six - an event in your life and how it changed you or someone close to you [4]

@sopelartey I am very confused about the goings on in your essay. You see, you are writing this story coming from the assumption that the reader is all too familiar with the Nigerian boarding school system, which we aren't. Now, I am not sure if you are writing this for an English class in your Nigerian school or if you are writing this for an English class as an ESL student. If you are the latter, then this essay will not work very well for you.

An effective short story is one that remembers that the backstory is just as important as the main story. For this creative story, set up the scene first. Explain what a prefect is, at the start, not in the middle of the story. You have to do that because the whole premise of the story relies on your duty as a prefect. Connect your duty with the manner that a Nigerian boarding school is run. You could, for example, say:

In a Nigerian boarding school, becoming a prefect is considered a tremendous honor. It is a position of leadership that is assigned only to the most responsible senior students in the school. I was in my Third year of high school when I stepped into this role. It was a role that unwittingly would help me become an adult and learn how to properly lead people. I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was Friday evening and I was part of the Duty Six. Ready to rustle up the late comers to dinner. That's what the Duty Six was all about. As a part of this team, I was assigned to....Then it happened. I saw a light on...

I am not sure if my example is a very good one as I only based it on what you have already written. What I would like to highlight though, is that you need to set the scene and explain the background of the events before you delve into dialogue and actual action. That way the short story becomes interesting and develops a better reason for its comedic or dramatic narrative.

Graduate / UCLA SOP; your scholarly area(s) of interest, experiences that have prepared you for advanced study [3]

Zhilin, the first thing I noticed about this essay is the length. It is almost 1000 words. Are you sure that you are not over the word limitation? An SOP is normally no more than 750 words in total. Please double check the word limit and adjust the essay accordingly if you find that you are over the maximum word count. You cannot submit an essay over the actual word limitation. The system could reject your application once you try to submit it online.

The responses you have delivered are well tailored to the demands of the prompt. However, it feels like you are over-telling the story rather than simply going direct to the point with each paragraph. Don't over inform the reviewer. Make his job easier by shortening your presentation. Be more direct. Being wordy is good for a personal statement. For a statement of purpose though, the relevance of the paragraph to the requirement is more important. When you over present your information, the presentation will tend to either bore or irritate the reviewer. Which is why you should keep the presentation as short, simple, but relevant as possible to the prompt requirements.

Personally, I would just edit the word count for this essay. By doing so, you will also create a better focus for each paragraph and create more informative presentations for the reviewer to consider or note for the consideration of your application. That will work better than trying to change the content of the essay.

Writing Feedback / The issue of whether or not people should choose jobs similar to their parents' [3]

Saeed, first up, there is absolutely no way that you can write 400+ words during the actual exam. You will only have time to write 300 words at the most and that will even be cutting it close in terms of editing, revising, and finalizing your essay presentation for scoring. Remember, this is a pen and paper test. That alone limits your writing potential during the allotted time frame. Write less words that have more meaning and improves your explanation instead of a long essay. A long essay will not translate to higher scores. That is guaranteed. In fact, long essays more often than not receive low scores due to the tendency to make more grammar mistakes in the presentation.

Take your care for instance. Your paragraphs often lack clarity because you are more focused on the English words you want to use instead of the meaning of the paragraph. You have pronoun usage problems in the essay (e.g. parents' = parents) due to your inability to use the correct plural form of a word. These errors will force the lowering of your overall scoring considerations. The lack of clarity, mistake in pronoun usage, run-on sentences, all of these will combine to pull down your final overall score because you will not score well based on the individual scores for consideration.

My opinion is that this essay is not an improvement over the first essay because you made similar mistakes and this time, filled the essay with run-on sentences, which cannot result in a passing GRA consideration. Neither does this mean that your essays are clear and understandable, which means your essay will not pass the C&C consideration. I will not give this essay a score because that will not help you at this point. Just remember the mistakes I pointed out here, write another essay, make sure you don't make the same mistakes (a third time), then post the new essay as a new thread for another review.

Hopefully we can get you close to being prepared to take the test by Friday. I am willing to work with you on a daily basis, using multiple essay posts (as new threads) until Wednesday. You must take Thursday to rest your mind and relax. Coming into the exam center all scared, stressed-out, and burned out will not help you. I always ask my students to take the day before the exam to rest and relax. That way you come into the exam center refreshed, rested, and ready to take the test.

Writing Feedback / Ielts - the development of road access to a City Hospital from 2007 to 2010. [2]

Ingrid, the essay is over the minimum 150 word count but under the 4 paragraph requirement for proper scoring. Your paragraphs are also mostly 1 sentence short of the minimum 3 sentence requirement. If you want to fully utilize the scoring potential for each consideration then you must write at least 3 sentences per paragraph, present 4 paragraphs, and ensure that you do not miss out on any important information in the presentation. Grammar-wise you do not have any real problems. The sentences are coherent and mostly cohesive in presentation. So the biggest problem of your essay mostly has to do with the presentation.

For the 4 paragraph essay, I often suggest that, using an image as a basis for the presentation, the student should use the following format:

Par. 1 - Description summary
Par. 2 - Description of original image
Par. 3 - Description of new image
Par. 4 - Merged / changes made in the new image

When you describe the new image in paragraph 3, indicate what new additions were made. The improvements to the existing structure should be made in the last paragraph. By using the above format you will always write about 200 words and have the full 4 paragraph format for maximum scoring impact.

Undergraduate / A plan to pursue academic interests at USC, address your first and second-choice major selections [3]

Hannah, the essay is off to an interesting start. The fact that you are facing frustrations with regards to your art career means you will be a dedicated student at USC. However, you have not been able to follow through on that frustrated excitement in the succeeding essay parts. I would have kicked off this essay by saying something like:

12 years... That's how long I have been trying to make a go of my career as an artist. I've been frustrated all of this time because my creativity has been stifled by various obstacles in the face of my talent development. Obstacles like... sometimes push me to the brink of quitting. That is, until I heard about the USC xxx program. Then my frustration was replaced with joy because the (begin the discussion of art facilities, programs, and other related information in relation to your artistic inclinations)...

For every specific university offering, describe how that will help you pursue your academic goal or professional skill. That is what the essay is asking you highlight, but you have to make it exciting. If you can relate it to both a personal and professional development on your part, all the better.

Graduate / How do get accepted to the top Design school in the country with a weak GPA from 8 years ago? [5]

Anthony, whenever faced with a word count maximum, you should never take a chance. Always submit at under or exactly at the word limitation. This is specially true if you are submitting your application through an online system. The system may not allow you to make real time edits to your essay in case it is over the word limit or, the system could be designed to cut your essay exactly at the 750 word mark. In which case, your essay submission will be incomplete and useless to your application. If you are allowed to make real time edits though, there is a timer that will prevent you from taking your sweet time in editing the work. It will shut down while you are still editing. These are the scenarios that you face when you try to submit an essay that is over the word limit.

The problem I have at the moment with your essay is that I cannot verify which aspects of the essay are of the utmost importance to the presentation and which parts can be moved to the program essay. Why do I have this problem? Well, you forgot to upload the SOP writing instructions along with your essay. Without it, I cannot help you beyond telling you that you need to cut down the word content. How you can do that and still have a stand out essay, I cannot help you with. You will have to do that on your own because I have no idea what the prompt requires you to write about.

Undergraduate / The most important to me is the relationship with my friends and family - UBC Personal Profile [6]

Victoria, I think that the slant of your essay should not be on the "relationship I have with family and friends". That sounds so -- ordinary. It doesn't catch the attention of the reviewer. Go for some dramatic flair. You could say that what you consider important is the "creation of lifelong bonds both with my friends and family". While the family relationship you depict here is typical, it doesn't make your bond as a family stand out. Think of something that makes your family extra special to you and use that to highlight the "family bond" that you are working hard to create because you know that when you go off to college, that bond could weaken or disappear totally because of the major change in your life.

As for your friends, the story you depict is normal for all growing, evolving, and changing friendships. You need a stand out moment that shows what this bond is important to you. Unlike the family bond that is forever, why do you think that keeping your bond with friends is important? That is more important than the common explanation that you give for it in the current essay.

I apologize for not telling you that this essay is impressive because you did put hard work into the development of the content. The thing is, I am looking at your essay with the critical eye of a reviewer. If I find it ordinary, you can bet the reviewer will find this boring and too common to make you a noticeable applicant. So I am trying to help you avoid that.

Undergraduate / To do no harm - Why NYU essay, maximum 2500 characters (Transfer Application) [3]

Why NYU? The question is asking you to explain your decision to change universities at this point in your educational career. What school are you coming from? Why can't you continue your radiology studies there? Sure Tandon offers excellent pre-med opportunities and can help you become a better radiologist. Are you choosing Tandon because of the pre-med opportunities that you can pursue after you complete your radiology degree? Is that why you are choosing Tandon?

What about the Vertically Integrated Projects? How do you see yourself making your mark in your professional field based upon the training you will receive in this area? If this one of the reasons you chose Tandon, then explain why this will make you a better radiologist in your opinion, without repeating the often quoted information about this line of study as you do in this paragraph. Don't tell the reviewer what he already knows. Tell him how you will use this program to improve your knowledge based upon your idea of its application in your potential workplace. That will make this essay stand out.

The same advice goes for the student organizations. It would be better for you to be explaining what sort of improvements you can bring to these activities in terms of diversity or participation. Don't just keep repeating information that all the other students will be quoting, such as the speakers at the conferences or the Spring Festival. Talk of the improvements you hope to make as a participant. Don't just say you look forward to participating in these events.

I know that you feel comfortable with the essay that you wrote at this point. However, I feel that it requires some major changes in terms of discussion points and reference elements. I hope you will consider my suggestions seriously as a part of your revision process.

Graduate / The ultimate goal of a free life. Statement of Purpose for the Master of Digital Media [2]

Hanjing, the one thing missing in this purpose statement is "What is the purpose for studying at Ryerson?" You are not explaining how the university you have chosen will support your career goals and academic requirements. You have spoken so much of your desire for a higher education that it was expected that you would have gone into greater detail as to why you chose this university in particular, without simply glossing over the course requirements, training provisions, and your academic expectations as you do now. That portion is tremendously important in a statement of purpose so you should try to build up that paragraph a little bit more.

Now, all of the information you include in this essay is important but that does not mean that all of these information should be presented to the reviewer. I feel a sense of overkill in your discussion points throughout the essay. The problem is that you did include the statement of purpose prompts from Ryerson so I am unable to help you edit this essay down to only the salient points of particular importance to the consideration of your application. I guess that is something you will have to figure out for yourself based on the SOP prompt requirements. Had you originally included the prompt, I would have been able to help you do that.

Like I said it is a very informative essay. It is impressive in terms of credentials and content. It makes you come across as a tremendously qualified candidate. Yet I am unsure as to whether or not you are actually responding to the prompt requirements at this point.

Writing Feedback / The issue of whether in order to be a successful person, you should be more like others or different [4]

I cannot really decide on that unless I see you write a different essay with the improvements I suggested included in your presentation. At the moment, your writing level is only a 2. If you mean complexities as in the way that you use the English words, then yes, you might get a 4 if only the word usage is considered, which is not the way the essay is scored. You are scored on clarity of explanation and use of English words. Don't try to over complicate the presentations. Keep it basic, simple, and easily understood. You are not trying to write the great American novel, you are just trying to explain an opinion so don't overdo it. For now, don't aim for complexity, aim for clarity in your discussion instead. That is what will help to boost your score over everything else and all other scoring considerations.

Undergraduate / How can I improve my response to "Reasons for choosing your program and Waterloo" in the AIF [3]

Mohammad, your excitement about applying to Waterloo is evident in the essay. However, beyond the excitement, there isn't anything in your statement that tells me your personal reasons for choosing the university in relation to your major. You are telling the reviewer things that he already knows. What you have to do is frame your response in a manner that doesn't sound like you are just repeating tired and well known information.

Rather than telling the reviewer that you know the graduates of Waterloo go on to work at Google, you should instead say that you see your future as an expert working at Google and you look forward to being trained towards Google level competency through the so and so program of Waterloo. The reviewer doesn't care about their university ranking, he is already proud of that. Neither will your interaction with their graduates impress the reviewer.

Focus your response on your professional goal of working at Google and how you know Waterloo can help you prepare for that. Talk about your plans, your ideas for research as a student, any topic that will allow you highlight the academic and professional opportunities afforded by Waterloo that will eventually lead to your career start at Google.

Undergraduate / What would you design, having money for your idea? [4]

Vinh, this seems like an unnecessarily complicated project. Why is it unnecessarily complicated? Mainly because you forgot to consider that all gadgets these days, from android phones to the tablet, can all be controlled by voice. That is the IoT, everything electronic and computerized responds to a voice command. In computers, this includes a voice override for the mouse functions. I know this because I use my keyboard via voice dictation, and that includes the mouse function. So your project is not as forward thinking and cutting edge as you might think. It is a bit backward in presentation since this problem has already been solved for your cousin by technology. Try to think of something else. Something still out of the box.

Remember the replicator from Star Trek? That hasn't become a reality yet. You can think of something along those lines. Unique, useful, and still not in existence. How could something like that help your cousin? The essay is challenging your imagination and out of the box thinking. Your response, though full of well intentions, is a bit short sighted and nulled by the existence of voice activated gadgets at present.

Writing Feedback / The provided information about the water used in different sectors in different countries in 2003 [4]

Diep, try to remember that when you write the analytical essay, you should avoid using memorized phrases such as "On the whole" and instead, use phrases that show a more personalized analysis of the situation such as "From an overall perspective" or something similar. In addition to that, please remember that when actual measurements are used in the chart, you must not use fractional references such as " a fifth" or "a quarter", and never "one in ten" because you are making the reader guess what these values are.

The instruction is that you are to write a report based on the GIVEN information. GIVEN being the keyword here. That means you do not replace the information just to show off your LR skills. Stick with the program. For every actual numerical figure given, you are to present it in its original form in the essay for the sake of Accuracy (TA), Clarity (C&C), and proper referencing with punctuation marks used in a relevant manner (GRA).

Regardless of these observations, you have shown a clear enough presentation of the overview summary, the facts of the chart, and the analysis of the information. You did a good enough job on this essay so that even if there are punctuation problems, such as missing commas in conjunction presentations, the essay will still manage to get at least a passing score.

Writing Feedback / The issue of whether in order to be a successful person, you should be more like others or different [4]

Saeed, this essay can score no higher than a 2. The main reason that you cannot score better than this is that there are certain presentations in your essay that lack clarity in the presentation. In the first paragraph, you ended up trying to over explain the simple prompt, which resulted in an extremely wordy and hard to follow discussion presentation. The second paragraph indicates that the increase in number of teachers lessened the respect for your father. So what? The prompt is asking about success, whether your father is respected or not does not lessen the amount of success he has achieved as a teacher. Your father was already a success since he became educated, worked as the only teacher in your village, and did so for 40 years. Therefore, he is a success. Respect, as you discuss in your essay, has nothing to do with his success. One can be successful without being respected.

Your second example is so ancient, one cannot see the value of success as you are trying to discuss in it. Don't use such old examples that require an amount of research into history before one can understand it. Don't try to show off your intellect. Show off your English prowess. Nobody cares about your knowledge of ancient history, the examiner cares about how well you can explain yourself and write in English. You even misspelled "Greek" as "Greak". That shows a clear lack of control over English words and proper spelling, which is another reason why you cannot score highly with this essay.

Always stay on point with your discussion. Stick to the given topic. Do not digress as you did in this essay. Make sure to check your work before you submit. Correct all of your sentence and vocabulary mistakes to avoid further deductions in your score.

Graduate / Master of Science in Computer Science - Statement of Purpose for applying Uva [2]

Zewei, are you planning to take a masters degree that does not have a professional background requirement? If so then this essay is acceptable. The problem, is that there is no reference to what your professional goals are that motivated you to study a masters degree immediately after completing your undergraduate degree. The essay is too long in the sense that you are going way too back into your past a child when the focus should start immediately with your college studies.

Do not confuse the Coursera discussion with your formal studies. Separate the two specially since your academic courses won you a scholarship, which means you might have what it takes to academically perform without the need for professional experience. That part of your educational background tends to get confusing because of the merged academic discussion.

This is a tremendously informative essay. The problem is, I cannot really judge which of these sections you can safely eliminate because you did not post the SOP requirements along with your essay. For that consideration, you are on your own. Try to develop the reasons / purpose discussion more than the presentation of your qualifications. This is after all, a statement of purpose, not a personal statement. Balance the professional purpose with the academic goals and a 5 year career plan. 10 years is too long for this type of presentation and requires further studies beyond a masters degree.

Writing Feedback / Advertising encourages us to buy too many things we do not need. Agree or disagree? [6]

Phuc, the main problem with your essay is the incorrect approach that you took to discussing the prompt topic. This is a simple agree or disagree essay. As such, you are required to pick only one side to discuss, develop, and support within your 4 paragraph essay. This is not a comparison essay because you are not being asked to "discuss both opinions" so you made a mistake in your discussion format. This is a single opinion essay, nothing more.

Your prompt paraphrase does not respond to the given question. This is not about what you believe, it is about whether you agree or disagree with the given statement. Therefore the response expected from you is as easy as "I disagree" or "I disagree" with the discussion. The closing thesis sentence should be "... based on a few / number of reasons".

The whole essay discussion does not connect with the given prompt. Your discussion is off in a different direction from the original prompt. That is why this essay cannot expect to receive a reasonable final score had this been an actual test. Familiarize yourself with the various discussion requirements for Task 2 essays and make sure you write your next essay in the correct format. There are more than enough samples at this forum for you to review to help you accomplish that.

Writing Feedback / Topic: People are walking less. What are causes and solutions? [4]

The main problem that I see with this essay has to do with the clarity of the discussion. You are using too many words, such as "and also", which mean the same thing so you create confusion in your statements. Either say "and" or "also", never "and also". The cohesiveness and conciseness of your paragraphs were compromised because of your unclear paragraph presentations. You make the essay too wordy just to meet the word requirement and as a boost to your LR score rather than focusing on providing a clear discussion of your reasons and supporting statements.

The prompt provided is a direct question essay. This requires you to outline your discussion points as a part of the opening paraphrase. That is another reason why you scored less. You should have provided 2 connected causes and 2 possible solution within the opening paraphrase to indicate the discussion of the upcoming paragraphs.

You were not very careful with your spelling either. The essay shows that you did not practice the Read, Revise, Review, Revise, Finalize practice of checking your essay before submission. Simple errors like "VietNam" create a problem for your LR score when it could have been prevented with simple editing and proof reading. You are being asked to discuss reasons, so you should be discussing 2 connected reasons in one paragraph. Use a transition sentence to connect the two topics in one paragraph presentation. The same goes for the solution. The lack of transition sentences in the paragraphs affected the GRA score for your essay.

Finally, your concluding summary wasn't a proper summary of the aforementioned discussion. You were supposed to repeat the prompt, offer the causes and solutions, then close the essay in this paragraph. It was to be done in a manner similar to the prompt paraphrase. You did not accomplish that in this presentation.

Based on these observations, you can see why you did not score well in this essay presentation.

Undergraduate / UCF Common App essay - What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? [2]

Victoria, save for a little punctuation problems with regards to missing commas after a conjunction, your essay is well written. It clearly responds to the prompt in a direct manner. I have just one small observation though. There is no clear reference as to what brought about your line of thinking. Why did you challenge this idea? Aside from the demands of needing to deliver a perfect game, what other reasons did you have for losing interest?

If you are trying to show a sense of maturity in this essay, then you need to show a sense of developed interests as well. Show how you were starting to evolve away from your father's interests and how you were enjoying your new interests far more than the interest that you took up to please your father. The idea that you are growing into your own person based on personal beliefs and interests needs to be an integral part of this discussion. It is not very well developed at the moment because there is too much focus on the background of your family in tennis within the first 2 paragraphs.

Try to narrow down that presentation so that you can immediately focus on the relationship you have with your father and the evolution of that relationship instead. Try to close the essay with a reference to your current father-daughter relationship now that tennis is no longer a bonding factor. That way the relationship outcome of the challenge becomes clearer to the reviewer as well.

Undergraduate / UC Essay: [8] Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you [2]

Considering your sentence structure, you need to remember to use a comma after a conjunction such as "shook" to separate the action presentations and add clarity to the paragraph. You missed out on doing this in certain sections of your essay so make sure to review your essay after you complete the final version so you can correct those errors.

As far as the content is concerned, it can use several improvements. The first improvement that I hope you can make is the reason why you went from introvert to extrovert on stage. Why were you an introvert? How did becoming a performer help you overcome that shyness? The second part you should further address is your time in the army. That is impressive and any lessons you learned during that time or skills that you developed will be sure to impress the reviewer. What you have to do is show a start contrast from the introvert, transitioning into the performer, then ending with the fully developed man you have become because of the time in the army. The transitions will help to guide the reviewer through your journey to adulthood and the evolution of a shy boy that led to his becoming and adult male.

You have an interesting draft here. Further developments to the topics for presentation should help make this a highlightable essay in the eyes of the reviewer. This is one work in progress I look forward to reviewing again.

Graduate / How do you hope to develop, both personally and professionally, during this one-year program at MSBA [4]

Varun, your response is totally incorrect. It does not apply at all to the questions provided by the prompt. You are discussing your past while the essay is asking about your current professional skills, training, and academic expectations for your time as a student. This essay just lays out the foundation of your educational background and nothing more. Therefore, the essay cannot be used as a response to the given prompts. You have to revise this essay in a manner that better responds to the prompt requirements. Let me see if there are parts of this essay that can be salvaged for use in your new draft.

Why is the Texas MSBA the next logical step for you?
-You do not have a definitive response to this question. Your academic background is relevant to a certain extent only. You should not focus so much on your college education because, while it allowed you to get the job you currently have, your current job has trained you beyond your previous academic experience to help you perform the required work tasks. To properly respond to this, you must focus on the discussion of what your current job description is ,what sort of continuing education and training you have received, and why you feel that your current skills and training have taken you to the end of your best abilities in relation to your profession. That way, when you respond to this question, you create the foundation for your response to the next question which is:

How do you hope to develop, both personally and professionally, during this one-year program?
- Instead of discussing what your future plans are, you must discuss how you plan to utilize the course curriculum, research opportunities, and other training programs that the university offers its masters students. Explain how these academic goals of yours supplement your past professional training and how these will help you address your future professional goals with specificity.

Once you have directly responded to each prompt with relevant responses, you should have a more aligned prompt response draft that you can work on improving in terms of content. As of now, you need to delete this version and write a new draft. Make sure to align your response with the explanations I provided above. The explanations should help you figure out what information you should provide from your background to create a proper response to every question.

Undergraduate / The people and things that have occurred in my life, to shape me into the person I am today [4]

Monica, you should not use Grammarly to proof read your essay. It stores your essay in a database for future comparisons with other essays. If your application is run through a plagiarism checker for originality purposes, the work could come back as plagiarized and end your application process as the university. Do not use Grammarly for any reason. Use the bundled software grammar checker with your document program instead. That does not store your essay anywhere so you will not have any plagiarism problems (should any arise) in the future with your college applications.

Now, as for the content of your essay. It will be better if you choose just one topic to discuss in the essay so that you can fully develop the presentation of how the person or activity in the community helped shaped who you are today. By using 2 topics, I found that I did not really get to know you very well. You were not able to properly discuss how each chosen subject had helped you develop your personality. I am guessing that is because you are using two subjects for the discussion instead of just one.

Choose to present the subject that you feel will best allow you to describe how you developed into the person you are today. I think your father helped you do that more that your art classes did. So you should consider a full discussion of your family background instead. This time, involve your mother and your siblings if you wish. They are after all, the foundation by which your character, conduct, interests, and personal values stemmed from. These are the traits that the reviewer hopes to learn more about as well through this given prompt.

Don't confuse the essay presentation. Focus on the strongest suit that will help increase the interest in your application. Don't use 2 topics when one topic will more than suffice to respond to the question.

Undergraduate / College essay - how I've dealt with my grandfather alzheimer's [4]

Amanda, you have written a very good essay that explains how you have developed your talent for a good cause. The way that you use your artistic ability for information dissemination regarding Alzheimer's is an admirable trait. However, I do not believe that you have chosen the right prompt for the essay. I strongly urge you to consider using the following prompt instead:

Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Based on the above prompt, you can see that your story encompasses everything that it requires. It has an interesting background story regarding your childhood. It has an identity story because of the interaction with your grandfather. The interest you developed in Alzheimer's because of your grandfather's illness clearly suits the prompt requirement, and your talent, which you should further develop as a discussion point, helps the essay come full circle in introducing the softer side of your personality to the reviewer. I hope you will consider my suggestion.

Graduate / Essay for applying to MasterCard Foundation Scholarship at University of Edinburgh (Review required) [2]

Olanrewaju. you seem to have misunderstood the prompt. What you wrote is a personal statement regarding the development of your interest in your chosen course. I do not see any passion in what you have written because you have not made any move towards contributing to a social change in any of these sectors. That would show a degree of passion due to the complexity of your involvement in this cause.

There are no personal values reflected in your essay because of the lack of passion in your presentation. Your passion stems from a personal value that you are trying to instill or promote through this cause that you are passionate about. The two must either intersect or connect in the presentation in a manner that allows for one to support the other.

There are several samples of the Mastercard Foundation passion essays that you can read at this forum. Have a look at those samples so you can have a better idea of the type of passion and personal value that you can present in your response. This current essay version doesn't really work well with the prompt. I hope you still have time to change the essay in total.

Writing Feedback / CAR OWNERSHIP IN GREAT BRITAIN: IELTS WRITING TASK 1- LINE CHART [2]

Dung, you were right about the image. It is so blurred that it is useless as a basis for reviewing your essay. You are lucky though, there were not major sentence structure or grammar issues in your writing. While your presentation could be better, it was not a problematic presentation. Your thought process was clear and your information came across in an understandable manner to the reader. I would have liked to have seen a more complete opening overview summary though. Your trending statement should have also been separated from the main paragraph presentations and included either as a part of the summary overview or a stand alone sentence. In this instance, the merging made it a bit hard to spot while reading.

As for formatting considerations, kindly remember that there is a 3-5 sentence requirement for the paragraph. The way you have this essay structured at the moment, the paragraphs tend to run into the lengthy territory, which creates unnecessary run-on sentences. Use full stops through a period for every sentence. Don't use commas because the continuous thought discussion pattern will tend to confuse your reader and in the process, lower your C&C score.

I don't advice you to write more than 200 words for this 150 minimum word essay. Any more than that and you will tend to make more GRA mistakes, create incoherent sentences, and lose all time for editing and revising your possible mistakes. Anywhere from 150-175 words in a 4 paragraph format will be sure to get you a better scoring consideration in the actual test. Editing and revising is just as important as the word count in this case so you have to find a balance between the two that you are comfortable with when you are writing the Task 1 essay.

Scholarship / Promoting Reading Habit in Indonesia - Erasmus Mundus Scholarship [2]

Maria, please do not repeat information in this essay. What I mean to say is, do not repeat the information about the violent attack twice in the same essay. What you should do is remove the stand alone presentation of the violent attack and instead, merge that as your main motivation and topic for your masters thesis in the dissertation section of the essay. That way you avoid reader boredom and avoid irritating the reviewer who will read the same information twice in your essay. Aside from that observation regarding the content of your essay, the rest of the remaining work has to do with editing the content to correct grammar use and sentence structure errors. Something that you can do after you address the dissertation proposal situation in the essay.

Overall, you addressed all of the requirements in a manner that shows the relevance of your previous studies with your current interests and you show a clear progression in your academic growth because of it. My observations are tentative at this time and will be subject to change depending upon the type of revisions that you will be making to your next draft.