Graduate / Public health to enhance my journey in health promotion and chronic disease prevention [2]

Krystal, In the first paragraph, open directly with "I am drawn to the Masters..." rather than opening with the confusing first sentence. It is better to keep the response as focused and precise as possible in relation to the prompt requirements. I observed that your essay is very strong in terms of your academic and professional background. Your experience clearly shows that you will be an excellent student in this field. As far as academics are concerned, this essay should qualify you for the course. The problem though, is that you focused so much on providing solid information about your academics and training background that you lost sight of the intent of your application. A letter of intent is no different from the statement of purpose. Replace the word purpose with intent and you still have the same requirement for the essay. So tell me, what is the purpose of your desire to complete this course? The letter that you shared at the end is not really specific enough for it to qualify as the intention for your studies. So you can safely remove that from the essay as it won't have any adverse effect on the presentation. Right now, you need to think about why you want to complete this course. What change do you want to effect in your line of work? Why do you consider that important? Tie it in with the earlier parts of your essay and you should have a better draft of your LOI to work with.

Scholarship / My Passion about the concept of sustainability and my vision of achieving development [5]

Hadeer, you should not include references to the ranking of the universities you have chosen, based upon publicly known information. The Chevening reviewer already knows about these universities and their qualifications. So those are irrelevant information in the essay. Your reasons for choosing the universities and how it will affect your future career plans have solid presentations. However, your platform regarding your academic and professional background is not really properly threshed out. You have to create an effective opening statement for starters. Pick either your academic or professional skills for that presentation. Personally, I would open with the professional foundation of your career. That ties in directly with your future plans per course. I would then close with the academic aspect, informing the reader of my accomplishments as a student in order to prove that I have the educational foundation and background to complete any of the courses I have chosen at the three universities.

Undergraduate / A Common App essay about my life, my challenges and what makes me unique... [4]

Katelin, you need to provide me with a copy of the complete prompt that you are responding to because this essay actually combines at least 3 of the current common app essay topics in one. All the college application essays focus on only one topic so I need to know what that is. Perhaps the university you are applying to has its own common app prompt for applicants. I can't really asses which direction you should take this essay in at the moment because I do not know what the end result of the essay should be. Care to enlighten me? I would not worry about the content placement and message of the essay at the moment since I don't really know what you want to do with this essay. I can offer you a more focused and detailed assessment of your work, and how to redirect it once I know the exact prompt you need to respond to. As of now, the essay has some pretty good references to various prompts that, once I know which prompt you are responding to, will make for a very good basis of an opening statement for your revised essay.

Scholarship / The pharmacy profession chose me as much as I chose to be a pharmacist [4]

Hoodali, this is not a very effective personal statement for a scholarship. Aside from your desire become a good pharmacist, I don't read anything that tells me why you are worthy of becoming a scholar. What abilities have you shown on your academic side to make yourself a good candidate? I am speaking of grades and academic achievements at this point. Scholarships are normally reserved for the best and the brightest students in their chosen college major. There is nothing in this essay that tells me you are an exceptional or gifted student in this field. Maybe I am missing something here because you did not provide the prompt requirement for this personal statement. Or maybe the essay is just weak with room for improvement. It all depends upon what the scholarship wants to learn about you through the personal statement. Your sentence structures are also weak. You have a knack for writing under developed paragraph presentations and your capitalization needs work. Your grammar needs editing, but I don't suggest you do that until you have the proper content represented in your essay first.

Graduate / MS in Cs with Data Science or Data Science Alone [3]

Shivam, I am not sure if you are writing a PS or a SOP so I am not sure about how to guide you with the development of this essay. What I can tell you though, is that because you are focusing on MS studies, you should remove the reference to your elementary interest in Math. The part of most interest to the reviewer in this instance, will be how you performed in college, what awards and achievements you gained during that time, what your thesis was, and how all of that relates to your current profession and specific interest in data mining or big data. Maybe you can focus on your current interests in Data Science in relation to your MS studies. Where do you see weaknesses in this field? How will a MS allow you to develop a framework to solve the issue or make data gathering more efficient? I can give you some more ideas, proper ideas, for the development of your essay if you can tell me what sort of paper you are writing. Either it is a personal statement or a statement of purpose. Each has its own writing requirements so you need to point this paper in the right direction.

Scholarship / Gaining Some Valuable Contacts and Information by Networking Skill - Chevening [5]

Bella, your networking skill will be strengthened if you can indicate how your blogger friends have helped you grow your network. For example, did their article about you result in the development of a new network on your part? Did other bloggers or media partners contact you in order to offer their assistance for your future projects? Or perhaps someone wanted to write a follow up piece about you that helped increase your professional profile? It is important that you show how these networks spin off into other networks whenever possible so that your ability to create and maintain new networks are added to the consideration of your networking skills. This should be connected to your statement about how you grow your network. You might need to rearrange the essay paragraphs so that the two ideas will flow more smoothly from one to the other. I am really impressed by the way you developed this networking essay. It is strong, focused, and really applicable to your profession and how you enhance your professional skills using it. The future scholars will be lucky to have you for a mentor, should you win the scholarship that is.

Writing Feedback / IELTS Writing task 2 about influence of colour on our purchasing decisions [4]

Nguyen, your second sentence in the opening paragraph is almost a direct quote from the original prompt. You need to change it a little bit more in order to remove the plagiarism in your presentation. You could have said:

Aside from other factors being considered during the purchase of an item, it appears that color is one of the foremost considerations that influences the decision of the buyer.

That paraphrase directly includes the last 2 questions provided in the original prompt. Which is what the opening statement requires.

In the body of the discussion itself, you present a contradiction from your opening statement. You started by saying that you firmly believe in the statement. Then, towards the middle of the essay you indicate that both color and quality influence the buying decision. Therefore, you do not believe that color is the strongest indicator of what a person will purchase. However, you repeat the belief that color influences the buying decision of clients in your closing statement.

In addition to that, you used actual research information in your second paragraph. You required research online in order to do that. There will be no such instrument for you to use during the actual test day. So use only popular information and personal opinions to discuss and defend your reasoning.

This is a very confusing, ill developed essay that unfortunately, will not get a passing score in an actual test setting due to inconsistencies in your writing and reasoning style.

Scholarship / My UK post study career plan; British-Indonesian cooperation towards sustainable development [4]

Alvin, your essay will not work because there is no direct reference to the UK activities in your country regarding space exploration. You need to make a solid statement about hoping to collaborate with such a UK agency in Indonesia in order to make that assumption work. You should find out from those 2 agencies if the UK has any contribution to their development or studies before you proceed with this essay. Unless you can prove that the UK supports the space program of Indonesia, you will have a bit of a hard time convincing the reviewer that you qualify for a Chevening scholarship. You have made a good case for your post study plans, however, the lack of UK collaboration as indicated in your essay weakens the content by at least 50%. You need solid representations of the UK interests in your country, within your field of interest / profession in order to make this essay stronger in the manner that the Chevening committee might consider relevant to your application. Right now, the essay works for your application, but only to a certain extent. It will be difficult for the committee to fully consider your application due to the lack of UK participation in your future plans.

Scholarship / Everyone is a leader and an influencer in his live. Chevenig essay about leadership. [5]

Hiwot, your essay does not apply to the requirements of the scholarship for the first 3 paragraphs. You need to focus on developing your professional leadership and influencing style alone. From what I have read in this essay, you have some pretty strong leadership skills when it comes to your students. Encouragement is good and could almost qualify as an influencing skill if you could provide some solid examples of how you integrated your leadership and influencing skills as you conduct your job. I believe that you can do that by adding one paragraph that exemplifies this action. Think about the time when you had a student who needed your leadership and guidance. As a guide, you had influence upon that student. So when you discuss that situation, you will in effect, be strengthening your essay because you will be accurately responding to the prompt requirements. Since this is an example essay, you do not need to refer to your future plans with regards to your leadership. The essay prompt is only asking for current examples of those 2 particular skills.

Scholarship / Chevening Post Study Plan: Helping Indonesia Using Data [5]

Anindia, you do not need to present the first 3 paragraphs in this essay. The focus of the post study plan is to elaborate on how you hope to use your gained knowledge in Big Data upon your return to your country. You have a good start with that discussion in your 4th paragraph. So use that as your new opening statement. Then proceed to explain what the interests the UK has in big data in Indonesia. You will need to justify how the UK has an ongoing big data project in your country that you hope to work with in the future. There are two things you have to accomplish in this essay.

1. Present your 5 year career plan regarding big data.
2. Present how the UK has big data interests in Indonesia and make sure that you explain how your 5 year career plan fits into it.

Find the UK project first then revise the essay accordingly.

Scholarship / Dreams become goals when I am trying hard to catch them [3]

Patarasuda, your personal long and short term goals are acceptable. However, your UK collaboration is not. You acknowledge that your country has joint projects with the UK government and its supporting agencies but you were not able to name a single one in your essay. You need to find out which agency the UK has a representative in your country that is closest to your plans for your career. Your reference is too generic, it does not have a clear direction regarding a collaboration between you and the UK agency in your country. First, you have to find the agency that will work best with your plans. Second, you need to explain how your personal plans will prepare you collaborate with the agency. Third, explain how you plan to join the agency. Finally write a statement that indicates how you look forward to this future collaboration. By developing the UK connection this way, you create a stronger essay that has a shared focus on the necessary topics for discussion.

Undergraduate / Personal statement about the reason why I chose marketing -UK PS [4]

I wish you had indicated that this is a UCAS statement from the start so that we could have immediately aligned the responses with it. Anyway, it isn't too late to do that now. All you have to do is replace the part that I am asking you to remove with a reference as to your overall impression of a British education and why you feel like you will thrive under that academic system. Now, your tendency will be to talk about Britain as a tourist destination in this portion. Don't do that. Try to get to know the British college educational system. Compare it with the system in your country. Then consider the positive difference that the UK system has over the Chinese one. Discuss that in the paragraph. That will show that you have given a great deal of thought to your international education and it is not just a way for you to get out of your country for 4 years. These changes will be generic enough but still, be important enough to make a big difference in your UCAS application.

Scholarship / Becoming a Chevening scholar would widen my network and an opportunity to meet various experts [5]

Natasya, this is not a networking essay. This is an example of a work ethic essay. I would say that this could very well have been a part of your leadership and influencing skills essay. A networking essay requires you to show how your training at the office has prepared you for your current and future work requirements. These include seminars attended, training you were involved in, and mentoring programs you were a part of. All of these experiences should relate to examples within your workplace when you had to call upon the help of these organizations or individuals to help resolve work related issues. It would be even better for your essay if you can explain that your original contact spun off into a new contact that remains active in your network today. The essay should exemplify how you manage to engage the help of those outside of your company in order to complete your company related tasks. This essay does not do that. Read the other networking examples here. That should give you a better idea of how to correct your essay.

Scholarship / Starting a sports social enterprise - Post study career plan question for Chevening scholarship [4]

Why don't you try to find out if sports associations in your country have been receiving aid from the UK first? Ask them how they receive their sponsorship and then decide if the organization(s) helping them can somehow work with your post study plans. More often than not, the UK continues their support of a project in a different manner. Perhaps they create a dedicated organization, or they consider grants for specific fields based on certain requirements. Basically, your request might be sent to a more appropriate foundation, organization, or government institution. You need to do some research in this instance and then revise your essay in the most appropriate manner. Since the DFID no longer supports projects along your line, then you should not mention them at all. Like I said, find an alternative connection through your existing network. With any luck, you will find that evasive UK organization that can help you make the solid connection your essay requires.

Scholarship / Chevening - Networking skills (Empathy as a good skill for networking) [4]

Janet, while your writing skills are academic level at best, you should not concern yourself with that. The method by which you write the essay is not as important as the information contained within your essay. Don't worry if your presentations are simple, there is no scoring in this instance. You still need to make sure though that you present your paragraphs in clear and understandable formats. So be aware of your grammar and sentence structures. You can ask other people to read your work and ask if they understood what you said. If they have questions, then you may need to revise the essay to become easier to understand.

Your examples, as best as possible, must be profession related because improving yourself in your quest to increase your professional capacity is the reason why you are applying for this essay. In a networking essay, the method you use to create your network and how that network has helped you in your professional advancement is just as important as the conferences you attended. In fact, how the network has grown and increased your professional profile is of great interest to the reviewer.

Scholarship / Hard Work - being the "positive" role model for peers. Chevening essay on Leadership [9]

Adil, you really need to remove the first two paragraphs in this essay. I have repeatedly told you that the academic side is not applicable to this essay. Focus only on the professional side. Do not include the work that you did as a lawyer unless you were able to resolve the case using influence and mediation instead of litigation. Your essay is already extremely strong in terms of your leadership skills. It is leaping off the page. Yet your influencing style is non-existent. I know that lawyers work with legal teams and that you have to get them to help you do legal research and other things. Can you think of a time when the team was refusing to cooperate with you? What was the situation? How did you influence them to support you? That is the missing link in the essay. You can remove the part about representing your friend in court to get his salary in exchange for a longer explanation of how you use your influencing skills in your line of work. You can change your opening paragraph to explain that you work as a corporate lawyer and that this is where your leadership and influencing style was honed and polished. That will take the place of the academic representation you keep trying to present.

Scholarship / An experience which has given me an opportunity to be a better leader in the future [10]

Natasya, the managing yourself stage is not really necessary in this instance because there is no such thing as self-leadership. You just have to do your job. The fact that you learned how to manage your time and other job related needs, in relation to yourself is not really leadership. That is just proper time management. Go directly to the management of the team. You have relayed a pretty solid explanation of your leadership style but it lacks a strong influencing style in the presentation. Try to discuss some problems that you had within the team. A true and influential leader thrives on conflict resolution. That is not really reflected in this essay. In fact, the management you had to do of the team falls under "easy" in this case. Look at the other leadership and influencing essays here and you will see how your essay makes the job you are doing almost like child's play. Which does not really enhance your leadership skills and influencing abilities.

Scholarship / Chevening post-study plans: Wildlife Connecting Brazil and the UK [3]

Rodrigo, you just tanked your possibility of receiving this scholarship because you have openly admitted that there is no UK project in your country to tie your post study plan career to. If there is no UK organization in your country to hitch your wagon to then you will not get the scholarship. Everyone whom I have helped that did not get the scholarship all had the same reason, lack of UK connection in the post study plan.

Bear in mind that the Chevening scholarship program has a set of priority areas for study and scholarship support. While Chevening has said that they will also support courses not included in the country priority areas, it may be difficult for you to gain a scholarship spot because your application will not be part of the priority considerations and those slots fill up fast. I hope this will not be the case for you.

In this instance, you will have to justify why the committee should consider your field of study a priority area as well. Don't waste the space on the first 2 paragraphs. That is already repeated information. Instead, open with the fact that the UK government doesn't have a project in Brazil for wildlife preservation. You will need to plead your case in this instance and prove that the presence of the UK government in Brazil is important if the wildlife is to be preserved.

You should not mention that you want to increase funding for your projects through various organizations. Discuss only the UK connection. Figure out what wildlife conservation projects the UK has in other countries and build on that. Convince them that the funding should also be established in Brazil. Don't muddle the issue with so many other agreements, initiatives, and the like. The UK connection is the sole focus of this essay and that is what you should be developing in the essay.

I am not assuring you that changing the slant of the essay will work but it is worth a shot. I truly hope that you are considered for and awarded a scholarship because of your noble intentions. The most I can do is help you try to create the best possible post study career plan for the reviewer's consideration.

Undergraduate / Helping me to pursue my dream in Canada [4]

Tam, you need to re-target the presentation of this essay. Base your requirement to study in Canada on your professional needs. The academic references you made in the essay will not help you because you are now applying for a visa to go to masters degree school. That means, you have at least 2 years relevant work experience in this field. So you have to convince the consul that there is an imperative need for your line of training in Vietnam. You should open with that explanation instead. Think of this letter s a statement of purpose to get a visa. Why should the consul allow you entry into his country? Start from the beginning. Here is an outline that you can base your revision upon. You can talk about:

1. The purpose for your studies abroad with justification as to why this training cannot be completed in Vietnam.
2. Why you chose to study in Canada (without getting political by mentioning diversity and tuition fees).
3. Define what the Canadian educational experience means to you.
4. Indicate if you have already received early admission to Seneca College and how this affected your decision to study in Vietnam.
5. Explain who will be sponsoring your studies. Make sure to mention that you have no intention of working while you are in Canada.
6. Reiterate your desire to return home at the end of the academic year.

If possible attach a letter from your employer that indicates that you have a job waiting for you upon your return to Vietnam. That could help to convince the consul that you are a good risk to return to Vietnam after one year.

Scholarship / After finish my master course I plan to get a job in a governmental and/or oil and gas company [9]

Walter, before you think about writing that acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Physics, you may first want to consider the latter part of the prompt requirement that is not represented in your essay. Where is the relation of the UK government projects in your country to your plans? You focused way too much on your personal intentions after graduation that you totally forgot about the UK connection. It is obvious that you did not double check the prompt requirements before you submitted this essay for review. Otherwise, you would have caught that all too important factor and as such, would have corrected it immediately. You cannot use this essay without connecting your plans with the UK government priority projects in your country. I strongly urge you to find that connection and revise the essay to make room for that discussion. If you don't do that and you manage to make it to the last round of interviews, you will most likely lose your shot at the scholarship because of that missing link.

Writing Feedback / Reasons for land degradation - what impair the productive capacity of agricultural land? [2]

For this essay, I think the highest you can garner is an 8. You had a few run-on sentences that caused you to fall short of the paragraph requirement in the last paragraph. There was also an issue regarding your sentence formation. For instance. you were missing the connecting word "the" when you said "Europe was hit most severely during THE 1990's." In the third paragraph, the correction is "... degradation MADE up (use the past tense as the information is taken from the past)". Then, "... land degradation WAS (past tense) attributed..."

Truth be told, I am very impressed by the consistency in your writing. Your scores so far have always ranged in the 8-9 bracket so I am more than confident that you will be passing this test with some of the highest marks in your batch of test takers. That is why I am now focusing less on the content of your essay and more on the grammar presentation. You are slowly developing a more fluid sentence presentation that will all but erase the fact that you are an ESL student.

Scholarship / I would like to contribute more to improving Indonesia's academic literacy rate. [2]

Theodora, you do not assume that your ideas for your career will fall into place with the UK initiatives in your country. You have to be sure. Be definite as to the UK project you will work with and how that will become a reality. Since the UK project seems to be focused on the STEM field, you may need to do some extensive research into a particular project that could tie in directly with your literacy initiatives. If the project doesn't tie in with your plans, then you need to figure out how to make that happen. You can't just throw in the idea just to fulfill the prompt requirement. Your honest desire to collaborate with the UK initiatives will be vital to the final consideration of your application. Additionally, you are not allowed to repeat information in this essay. If you already mentioned it in the Study in the UK part, you cannot repeat that information here. Find some other relevant information to replace it with. Chevening constantly repeats that instruction across the essays. There is to be absolutely no duplication of information across the essay discussions.

Writing Feedback / Given are two pie charts illustrating how different languages are spoken by British students [3]

Sandra, it is difficult to review your essay because you forgot to upload the image for our reference. You can't expect too much help from us regarding the review of your work because of that. I can however, offer a general review of your essay based on format considerations.

Your summary overview is not appropriate. It is missing a number of important information in the presentation. A more appropriate presentation for this would be:

Charts were provided in order to assess the number of British students who could speak other languages aside from English. The years indicated for review are 2000 and 2010. This essay will present the summarized information along with a comparison of important features when required. Overall though, it is noticeable that Spanish proved to be the most popular other language spoken at the university during these two years.

I am unable to proceed beyond this point of reviewing your work because I have no way of confirming the information you have provided. Hopefully, you will remember to upload the image with your next essay and I can give you a more useful review within that essay. As for this essay, I don't think the review can progress beyond this due to the lack of image reference.

Writing Feedback / Parents and teachers task is to teach good behavior to children - by force? [4]

This is an extent discussion essay. Yet there is no reference to that discussion in your opening paraphrase. That makes the paragraph faulty and as such, will receive the appropriate points deduction. The proper presentation for this opening statement is as follows:

While everyone agrees that children must be taught how to properly conduct themselves in public at an early age, the method by which this should be done is debatable. Some people acknowledge that punishing children necessary in order to teach them the difference between right and wrong. I agree with the aforementioned statement to a certain degree.

I decided to use the "certain degree" discussion in this instance because, as I reviewed your essay, I realized that you had certain reservations regarding punishments and how it should be applied. Therefore, this extent essay needs to be "limited" in presentation so that you can discuss both sides of the issue.

I have a problem with the way that you wrote this essay. You wrote 329 words but you did not fully accomplish the task requirements. Due to the missing discussion points, you will definitely lose points that could affect whether or not this essay passes the test. Writing a lot of words, if it is not aligned with the prompt requirements is useless. Your statements need to be aligned with the prompt requirements in order for the word count to be of value in the final scoring.

Scholarship / Career Plan for Brightly Civil Engineer - Chevening Scholarship [4]

Ayu, don't just give a run down of the DFID investment in Indonesia. You have to explain how you plan to take part in the development of the engineering sector via the UK project. For example, explain that you will be looking to start your own company that will apply for funding from the DFID so that you can assure the UK government that their funding will be spent on their target projects and also, that you will collaborate closely with the DFID in the development of the project. Place the UK investment in Indonesia somewhere in the middle of the essay. Kick off the essay with your personal plans first. That way, you can develop a paragraph that will allow you to smoothly transition into the DFID discussion. Basically, this essay is all set. You just made a mistake in the positioning of the information. So you should just rearrange the the presentation in order to make it more effective. Follow the outline for the presentation as provided in the prompt requirements. That is why the UK information should be towards the end of the essay.

Writing Feedback / Charts below show how energy is used in an average Australian household vs greenhouse emission [3]

A better scoring IELTS Task 1 essay usually has at least 200 words. Try to aim for that in your next essay. Writing more sentences(both simple and complex), and in the process, words, will allow you to get a better chance at increasing your overall scoring considerations. Specifically in the LR, C&C, and GRA sections.

In the summary overview, an indication that the 6 comparative elements, and its enumeration in the essay would have helped to increase the summary of information you are presenting. Indicating the discussion instruction would have also allowed you to increase the TA scoring consideration for your essay. Remember, it always has to be more than 2 sentences in order to increase the score per criteria.

If you had combined the last 2 statements into one paragraph, you would have created a more informative discussion because the information that you are presenting turns out to be inter-related. Developing a 2 sentence paragraph doesn't help your essay. Presenting at least 4 related information in one paragraph makes a difference in your final score. Always aim to present a complete paragraph and highly informative sentences so that you can assure yourself of the best scoring considerations in the end.

Undergraduate / UW College Essay: Family History/Cultural History --> Education Goals [3]

Isaiah, your family's experience is indeed rich and engrossing to learn about. Yet, somehow, the essay feels like it is lacking something in its representation. It is as if your family culture and history, as in the nucleus family that your parents created, did not face any adversities in their attempt to better the lives of their children and the children did not face any challenges in the pursuit of your academic goals. This is a very simple essay that glossed over the dramatic aspects that the reviewer would like to read about, understand, and consider as part of your application. Perhaps you can develop the story of your nucleus family more by presenting how the lack of education served as drawback to your family's improvement in life. Delve a little deeper into the mindset of your parents that resulted in their desire to provide the best possible education for their children. As their children, did their lack of education have an adverse effect on you? Talk about the family experience because of the lack of education on your parents side. Do you consider those as challenges towards the pursuit of your academic goals? If so, why? If not, then explain why as well.

Writing Feedback / [WRITING IELTS TASK 2] - Mass Media controls people's mind. What can be done? [7]

Chantel, you were going great in the development of the essay discussion until you made one small error. You decided to say the following: however, I am convinced that there are solutions to this matter.

Where did that reference come from? As I reviewed the original prompt, this opinion was not being asked for. So why did you include it? This is a prompt deviation that has forced a failure of your TA representation. You will definitely lose major points for including a discussion of a topic that is not required by the original presentation.

This is a single opinion essay, not a double opinion presentation. Therefore, when you did a compare and contrast of the topic, instead of just discussing the supporting facts of your opinion throughout the essay, you once again, failed to accurately represent the task you were assigned to do. More points deducted.

Your conclusion does not accurately represent the summary of the given topic. More points deducted from the overall score. It is difficult to say that you will pass the test with this sort of presentation because of the prompt deviations that exist within it. It might get a passing score but I can't be sure about it.

Writing Feedback / An Essay on the topic: Mistakes are always part of learning [4]

Hi Joey, I have to say, you are too hard on yourself. The mere fact that you were able to write all these words and use them in paragraph form already means that you were able to write an essay. You actually developed a pretty good discussion based on the topic you were given. You had insightful information to share and you kept track of what you wanted to focus on throughout the paragraph presentations. Good job! Now, while the formatting and sentence structures have some problems (needing to divide the paragraphs into topics, extremely long sentences that should have been presented in shorter sentence for better presentation and understanding, to name but a few), it doesn't erase the fact that this can be considered a successful attempt at writing an essay. You just need to practice more and develop confidence when it comes to using the essay to present your voice pertaining to a discussion. Not bad at all. I look forward to reading your upcoming essays.

Scholarship / Chevening leadership and influence essay - the wave effect! [4]

Selma, for some strange reason, I've been reading personal statements trying to pass themselves off as leadership essays all day today. This essay is one of those presentations. Let's clarify some things. First, do you work in the field of mental health? If you do, then you need to indicate that in the essay. Next, attending a seminar on mental health is not a display of leadership and influencing ability. Even with your presentation of having your friends help you, there was no successful justification of a leadership and influencing skill. I am doubtful as to whether or not this is your actual profession. However, if it is, then you need to find a more profession related example of your leadership and influencing skills. There is no need to present the story of your brother and how that influenced you into this field of work. That is too much information for the reviewer. He is only interested in how you portray a leadership and influencing position in your line of work. I don't see that in this essay. Try to change the focus of your essay from a personal statement to a justification of your leadership and influencing skills instead. Read the samples here and then consider if there are any similar situations in your career that required you to pick up the leadership and influencing cudgels to get the job done.

Writing Feedback / Governments think that economic progress is their most important goal. Some people disagree [3]

@just_writer Of course I won't give up on you. I am going to keep helping you and providing constructive feedback until you take and (I do not doubt that you will) pass the IELTS test. The sample sheet is a good way to practice for the test. Just don't let it get the better of you because, in that almost exam testing center situation, you will have a tendency to lose your head and in the process, panic when the time comes to write the essay. Now, on to the review of your work in this essay.

Reading your essay, it seems to me that you have more to say, but you are holding back. Don't do that. Complete your discussion. Aim to present the complete 5 sentence presentation so that you can fully develop your examples and explanations. In each paragraph, you seem to have at least 2 more sentences to present. Don't let the opportunity to improve your GRA and C&C scores go by. Most of your discussions need further development. That is why I am saying that you are wasting the opportunity. In each paragraph try to present the following:

1. Topic sentence (Only one per paragraph)
2. Reason 1
3. Supporting sentence 1
4. Supporting sentence 2
5. Example

By using the aforementioned format, you will be able to fully explain your thought process in the paragraph. This is the aim of the GRA and C&C scoring sections. That is why there is a 5 sentence maximum as well. You can easily defend the pros and cons in every paragraph using the format I just gave you. It allows you the opportunity to fully allow yourself to achieve the maximum possible score in the 2 scoring considerations. If you can improve your paragraph presentations, then your ability to gain a higher score is also increased.

Scholarship / Leadership Ability essay for MasterCard foundation Scholarship [3]

Ugbashi, I suggest that you reverse the presentation of your leadership experiences in this essay. You need to reel in the reviewer and make him interested to know more about your leadership skills. So it would be best to start the essay by presenting your most recent leadership undertaking instead. I was impressed to read that you co-founded an initiative in your home country. This is the type of leadership skill that often sells the reviewer on an applicant. This is the strongest part of your essay. Don't bury it at the bottom of the page by presenting your weakest leadership stories first. Those should be buried at the bottom of the page instead. The idea, is to present the idea that you have strong leadership potential within you. That won't be accomplished by the presentation of the weak and less impressive organizational leadership experience that you have had. More importantly, the AEAI clearly shows that you want to give back to your community in a manner that is most effective for your cause. That is what the prompt requires and that is what should be served upfront instead of at the bottom. You can use this essay as is in terms of content. It is the positioning of the paragraphs that need to be altered for maximum effect.

Scholarship / I will spare no effort to enrich my networking, experience and knowledge to serve my community [12]

Mariam, the common misconception for the networking essay is that if you attend 24 conferences in a year, you already have a network. That is crazy. A network is not based on the number of conferences and seminars attended. It is not based on the number of important people whose name you know and whom you were introduced to. Networking is based upon how you use these conference contacts to help you in your career advancement. What use were these contacts / networks to you when it came time to ask for help with a task at the office? Who came to your help? Why do you think that person helped you? How did you cultivate that contact? More importantly, did that contact result in an introduction to someone else who is now part of your inner contact circle? That is how you grow your network. Your contacts need to be profession based. So the reference to the charity network is out. Or, you should present that as a last resort. Personally, I don't think it will help your essay because it is not profession based.

Review your essay. None of these elements are represented in the original and revised version. Therefore, you still have a lot more work to accomplish in terms of this prompt. It may be best for you to write a new essay that showcases how you make contacts, how you cultivate your contacts, how your contacts have helped you so far , and why these contacts could turn out to be a Chevening asset in the future.

Scholarship / My ability to succeed as leader and as follower in any given responsibility - Chevening application [7]

Mariam, the examples of leadership are strong in the essay. However, your influencing skills are not accurately represented as you only imply the situation regarding your influencing problems. You do not really provide solid examples of the problems that arose which you had to use influencing skills on so that the team would actually work in unison. The fact that you are the youngest team member does not mean you need to inspire them to listen to you. It means that you have to prove yourself as a leader in order for them to respect and follow your commands. Influencing means changing the mind of the person who is opposing you. Did you ever find yourself in such a situation? How did you handle it? Would you say that your influencing skills resulted in a positive outcome for both you and the person who disagree with you at first? Don't focus your next revision on the leadership aspect. Look at the influencing aspects you can improve instead.

Scholarship / Leadership and purpose became synonymous with instigating revolutions - NSF memberhip [5]

Marzia, what you wrote is not a leadership and influencing essay, it is a personal statement. The content of the essay, though enlightening and provocative, does not meet the Chevening requirements for a leadership and influencing essay. From your background, it is quite possible that you have a side of you that wants to be an activist. Am I right? However, you cannot be an open activist in your situation. That is why you use your work to influence people's thoughts. So focus on your work at Oxford University Press. It shows a pretty good foundation for your influencing skills, but doesn't really deliver much in terms of your leadership skills. Is there any way that you can use this professional foundation to further illustrate your leadership skills? You can use your belief in "development through literacy" as your leadership basis. The only question is, how do you tie it into your professional experience? When were you ever called upon to lead a project or team at OUP? If you can develop the leadership and influencing examples in the context of your job as an editor (?) then maybe, just maybe, we can get it to work for this prompt. You should only use bits and pieces of the fact that you were raised in a communist regime and have a communist father in this essay. Work it into the development of your leadership and influencing skills as the basis for your personal ideologies about leadership and influencing or for the fact that you lead and influence people in a far different manner from that which is familiar to you. You need to revise this essay first, submit some good comments on other people's threads here, and then hopefully, I can offer another review of your revised essay.

Writing Feedback / Numbers of visitors to Ashdown Museum during the year before and the year after it was refurbished [5]

@just_writer even without the file uploaded yet (you should do that for a better review) your essay will automatically fail because you just cut and pasted the original prompt with very little changes in your summary overview. You should learn to present the original prompts in your own understanding. This has not been too much of a problem for you before. I am wondering what the situation was that led you to almost not even try to properly write this essay. The opening summary faults alone are enough to garner you a failing score for this presentation. All of your sentences are run-ons and do not help to prove your ability to write complex sentences. Breaking down the presentations in shorter sentences should help you achieve that. At 159 words, you just only made the minimum word requirement. Frankly, you did not even try to write properly in the same way that you tried for the other essays. This is a disappointing writing attempt on your part. It makes me sad to see this failure of an essay coming from you.

Scholarship / In five years after my scholarship, I would reach higher managerial level in my country. Chevening [7]

Mariam, you can't just say that your plans for tourism development in Egypt is aligned with the UK government interests in your country. You must justify this claim by naming the agency involved, what the project is, and how that ties in with your own post study plans. The interests of the UK in your country should become the same as your interests for your country. The two need to become symbiotic in a way. One plan cannot exist without the other. So, why your earlier plans are solid, you may need to adjust the presentation of those plans in order to allow room to discuss a more solid project that the UK is promoting in your country that you can help with. Explain how you will come in to help the UK project and how you hope to make a difference in Egypt as a member of that project team. Remember, the UK project needs to be presented in at least half of the paper content because it is a prompt requirement. It cannot be implied nor simply mentioned in passing. It needs to be a developed plan.

Scholarship / Regarding the leadership and influence essay in the Chevening scholarship [7]

Khaled, you have some pretty impressive leadership lessons learned along the way of your life. However, those are not truly effective in the essay because it is not in a professional setting. The influencing story about your time as a cashier though, that shows your potential to be a leader and influencer. Why don't you build on that experience instead? So the restaurant was going to be shut down. You convinced the owner not to do it. How did you do that? What changes did you initiate in the restaurant with his support that led to a positive outcome for the restaurant? I am assuming that the restaurant did not end up closing? That is the kind of leadership and influencing essay that you could present in this essay. You could tie in your life experiences with the reasons why you choose to lead people or influence them in a certain way. You don't have to throw away your personal story if you can find a way to tie it into your professional setting.

Writing Feedback / [IELTS TASK 2] New technologies have changed the way children spend their free time. [3]

Van, there are actually two ways of discussing this essay. One, is the method which you used, the personal opinion which, although not required by the prompt, can be accepted by the examiner to a certain extent. The other, is the public opinion presentation. The latter, is the more acceptable presentation for this essay prompt because it allows you to present the best public information in the manner indicated by the prompt. Now, whether or not you used the public discussion format or not, it does not erase the fact that your essay opening statement is lacking in the sentence requirement department. That tells the examiner that your presentation is incomplete and is not an accurate paraphrase of the prompt. You always need to present up to 5 sentences, no less than 3 in each paragraph because that is how your English abilities are best assessed. The more you use the language, the more accurate the judging will be. My presentation would have been:

The advent of technological devices have created a new way for children to fill their vacant hours. While some believe that the advantages of these devices outweigh the disadvantages, there are those who believe otherwise. This essay will discuss both points of view in order to determine whether or not the positives of technological use among children outrank the negatives.

By creating a more accurate representation of the prompt in your own understanding, you will be able to write at least 3 sentences that will help you better outline your English understanding capabilities, which are scored first. Don't present any information like a personal opinion at this point. You must save it for the body of the essay where you will then be scored on your ability to explain yourself in English. You will have 3 paragraphs with which to do that.

If you want to get the best possible score for your body of paragraphs. Never discuss 2 topics in one paragraph. The highest possible score for the C&C section can only be achieved if you are capable of fully explaining, reasoning, and supporting a single idea in one presentation. The GRA score is highest when you are capable of threshing out your thoughts in a manner that allows you to develop a mix of simple and complex sentences. When you present more than one thought in each paragraph, you do not have the opportunity to fully defend each side and increase your GRA potential. By focusing on a single topic, you maximize the scoring potential of each paragraph.

The problem with your conclusion is the same as your opening statement. You are not fully utilizing the presentation of the summarized discussion within 3-5 sentences. So you lessen the potential of your essay to achieve its maximum score.

Scholarship / Essay related to studies in UK for Chevening Scholarship [3]

Faray, congratulations on having written your opening and closing statement for your UK study essay. The opening statement of your essay should start with and end with the following: "During my undergrad studies...Automotive or Automotive Mechatronics will be a perfect way to do so." Your closing paragrap should be: "Being an upcoming technology, ... safe on the road."

Now, in between these paragraphs, you must explain your university choices. First indicate the name of your chosen university and the course you have chosen to pursue there. It is important that you explain the potential impact of this course choice on your future career. That is why you need to explain that you have the academic foundation for the course. You have the professional experience that will help you complete the line of study, and finally, that you have some solid future plans for yourself where this particular course will not only be applicable, but will be the basis of your career progression.

Do that 3 times for the 3 courses and universities, apply the information that I indicated above, and the essay will be set for submission.