Undergraduate / My girlfriend. This girl changed me as a person. Penn State Personal Statement [7]

Hai, this is a unique personal statement. I am not sure if you are projecting the right image by focusing the personal statement on your love life. Is there any chance that you have an essay prompt instruction that you can share here so that I have a better idea of what the prompt is asking you to write about? It would really help me develop a more relevant series of advice for you.

Generally, personal statements are often used to introduce the applicant's early academic and extra curricular side to the reviewer. In this instance, the whole essay is about your love life and its effect on your development as a person. The problem, is that there is too much romance and too little development on your part. In other words, the essay should not be focused on your girlfriend, if that is an acceptable topic for the essay based upon the prompt.

Rather, the focus of the essay should be on you and the effect of this relationship upon you. The later part of your essay, towards the conclusion speaks of this aspect and should honestly be more developed to be a greater part of the essay. I think that I will hold off on offering more advice for the improvement of your essay until I am sure that discussing such a private and personal topic will be acceptable to the reviewer based upon the prompt requirement.

Scholarship / Mathematics is a language. I love to create things, to solve problems, and to figure how things work [2]

Nwanko, you have written a pretty good essay in terms of portraying your background and difficulties you needed to overcome in order to become the person you are today. The personal story is admirable and will leave the reviewer rooting for you to succeed. Unfortunately, your academic goals are not as strong as your personal ones. So you will need to focus your attention on further improving that aspect of your essay.

In terms of your academic goals, it is a bit confusing to follow. Since this is a personal statement, it should follow a presentation that shows the development of your interest and the influences that led you to decide upon a career in mechanical engineering. You have one too many possible college majors indicated in this essay. You need to pick one, I believe it is mechanical engineering right? After making your final decision regarding your course major, you will need to refine or revise the essay to show a keen interest in the field of engineering on your part which led you to this final decision. Right now, you are showing the reviewer your academic "options" instead of a solid academic "goal".

Graduate / I like numbers, I like stocks, and I like programming. MIT essay. [4]

Hi Steve. With regards to the grammar in the essay, I would have to say that the language you used is acceptable enough. Honestly, there is room to improve the language used in the essay but I never advise my students to do any grammatical corrections while the essay is still in its drafting stages. The reason being that the editing of the grammar comes with the adjustments to the content of the essay. At this point, I would like to see the kind of revision you will do to the essay before we focus on perfecting the content of the essay, along with the grammar corrections. Go ahead and revise the last paragraph if you feel that it is necessary with regards to your personal information in the essay. Let's see if we can merge it in a better manner with the rest of the content. I'm looking forward to reading your revised essay as soon as you are ready to share it here.

Writing Feedback / The information about the air diffusion in a house and how it reduces heat [3]

Lincoln, if you will study the diagram closely, you will see that the house is composed of 3 floors, each of which has a specific diagram relating to heat loss and air circulation in the house. So the best way to have presented the information provided would have been by focusing one paragraph on each floor of the house. Why should you have discussed the diagram in a per paragraph form?

The illustration could have been better presented to the examiner in a per paragraph form because you could have better concentrated on presenting the information in every part of the illustration. Your current presentation is rushed and did not take other aspects of the house into consideration (such as the crawlspace) in your explanation. By omitting certain portions that were important to the illustration but missing in your presentation, you will risk losing points due to an incomplete presentation.

If you will further review your essay, you will notice that it is actually too short in the conclusion part. This is probably because of the lack of information in the earlier parts. By the way, you have a number of grammatical errors in the essay such as varied = various, trough = through, cash = cast , and plan = fan. You need to slow down and make sure that you are using the correct terms and spelling them properly in the essay. You do not want to lose major points in the grammatical range and accuracy section. That will drag down your final score immensely and could make you fail this test section in the actual setting.

Graduate / I like numbers, I like stocks, and I like programming. MIT essay. [4]

Steve, your statement is good but lacks verifiable information. The following areas of your essay require, as per the instructions you provided from the university, verifiable information for the reference and verification of the reviewer:

1. College you attended as a double major.
2. Company you were associated with when you made $8000. Bank you were connected with as an intern and your length of stay with them.
3. Title of the app you developed, place where the app was released (Apple store, Playstore, etc).
4. Name of the competition you joined including the year and your final place in the winner listing.

Your final paragraph referring to the student-mentor program of MIT is misplaced. There is nothing in the prompt asking you why MIT will be a perfect fit for you and yet you are offering information regarding that. You actually lessened the strength of your essay because of the inclusion of this paragraph. You could have closed on a hugely strong note with your 5 year career plan instead.

Your essay is impressive in terms of information. What you need to do is make sure that the reviewer can verify all of the information that you have provided. So take note of the information that you need to add to the essay in order to make it as strong as possible in terms of informing the reviewer.

Undergraduate / Why Rice_This was when I first learnt about Rice, as I watched the YouTube video of Joe Wong [6]

Martin, the most important consideration for this response has got to be the academic reasons that you decided to apply for admission to Rice. While your response is entertaining and you have shown a great deal of admiration for certain aspects of the academic and extra curricular life at the university, there is a lack of information regarding the true reason behind your application.

What is the major that you wish to focus on as a student? Good, you know what it is. Now, look into the reasons why studying that course at Rice will make you an outstanding graduate. What academic programs, internships, organizations, or other activities that you can participate in tells you that Rice is the ultimate school for all your ambitions? You are talking too much in general terms so that tells the reviewer that either you do not have a major in mind yet or, that you have not really settled on Rice as your first choice university, yet.

The reviewer will want to see the excitement coming from you about becoming a part of the academic life at Rice. You have the early foundations for that in the essay's second paragraph, make it stronger and more focused on a task that you want to accomplish while studying. Make sure that your reasons for opting for Rice as an academic institution shows the motivation behind your application.

You don't have to focus on the video of Joe Wong. That should not even be the quote at the start of the essay. That should only be mentioned in passing because it is not as important as the other information that you should be presenting. Knowing a famous alumna of the school will not help you application. It just shows that you know who the graduates of the university are. So focus only the "Why?" and "Motivation" of your application.

Writing Feedback / TED Summary - If superpowers were real: Super speed - Joy Lin [2]

Lincoln, The Flash was never mentioned in the video presentation. This is an assumption that you are making because of the popularity of the TV program. For accuracy purposes, never mention any entity or event hat is not included in the original presentation. It is important that you stick only to the facts because when your summary is compared to the original source, points will be deducted for inaccuracies.

Your summation of the video is somewhat acceptable. It would have been further strengthened if you had been able to take note of Newton's law of motion which was an integral part of the explanation in the video. That was the total basis of the scenarios presented and accompanying explanations. So, while your essay is informative and sums up the video as best as you can remember, the summary still has room for improvement. However, due to time constraints, I believe that you will get a decent, maybe passing score in an actual test if you write this way when taking it.

Writing Feedback / Regulating Advertising - let the Ministry of Truth decide [2]

Ha, it is extremely difficult for me to review your essay for a number of reasons. The first one, is the lack of the original prompt requirement. That is the guideline by which I can properly assess your work for task compliance and discussion accuracy. At the moment, I am unclear as to what the actual slant of the discussion topic should be. Please post that prompt as soon as you can for a more accurate review of your work on the essay.

In the meantime, I would like to call your attention to the grammar problems in your essay. You misspelled so many words within the overall essay that you would not get a very good score in terms of grammar range and accuracy. The highest you would probably get is a 3 which, as you know will drag down the final score calculations for your task test. Examples of the misspelled words are opimion = opinion, hight = height, interesten = interested, etc. Please make sure to take your time while typing your essay. I am not, at this moment, sure if you just have typographical errors or if you really do not know how to spell these words. Either way, your score in this section would be less than passing.

Writing Feedback / The only objective of an enterprise is to generate profit, however, I disagree with that idea [2]

Lincoln, your essay started out on a strong note, the paraphrased paragraph doesn't really fall under the required number of sentences which is 3. As such, the paraphrasing and the presentation of your opinion could have been made clearer and stronger to the reader. That is not the strongest problem of your essay though.

You made some grave mistakes in the grammatical accuracy of your thought development. Using terms such as "threat" instead of "treat" in reference to the way the businesses deal with their employees. Then, another serious problem with your coherence and cohesion performance appeared.

There is the sudden emergence of your thought that all business employees are uneducated. Where did you get that idea? It was not developed within the paragraph before it was introduced. What made you think that all employees are uneducated? There are blue collar and white collar workers, both have professional training in their field based upon some sort of education. It is not right to imply that they are uneducated. It shows a lack of analytical thought process on your end.

Due to the problems with your essay, I doubt you could get a higher overall score than a 4 in an actual test.

Writing Feedback / The aim of the firm is to be profitable and companies should only focus on this. [5]

Bams, in the opening statement, you accidentally created a hanging sentence instead of delivering a complete thought. Remove the word "while" in the second sentence so that you end up stating a fact instead of showing an incomplete thought process. Since you are presenting a personal point of view throughout the essay, make sure that you always take ownership of your opinion by using first person references such as "I, my, me" This will add to the strength and conviction of your statement / opinion throughout the essay.

The flow of your discussion is logical and, although sometimes confusing, can be understood by the reader after a second reading. Your concluding statement is lacking in the major elements that would have made it successful. This includes a representation of the summarized discussion, reiteration of your opinion, and a closing sentence. If you review what you wrote, it is obvious that more information is required before the sentence can actually deliver a complete statement to the reader that can properly close the discussion.

Writing Feedback / Article Summary : Bees of the sea : Tiny crustaceans pollinate underwater plants [2]

Nda, your topic sentence at the start of the summary should have immediately indicated that the tiny crustaceans help in pollinating the sea plans. That is the entire focus of the essay and that was the essence of the message delivered by the speaker at the very start. The rest of your explanation in relation to this topic is acceptable.

A word of advice though, when there is a secondary speaker in the article or video, make sure that you mention the name of the speaker somewhere before you mention her contribution to the article. You will need to write an introductory sentence for the speaker prior to the quotation you will be presenting. The way that you presented the second phase of information from the second speaker is not proper in this essay. If you review the statement as you have it now, you do not know where the information from the first speaker ends and the information from the second speaker begins. That is why you have to make sure to present the second speaker prior to indicating the information from that person. Without a differentiation in speakers, the summary becomes confusing for the reader to assess.

Graduate / Scholarly and research area(s) of interest, experiences that led to your preparation in the field [21]

Shuting, you don't have to delete the important parts of the paragraph. You should only summarize it. If you feel that it is essential to your paper to present the information in its entirety then go ahead and do so. I am only here to guide you. The final content of the paper, specifically when it comes to your experience, is up to you. I am not familiar with the work you are doing so if you feel that you should present the whole experiment to the reviewer, then go ahead and do so. I do not want you to weaken the content of the paper in any way.

The summarized 5 year plan sounds sufficient enough to me. It touches on some points as to why you have chosen to study at UCLA in relation to your future plans and creates a forward thinking image for you. At this point, all that is left is for you to conclude the essay. Remember to reiterate your desire to attend the university this upcoming semester and summarize your desire too help enhance their student community and their international image as a top caliber university as well. After that, the essay will be done.

Graduate / Characteristics, motivation and your background - Speech-Language Pathology Personal Statement [2]

Leah, the most important thing you have to remember when writing a statement in response to the question relating to personal characteristics is that you have to show, instead of tell the reviewer what these characteristics are. He will have a better idea as to whether you have the personality to succeed in the program if you are able to illustrate your abilities through examples in your daily life or relevant settings. Rather than just telling him you have the traits. Telling him is one thing, proving it is another. Since this is a written interview, you should use your experience to prove the elements of your personality that work best in response to the question. I read the traits but I don't see how you were able to use it in a relation to your academic, work, or personal setting. So an example of the traits would work best in support of your claims.

Now, your passion should come from helping others. It would be nice if you had an experience to share with the reviewer that could have been the "Aha!" moment that helped you realize that you passion lay in speech pathology and that this was the career you wish to pursue from that point on. Perhaps you can relate the response to something specific in your work experience?

Keep in mind that this is a personal statement. The keyword being "personal". So you have to present information from your background and not just summations as you have done so in this version of the essay. Be specific in showing your response. What the reviewer is after here is evidence that you are truly a person who sees speech pathology as a vocation and not just another career that you may or may not complete as your degree in the future.

Essays / I don't know how write this process essay! [8]

Soheilk, you did pretty good work on this process essay. You just needed the confidence and prodding to give it a try. You just need some instruction regarding the format of the process essay. Since you have already written other essays for task 1, I assume that you are familiar with the need to present at least 3 sentences per paragraph with a maximum of 5 paragraphs in your essay. The overview introduction should be clear and allow the reader to know the basis for the topic discussion with the conclusion in summary form. Your introduction needs some more work in that aspect.

In order to make your essay bit more compliant, all you have to do is add the sentences from the 2nd paragraph to the single sentence that you have which represents your introduction or first paragraph. When you do that, make sure that you edit the long sentence into at least 2 more parts in order to create the minimum 3 sentence requirement. How you position it is up to you. You have to do the same thing for your conclusion because that is incomplete in presentation as well.

A point of adjustment for the content of your essay though. The blowhole was created before the sea cave. The sea cave was the result of the eroded blow hole. Like I said, you have to read the illustration from the right (with the outline of the original headland) and then start the process from the left of the drawing so the process would be:

1. Original headland
2. blow hole
3. sea cave
4. headland
5. arch
6. under cutting
7, collapse
8. stack
9. wave-cut platform
10. stump

Since the process is open to interpretation, the above listing is how I understand the process to have gone. It is somewhat similar to yours and is only technical in nature. You did a good job in explaining the process as you understand it to be.

Essays / I don't know how write this process essay! [8]

Like I said, this essay is open to interpretation. It requires you, as the writer, to use the following skills in responding to the questions you posed:

1. Common sense
2. Analytical abilities
3. Logical thought process
4. Ability to write in a chronological order

The good news is that because the diagram you are being shown is so vague, that you can actually interpret it in any way that you want. There are no right or wrong answers in this case. The only concern of your answer, should be to produce a logical thought process that can manage to explain the diagram in the best way that you understand. Here is another tip, look at the start of the diagram, then look at the end result of the process. That should help you understand the process a little bit more using the in - between information provided in the illustration.

So, how do you understand the diagram? Write about it and post it here. If it looks confusing to you, then say so in your essay. Just write about what you think the process is about. The worst thing that you can do is to not even try to write something about what you are seeing just because you feel confused about it. Write with a confused thought process, we can help you sort it out so that it makes sense. The point is, we can't help you until you at least try to write something.

Essays / I don't know how write this process essay! [8]

Soheil, unfortunately we cannot and should not write this process essay for you. The main reason for that is because the illustration can be interpreted in many ways by different people looking at it. What we can do, is at least point you in the right direction or get you started on the right track by showing you where the process essay starts.

The process starts at the point where the diagram outlines the original shape of the headland. Start your essay with a description from that point. Then go to the left side of the diagram and start your explanation from there. Follow the process and describe it. The key descriptions are indicated in the illustration. You just have to form sentences with it. The diagram is clear,

I sense that you are being frantic and frustrated because this may be the very first time that you are writing a process essay. So keep a clear head. Just look for the starting point, it is always clearly outlined or pointed out in the diagram, chart, illustration, or whatever it is that you are supposed to analyze for the process essay.

This type of essay is open to interpretation because of the process illustration provided. So the essay can, like I said, be presented in various ways. Your job, as the summary writer, is to interpret what you see and put it into written form. We cannot do that for you. This is a test of analytical and comprehension skills so this is something that you have to do on your own.

Undergraduate / I come from a family of chefs- MIT essay [8]

Ambigay, you are concentrating the essay on yourself. That is not what the essay wants you to present. This essay prompt is designed to give you a chance to introduce your family, culture, community, or influential people in your life to the reviewer. The end goal of the essay is for the reviewer to understand the kinds of influence that you have in your life that have helped you become the person you are today. We are talking about character traits, ambitions, or outlook in life. Aspects of your personal development that have helped to shape you into the person you are today. Look over your essay with a reviewer's set of eyes and you will come to realize that you are not allowing him into your world nor allowing him to see the influence that these people or places have had on you.

You are supposed to take a backseat in this essay. You are not the focus of the discussion. You are only supposed to show the reviewer how you were influenced by those around you. So having your parents support your cooking hobby is one thing, but how did their influence upon you, outside of the culinary arts, help you become the person you are today?

Try to approach the essay prompt from a different angle. Think of who you are at present. Don't think about the person who wants to become a chef. Think of the person who is an asset to his community or an exemplary member of the family. Why or who helped you become that person? That is the focus of this essay and that is what you should represent. I know you are applying to culinary arts school. However, not all of your application should relate to it.

The reviewer will always appreciate getting to know you beyond your culinary interests. It shows him a more personal side to the applicant. Something that he might not have seen because the other prompts would not have allowed him to see it based upon its discussion topic. So take advantage of the opportunity to introduce the influential people around you, and how their influence helped to share the person you are today.

Graduate / Scholarly and research area(s) of interest, experiences that led to your preparation in the field [21]

Shuting, in reference to the experience paragraph, the first you have to do is remove the sentence that starts off the statement. Specifically, remove the part that begins with "For advanced study and research..." The reviewer will automatically know what you are talking about because you will be referring to the project in the discussion. Now, to further cut down on this portion, you will need to focus / concentrate your statement on simply presenting the problem, giving an overview of the experiment done, and finally, the results of that experiment.

You need not describe the method or instrumentation in great detail. What you should do, if you haven't done it already, is let the reviewer know that this paper will be published some time in the future. Being published or soon to be published usually makes the reviewers take note of applicants because the acceptance of the applicant and subsequent publication of his word is normally fantastic publicity for the university.

For your future plan, look into developing the professor side of your plan. This will tie in with your 5 year plan accurately and also let the reviewer know that you are keen on information sharing and development based upon your studies and professional skills. The opening sentence for that paragraph doesn't really work because it still relates to your potential studies at the university instead of the fast forward to your future career, after you graduate. The post study plan should not mention what you hope to learn and how during your time at the university. That is why it is called post study and covers up to 5 years after your graduation.

Undergraduate / I have a dual personality. What would it mean to you to call yourself an AU Eagle? [5]

AvR, the response to this essay will require you to do some research on the offerings, campus, and other background of the university. This is one time that either having physically visited the campus or, reading up on the internet regarding the university will come in handy. The reviewer is looking for information from you that will tell him that you have thoroughly considered all aspects of your university application and that you have settled, for some major reason on AU as your first option university.

In line with the current response that you have, it would be best if you tried to revise it to show a familiarity with the university and its new spaces for learning. It really sounds like your dual personality essay would benefit from connecting the 1.5 million square feet expansion that the university recently completed. You could also consider how, as an "eagle", you can act on your aspirations and passions. The university prides itself in its community service to maybe there is something there that can help you define what it would mean for you to call yourself an "AU Eagle".

I've already directed you toward some of the commonalities between you and the university based upon what you have currently written. What you have to do now is look up further information on the internet regarding the expansion and how it can relate to you. Keep in mind that as an "eagle" you have the ability to soar and learn all over the expansive campus. So think "the sky is the limit!" when you revise your response. Show how you will soar as an AU Eagle instead of telling the reviewer.

Graduate / Tell us why you're here...and where you plan to go. Personal Statement for MAC program at UNC [8]

Jiayun, I like the essay that you developed but it is not always on target with the prompt requirements of the essay. There is a reason that the university gave you a number of guide questions to aide you in developing your essay. While some of your response can be assigned as a response to the question posed, not all of your responses are aligned with the guidelines. You don't have to worry though, you can still manage to align your revised essay with the prompt.

In order to properly revise your essay, you should not write the response in essay format yet. It would be best for you outline your response in a question and answer format first. If you write your response to the questions in that method, you will have effectively drafted your essay in a more prompt adherent format. One reason that this method of drafting your essay will work well for you is because you will be able to expand upon your response without being distracted by the other unrelated essay content.

Once you are satisfied with that you have written in response to each question, you can now take those numerical responses and format it into a draft essay, which you will then review for length and content. If you feel that the essay is running too long, you can now edit it for length. At this point, we can also better help you with regards to the editing of your content and tightening of your essay coverage. Right now, I don't really feel that the essay you developed reflects the information that the guides were trying to lead you to answer.

Writing Feedback / Using media gives many cons on individual relationship between citizens. [3]

Hi Louchin, when you post your essay for review, please always remember to post the original instructions / prompt for the essay. As a reviewer, we need that information to guide us in reviewing certain parts of your essay. Mostly it helps us to judge your task accuracy band score. With that said, I will now proceed to give you a general review of your writing task.

In terms of your essay topic paraphrasing, I do not feel that you did a very good job on it. I did not get any background information regarding the actual prompt topic, what the discussion is supposed to cover ( aside from your opinion), and what sort of succeeding discussion I am supposed to expect in the next paragraphs. There is a lack of clarity in your paraphrasing of the topic so the actual theme of the essay is not properly presented to the reader.

When you say that there are pros and cons to an issue, you must make sure to dedicate one paragraph specifically for the pros and another for the cons. The way your essay sounds at the moment, there is no separation in the discussion. This produces a lack of clarity in your thought process and shows the examiner that you do not have any really cohesive and coherent ideas for discussion regarding the topic.

If you think that merely saying "I think..." in the concluding paragraph represents your opinion in the essay, you are badly mistaken. Your opinion should be a full paragraph on its own that clearly depicts your opinion, ideas, and examples in support of your stance. So what you wrote is not really a conclusion but rather, another paragraph that represents your opinion.

Overall, you need to work harder on the formatting of the essay. You must pay attention to the way that you discuss the topics. Make sure that you try your best to present a logical thought process in your succeeding essays in order to help you improve your test scores. At the moment, this essay would fail within the band scores.

Undergraduate / I have a dual personality. What would it mean to you to call yourself an AU Eagle? [5]

AvR, the first question that I need an answer to from you regarding this prompt is, which branch of American University are you applying to? Are you applying to the main campus in Washington, D.C. or one of the out of the country branches? Your response to the prompt will somewhat depend upon which branch you are applying to because of the type of mindset connected to the particular location of the university that you are applying for admission to.

In order to properly answer this question, you will have to relate one of your particular personalities to the university. This could be a trait of your that identifies with the mission and vision or objective of the university, or, it could be something about the campus, the learning environment, or other things that makes the university special to its students. You will need to do a little research at this point because the response that you have now, doesn't really reflect the kind of intimate response that the prompt requires. I strongly suggest that you look into the background of the campus that you are applying to and try to relate to that campus in particular. That is one of the main reasons that I am asking you about which campus you are applying to.

Writing Feedback / New Zealand: the cricket as a sport which attracted the smallest number of girls to involve in [6]

Nguyen, in my opinion, the first version better reflects the chart information. By the way, please remember to include the chart, diagram, illustration, or whatever file it is that you are basing the information on. We use it for comparison purposes with your essay. The reason that I say the first essay works better is because it covers the minimum 3 sentences per paragraph requirement for this writing task. It seems to present an accurate depiction of the (unseen) information from the chart. This is why we need that chart from you, we need to make sure the information you are presenting is accurate and does not have a different meaning from what the chart is providing. Overall, I believe that the first version would work best in an actual test setting.

You should develop the confidence to present only one essay for our review in the future. That is because in an actual test setting, you will writing under a time constraint and will not have the opportunity to present two versions for the examiner to choose from. It is of the utmost importance to your final score in the actual test that you accomplish your practice tests under the same time pressure setting as the actual test. There are certain liberties, such as writing two essay versions, that will not be available to you at that time. So you need to make sure that you always get it right the first time. These practice tests are meant to help you develop that skill and confidence prior to taking the test. So always do the practice tests under actual test settings. No exceptions.

Writing Feedback / Artificial gills enabling human to breath under the water. [2]

Nina, once again you seemingly present a personal opinion in what should be an objective summation of an article that you have just read. By the way, were is the link to the article for our reference? The summary is good but lacks in actual information since you do not refer to the proper keywords, terms, or descriptions for the various options that you present in this essay. Who were the scientists who undertook this experiment? Where was it done? You have to refrain from making these summaries an opinion paper because your opinion is not called for.

So do not use terms such as "Needless to say" because this connotes a personal opinion on your part instead of information coming from the essay. It also changed the overall focus of the essay from a summary to an opinion because you placed it at the start of the summary introduction. Always make it clear that you are just offering a summary of information and content and not a personal opinion. That is easy to do provided you stop using words that define the content as an opinion rather than a part of the information from the original source.

Writing Feedback / The finding of two studies that aims to ask workers which the varied skills should they have. [2]

Lincoln, there was only one study covering 2 questions presented in the chart. So you made a mistake in your summary overview regarding that part of the information provided. You need to be careful when presenting information from the essay. You will be losing points for those mistakes. You should also have proceeded to divide your single long sentence into 2 sentences so that you could have met the minimum 3 sentence requirement per paragraph for this task. Sadly, meeting the minimum sentence requirement per paragraph was a consistent problem in your essay.

I am not as concerned with your grammatical problems as I am with the way that you were unable to meet the immediate requirements of the essay for one reason alone. You manage to include all of the required information from the chart in the essay, but in the wrong paragraph format. One major error can create a major deduction in your points. That is why I am very concerned with the presentation of your essay. Remember this, make it your mantra "3 sentences minimum , 5 maximum sentences per paragraph" and you should be able to meet the format requirement every time you write a task 1 essay.

As for the grammar accuracy, don't worry about it. You did well in terms of presenting the information from the essay. Like I said, it is not the grammar that should be of concern here. Rather, the fact that you are unable to divide your sentences into proper complex or simple sentences is what you should focus on improving in your upcoming essays.

Writing Feedback / The electronic media impacts on the alteration of human behavior which tends to be more individual [3]

Hi Lincoln, your essay is a very good attempt at providing you with a high possible score for the prompt. Your paraphrasing and presentation of opinion in the first paragraph is acceptable and shows that, although your language might be weak, you actually did understand the instruction provided for the discussion. Succeeding discussions might have some mis-used words such as "friendly-user" which should have been "user-friendly", but your discussion contained coherent ideas that resulted in an acceptable cohesion in the overall paragraph presentation. I applaud you for your desire to use a higher level of vocabulary and your obvious attempt at creating better complex sentences. Overall, I believe your band scores would be as follows:

Task Accuracy - 6
Cohesiveness & Cohesion - 6
Lexical Resource - 6
Grammar Accuracy & Range - 6

Basically, I think you stand a pretty good chance of further improvement in your band scores based upon your performance in this writing task. Keep up the good work. You are getting to the point where you need to be in order to pass the test.

Undergraduate / How my inability to speak has affected me in negative ways [6]

See if this conclusion works for you.

My religious belief caused me to be bullied by so-called "friends" for 8 months. I kept silent as they mocked my cultures dress style, traditions, and artistic dance style via social media, racist actions in face to face settings, and condescending actions. They made me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome every chance they got. I kept silent because I feared that speaking up for myself and my background would make the harassment even worse. I endured the discrimination out of fear of being labeled as a "sissy", a "crybaby", or a socially inept person. All of which I knew I was not. My upbringing and religious training became my enemies in this case. The silence that I was taught was to be my protector in times of doubt and fear was turning into my worst enemy. A far worse enemy than my friends or parents could ever be to me.

My inability to speak, the silence that I was trained to use in order to avoid conflict or end an altercation caused the most negative effects on my life. My silence allowed people to walk all over me like a doormat because I did not want to risk breaking with my traditional training an escalating various situations in the process. My silence told those around me that it was alright to mock me, kick me, and ridicule me. They would get away with it because I would choose to remain silent. Was silence really bliss in this case? Maybe for others, but not for me. I acknowledge that silence can be a friend in most instances. However, for me, silence was the enemy that I could defeat in most personal and social settings.

You can make this the basis of your revised conclusion. Good luck with your revision work!

Undergraduate / Why Information and Decision Science essay [3]

Zuzzana, what you have here is a very badly developed personal statement that does not relate in any way to the question that the prompt has posed before you. The question is about your choice of major/minor at UIC. I do not know how you got the idea that you should tell a story about what happened to you when you were 4 years old or asking your aunt for a Tamagotchi toy was the right response to this question. Let me see if I can explain the prompt expectations to you below.

The Information and Decision Science major is a course of study that would be of high interest to someone who has a great interest in two fields of study, computers and business management. Why is that? The course focuses, specially at UIC, on Information systems, operations, supply chain management, and business data analytics. Therefore, you should only be applying for this major if you have an interest in becoming a 21st century business person. From what I have read of your original response, it seems that you did not do any research regarding your chosen major. Can you tell me why you chose to apply for this major? Maybe there is something that you did not properly reflect in your essay which is why the essay that you wrote became inapplicable to the prompt.

Scholarship / My country Rwanda has seen huge progress in various sectors these past couple of peaceful years... [3]

Lambert, you should shorten the presentation of the problem that your country is facing because it covers a total of 2 paragraphs in an essay that should only be 2 paragraphs long. The best way to shorten your essay would be to simply present the unemployment data for unemployed youth population of the country. By doing this, you will focus on the real problem unemployed youth of your country and, later on, the relevance of this information through the Vision 2020 program of the government.

By the way, telling the reviewer that your country is living in relative peace at the moment is unnecessary. That is not a question being asked in the essay prompt and it is not information that can help to better inform the reviewer regarding the problem of unemployment in your country either. So when a piece of information is not really helpful in the overall essay, you should just remove that reference.

For a more relevant mention of the Vision 2020 of the Rwandan government, it would be best if you can discuss how this vision has inspired you to pursue higher studies instead of just explaining the goal of the program in countrywide terms. You should immediately present your idea that in order for the government program to succeed, then the college age youth of the country needs to be prepared to carry the responsibility of making this a reality through proper education and professional preparation. Which should be the purpose of your pursuing the Mastercard Scholarship at the U of T.

Basically, your essay should be complete within 2 paragraphs, properly focused using the directions i have given you above. The essay will be short, informative, and offer a clear overview of all the necessary data for the consideration of your scholarship application.

Graduate / Scholarly and research area(s) of interest, experiences that led to your preparation in the field [21]

Shuting, in the paragraph where you are explaining the work that you are doing as an assistant to the professor, it is not enough for you to simply enumerate the work that you did and the equipment you used. It would be beneficial to your application if you can present the observations that you made while executing your duties. I am guessing that somehow, the work exposure you got during this time had something to do with your interest in higher studies. So you should try to include that information in your essay.

Regarding your post study plans, you don't have to worry about it being only something you imagine at this time. Why don't you try to include it in the essay so we can decide how to best tie it in with the previous information? You don't have a word limitation so you should consider yourself lucky. You can be as definitive, information inclusive, and detailed in your presentation. Although, I believe we should aim for the maximum 750 in this case. Anything longer may just become redundant for the reviewer.

Undergraduate / I'm writing about my interest, talent in mathematics. 'Some students have a background...' [2]

Antonio, in my opinion, the essay will work best if you remove the reference to the way that you were taught math at school which led to your boredom. Specifically, I would like to have you consider removing what you currently have as the opening statement. That is the portion that really does not help because it sounds like you are complaining about the Mathematical teaching method in school when you were younger. Let's not make any reference to age whatsoever in the essay so that you will come across as a well rounded and informed student applicant instead. Your opening sentence in your current second paragraph would really work well in enticing the reviewer to read your essay when compared to the current opening. Try it yourself. Read the essay in its original form, then remove the current opening paragraph, I bet you will spot the immediate difference.

The part that opens with "That was Six year ago" should instead open with "Six years ago, my school was invited..." Opening the paragraph that way makes the intention of the paragraph clearer to the reader. The rest of the paragraphs from that point have been developed well, as far as I am concerned.

Now, I found myself wondering if you are applying to become a Math major in college? If you are, then maybe you should consider using a different topic for this essay. The prompt is normally used to allow the student to show a more relaxed side of himself outside of his academic interests. Something that the other common app prompts did not allow you present because those were focused on discussing your chosen university or major. Consider changing your topic if I guessed right and you are a Math major. If you are not, then the changes I suggested ought to work find for your purposes.

Letters / Music Resume: Identifying Points of Confusions & Possible Solutions [4]

Hi Zhang, I ran through your resume and I think that there are certain points that you can clarify or add information to in order to add stronger content and considerations to your list. One of the thoughts that occurred to me was about the private music tutor aspect. Since you underwent it for 5 years, I can only assume that you either had one or move singing coaches (not voice coaches as those are two different terms that are sometimes interchanged) right? Were they notable singers from your country or perhaps members of international singing / music organizations? The same comment applies to your piano tutors. If so, then you should mention that :

Private Lessons:
Years covered
Under the tutelage of:
Name of singing coach
Coach organization membership

By adding this information, your make your singing foundation notable, memorable, and impressive. The idea is to inform the reviewer that you have been serious about your singing career from the very beginning and have taken great pains to ensure that you got only the best possible starter training from the very start.

With regards to your participation in the Pudong Youth Orchestra, you do not really need to put the words (city district) in parenthesis. That is not important information. Unless the actual name of the group is Pudong City District Youth Orchestra, then you can insert that descriptive term in there. Otherwise, the formal title of the orchestra will do.

You have a pretty impressive musical background. I bet you will be a strong competitor for admission based on your resume alone. Good luck with your application !

Undergraduate / Boston University supplement essay: tell us why BU is a good fit for you, why you apply? [2]

HI Jessica, there is no need for you to include the course code in your essay. The university reviewer will automatically know which class you mean if you mention the actual course. If you want to bring your word count down even more, use the course code instead. The reviewer will still know what you are talking about. Now, on to other matters.

I would not speak of the diverse campus experience at BU if you have not yet done an actual campus immersion or visit. That is because the diversity experience is not something that you can explain away in a theoretical form. You need to have actually experienced it and detail the event in your own words and experience. It cannot be based on research or interviews of alumna.

Another out of place section is the mention of Chinese as fitting well into the program. Since you are not allowed enough words to actually explain why speaking Chinese makes you a good fit for BU, it is senseless to present the information in your essay. If you can't expand on an explanation, it is best not to include it in the essay. You don't want to leave the reviewer wondering about what you mean by mentioning Chinese as fitting into the program because you left the topic sentence hanging.

Overall, the essay content that you have really is a good fit for the prompt. The only possible problem content that I can see so far, are those that I mentioned above. While I think you should totally skip the diverse experience reference, you can adjust the other parts of the essay (you make the choice) so that you can better explain the Chinese language reference that you made. It's a pretty strong draft and you should be proud of what you have written so far.

Writing Feedback / (summary)Strong Personalities Skew Study Samples [4]

Vicky, where is the link to the article that you based this summary on? We need the link in order to compare your summary with the original. Otherwise, we cannot tell if you missed some information or misrepresented some information in your summary. At the moment, what I can tell you as of this moment is that your summary is really too short at 103 words. You should always aim for the minimum 150 words per essay. This will not only show a minimal ability to develop an English sentence structure, but will also allow you to carefully present some grammatical skills and vocabulary knowledge in the essay.

The summary that you wrote does not contain any transition phrases or sentences, which makes the introduction of the various information sudden and seemingly disconnected from each other. It would seem that you just took note of some highlights from the report and typed it as it was presented. There is no development of the ideas that would have added to the information that the summary could have imparted to the reader.

You have made a pretty good effort with this summary but I know that you could do better. I look forward to your succeeding essays which, I am sure will benefit from the notes I have given you above. I hope you remember to apply the changes in your upcoming essays. That is, if you have the chance to do so.

Undergraduate / I come from a family of chefs- MIT essay [8]

Alvin, you can really discuss almost all of those points in your essay. Just keep in mind that you have a maximum word count to deal with. So it may not be in the best interest of your essay for you to be discussing so many topics in it. I suggest that you narrow down your discussion to the top 3 most important factors that helped you shape your dreams and aspirations. That way you do not find yourself suddenly at a lack of words because you overshot the maximum count.

Three choices for the discussion should be more than sufficient to cover the important aspects of the prompt. I know that you feel like a lot of factors contributed to your development but the reviewer is only interested in the most important personalities or places that helped you achieve the status of who you are today.

The only aspect that I do not believe works for the revision is your desire to explain how you shared your passion with the world around you. You are supposed to discuss how the world influenced you, not vice versa. So skip that part. You should never present information that is not being asked for or is not applicable to the prompt you are provided with.

Don't go off tangent with this essay. You have at least 2 other prompts where you may be able to discuss more of what you want to share with the reviewer. For this essay, just stick to the requirements and stay within the word limit. Keep it simple and direct to the point.

Writing Feedback / Snowman Revenge - it was built on a hydrant. [5]

Iklasul, it seems to me that you did not even try to create an original summary for this story that you are presenting. You only changed some parts to include grammatical and sentence structure errors but you did not change enough for me, as a reviewer, to not realize that you plagiarized most of the content of your summary. This is not an original summary and the original article is linked to the work that you did to prove it.

This summary would get a failing score in the actual test because you did not even try to apply some effort in properly summarizing the story. You have to at least try to write an original summary so that we can properly help you. It is better to present a bad, but original summary, then what you have presented here.

Writing Feedback / BE KIND TO OTHER PEOPLE [2]

Ahmad, do you have a prompt that you are responding to with this statement? I am not sure about how to review the content because I have no idea where your response is coming from and what it should apply to. However, even without knowing the prompt, I know that the essay is riddled with punctuation, grammar, and lexical problems.

For example, you do not have properly placed periods in the essay even though you knew to capitalize the start of the next sentence. So I knew where the next started and the other one ended. Why did you forget to place the period in those areas? The same opinion applies to the way that you did not use punctuation marks when you should have within the essay. There are also coherence problems with the statement such as the reference to someone "sues" a shirt. I am not sure what you meant by sues. Did you mean "uses" and not "sues" ?

Keep in mind that you should review your responses and make sure that the reader will be able to understand what you saying clearly. Otherwise, your explanation or response will fail in its task of informing the reader. Are you doing this exercise or a qualifying test? Please let us know because the advice for you can be adjusted even further in order to help you pass those tests. Otherwise, this basic advice will already deliver some very important reviews and advice for your English writing development.

Writing Feedback / (Summary Article) Illegal Miners in Ghana Moving into Ristricted Forest Areas [2]

Dedy, your grammar accuracy problems in the sentence development and confusing use of lexical resources have made an otherwise informative summary immensely difficult for the reader to comprehend. I found that I had to read your passages multiple times before I was able to figure out what it was that you were trying to say. Most of the problems come from your lack of English language vocabulary.

Due to your unfamiliarity with the language, you had a tendency to use the wrong term in reference to an action (e.g. duo instead of due). It would be best if you refer to a dictionary, if you have the chance to do so in order to look up the meaning of a word before you use it in the essay. Lexical accuracy is important because it shows an advanced knowledge of English language and comprehension abilities as well.

As for the body of your essay, when you say that the illegal actions of the residents are causing harm to the water and land areas of Ghana, make sure to cite the examples of the damage done from the original article. This offers the reader a better idea of the summary that you are presenting. Let's just say that what you lack in coherence quality, the example should make up for in helping the reader understand your message.

So, the essay suffers an overall task accuracy problem due to the grammatical and lexical errors which led to a very weak cohesive and coherent structure for your essay. I hope that you can address these weaknesses in your next practice test Take note of my advice regarding improving your English word usage as you write your next test. If we cannot improve your comprehension and sentence development skills, it will be difficult for you to pass this section of the test.

Scholarship / "Every strike brings me closer to the next home run" Global UGRAD Program [4]

Nikoloz, call me crazy but as I read your essay, I found myself thinking that "he wrote his application essay in reverse!" I came to that conclusion because your essay became more and more interesting as I reached the end of the paper. The information in your last paragraph has much more room for development so I felt that it was such a waste to place it at the bottom of the essay. I hope you will agree with me when I say that this statement should simply be revised in order to become an even more effective opening statement for your essay.

If your reverse the essay and place the conclusion at the beginning, totally deleting the reference to baseball because it is such a shallow reason for your to be applying to the program, and then place the statement about self - development under the new opening statement, your essay will almost be ready to use.

The story behind why you wish to become a member of Global UGrad is really admirable. However, you should add some information that shows your excitement at learning from your international group mates as well. Don't just focus on the exchange of cultures between Georgian backgrounds and American culture. You need to be inclusive in the discussion because the program will have hundreds of other students from other parts of the globe, whom you will be expected to mingle, collaborate with, and learn from during your semester abroad.

By the way, please place paragraph spacing whenever you can. The essay is difficult to read at this point because there are no clear demarcations between topics. It is difficult to figure out where one topic ends and another begins. It is necessary to do this so that the essay will not stress out the reader and make the reviewer think about not finishing reading your statement because of the difficulty in keeping track of his place in the essay reading.

You really have a pretty solid essay here. The adjustments I am suggesting are aimed at better highlighting that fact. I am looking forward to reading your revised essay. I am sure it will only get better and more impressive from here.

Graduate / Evaluate my statement of purpose for MS in electrical engineering, UC Berkeley [2]

Mounika, your presentation is that of an affidavit and not an essay. Please revise your opening statement because you need not introduce yourself in a manner that makes it seems like you are taking an oath of public office. You are only applying for admission to MS school. The format you have chosen to open the essay with is wrong. Just simply open with a statement that indicates your purpose for higher study. Be direct to the point and do not make references to your high school education.

In order to properly develop your essay there are a number of things that you have to do. First, we have to remove the wordiness of your essay. Second, we have to focus on your professional experience if any. Third, we need to present your current qualifications. Fourth, your post study plans covering 5 years at least. Finally, the reasons why you chose to apply to UC Berkley.

For your first paragraph, state your purpose for higher studies immediately. Relate it to your current work experience in order to solidify the reason for your interest in MS studies. Makes sure that the progression of academic training is consistent with the current work you are doing and any future work you may find yourself doing. Do not be too detailed in the college section. Instead, highlight your work experience, which I hope you have because work experience is vital to MS studies.

Your second paragraph, needs to explain what your thesis statement will be. Upon that presentation, you will be able to discuss how UC Berkley fits into your plan to develop this research paper. This is the section where you should show a keen interest in the course offerings, research facilities, and notable professors of the university who are working in the same line as you and possibly, developing research similar to yours. Indicate a strong desire to complete your studies at UC Berkley because of these reasons.

The third paragraph, should explain your immediate, short term career plan in relation to your studies. Are you applying because you are hoping to be promoted on the job? Possibly switch careers? Or are you just doing this for personal academic advancement? Be clear in this paragraph and make sure that the plans you present are impressive.

A fourth paragraph will just be necessary in order to wrap up your discussion. Reiterate your interest to enroll in the upcoming semester at the university and assure them that you are more than capable of completing the course of study because of your previous academic, work, and research interests / activities.

Remember, this is not a formal affidavit. This is a statement of purpose. You do not need to state your name at the start, nor swear to anything. Just follow this outline and your essay will sound more like a statement of purpose.