Undergraduate / The only true option is to push forward, to persevere - common app essay [3]

Hi Justin, this is a very well developed essay. It has a timeline that allows the reviewer to get to know you better and understand the kind of thinking that you go through when you are faced with failure. It is a slow realization and understanding of your personality that you develop because you take the time to analyze the setback and its effect on you. The problem, is that the prompt that you chose to respond to requires an immediate realization for an immediate setback or failure. In your case, the realization happened over the course of a year. So this is not the correct prompt to use for the essay that you developed. Based upon the story that you told, it is my opinion that the following prompt would be better suited for the material:

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

In line with the discussion of this prompt, a review of your essay will show that you actually have an experience regarding an "event" that "sparked" a "realization" that led to "personal growth" along with a "new" understanding of yourself. All of which led, over time to the changes that that occurred in your as a person, an athlete, and a student. All of which took place over an extended period of time and therefore, is best applied to this prompt because of the implication of a "period of personal growth". I hope you consider my suggestion.

Writing Feedback / The perseverance can bring us through the most difficult times. Narrative essay correction. [2]

Ben, this is a very good rough draft. It is so imaginative that I actually felt the pain you were describing during the accident. You don't have a problem when it comes to writing the narrative. In fact, the problem with the narrative could be that it is too detailed and involved. You leave very little to the imagination and the reader doesn't really need to contemplate what you are going through at the time. You already hit the reader in the face with it. As a college application essay, this might run a bit too long so be prepared to use only bits and pieces of this essay, sewn together in a new manner depending upon the prompt that you are responding to.

Content wise, you have a problem with your paragraph presentations. Try to narrow down the paragraphs and make them more complete in telling within a few sentences. There is a tendency for you to not edit yourself so you keep rattling on in a paragraph when you should have started a new one already. In the second paragraph, there really wasn't any need to indicate how the camp operates. That did not help push your story forward. However, if you opened with the date of the accident itself, then the reader would be deeper drawn into the narrative.

At the end, try to give the reader a status update on your foot since that is the focal point of the story. By the way, you went to the doctor to get your wounds treated and then you went to physical therapy for exercise and foot training. You don't go to physical therapy to get your wounds attended to. Physical therapists aren't allowed to clean the wounds. They don't deal with the wounds at all. Only nurses and doctors do that.

So far, I don't suggest editing the grammar until you have reached the final copy of your essay. It isn't advisable to alter the grammar at this point because you will still be making changes to your content. Save the grammar for the last part. That is where it will make the most impact upon your essay presentation.

Writing Feedback / [IELTS] The percentage of female employees in major tech companies in the US [7]

Thi, this essay is terribly under the 150 minimum word count requirement. You only have 108 words. So this essay would get an automatic failing grade in the actual test. You need to make sure that you write at least 150 words to meet the minimum word requirement. That is not to be confused with the 3 sentence minimum for the individual paragraphs. The maximum sentence per paragraph is 5. In this instance, you do not have a threshed out summary overview and you do not accurately represent all of the numerical percentages, per company in your essay. It is important that you create an accurate paraphrase for the required discussion along with a representation of your understanding of the discussion instructions. At the end of the opening paragraph, make sure that you include the trending statement. It does not really have an impact as a short sentence at the end of the essay. That creates the most informative representation when included in the summary overview. These are the reasons why you did not meet the minimum word requirement. You only presented a percentage for PayPal when all the other companies were also represented in percentage form within the chart. Aim to write at least 4 paragraphs for this sort of essay so that you will have a better chance at a passing grade. 4 is an acceptable number of paragraphs because a concluding statement is not required for a task 1 essay.

Scholarship / Chevening: Outline why you have selected your chosen three university courses [2]

Yusmeti, the proper approach to this essay is to first, present your academic foundation in this area of study. An overview is sufficient enough. You just have to establish that you have some sort of background in Entrepreneurship, never mind if it is not yet part of a start up. Second, present your professional background in relation to the start up company that you hope to start. If you worked of a start up before, then explain what your role was then and how that relates to your current advanced learning interests.

Next, you need to discuss the universities in individual paragraphs. Note the course that you want to take, the classes involved, what your background is that relates to this study and then finally, what your future plans are in relation to what you will be learning from these courses. Repeat that 2 more times for each university.

Remove the reference to the short term career goals. That is a requirement in your post study plan. It does not belong in the UK courses essay. Instead, close the essay by referencing how any of these courses would allow you to advance your career due to the increased knowledge that you will be attaining as a student in the UK.

Scholarship / I have been given the opportunity to lead in several aspects in both professional and social spheres [3]

Emeka, unfortunately, I can only assist you with one of the essays that you posted here. We have a one essay per thread policy so multiple posting in one thread is not allowed. Actually it is against the rules so you should delete the other essays if you have the chance because this violation could result in the suspension of your account. In the meantime, I will discuss the improvements that can be made to your leadership essay. Please post the other essays as individuals threads when you have the time.

For the leadership essay, open with the 2010 discussion of your leadership skill and work on developing that into a transition into your being the department head at present. Those are two very strong leadership presentations. It is well developed and really works to show off how you can be a future leader in your country within your profession. Sadly, you were only focused on developing your leadership abilities so I found myself searching for a representation of your influencing skills as well.

I believe that as the head of the department, you can find an influencing opportunity to present in the essay. That can be a separate presentation if your work experience requires it to be that way. Taking the initiative means you were able to lead people in the face of adversity. Adversity is equivalent to difficulties in the project. Difficulties in the project requires leadership. Leadership requires you to influence your subordinates to complete the task on hand. How did you, as a leader inspire your subordinates then? Think about such a scenario then present that as your influencing experience. Make sure that it sounds important enough to qualify as a significant influencing experience in your line of work.

Writing Feedback / [IELTS] Overpopulation in many major urban centers around the world is a major problem. [4]

Hi SG, listen you have a problem with your opening paraphrase. The first sentence is too similar to the original and the rest, doesn't allow for the proper redevelopment of the presentation in a manner that suits the requirements of the prompt. A more accurate paraphrase would probably have been as follows:

City capitals across the globe are experiencing a population boom. This has resulted in a number of problems for each country. In this essay, I will present a few causes of this problem and offer a possible, unified solution to the worldwide population growth problem.

Now, you only have 3 body paragraphs within which to discuss the problems and the solution. The situation in your essay is that you presented 3 barely developed representations of the problems in a single paragraph. That does not allow you to accurately develop your paragraph presentations in a coherent and cohesive manner. You only presented the problems without an actual cause to explain its existence. The solution, would have been to choose only 2 problems to present in fully developed individual paragraph discussions. That way the reason behind the problem is also presented and as such, a logical solution could be considered for presentation. Make sure that you just present connected problems so that you can offer a single solution that can cover both situations. Remember, you need to be able to clearly explain yourself in English so that you can score well in the C&C and GRA sections. So individual presentations are always best.

Some of your paragraphs do not cover the 3 sentence minimum requirement so you need to fix that in your next essay. It should always be 3-5 sentences. No exceptions. As for the conclusion, it doesn't really summarize the discussion and offer a clean wrap up of your presentation. Rather, it continues the discussion so the examiner will see that there is no clear resolution in sight for your discussion and as such, came up as a 5 paragraph open ended essay rather than a closed essay discussion.

Scholarship / Communication and leadership skills by joining social organization activities - Chevening essay [2]

Diga, do not waste the word count of the essay on the trivial discussion of your college activities that showed your potential as a leader. You should also remove the discussion about your being a health promotion assistant. If you open the essay with those 2 paragraphs, the reviewer will stop reading your application since these do not depict any senior leadership role for yourself. Open instead with the moment when you were assigned as a Health Promotion Officer. That is the point in the essay when you finally assume a large leadership and influencing role and therefore, should be the opening salvo of your essay. That will give that information the opportunity to create a maximum impact in your essay.

Provided your essay does not fall short of the word requirements after the removal of the first 2 paragraphs, you should just focus on correcting your grammar mistakes in the essay. There is no need to ad or remove information as the presentation is already complete. At least, as far as I can tell. Remove the last 2 lines in the last paragraph of your essay. Never belittle your contribution as a leader in this instance because, even though it is not an executive role, you clearly led a program to success and influenced the community members in a hugely positive manner. This is, for all intents and purposes of your application essay, the best presentation of leadership and influencing skills that you could provide.

Writing Feedback / More People Would Like To Pay More Attention To The Famous People. This Is A Positive or negative? [2]

Nguyen, your opening paraphrase was going so well. It was smooth, it was right on the mark, and then you dropped the ball when it came to the discussion presentation. You were asked if this trend of people paying attention to famous people carries a positive or negative effect. What you presented as your topic discussion instruction was instead a disagreement essay discussion format. That is incorrect. A positive or negative discussion asks you to choose one of the two opinions for discussion in the whole essay. What you did is considered a prompt deviation and tells the examiner that you did not understand the prompt discussion requirements. So you will get a partially failing score for the Task Accuracy portion of the test. You got lucky because the rest of your discussion somehow aligned itself with the original instruction and chose to discuss the essay as a negative development instead. So you would still be properly scored on the remaining task requirements. The problem, is that your concluding sentence, which actually should have been a paragraph continues the mistaken discussion and again, would added to the increased failing score of your task accuracy section. That said, while the essay body is correct, the opening and closing statements are not. Therefore, this essay will not get a passing grade in an actual setting.

Writing Feedback / Should working hours be reduced? [8]

Tran, are you taking the GRE test as well as the IELTS? The reason that I ask is because you did not specify the type of test this essay prompt is for. However, judging by the method of your discussion, it could be that you are discussing it in a GRE format essay test. Am I correct in making this assumption? If that is the case then, your work is right on the mark.

You provided a neat paraphrasing of the original requirements and also presented valid discussions in support of your opinion. However, the essay would have been better developed if you somehow related the knowledge you presented with your personal experience as well. If you consider the prompt instructions, it becomes obvious that the essay would have appreciated the contribution of your personal experience alongside the theoretical discussion. This would most likely have led to an increased score on your part as you would have presented the most valid and accurate discussion for the prompt given.

Writing Feedback / Writ. task 1: the pie chart provides information on 5 major purposes for student to study in Britain [3]

Nhu, your overview is incomplete as it does not give an accurate outline of the discussion topics as presented in the pie charts you were provided. These are the information represented in the color coded pie chart. It was located on the right side of image that was provided to you. Indicating that information would have helped to better prepare the reader for the forthcoming discussion.

The discussion itself is confusing because you did not first, present the information from the individual pie charts before launching into the comparison discussion. The format should have been (in the body):

1. 1987
2. 2007
3. Comparison discussion

Following the above format, your presentation would have been better threshed out and presented in an understandable manner to the reader. You have all of the required information presented in the summary discussion. The problem was actually in your presentation of the discussion. Focus on the clarity of your presentation in your next practice test.

Writing Feedback / Agricultural land productivity - IELTS-Cambridge 8- test 1 [3]

Sandra, your work in this essay could very well score you a maximum of 6 with this type of writing. Your summary overview does not miss any points and even includes the all too important trending statement in it. However, an improvement could have been made in the presentation, which could have increased your score if you had provided the reader with the discussion instructions. The addition of the line:

This essay will discuss the causes of worldwide land degradation in relation to its regions by presenting general information and making comparisons where relevant.

would have created a tighter and more efficient summary overview. Your discussion is good, strong, but a bit inconsistent when it came to the sentence count. You need to present the information per paragraph in only 3-5 sentences. Your final paragraph came in at 7 sentences so you should have found a way to divide that into 2 paragraphs instead.

Writing Feedback / Is paying taxes enough? Writing IELTS Task 2 attempt [4]

Aulia, since this is an agree or disagree essay, it can be said that you did not understand the prompt requirements as per the discussion sentence provided (yet again) which is why you ended up discussing a comparison essay (again) which is not the required discussion format. You are constantly making the same mistakes with your essay in regards to the prompt requirements. I do not see any improvement in your English comprehension skills over the past essays. It is almost as if you are not even trying to to improve your understanding of the English language. Most students here would have shown some sort of progress by now in this area.

I cannot understand why you seem to keep forgetting the advice I give you about the prompt specifications. I am already repetitive with my reminders and with any other student, the lesson would have been learned and applied as an improvement to the written work by now. If you truly want to learn about how to discuss the different essay prompts, then read and learn from the examples of others and their practice tests. It is not difficult to remember the differences and how to discuss specific format types.

You did not properly present the concluding paragraph either. You already know what the requirements for that are. You need to apply what I have been trying to teach you in your essays. Otherwise, I do not see how you can pass the test when you eventually take it.

Writing Feedback / City - for the young / Rural - for the old? Living in small community or not? [4]

Alimin, your prompt paraphrase is improper because you begin to discuss the essay in the opening paragraph. Since this paragraph is part of the TA portion of the essay, you cannot begin your discussion at this point. Instead, you should start the discussion in the second paragraph. The first paragraph should only explain to the examiner what you understood of the original prompt topic and the discussion type. So it should be:

Previous generations lived in small villages where everyone knew each other. Recently though, there has been an influx of people moving to larger cities where they do not know anybody. In this essay, the advantages and disadvantages of living in a small residential area will be discussed.

Please pay attention to your writing style. Do not capitalize words that do not need capitalization. For your reference, I mean "Relax and Avoid from Stress". Those are not proper nouns and are located in the middle of the sentence so these do not need to be capitalized. In the third paragraph, the second sentence is a run-on. You will need to learn how to use periods to separate your topic sentences. Never merge them because that will lower your GRA score.

In the conclusion, you made some suggestions that changed the discussion profile. Since your original prompt does not require a personal opinion, that presentation was unwarranted and will therefore, be cause for points deduction in your final score. You should have just continued to summarize the discussion as you started it with the first sentence.

Writing Feedback / Writing Task 2. Small Village and City Center [3]

Ummu, there are a number of problems with your essay ranging from inaccurate prompt paraphrasing, lexical mistakes and grammar development presentations. Your desire to write the perfect essay is evident in the work but unfortunately, it falls short of the requirements and expectations for this sort of essay. I guess I have to walk you through this problem so let's get started.

In terms of the opening paraphrase, you were way off base in your presentation because you were too focused on using as many complex English terms as you could rather than developing a proper presentation for your thoughts and reasoning. Let's see now, the correct prompt restatement would have been:

These days, people prefer to live in urban areas rather than a small community. It seems that they prefer to live in places where they do not really know their neighbors when compared to those living in a small community. In this essay, I shall present a discussion regarding the advantages and disadvantages of living in the small residential areas.

The opening paraphrase should be just that, a restatement of the prompt in your own understanding, which is what I presented above. I trust that you understand how to paraphrase because you had a pretty decent attempt at doing it in this essay. Please remember that there are certain keywords that need to be used in the opening statement, such as "advantage" and "disadvantage" in order to show that you understood the discussion requirements properly.

You use some pretty impressive English words in this essay such as "hutment" and "burg". These are really old English / ancient English words that are not commonly used these days. Which tells me that you researched these words before using them in the essay. These are not part of your regular English vocabulary. You were out to get an unreasonably high score in the LR portion of your test. Unfortunately, this will backfire on you in the actual test because you won't have time to research impressive sounding words. Just speak naturally and used words that you are familiar with. It is best to be scored on the level for information you truly know rather than information that you researched.

Finally, please make sure to double check for your punctuation placements. There were a few instances when you did not place a period at the end of a sentence leading into a new paragraph. That creates a hanging sentence which would affect your GRA score. Also, you need to provide at least 3 sentences in order to create an acceptable, minimum paragraph. You will lose points for writing less sentences as well. Just don't go over 5 sentences and your score will be acceptable in that area.

Scholarship / My vision into the reality. Chevening: leadership and influence essay [6]

Zaheen, if this is the only example of networking skills that you can present to the reviewer then your application will not get past the consideration point. This network is so unprofessional that it will not be possible for this to be considered a step in improving the currently existing network of Chevening, which is the whole point of this essay. You need a professionally developed network that details your ability to create, cultivate, and use the network to your professional benefit. Think of it this way, if your network can help you advance your career ambitions, then it can help Chevening improve its network and also, assist the future scholars in their quest for career improvements as well. Your main role in this network will be that of mentor. That is why you are being asked to detail the type of network that you have and its usefulness. None of these requirements are present in your essay. It is not there because you haven't had a chance to develop a more serious profession based network. You may need to get creative in your presentation so that you can make an amateur network sound important enough as a professional network. If that will be possible for you to do. This network should exist to help you and Chevening in the future so make sure you discuss the development of those networks along those lines. Review the prompt requirements, that way you will be clearer about the expectations from this essay. Read the samples, the work of those before you can help you develop a new essay in a better manner as well.

Undergraduate / My diverse upbringing; culture is the most valueable asset - Apply Texas [4]

JPatel, the essay that you developed has points that touch on the prompt that you chose. However, the essay seems to be more attuned towards a different prompt description. I would like you to consider using this essay for 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.

As I reviewed your essay, it became apparent that you were sharing more of a background story that helped to introduce more of who you are as a person, a member of the academic community, and an individual than the environment that you were raised in. Yours is more of an immigrant family story than a story that depicts how various influences helped to shape you as a person.

I felt, as I read the narrative, that you were sharing not just your story in this essay but your parents as well. This made the essay more personal in nature and less mechanical in presentation. There is a sense of personal interest in the way that you shared the story which was far greater than a simple description of the environment that you came from. That is why I made the suggestion to switch the prompt topics instead. I hope that you consider my suggestion.

Scholarship / The startup culture leads to be very specific criteria of leadership. Chevening essay [2]

Via, you are not being asked to present a long winded explanation of your point of view about leadership, startups, and business in this essay. You are being asked to focus on only 2 topics that go hand in hand in this essay, proof of your leadership and influencing skills. Instead, what I got is a long explanation of your point of view about leadership, start up cultures, and international business development. Definitely not the response that should be found in this essay. When you do somewhat get to the point, you spend less than a whole paragraph explaining your leadership and influencing skills. Definitely the best way to get your application thrown out by the reviewer. I want to make this essay work as much as you do for your application so I need you to listen to me with regards to the revision requirements of this essay.

You will need to start over. I know, it hurts to think about having to write a new essay but that is what you have to do. From the very first paragraph, you need to catch the reviewer's attention so that he will know that your response will be on track with the prompt expectations. You can define what you leadership and influencing means to you based upon your professional experience if you wish. What you can't do is discuss world business in the essay.

After you define what leadership and influencing means to you, then you can launch into a transition sentence towards the end that will allow you to explain a time during your professional career when you were called upon to display leadership and influencing skills. These could be in the form of a project, a work related problem that your boss was experiencing at the time, or a challenge that was posed before you. Whatever the scenario is, make sure that it has you handling people or developing solutions that required you to exercise a degree of negotiation skills in order to fulfill the work requirement. To make it easier for you, you don't have to present the leadership and influencing narrative in just one incident presentation if it is not possible. You can present them as 2 separate incidents if it will be easier for you to do that.

What is important is that you focus on showing your leadership and influencing abilities rather than explaining it away in a single paragraph as you did in this essay. Proof of leadership and influencing abilities needs to be presented in a manner that the reviewer can verify. The presentation you have at the moment isn't going to allow that to happen.

Scholarship / Chevening Essay on Networking - understanding the importance of networking, I arranged this [3]

This sounds more like an event planning ability presentation than a networking skill presentation. What you did during the reunion was merely organize the graduates into sections. There was no networking involved in that. What makes this worse is that it is an extra curricular activity that does not relate to your professional tasks, abilities, and requirements. If you review the networking prompt, you will see that it clearly indicates the need for you to describe how you develop your professional network and how you continue to cultivate this network for the benefit of your profession. It is important that you discuss a series of profession related networks, rather than a social network. If you noticed, not once in this essay did you ever claim that this network that was created became beneficial to you in the discharging of your profession. As such, it will be impossible for you to claim that this is a solid and professional network that can help to grow the existing Chevening network and also, allow you to assist your Chevening batch mates or future scholars that you will be mentoring. I guess I have to say it straight. This essay is not what the Chevening committee will be looking for. It does not deliver the requirements of the networking prompt. You need to review the presentation samples for this prompt that are available here so that you can get an idea as to how you can revise your essay based upon your existing network and experience in networking.

Undergraduate / Essay that Discusses My Personal Story [6]

Amey, I will admit that your essay does not properly follow the prompt requirements. However, since you have already devoted time to developing and writing this essay, I would not want to see all of that effort on your part go to waste. Sometimes, a student such as yourself will choose a prompt and write an essay that seems so applicable in your mind. Only to have others tell you that the essay you wrote is not applicable so you have to start over. I always consider what other available prompt topics could fit the essay that was written and then advise that the student change the prompt to suit the essay instead. In this case, I would not ask you to write a new essay to adhere to the prompt requirement because there is always prompt #7 to fall back on that instructs:

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

I firmly believe that you have chosen a pretty good, self explanatory title for your essay topic that already has a inclusive prompt of your creation in it. So, if you would like you, the option to change the prompt to fit the essay could work to your benefit. The prompt of your creation deals with the person who inspires and has influenced you the most. A perfect way to explain the kind of person you have become and how you developed that personality through the influence of the strongest figure in your life.

Then again, if you wish to use the prompt above and write a new essay to suit it, then you can also go ahead and do that. The final choice for the prompt specifications is actually yours to make.

Writing Feedback / Topic: The graph below shows the differences in wheat exports over three different areas. [2]

Vu, you will be losing points for task accuracy with your presentation. Your summary overview at the beginning is incomplete. Without a proper overview or summary of the forthcoming discussion, you have created an essay that does not have a proper outline and also, does not accurately inform the reader of the information to come and who the target audience for the presentation is. Normally, the proper presentation for this outline would have been:

A graph has been presented for a summary report. The summarized information shall be presented to a university lecturer for his consideration. The data that was taken from the chart for presented include...

As you can see, a simple adjustment of the content of the statement you presented would have garnered you a higher TA score which, in the process, will also boost your remaining score considerations.

Undergraduate / USING LAW TO CHANGE THE WORLD - UCAS SOP [2]

Rishbha , a statement of purpose is not complete when it does not provide an overview of your foundation in law. What course in particular did you take before that prepared you for a career as a lawyer? Are you a Philosophy graduate? A Political Science graduate? Or some other law related degree holder or associate degree holder? As with a masters degree statement of purpose (I know this is not for a masters degree but the requirements remain the same), you need to prove that you have the proper academic foundation to enroll in, remain as a student, and graduate from this course. I do not get a sense of your prior academic preparation in the essay. Philosophy could have been taken as an elective in almost all college classes. However, since that is one of the pre-requisite classes for a pre-law student, you will need to explain what your previous and relevant academic training is. By the way, double check our grammar. This is not of "import" to you. It is of "importance". Those are two different words with meanings that are also worlds apart. Be sure that you are using the correct terms all throughout this essay because the reviewer is considering your preparedness in all aspects, and that includes grammar usage and vocabulary. Overall though, you have a pretty decent and consideration worthy essay here. You just need to add information to it in order to make it more informative and allow it to deliver required information you missed the first time you wrote the draft.

Letters / A letter to newspaper editor regarding a benevolent stranger who helped an elderly relative of yours [4]

Raika, first of all, the approach that you took to writing this essay is totally wrong. You are supposed to be writing a letter to the editor about a stranger helping an elderly relative of yours. Therefore, the letter should open by having you introduce yourself to the editor first. Who are you? What is your relationship with the elderly relative? Why was it important to you that the story of your relative be told? All that information should be in the first paragraph.

Next, pay attention to your sentence spacing. You kept forgetting to hit the space bar between sentences in order to create spaces that would make it easier to read from one sentence to the next.

Finally, who was the young man who helped your relative? You should at least offer a simple physical description of the person so that the reader will at least be able to imagine who this good Samaritan was and, if possible, call his attention to your letter which should also be thanking the stranger for his help with your relative.

Scholarship / Deliberate review needed for leadership and influence chevening essay question [2]

Mohamed, forgo the civic aspect of your leadership and influencing skill. The prompt specifically calls for a professional setting for your leadership and influencing skills. The best thing for you to do will be to develop the discussion of your Pfizer experience instead. Your leadership presentation is not strong enough. Specially since you seemed to be a one man team at the start. You need to explain why your team was not inspired to help you with the project in a greater detail. Then, describe how you figured out that your team was finally inspired to complete the project by assisting you. Rather than saying that you presented the results of the work on behalf of your team, you should instead say that the team presented the successful project instead. It is alright to say the "team" in this instance because you did have to work to lead and inspire them to victory. Therefore, they should share in the credit, but not take all the credit for the success of the project.

Scholarship / Three MSc courses for wildlife conservation. Why do I have chosen them? [2]

Rodrigo, it is 3 courses in one university or 3 courses in 3 universities. You cannot present 3 universities and 4 courses. You have to remove one of the courses from the first university choice or, remove one university and course from your choice of 4. Don't misunderstand the prompt. It is 3 universities and 3 courses or one university and 3 courses. So that means, since you picked 2 courses in one university, that you only have room for one more university and course choice.

Your essay is not properly formatted as there is no reference to your academic and professional foundation for the given programs, per university. Aside from that, you also need to present an explanation as to how each course can be applied to the future of your career. Therefore, major editing needs to be done on your essay based upon the excess course presentation and lacking skills discussion per course choice.

Writing Feedback / Changing job; my writing should score 6 for IELTS, can you help me to improve my writing ability [4]

Yao, your opening paraphrase does not make any sense. It is so confusing to read that I found myself wondering what I was reading about and then realizing that you had no idea what you were writing about either. Based upon the pointless opening paraphrase, you can bet that you have already failed the test. Once you do not clearly restate the prompt requirements in the first paragraph, you lose at least half of the official score. As such, most examiners say that once you fail the TA portion, which is scored in the first paragraph, then you already failed the entire Task 2 essay exam. Here is the correct paraphrase for your reference:

Young adults tend to change jobs frequently these days. Some of them change careers every five years. I believe that there are a number of reasons for this and I will be presenting those reasons in this essay. After I present the reasons, I will the discuss whether I believe the advantages of constantly changing careers is greater than its disadvantages.

You also have extremely long sentences per paragraph, which means that you are not capable of writing short but meaningful English sentences. Try to practice writing your thoughts within the required 5 sentence maximum per essay so that you can stand a better chance of eventually getting a fair score in the C&C and GRA portion of the scoring requirements.

Your work also lacks a proper concluding paragraph that would properly represent a summarized discussion of the given prompt. Basically, this is a very bad first attempt at writing the task 2 essay. I hope that my comments can help you improve your second essay by having you focus on the problem points from this one in order to allow you to improve in the next essay.

Writing Feedback / The maps illustrate how Meadowside village and Fonton, which is a neighboring town - development [4]

Gang, we are looking at another possible 8 score for this essay. Ever since you started developing your own writing style, I have noticed that your writing has improved to the point where you can now just focus on proper analysis of the information rather than the presentation of the information. Remember, I told you that when you become comfortable writing in your own way, the essays will fall into place on its own? It looks like you are well on your way to making writing these essays second nature to yourself. One point for revision though, when you are discussing a past year, never use the present tense of "This year..." to signify the place in time. You need to practice referring to past instances in various formats such as "During that year", "In the same year", or "Based upon information from the same year..." among other possible phrase presentations in reference to past time. I admire you for being extra prepared for the test. You obviously want to do your best so you are over preparing this early. Be careful though, you don't want to burn out before the actual test date comes. You might run out of steam and end up not doing so well in the actual test. Pace yourself with the exercises. Your exam isn't till next year. Take it easy and don't overdo the preparation.

Writing Feedback / Public celeberations such as festivals, holidays... shouldn't be financed by governments [5]

Helen, there are only 2 problems with the essay that you wrote. Both of which you can easily avoid in the future. The first problem, is that you began an immediate discussion of the essay prompt when the opening paragraph requires a prompt paraphrase, without an actual discussion instead. Therefore, your opening paragraph should have been like this:

With all of the government funded festivities that occur in a year, most people believe that the government is not spending tax funds in a proper manner. They believe that the government must be more responsible in spending the budget allotted to the government. I agree with this statement for several reasons. In this essay, I shall discuss a few of those reasons and support the presentation with my personal knowledge whenever possible.

The first rule of the Task 2 essay is, always properly restate the prompt requirements. If you fail to do that, as you did in this essay, there will be a great tendency for your TA score to be either low or failing in score. If you get the latter, then your whole essay automatically fails. Lucky for you that your succeeding paragraph discussions were right on the mark. More than the maximum allowable of 5 sentences per paragraph, but still, well thought out and developed. Just remember discuss the paragraph topics with less sentences next time.

By the way, your concluding paragraph had the opposite problem. You came in with a run-on sentence instead. For scoring purposes, always use the minimum 3, maximum 5 sentence ruling. One long sentence will not increase your chances at a higher final score but 5 short but significant sentences will accomplish that.

Writing Feedback / The invention of the Internet has had negative effects on your civilization. [4]

Kode, I need the full prompt that was originally provided to you for the proper assessment of your essay. You cannot just give me a partial reference to the prompt instructions. That is useless to me and will not allow me to help you improve your writing based upon problem points consideration. You have written this essay as a research paper instead of an agree - disagree essay. Your sentence count per paragraph should never go beyond the 5 sentences per paragraph limit. You do not have the time to write these extra long and detailed paragraphs in the actual test setting. I have a funny feeling that you did not time yourself when you wrote this essay. The content borders on being extra analytical. That means, you took the time to think about your response and develop it. That is why you came up with these extra long paragraphs. Believe me, in the actual setting, you will be hard pressed to complete your paragraphs within the given time frame. So you must practice with a timer and try to develop a better way of writing. One that allows you express yourself within 5 sentences, without creating run-on sentences in every paragraph. While this is a tremendously strong essay, there are a number of scoring considerations that I cannot use in the assessment of your work due to the lack of the original prompt. Since I can only give you one advice per essay, you will need to remember to give me the complete prompt when you post your next essay.

Writing Feedback / Memoir writing draft about my memories in Korea [3]

Yongju, when you set up your first paragraph, you need to do so in a reflective manner. Ease your reader into the story you are about to tell by first, pondering upon the memory. What did it mean for you during that time? What is your reason for looking back into the memory now? Where did the memory take place? Why did this hold a special memory for you?

The second paragraph should open with an indication that you are doing a flashback to the start of the memory. Don't do the flashback in the middle, do it at the start. That way you tell the story forward instead of doing 2 successive flashback references. As you can probably tell from the way your essay got lost in its presentation, having 2 flashbacks makes it difficult to develop your presentation.

Overall, the story has potential. It is a part of your childhood that helps the reader get to know more about you. However, the presentation you used is confusing and not very well thought out. Try to use an outline for your story presentation before you begin to draft your revised essay. Maybe then you will be able to write a more coherent story for the English essay exercise.

Writing Feedback / History HW - One Object that Can Reflect Modern Civilization [3]

Sherry, this can only be considered a possible outline for topic discussions in your homework. I failed to find a thesis statement that would help me understand what the purpose of your essay is. It sounds like you are just throwing ideas together without any consideration for how these will come together to form informative paragraphs. Each paragraph is disconnected from the next one because of the lack of transition sentences. Again, the lack of transition sentences could be due to the faulty or almost non-existent discussion outline for your essay.

Fix the essay by first, presenting the objective of the discussion. You have the topic presented, but you have not told me why I should care about this homework of yours. What is the point of the discussion and how do you plan to convince me of it? That should be the first paragraph.

After you figure out your thesis statement, you should be able to develop a clearer discussion outline for your essay that will allow you address any preliminary research questions that you might have developed during the course of your research. There seem to be conflicting discussion points in the essay so you need to address those as well. All the discussion points need to connect otherwise, your essay will just be a bunch of disconnected information paragraphs.

Scholarship / Chevening scholarship will give me probability to interact with influencers both locally and abroad [5]

Nnamdi this is the kind of essay that will be ignored by the Chevening committee during the preliminary round of considerations. Why will it be ignored? It does not have the kind of leadership and influencing experience that is required of a Chevening candidate. You are using an academic based activity in place of a professional leadership and influencing presentation. While there was some influencing involved and presented in your essay, the fact that this was academic in nature will not allow it to stand out from a pack of applicants who are going to be presenting leadership and influencing skills of a more important nature in their professions. The applicants to Chevening are undersecretaries, government officials of high ranking, company vice presidents, executive officers, and international agency connected individuals who have notable skills when it comes to leadership and influencing. The leadership quality and influencing skill that you are presenting in this essay is only good for a freshman college application. It cannot work for a Chevening scholarship application. Come up with a strong leadership and influencing presentation based upon your current profession. Indicate your current position in your essay, what leadership projects you have undertaken, and how you influence your officemates to complete tasks that have been assigned with you as a leader. Failure to present a professional basis of your leadership and influencing skills could end your quest for the scholarship consideration.

Graduate / Application Essay for a Speech Pathology Program [3]

Taylor, you have way too much information in this essay. So much so that it is extremely difficult to find the places where you actually discuss compassion, respect, and service. What you have explained here do not really cover a display of the values. Instead, you simply imply the values as being part of the overall result of the requirements of certain events you participated in. In my opinion, since you have the benefit of attending a connected speech language camp, the essay should only focus on that event. Rather than trying to fit yourself into a listing of all your related organizations (Which is not the point of the essay), you should instead, develop a narrative based upon your experience at the camp that best reflects all 3 requirements. The best presentation would be to tell the story of an interaction you had with one particularly difficult case at the camp where you were called upon to show compassion, service, and respect even though you wanted nothing more than to throw in the towel and scream at the person. Telling a story like that in this essay would best display your abilities to enact these values in real life because you have already, somewhat, brought those values to the foundation of your career through the summer camp participation that you had.

Scholarship / "Everybody is a genius" Review my personal statement for KGSP Undergraduate Scholarship (2018) [2]

Rishu, Try to balance the inspiration that you derive from both your parents, not just your father. As you have a complete set of parents, both of them have had some sort of influence upon your life and the person you are today. It is important to note the contribution of your mother to your personal development as well. Depict the reasons why your family unit is one that inspires you to do well in life. You have to discuss your family in such a detailed manner because Koreans value the family and its contribution to society on an unbelievable level. If you can depict strong family ties, then you will impress the reviewer.

With regards to the people who have had a significant influence on you, use Ban-Ki Moon instead of several personalities. Being a notable Korean, you will be able to use his achievements to sell additional information as to what motivates you to study in Korea in an indirect but useful manner. Speaking of which, lose the quote from Einstein at the start of the essay. That doesn't really blend well into the discussion about your family. This essay needs to be focused in content. Don't waste the time of the reviewer with trivial quotes that don't help to move the essay forward by answering a direct question from the prompt.

With regards to your community service, remove the references to your being a participant and instead discuss how you were chosen to give the informative speech because of your notable participation in community service activities. It is more important to show that your activity has results other than your being a participant in it. So build up the speech presentation portion.

Going back to your motivation for applying. Try to tie in the motivation with a specific reason that will relate to your chosen major. After all, when you apply for this scholarship, you have to indicate a major to apply for admission to. What motivated you to apply to Korean for your education in this field? What makes Korea stand out as a teaching channel for that profession? Relate your desires for learning with what Korean education and training has to offer those interested in this field.

Your closing paragraph is a bit too casual in presentation. Try to revise it to carry a more formal academic tone. After all, this is a serious scholarship that asks you to consider serious matters in your application. Starting the conclusion with "Well..." doesn't really carry forth the academic focus the closing statement requires.

Undergraduate / 'I had to stand strong, Independent and be my own self' - UGRAD statement essay [4]

Hadiqa, I realize that the essay is limited in word count, which is why you need to make every word in your essay count. There is a requirement for you to revise the content of your essay because it focuses on the wrong information and limits the important information. First up, when you introduce yourself to the reviewer in the first paragraph, try to summarize the information in order to make it more direct to the point and relevant. Simply say that you come from a male dominant society so when you attended a cultural exchange that allowed you to integrate the Balochi culture with your own strong will as a woman, you became a unique Punjabi who was able to resist male domination in your life.

Summarize the information about your friend who got sick. Just say that the 3 of them contracted the illness and they could not be treated properly due to the lack of microbology knowledge in your hospitals. That is why you decided on that career. Then transition to the reason why you want to study in the US.

You must do some research in this area and present a foundation for your one year exchange program in the US. Talk about what you hope to learn about Microbiology during this time and why you consider learning that information important. Explain how you plan to grown your knowledge during that semester abroad. Outline any research or experiments you hope to carry out during your stay. Strengthen you reasons for your desire study in the US. That is best done by discussing your study plans in a summarized, by effective format.

The closing paragraph clearly delivers the message that you are planning to return to your home country at the end of the program. That is good. You should make that clear because if there is any doubt as to your plans to return, your application process might stall.

Scholarship / I would be part of a vast network at Chevening which creates opportunities [4]

Onyinyechi , there is too much "we" in this essay that should be more about the "I" in the network creation and function. The reviewer isn't interested in how the team formed a network to accomplish a task, he is interested in your ability to create an independent, professional network that can help to increase the strength of the Chevening Scholar network. In order to impress the reviewer, you must add a series of professional networks based upon the demands of your current job. After all, that is what you are applying for the scholarship for. There is a lack of reference to how you created and cultivated these networks. It seems to me that there were already pre-existing networks that were handed to your group on a silver platter when you had some projects to enact. It is the pre-existing condition of these networks for your team that created a weak networking essay for you. Unless you can prove that you have the ability to create your own network, flourish in the use of that network, and depict a method by which that network can be of use to Chevening scholars in the future, then this network essay is nothing more that a practice narrative essay. The only part of the essay that seems to have some sort of strength is the part where you were introduced to the official of the National Agency, but then you did not fully develop that discussion in terms of how you cultivated that network after the introduction.

Graduate / SOP for MS in Business Analytics; the dynamic field of big data analytics, predictive analytics [3]

Jaideep, rather than opening the essay with that anecdote about football, I believe that you should instead, open the essay with a statement about your current thoughts about the state of Business Analytics and what you perceive the future for this field to be. That will help to provide a platform for your discussion about the method of your exposure to this line of work in a manner that can better integrate your educational background.

By presenting your thoughts about the future of Business Analytics, you can make a reference to your current career and the problems that beset you are a practitioner of Business Analytics. From there, you can tie that into the shortcomings of your college education in comparison to the demands of the job. That way, you can segue into a presentation of your future plans for yourself after you complete the MS degree. Don't forget, one of the most important elements of the statement of purpose is an explanation as to why you desire to study at a particular university. This is where your interest in particular courses, participation in internship programs, or further training under the guidance of the university mentors will come in.

The purpose of your education and the method by which you will accomplish it should tie in with a summarized proposal for your thesis study as well. That is why you have to explain how the university can help you complete your potential thesis project. Based on what you will be studying and your future plans, you should develop a 5 year career plan for your future at ZS.

The total discussion should close on the strong note created by your future career plans delivered in a summarized form. That is, if your post study plans need to be discussed in a separate essay. The reviewer needs to be clear about how your studies will connect with your future professional plans by the time he concludes reading your SOP.

Undergraduate / Equality in sport, topic of importance essay. [3]

Chinenye, here is the thing, your title indicates that you are compassionate about having equal rights for all people. Yet, in the discussion that you present, you focus only on the inequality that you experienced as a member of your varsity team. Therefore, the essay is less about inequality and more about bullying. If you want to discuss inequality in the manner that your title implies, then you must focus on a general discussion of inequality in your school. That way, then you start saying that you began to implement changes to inequality as a team captain, you touch on a general solution to the problem. This then reflects a person who strives to live a fair and just life. Which is a good character trait to have. If you revise the content to be general in reference to inequality, then you can use this essay with minor revisions to the content. However, if you want to use this essay as is, you have to change the slant from inequality to bullying because that is the main reference point regarding the treatment you received from the other people in your school.

Writing Feedback / [TOEFL independent task] What events (experiences or ceremonies) make a person an adult? [3]

Sophia, I think you did not post the full original prompt for the discussion. The topic sentence is missing. All we have is the introduction and the discussion instruction. That is why your essay is a bit difficult to analyze in terms of purpose and response validity. However, since I am a native English speaker, I am capable of piecing together most of what the original prompt might have been asking of you. That is why I have a totally different take on your essay in terms of its response to the (possible) prompt. I believe that it is highly effective in explaining the reasons why you believe that the economic boom of China has resulted in turning points in the lives of the children.

The problem, does not lie in your reasoning but rather, your presentation of the opening paraphrase. Personally, I believe that your presentation would have been better if you had given the presentation a personal insight right from the very start. I would have said something like:

It is widely accepted that children and adults are of different in many ways. However, there are times or circumstances in a child's life that force the child to become an adult. My experience as child of a "separated due to work" family will best illustrate the points that turned me, as a child into an adult. In this essay, will be discussing that turning point in my life.

I became an adult because my parents left my siblings and I behind so they could work to support our family. This is something that is normal among families in China. It is a heartbreaking in any situation but it builds a responsible child adult in the process. The separation is caused by the rising economy of China. It is the 2nd largest in the world behind America. So large international companies come to build factories in China, which results in a migrant worker boom. Parents leave their children in favor of work. The eldest child, who in this case, was me, is often left to take care of the family and fulfill adult responsibilities.

My family was broken so I needed to become an adult. Their responsibilities passed on to me. Responsibilities such as...

There are times when a TOEFL essay requires a personal insight into the matter, using personal experiences to strengthen the discussion. This essay is one of those sorts. It would have been highly beneficial for your TOEFL score if you had used your experience solely as the driving point for the discussion because the examiners tend to score personal experience and knowledge higher than the theoretical explanations.

Writing Feedback / The bar chart illustrates the Biritish male and female employees working in different occupations [3]

Kieu, it seems that the image you uploaded cannot be enlarged so that is making it a bit difficult to analyze your essay in terms of data presentation, relevance, and missed discussion points. That has not prevented me from making some immediate observations about your work though. Most if the problem comes from your lack of a properly formatted and informed presentation of the information summary, also known as the summary overview.

Your analysis became flawed because of the lack of outline in your presentation. When you read a chart, there are a few things you need to take note of before you start drafting the content. The immediate observations you have to make include:

1. What type of graph you are looking at.
2. The purpose of the graph.
3. The source of data plus the measurement type
4. The discussion instruction.
5. The overall trend.

These information should come cohesively and coherently together in the first paragraph. Upon this presentation, you will be able to gain a deeper analysis of the illustration. Don't compress your data into a single paragraph. Don't keep hitting enter instead of the space bar either. You need to fully develop your paragraph presentations by allowing yourself to explain the information from the chart in a complete manner. Don't just explain the obvious. Look for deeper discussion points that may not be there the first time you review the image.

Basically, you draft your paper with the immediate information, then go back to the image and look for discussion areas you might have missed the first time you wrote the paper. Add any information you find this time around and then finalize the content for presentation. It is only by being highly critical of the given image that you will be able to write an intricate and well scored analysis essay.

Scholarship / This is a prompt about 'challenges you have faced' for the Apiasf scholarship [4]

Abhishek, you still have room to add information in this essay since you have a 500 word maximum. I would like to suggest that you add information as to how the language barrier affected your academic goals and personal ambitions at the time. Talk about how frustrated you felt. Describe how it held you back from doing certain things that could have helped make your social adjustment to a new culture easier.

Tell the reviewer who you were before you came to America, how your personality changed after your arrived because of the language barrier, and what kind of personality you have managed to develop now that you already a fluent English speaker. These are the types of information that will allow your essay to be more telling of how you took on the verbal barrier challenge and how you developed a new or improved personal character because of it.

The challenge that you took on could be insurmountable for others. You however, seem to have done an excellent job of integrating yourself into the American culture. By explaining how you successfully did that, considering the highly different culture that you came from, you will be able to create a unique and perhaps, individual personality in terms of who you are a person and student applicant.