Undergraduate / Suggestions for personal statement for Top university (Chinese in Canada) [11]

It really doesn't, unless you happen to have been in China recently. The second sentence therefore makes the first extremely jarring. At least, that's the effect it has on me.

Book Reports / Argumentative essay on 1984 - Outline [40]


The comparison is ridiculous to anyone who does not share a the ideological mindset that inspires it. No one has argued that torturing people to control them is moral, only that torturing people to get information out of them is effective. Of course it is. The whole point is that people will eventually say whatever they think their torturers want to here. This makes it unreliable if the people don't have the information one wants, but presumably very effective if they do. Nor has anyone argued that the public should be habitually lied to and manipulated by those in power, only that secret agents and agencies should be permitted to work, with, well, a fair amount of secrecy. To discuss 1984 in this context can only lead to a massive distortion of either the interpretation of the book, or else of the Bush Administrations policies. Most likely both, I should imagine.

Dissertations / Need to decide topic of dissertation Mtech Computer Science [11]


This would seem to be the most important one, since you seem to already have made it into your program. What do you want to work on, bearing in mind that this is likely the final step in your transition from student to professional?

Essays / How do female characters fit into the modernist milieu? [4]

An interesting question indeed. I am curious if the opinions of male respondents will differ substantially from those of female respondents. Alas, I never much liked modernism, and have not studied these authors enough to be able to offer a useful comparison myself. If I weren't so busy at the moment, though, I would read the novels in question, just to be able to comment.

Undergraduate / UCF Admissions essay - family history environment / culture - suggestions / proofread? [21]


Don't worry about trying to rephrase it, either -- just cut it. Even the most original phrasing wouldn't hide the fact that it is a bland idea that, as you said, the reader already knows without you having to tell him.

Research Papers / Comparing pre and post Gold Rushes of the 1850s in Australia. [14]

I love Google Books. It's like visiting a library with schizophrenic censors, only without having to leave your house.

Essays / CBEST exam topic ideas? [12]

Hey, this is third time you've asked this question! At least this time you put it in its own thread, I suppose.

Okay, I just moved another answer from yet another thread you posted that was identical to this one, which I then deleted. If you spam the forums like this again, I will be forced to suspend your membership. So please, don't.

Undergraduate / "My Name" - Common Application short answer essay [8]


And that's precisely your problem. I still say you should reduce the essay to a single opening sentence, and then use the extra room to talk in more detail about the specific things you learned from the Model UN. There is not much point in having a clever opening line to an essay that is overall very generic and unmemorable. It would be much better to have a generic opening line to an essay that is very clever and interesting overall.

Essays / Similarities between myself and any vegetable [17]

Lol! That would hilarious. Instead of treating it as an exercise in metaphorical thinking, actually do a scientific comparison between yourself and a vegetable. I imagine that at least some parts of the genetic code would be similar, some of the biochemistry (humans and vegetables do exist in the same ecosystem, after all), and so on. It also works better with the actual phrasing of the prompt, which is "similarities between myself and any vegetable"

Undergraduate / My Heritage - in my own country I feel the most foreign. Common App. Essay [10]

No problem. I look forward to reading your next draft.

Writing Feedback / [TOEFL] Observing or studying animals teaches us a lot about human nature [4]

There are a number of grammar mistakes.

I assume, from your own comments on others' threads, that this is what you consider useful feedback.

Undergraduate / UCF Admissions essay - family history environment / culture - suggestions / proofread? [21]

Better. And what did you love about Florida, exactly? This seems like a particularly important question for you to answer in this essay, given that you are applying to UCF.

Undergraduate / influential person my father [4]

Ugh. Students should be banned from picking family members when writing this sort of essay. I'm sure admissions officers everywhere would be grateful. Still, if you're going with your father for this essay, then you need to describe him so that we can picture him, show through a narrative anecdote how he influenced you (instead of just telling us) then explain how that influence has made you an ideal candidate for wherever you are applying to. At the moment, your essay does none of these things.

Undergraduate / 'in disbelief and shock after our win' - University of Florida essay [24]

No worries. We are very patient people.

Undergraduate / Need help on Bump in road Essay (my best friend's death) [23]

The story you have now is very powerful, but you need to explain how it makes you a desirable candidate for admissions, and that means focusing more on what you learned from the experience, and how that has made you a better person in some way.

Undergraduate / Suggestions for personal statement for Top university (Chinese in Canada) [11]

"In the summer, one may have seen an energetic young man riding a bike,"

"Chengdu, my legendary city, has changed so much that I have difficulty to recognizing it."

"I am really a Chinese, a faith that can never depart from me." As far as I know, Chinese isn't a faith. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, arguably even Atheism, are all faiths. Chinese is a nationality.

"At noon, I and many Chinese students went to the director's meeting room to know their final decision, and it was YES" Did they really shout their answer at you?

"The soft side of my heart [can you find a better phrase for this?] has helped me to appreciate other ideas and cultures, to blended them together and lea d a change." What change?

Undergraduate / This year's cross-county varsity - common app significant experience essay. [14]

It isn't that difficult. Combine sentences. Cut down on phrases that don't really say anything. So, for instance

"I had never beaten him. However, that evening, I was surprised to find that I defeated him by a satisfactory margin."

can be rewritten as

"That evening, I beat him for the first time."

Likewise

"This experience instigated me to squint a bit and consider what my cross-country training had offered me rather than what it did not. I then had a clear view of everything I had gained and I was blithe again. I had learned how to manage my time effectively, an area I had always been weak in, when I looked up my exam result again with all A's."

can be rewritten as

"This experience built my confidence and inspired me to improve my time management skills more generally. As a result, my academic work also improved."

And so on.

Essays / "The Curious incident of the dog......."-Christopher's change & lessons learned [26]

I remember this as being an excellent novel. Unfortunately, that is about all I remember of it. Still, as I recall, a lot of the novel has to do with how inexplicable many human actions would be, driven as they are by emotion, to someone with autism who lacks the ability to imagine other people's emotional lives. So, perhaps you might look at what the book has to say about the nature of "normal" human psychology.

Essays / Pro Con Analysis (Immigrants to Learn English) [19]

Your essay rambles. In part, this is because of the ridiculous outline you have to follow, but you could still improve, even with the lousy framework you are stuck with.

I'd suggest you start by defining your key terms. What do you mean by "inhumane," for instance? At the moment, it is unclear why the death penalty should be more inhumane than locking someone in a cage for twenty years.

You say that, for those against the death penalty, the issue is mostly a moral one. Okay, what moral principle do they cite in their objections?

You say that the death penalty is objected to because it is irreversible. Why should this be an objection?

You say that those in favor of the death penalty can refute these points. How?

You cite the notion of "an eye for an eye" as the justification for the death penalty. But earlier, you mentioned rape as a crime for which the death penalty should be considered. Killing a rapist isn't an eye for eye. This leads to the notion that perhaps, back at the beginning of your essay, you should have defined the death penalty, or at least the version of it you planned to argue against. Singapore, for instance, has a very different system of capital punishment than does the U.S.

You mention the recidivism rates, but fail to make explicit how these can be used to support a stance on the death penalty (which is a shame, because it is one of the strongest arguments in favor of it).

Then you say that these arguments can be rebutted by opponents. Again, how?

By the way, your conclusion, that the two camps are ideologically opposed, implies that at some point the two sides stop refuting each other and essentially have to disagree as a matter of principle. If so, you should explain what the principles are, and why they cannot be reconciled.

Undergraduate / Satisfactions from activities as a physician - Columbia University Secondary [35]

I wouldn't have pegged you as the sort of person who really wanted people to internalize the messages of rap or hip-hop. But then, on reflection, I realized that I should have easily been able to predict your support of the genres. In any event, as far as slowing the rate of change down in English goes in order to preserve the language as long as possible, hip hop is unlikely to be considered beneficial.

Essays / Similarities between myself and any vegetable [17]

OW! I can see that I'm going to end up biting my tongue right off before we're done with this thread . . .

Book Reports / Argumentative essay on 1984 - Outline [40]


Even this would be a great improvement from how things actually are. As it is, many people act in ways they know to be self-destructive. Besides, how can one perceive one's own self-interests if one has never stopped to ask what constitutes them? A great many people act for their own short term pleasure, but as this has nothing whatsoever to do with their self-interests, such people should be described as hedonistic, not selfish.


Only if you take a certain view of wealth, which I don't.


But in buying the TV, they provide employment for television manufactures, people who work for television manufacturers, and indirectly the miners who mine the raw materials necessary for television production. Spending money for one's own benefit is not therefore the same as hoarding wealth.


There is some validity to this point. At some point, the population becomes large enough that the finite resources of the planet become spoken for. However, even now I don't think we've quite reached this point, and we certainly haven't been in such a state for most of our history. Moreover, just because resources have acquired by one person, that doesn't mean that no more wealth can be created off of them by others. A mining company that extracts iron from the ground turns the iron from useless stone to valuable resource, but others then purchase that iron, and make money off of it by adding value to it, by, say, shaping it into more complex products. Others come along and add value to it by combining these products into even more complex ones. Still others come up with more efficient designs for the products being produced. And, of course, depending upon what is produced, others may be able to create wealth by offering services related to the product.

Interestingly, I believe there may come a time, probably a brief one, where the limited view of wealth may, in a limited way and for a limited time, be true. However, once the resources of the planet have all been tapped, it then becomes highly worthwhile to head to space to harvest the resources available in the rest of our solar system, and so the scope of the system will soon increase to make it one in which resources are, for all practical purposes, infinite.


I think my above comments show why your analogy is wrong. Our "island" isn't small enough for that to be a concern, and we certainly don't live in a world in which there is only one commodity that constitutes wealth. A better analogy would be this -- imagine a large island populated by gorillas. Most of the gorillas get their food from banana trees populating the island. But, there aren't very many trees, and so often the gorillas are hungry, though most get enough to survive. Fights frequently break out over food. One day, a gorilla thinks to himself -- hmmm, I bet I could take some bananas, and grow more trees, so that I didn't have to fight all the time for whatever happened to be lying around. He therefore goes off to a remote area of the island and clears some land. It is backbreaking labor, moving the huge rocks in the soil, figuring out how to plow the land (since he first has to invent a plow) and trying to figure out what conditions are most hospitable to bananas. Then, he must plant the trees, haul water to them (or invent a system of irrigation) weed them, and generally tend to them. Eventually, though, the crop is ready for harvest. Then, he finds that he has plenty of bananas, more than the whole island usually produces. Then the other gorillas come to him and say,"you should share, why should you be rich, while the rest of us have barely enough?" To which the other gorilla might reply, "because I put in the effort to figure out how bananas could be grown, and to bring my project, literally, to fruition. While I worked hard to improve my circumstances, you fought amongst yourselves complaining that wealth was limited. Yet I have found a way to provide enough food for all of us, and I surely do not want to see the excess bananas that I cannot eat rot. So, what do you have that is of value that I might trade them for?"

Of course, in real life, not only would the other gorillas not have helped our hero, they probably would have mocked him and derided him for going against tradition and trying to plant banananas, and for neglecting his own particular gang of gorillas by laboring in the fields instead of preparing to defend one of the existing trees from rival gangs. Once he has proven successful, of course, they will adopt his technique, and because of his efforts, bananas will never again be scarce.

In any event, none of the other gorillas on the island have been hurt by the first gorilla's ingenuity, nor do they have any claim on the bananas he produced.


Now that's just silly and plain wrong. Words have many, many different definitions, and those tied to highly complex concepts, such as various ideologies, are very much up for debate, and are in fact constantly being altered and refined through discourse.


Which is my main point, that communism has to fail, because of the premises it is built on. It isn't that communism never gets there, it's that the "there" it promises is a lie. In the end, it always gets to the state logic predicts for it -- a totalitarian state.


And again, being rich doesn't make it any harder for others to be happy. To prove it, why not ask your parents to give you your inheritance now (a la prodigal son) [I'm guessing you're not poor yourself -- you're too thoughtful and well-educated]. Then, go and walk through any large city, giving away five dollars to every person you meet who asks you for change. Do this every day until you have spent every last penny. Then, as you are standing on a street corner begging for change, ask yourself if you have made the world a substantially better place, by ridding a city of beggars, or a worse one by merely adding one more to their number.

Crap. Accidentally posted this, so now I can only edit, not quote. Oh well.
"If some bully is pushing you around should you just say to yourself, "It would be arrogant of me to oppose him and make my own, more just, rules because since he has more power he must be smarter than me.""

You're missing the point. There is no bully. There are only people who believe as you do, deciding that they will be more just with other people's wealth than nature has been. And yes, that is arrogant, as it involves stepping in to fill the role of bully yourself. You have no right to try to dispose of what belongs to other people, and trying to do so is unjust. An unjust act, howsoever noble its intent, remains unjust. The ends do not justify the means, and all the villainy in the world comes from believing otherwise.

Undergraduate / "Experiences or accomplishments that defined me as a person" [5]

Well, first you would need to write a draft of some sort. You might do this after brainstorming, outlining, etc. I'm sure you must have covered the writing process in school by now, if you are applying to a university. As it is, we don't know you, and so can hardly tell you which of your personal experiences and accomplishment defined you.

Student Talk / Took the IELTS Today and didn't go as I expected :( [35]

Yes. Just post it in its own thread.

Undergraduate / This year's cross-county varsity - common app significant experience essay. [14]

It's actually quite good. I rarely see essays that have too much detail in them -- the problem is normally the opposite. I understand why you included the other paragraphs, but they just aren't necessary. We get it. You trained hard and succeeded at a difficult task. That's the point you want to make. The essay drags on because, once you have made you case, you keep on making it. If you were writing something meant to be longer, the extra detail might be warranted, but as you realized, this sort of essay should be much shorter than it currently is. Cut it down to size and then repost. I am reluctant to edit for grammar or content if the changes I make may be to material that gets cut.

Book Reports / Argumentative essay on 1984 - Outline [40]


A variation of it, yes.


You should read The Virtue of Selfishness. In it, Rand makes the point that to be selfish is to act in one's own self interest, i.e., to benefit oneself. But, only through rational thought can one determine what is in one's self interest. If one refuses to engage in the process of rational thought, then one cannot actually act selfishly, except by accident. One might act hedonistically, but few people would consider a life of dedicated hedonism as being in their own self-interests.


Apology accepted.


Which brings you a step closer to my side. Yay!


My point was that if everyone was smart enough to know how to help others as intelligently and efficiently as possible, then everyone would be smart enough to fend for themselves, and so not really need helping.


And I have nothing against permitting millionaires to donate money to needy children. It is when you force them to that I object.


Assuming that they earned, rather than inherited their money, why should they not spend it on themselves?


Ah, you subscribe to the notion of limited wealth. I, on the other hand, subscribe to the view of the production of wealth. If wealth is produced rather than found, then creating wealth, and keeping (hoarding even) that wealth for yourself doesn't harm anyone else.


Who are you to say what someone else needs to be happy? And again, if they earned their wealth, produced it through their own activity, then their behavior is not destructive to anyone else.


I am talking about communism in practice, i.e as real world ideology that led to millions of deaths. You are talking about it as a fantasy that has nothing to do with the real world. As this conversation started by my talking about it as the former, I see no reason why I should accept your arbitrary changing of the definition to the latter. My whole point (way back at the beginning, before the series of ridiculously long posts), was that, because of the assumptions and principles of communism, any attempt to implement it in the real world must inevitably lead to totalitarianism. You cannot deny that by arguing that communism is a wonderful theory so long as no one ever attempts to put it into practice, for reasons that should be obvious.


And life in primarily capitalist countries is long and relatively easy. Hm.


Capitalism allows everyone to deal with one another freely, in pursuit of their own happiness. It just doesn't guarantee success, is all. But I suspect our real difference here lies in our differing views on wealth. You subscribe to the limited view of wealth, whereas I subscribe to the productive view of wealth. That is, you believe people ultimately only ever steal money, whereas I believe that money is ultimately made, and that only after someone makes it honestly can it be stolen.


A great deal of human misery is caused by people engaging in unjust acts in an attempt to remedy the perceived injustices of nature. But nature, being blind and unaware, is incapable of either justice or injustice. As you said, it just is. Humans, however, can be just or unjust, i.e. giving people what they have deserved of them. The problem comes when people decide that others should get what they think those others deserved from nature but did not get. Because sooner or later, they always realize that trying to remedy that "injustice" on the part of nature on their own is futile, and so take unjustly from others in the name of a higher justice that never was or can be. Really it's a form of arrogance, a sense that, since God is MIA or just plain mean, certain people should step in and play His role.

Writing Feedback / CBEST Essay - Why I enter education field? [4]

Meh. Not bad, but a bit on the dull side. I can't picture Christopher, and you tell rather than show your change of heart. As near as I can tell, you had to spend your vacation taking him to various appointments and listening to him throw tantrums, and somehow this brought "joy that I had never felt before." That's nice -- just don't expect your description of the boy to send people flocking to volunteer to help with disabled kids. If you want to improve this essay, add a description of Christopher, and a narrative anecdote that lets us see how he really is "special" to you.

Book Reports / Book recommendation for Novel Analysis Thesis [13]


Oh, well, that narrows it down considerably. :-)

How about "New England as the worst place in the world: American Horror from Hawthorne to Lovecraft to King."

Undergraduate / This year's cross-county varsity - common app significant experience essay. [14]

Well, here are a few ways you could shorten your essay:

""And the name of the final candidate making this year's cross-county varsity team is ...". Before I disclose the name, let me go ahead and describe to you my scintillating experience of training myself for cross-country varsity until this point where I stood shivering together with the other competitors, hoping that the last name be mine. "

"Unlike my other poorly resolute decisions to be a table tennis star when I saw the Chinese rallying on the ping pong tables or to be a kung fu black belt holder when I saw the Koreans fight, this one of becoming an athlete was an inelastic one. But the next track and field tryouts were a long later. I rather decided to train for the upcoming cross-country tryouts 6 months later. This was all how I began training myself with theby aiming to complete a 5 kilometer distance in no more than 22 minutes."

You can cut your fourth and fifth paragraphs completely without really losing anything important as far as the main point of your essay goes, too.

Undergraduate / About my environment - admission essay topic [7]

Can you unify all three points with a common thread? That would go a long way towards making the essay seem less choppy.

Undergraduate / Career aspiration essay - the pharmacist. [10]

Well, how brief does it have to be? "I hope to one day be a pharmacist." would technically be a brief answer to the question. If you want to lengthen it, you're going to have to talk about why you want to be a pharmacist, and what you hope to accomplish in that career.

Undergraduate / "Want to be a doctor" - Penn State, personal statement [26]

Excellent. Well, you have a a really strong essay you can be proud of. Good luck with your application.

Undergraduate / Career aspiration essay - the pharmacist. [10]

Well, talk about why you want to be a pharmacist, how you think your education will prepare you for that, what sort of degrees you plan to pursue in order to achieve your goal, that sort of thing.

Writing Feedback / Credit cards's advantages [8]

Feel free to post a revised draft here for more feedback.

Undergraduate / "Significant Experience" essay - need advice on the content of this essay [22]

Yeah, the superfluous paragraph can go. Also, what exactly does the "Gay law in India" (that can't be its actual name -- look it up and use that) have to do with hermaphrodites? For that matter, how would you (or even the other onlookers), know that the people they were beating were intersexual? Assuming the victims were clothed, that is. As I understand it, the condition is usually unnoticeable to a casual observer.

Undergraduate / Satisfactions from activities as a physician - Columbia University Secondary [35]


So you're saying the English language is doomed?

Undergraduate / Career aspiration essay - the pharmacist. [10]

Is this a trick question? If you aspire to be a pharmacist, what career do you aspire to? Let me think . . .

I suspect you really want to ask a different question.

Undergraduate / "Want to be a doctor" - Penn State, personal statement [26]

If you have the room, I'd make one more small fix:

"My mother always cautioned him that "if you live by the sword, you die by the sword," but she could never have been prepared for the day it almost came true."

I don't know how many characters you have to play with, as my word processor apparently ignores spaces, but the revised sentence flows better and, with the addition of "almost," is more accurate, too.

Undergraduate / "Fleeting memories" - Are there any significant experiences you have had.... [16]

Some concrete narrative anecdotes would really help here. So, show us in the beginning how you would help people even when doing so harmed you. Then, give us a complete anecdote about how you realized that this was perhaps a bit foolish. Finally, add an anecdote that shows, rather than tells, us your new attitude towards helping. At the moment, I find your latest essay a bit too abstract, talking about your feelings and your attitudes without grounding them in details that allow us to really see what those feelings and attitudes mean.

Book Reports / Argumentative essay on 1984 - Outline [40]


Thank you Notoman. That's exactly what I wanted to say in response to that point, but you articulated it much better than I did. I must admit, after learning that you had been reading Rand recently, I was wondering if/when you would leap into this discussion.