Graduate / People in my hometown always associate "project" and "project people" with hope of a better change [3]

Thao, when writing a statement of purpose, it is always in your best interest to mention as little as possible about your college background. That is because when you apply to masters or PhD studies, it is understood that you already have ample professional experience that has brought you more hands on rather than theoretical education. These higher studies always center around advanced studies in direct relation to your line of work so any of your childhood dreams, ambitions, inspirations, and high school or college accomplishments no longer apply as strongly for consideration in your application. I advise you to revise the essay while keeping the following paragraphs which strongly apply to your SOP:

Base your SOP on the following basic guide questions:
1. What is your purpose in applying for higher studies? (This is usually work related in terms of promotions and/or a change of career within the same occupation)

2. What field of higher learning are you applying to ?
3. How does your current work and training experience relate to these studies? (This would be the best place to summarize your college experience)
4. What are your short and long term goals in pursuing this degree? How do you expect it to help you attain your goals and ambitions?

Those are actually the only required information in an SOP so if you follow these guide questions, you will find that you have written a tighter and more informative SOP without really needing to use too many words.

Graduate / Rainbow nation child - Diversity Essay [10]

Anastacia, I strongly advice you not to tell the dog meat story in your essay because it is not something that is culturally acceptable to others and could affect the impression of yourself that you are trying to convey to the admissions officer. Do your best not to possibly offend the senses of your reader. Dog meat for food is something strongly frowned upon in most countries, specially the United States, which is a country of dog lovers.

Overall though, the essay seems to be working already. This is a good draft that can use some editing. However, since I advised you to take out a great portion of the essay referring to dog meat, you should revise the essay before we settle down to work on the grammar issued that exist. I want to make sure that we will have a final version that is best suited to your needs and best represents you before we deal with the errors in the paper.

Undergraduate / My classmate Chen with language barrier, due to the brain damage, caused by car accident [5]

Dominic, you unfortunately missed the point of the prompt. You were not supposed to talk about the experience of another person whom you know about. You were supposed to talk about a family member, your community, or school as the world that you come from. From what I gather from your essay, you have not even come close to answering it. You keep talking about Chang rather than yourself. This essay is supposed to discuss you, not the way you observed and tried to help another person. This is about your world and how it shaped your dreams and aspirations. That means you need to delve into the people that you interacted with who influenced the person you have become along with the dreams and ambitions that you developed. That is not the focal point of this essay and therefore, it does not answer the prompt. You need to write a new essay that better suits the prompt. Maybe you can save this one for a different app that it may apply to in the future.

Undergraduate / Meeting James Watson, best day of your life. VTech Supplement [4]

I edited the paper by deleting some sentences and rewording a few as well. This is now down to 223 words. I hope this version works for you :-)

I was one of the two students from John Champe High School who were selected to attend the Holiday Lectures at Howard Hughes Medical Institute about the Era in Genomics. These lectures were focused on how advances in genomics are helping to get a better understanding of diseases such as cancer and how treatments are rapidly improving. There were rumors that James Watson, the prominent co-founder of the DNA structure, was going to be speaking lectures. We later learned that students would get a chance to have a Q&A with him for about 45 minutes. When the time came, I finally got to ask my question, "What is some advice that you would give to high school students?" He gave a very cliche answer, but an answer that has stuck with me even though I have probably heard it numerous times; he said to "Never give up. Always keep trying and you will get what you want." Words coming from a Nobel Prize Winner mean something a lot more. Later, I even got a chance to personally talk to him for about a minute and get his autobiography signed by him. It was an overwhelming experience as I was talking to someone we had only learned about in biology books and profoundly looked up to for his work in the Human Genome Project.

Undergraduate / USC Incoming Freshman Supplements -- Both General and Viterbi School of Engineering Essays [5]

You have given very intelligent and well thought out answers to every prompt provided. I find your first answer, the one to the question about nerds, to be a highly open minded answer that should impress the reader mostly because it shows your ability to be able to see beyond social expectations, qualifications, and norms in order to see the totality of a person. As for the second prompt, I wanted to read about something more specific about your plans to use the degree. Perhaps a reference to a solid goal or hypothesis that you hope to prove or invent through your studies would have a good impact upon that statement. The prompt that I have the most problem with is your answer to the third prompt because you deviated from the topic. You should have concentrated on only the answer to the question. Remember, in an essay such as this one, which can be considered to be a part of the interview and evaluation process, you should always give direct to the point answers instead of beating around the bush as you did in this statement. Rather than referring to the arguments you had with your mother, you should have used the space to further discuss how you plan to utilize your academic exposure in the pursuit of your interests.

Writing Feedback / Introductory Paragraph about causes of HIV in children [6]

Tamara, "indicate" means to let people know, to inform them about certain things by pointing out the details of information. So when I say indicate that it is worldwide, that means to tell the reader that the figures cover evidence coming from international sources and figures. I like your idea and approach to your essay. It is a good way to write it and it will be easy for the reader to follow the flow of discussion. The revised introductory paragraph is well written even with the existing grammatical errors. I hope to read the finished draft in the future so that I can help you clean up the grammatical errors that are sure to arise as you draft the essay :-) Good luck with your research !

Writing Feedback / Introductory Paragraph about causes of HIV in children [6]

Tamara, be sure to use the word "worldwide" when quoting facts and figures. Since you did not mention a country in particular as being the source of this information, I am deducing that you mean international figures, specially with the mention of the United Nations. However, for the benefit of those who may not be familiar with such terms, you should always be sure to indicate whether the figures are international or not in nature.

As an overview of the potential research information contained for discussion in your essay, this introduction works very well. You have mentioned enough facts and figures to keep the reader interested in finding out what you have to say in the rest of your essay. Be sure to indicate that further information and discussions will be reflected in later paragraphs. Right now, the essay seems like it going to try and discuss all of the relevant information in only one paragraph. Be sure to represent your discussion well in the introduction so that your essay discussion will have a semblance of order for the reader after you have written it.

In relation to the grammar errors, please note that the information you are using comes from previous years (2013) which means that you must use the past tense when discussing the information. Please go back to your essay and revise the tense usage so that your essay will become grammatically correct in that aspect.

Undergraduate / Samsae-third generation Korean immigrant-born in Japan - learned of my Korean and Japanese heritage [10]

I was just making some suggestions to help you out :-) I would prefer that you develop your own essay if you can. You don't have to follow my instructions to the letter if you think that there is another approach that you can take in writing the second version of your essay. I am only here to guide you and advice you until you feel that you have developed an essay that you feel is satisfactory to your needs. That means that you hold the decision reins in your hands. Write the essay the way that you feel you can do it best. I will take my cue from you and help you develop it in the way that you envision it :-)

Writing Feedback / Descriptive writing; unexpected events, unpredictable situations and unforgettable moments in life [2]

Kanyepi, before I comment on the descriptive essay, may I know what your are being asked to describe in particular? I ask this because I see a number of life events being described within the essay which I feel brings this essay into a more personal area. So I want to make sure that I don't offend you in any way with my comments or suggestions. I notice some grammatical errors that can be corrected in the essay without affecting the over all descriptive content. The essence of your essay is quite sweet and touching. I like the way you use descriptive words to move the essay along. It truly brings the reader into the world that you are describing and offers us an opportunity, even as strangers, to get to know you better. So I am sure that this is a very effective descriptive essay. With some minor adjustments, based upon the topic of the essay of course, I am sure that we can make it even better and polish it to near perfection or perfection for you :-)

Undergraduate / 'The hideous alarm sound woke me up' - Got Social Anxiety? UC personal statement 2 [18]

- Jiseung, I believe it would be best to delete this portion of your essay because it does not really help the story along. The paragraph after this contains the hook that will keep the reader interested and also provides the basis of the rest of the essay you are presenting.

You have a tendency to start your sentences with the word "because", please revise all of those sentences because one of the hard rules of English written grammar is that no sentence can start with "Because" or "And".

Overall though, the essay relates a very important personal experience for you and the succeeding aftermath of those events. It has some grammar problems that need to be corrected and there are certain parts that can still use some editing and revision but I would like you to correct the sentences that start with "Because" first because you will be using a totally different sentence which could affect the overall content of the essay. I will give additional comments and advice after I read the new sentences :-)

Undergraduate / UC essay: How my world has shaped me, from denial to embrace [2]

Lei, right now this essay sounds more like a "central identity" paper than a "world shaped my traits essay". The reason I say that is because you mostly discuss how you found yourself and the niche to belong to in the two worlds that you live in rather than how belonging to these two worlds that are in conflict within you helped to shape your dreams and ambitions in life. I suggest that you revise the essay to better reflect the dreams and ambitions that have been shaped by your experience living in two worlds. If you feel like the two worlds theme does not work for you, then discuss how your parents have helped you shape your dreams and ambitions. You did mention that they were quite supportive and they allowed you to make your own decisions. So that world, the world that you come from where your parents are there to guide you in a less constricted way makes the essay more interesting and aligned with the prompt requirements.

The essay states "the world that you belong to". Don't take that to literally mean the country or town that you live in. The "world that you belong to" can be the world that you live in with your parents, your world in school with your classmates and teachers, even the world that you share with your friends. Think outside the box. Don't limit yourself to just discussing the world as it pertains to where you live. This kind of essay requires out of the box answers. So by discussing a different world, the private one that you live in with your parents, peers, teachers, or classmates, you will be able to accurately represent the world that you live in and how it has shaped your dreams and ambitions in life. I have to reiterate this because there is nothing in the current essay form that shows any dreams and ambitions that were shaped by the events that you depicted. You described the development of your central identity to a certain degree instead.

Writing Feedback / Nowadays, technology and social media is the fourth need of people after food, shelter and clothes [2]

Nisarg, you need to review the content of your essay. While you wrote a very good essay, it does not fully respond to the prompt because you failed to properly represent and discuss the positive and negative impact of technology upon the relationships of people and the effect that technology has on the relationships of people. Your essay title is good, addressing the fact that technology has now become the 4th basic need of people. Yet somehow, you failed to properly discuss the background of the title in relation to the prompts.

For example, for the prompt asking about how technology has affected the relationships people make, I would present the positive and the negative as follows.

1. Technology like Facebook and Twitter have allowed relatives and friends to stay in touch even if they move to other parts of the world.
2. There are many criminal acts that now take place because of casual acquaintances made through the same mediums. Often resulting in murder and hate crimes.

When it comes to discussing the positive development, explain how technology has allowed people to make friends in a global world. Time differences and vast locations no longer matter when making friends and keeping those friendships alive. The negative, is that people tend to use the anonymity of the internet to do harm to others as proven by the rising cases of online bullying.

Those are just some ideas that I think you could better play around with in order to create a more solid and well discussed essay :-) Localizing the content of your essay by mentioning some events that are only known to the people of India limits the effectiveness of your statements as not all your readers can relate to what you are saying.

Scholarship / Obviously, direct communication makes conversations more clear and smooth [2]

Laurita, what is the exact prompt that you are trying to answer here? It is marked as a scholarship essay but it sounds more like a TOEFL practice test, so which is it? For a TOEFL practice test, I have to tell you that it is too short and does not follow the IBC writing requirements that are used for the TOEFL tests. You need to have an effective introduction, body, and conclusion for your essay.

All of those parts get their own paragraphs, so this bundle of a statement is really not in line with the prompt. Each paragraph needs to be fully developed with 3 or more sentences per paragraph. Most students feel comfortable using 5 sentence per paragraph so you will need to feel your way around that requirement. Since you have numbered your reasons in this essay, you should also offer a full paragraph of developed ideas for each numbered reason, separating each reason as a paragraph.

Your conclusion is also improper because you presented a new idea in the last paragraph instead of summarizing the essay prompt, reasons, and your opinion. Please remember that your opinion needs to be stated as a paragraph before the conclusion. the hard rule of essay writing is that nobody is allowed to present a new idea as part of the conclusion. So you need to revise that as well.

Having critiqued the negative parts of your essay, take heart in knowing that your line of reasoning is actually very good. It can be even better once you learn to fully defend and develop your reasoning in the proper manner befitting a TOEFL essay. Yes, I said TOEFL because there is absolutely no way that this kind of prompt would be used for a scholarship application. Please double check the requirements of the essay, you did not write a scholarship essay.

Undergraduate / People around me always consider me as a bird of a different feather. UC Prompt 1 [8]

You can use this essay for that prompt Li-Wei. It pretty much answers all of the prompt requirements about how you can succeed at Penn State. I would advice you to strengthen your positive attributes as a student though in order to highlight your ability to perform well academically. You should also present a more positive outlook on your social activities at the moment so that you can portray yourself as a socially well adjusted person whose drawbacks in life only meant more success instead of obstacles that you had to overcome. If you would like to have a try at restating the essay for the new prompt, I would be more than happy to help you polish it :-)

Undergraduate / "My Life Incubator: Target" - Common App Essay Prompt 4 [8]

I would be more than happy to make suggestions regarding the second prompt. It would be best though that I wait until I have seen what you have come up with in your repurposing of the essay so that I can properly assess the content and alignment with the prompt. Just remember that you will need to keep the essence of the original paper while restating everything in a new manner. If you want to, you can keep the portions that you think are vital to the essay without revising or adding to that content. That way you will not risk getting something lost in translation. Work on the restated prompt and I will see what we can do to improve it or if it requires improvement :-)

Research Papers / Lupus and its Lifestyle - Research Paper [4]

Just post it to this thread Martiana, if you start a new thread it will just be merged here since you already started this one. The forum rules require one essay per thread per author. Remember, post the whole essay and the instructions consisting of:

1. The prompt that needs to be answered
2. The specific instructions of the professor
3. The required writing format (MLA, APA, Chicago) for proper in-text citation and reference formatting considerations
4. What you want us to be on the look out for regarding your paper.

Undergraduate / "My Life Incubator: Target" - Common App Essay Prompt 4 [8]

If you want to use this essay for the contentment app, then yes, you have to revise the essay in its entirety. Should you choose to use this essay for the second app instead, then you won't have to revise it very much. It actually answers the second prompt more than the first one which you wrote it for. You will just have to make a few adjustments to the essay in order to make it fully work for the second app but it will definitely work. In fact, I suggest that you go ahead and use this essay for the second essay prompt instead. That will save you the bother of having to develop a new topic and essay for that prompt. Just develop a new one for the previous prompt. Remember though that whatever you choose to do, we will all be here to help you review and develop it :-)

Undergraduate / I never saw myself as an average child - Elon Scholarship Essay [2]

Lauren, this is a very effective essay. You closely adhere to the prompt and explain how Stephen Hawking and your grandmother inspired your medical dreams. I would have like to see a stronger hook at the beginning of your essay though. Opening it with the statement that you father read thick books of complexity doesn't really interest the reader immediately. I suggest that you revise that part to instead reflect what drew you to read Stephen Hawking's biography instead. Maybe you had an interest in science that you did not realize you had until you came across his books which then led you to learn more about the man who made the "Big Bang" theory the most controversial scientific topic of all time? Whatever the reason was for your being drawn to his works and biography will be part of the reason that you were drawn into the medical world. The same goes for your grandmother. You can add a touch to that by claiming to have developed an interest in Oncology, thus creating a personal relationship between you and your desire to pursue a medical degree. These are just some small suggestions I am making for your consideration and hopefully, the further betterment of your already well written essay :-)

Research Papers / Lupus and its Lifestyle - Research Paper [4]

Martiana, you have a very interesting research paper that I am looking forward to reviewing.We have a problem though, you forgot to cut and paste the paper into the thread. Don't try to upload a file, we won't be able to see that here. Use the cut and paste method to get a copy to us and then make sure to supply us with the requirements of the research paper so that we will be able to base our review on the proper guidelines from your professor. We can help you with all of your concerns and we look forward to doing it, as soon as we get a copy of the paper for review :-)

Undergraduate / Meeting James Watson, best day of your life. VTech Supplement [4]

Kumar, have you given any thought to lessening the story about the trip to the event place and instead discussing more about what transpired during the event? If you speak more about what you heard, learned, and shared during that day, leading up to meeting James Watson, you may be able to create a more effective conclusion for yourself. We are talking about the best day of your life so you should concentrate on the events of the day itself instead of giving us the back story in such a lengthy manner. Don't even tell us about the bus ride. Just talk about what transpired at the event for you. Try to elaborate about the meeting that you had with M.r. Watson. Explain what it felt like for you and why that meeting has to be the best day of your life (so far). By lessening the back story and concentrating on just the event you will find that the word count will immediately be cut to almost half of the requirement :-)

Undergraduate / "My Life Incubator: Target" - Common App Essay Prompt 4 [8]

Lan, the essay that you wrote is really informative and tells us about your background. However, it does not answer the prompt. What the admissions officer wants to know is where you feel content. Unfortunately, that connection does not exist for you in this essay. Target was far from being a place of contentment to you. It was a place where you learned things about life, which is not the same as feeling contentment. to better answer the prompt you should think of a place where you feel safe, secure, and complete. This could be any place that you want. You could even use Target if you want to, just make sure to tie it to a sense of contentment rather than a sense of learning so that the prompt can be properly answered. Any place where you feel satisfied even just by sitting there, such as a park or playground, is the place where you feel content. Find that place for yourself and write about it :-)

Undergraduate / "Young antique" - challenge myself; common prompt1 essay [7]


- Field training for what? Be as specific as possible, don't leave the reader guessing since this essay is supposed to be a preliminary interview that will help the admissions officer get to know you.

While the essay itself has vastly improved, there are still some areas that need clarification. I suggest that you explain why you developed a fear for trying new things and about harm coming to you. What were the reasons behind it? Did it stem from over protective parents? Teachers who feared you would have an accident during class? What made you a person fearful of the world around you? By explaining the reasons behind the fear, we will understand why it became important for you to complete the challenge you were given and how it affected the change in your personality and life.

Undergraduate / Unbalanced - I always take a closer consideration to things now. Common app prompt 1 [7]

This is a good start for your essay. Draft wise it contains all of the possible ideas that you can discuss within the essay. However, I feel that you should concentrate more on the issue of self-image as opposed to the image that society sees of you. That is the central theme that I have gathered from your essay and I can tell that it is the issue that has most helped develop your central identity. In my opinion, you should open you essay with the following line from your draft :


. Use that as the basis of the main essay theme. Discuss how you met Beth and how her condition opened your eyes to the fact that beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder and cannot be based on physical appearance or body weight alone. Then explain your background as being overweight or whatever, launching into how you used to try to keep changing yourself until Beth entered your life. Then from then on, you realized that you were beautiful just the way you are and that it is society that needed to learn to accept you because you already accepted who you are as you are. That would be a good 2nd draft that we can work on further improving :-)

Undergraduate / "The Code is Mightier Than The Pen" - NYU Supplementary Essay [10]

I made my comments below and also restructured a paragraph for you to hopefully make it work better :-)


- This is a totally unnecessary and disconnected addition to the paragraph. Just leave the paragraph as is. It works best that way :-)


- Your sentence at the end best sums this sentiment up. If you keep this sentence, you will have to explain it. The last sentence includes an implied explanation already :-)


- The best placement for this sentence would be as follows :
Being a person who learns kinesthetically, NYU will give me the proper balance in real life and classroom learning to maximize my education. In the morning, I may very well be sitting in a lecture hall, but in the afternoon I could be interning for a startup helping build the next great human technological advancement. I hope to contribute to NYU's excellence and continue my own endeavors of creating code that benefits society.

Undergraduate / Creation of a program, and how it developed me. UC App Personal Statement 2 [2]

Wilson, this is definitely an accomplishment that you should be proud of even if it happened at a very young age. The reason for that is that your acceptance was a feat unto itself and the subsequent performance that you did was a high profile event. This lays the foundation to perceive you as a unique individual who is capable of performing feats beyond your expected abilities and age. There are some grammar errors that need to be corrected though. I will present these corrections to you below :-)


- ... and a fast beating heart...


- ... approached the podium...


- .. violin to life and...




- ... rejectioncrept below...


- ...accompanied by shame, waited for me at the last chair of the section.

-I began to feel unnecessary in the orchestra. I considered leaving to save myself from embarrassment. Yet, I found a way to brush the negative thoughts aside in order to submerge myself into the music, which always lifted away my doubts. I began to develop close relationships with my fellow musicians after a period of time and, while discussing with them, I slowly began to develop an idea, a concept that would establish camber quartets... and to prevent other future members from having my experience.

- As the leader of the program, I learned break free of my inhibitions and think out of the box. I began to lead others and learned how to speak to strangers in a formal manner. Any performance mistakes that I made only served to fuel my desire to improve my craft further for the benefit of the ensemble. Tough preparations for performances brought a greater sense of accomplishments I no longer doubted myself after the success of my quarter program. I finally belonged and learned how to use my past experiences to further develop the traits that have helped to shape the person I have become. I now belonged to a musical family, the Virtuosi and learned that it is possible to overcome any challenges provided I was willing to take a chance on myself, with or without the support of others.

I reworded some paragraphs to create a better impression or impact. I felt that some of the paragraphs needed shortening and revisions so I took the liberty of doing it for you. I hope you approve :-)

Undergraduate / "The Code is Mightier Than The Pen" - NYU Supplementary Essay [10]

Lan, see if this 342 version of the essay works for you :-) I rearranged some parts and edited certain portions. I do not feel like the changes affected your message. I hope you feel the same after reading it :-)

Someone once told me, "If you are good at something, there will always be a thousand people who are better than you." At NYU, there are thousands who are just as inspired, smart, connected, bold, and passionate as myself. When you place all these people together, the possibilities for creation are limitless. As a student at NYU, I will have the opportunity to create with similar-minded people and at the same time receive a world-class education in the world's most diverse urban agglomeration.

As an organizer for HsHacks - the largest high school only student-run hackathon in the United States; I have experienced first hand the impact that programming has. When young people see that they have created working code from scratch, it inspires them to continue to create. The power to create is an unstoppable force. The power of computer science can be summed up by a new metonymic adage: "The code is mightier than the pen."...

Undergraduate / "Studying history is important to me because history is all-encompassing" Cornell Essay help [7]

Daniel, while the essay is fine as it is, I believe that adding an anecdote at the start will help explain the foundation of your current intellectual interests Since your interests are not common among most people, it would be fascinating to learn about how it developed. More importantly, it will help highlight the reasons why you believe that Cornell will be the best place / university to help further hone your interests and skills in this particular field. Try to make the anecdote interesting and relevant to your latter discussions in a collective manner. Just present one all encompassing anecdote to tie the whole essay together. Good work by the way. It is a very interesting and relevant essay. It was a joy for me to read :-) The addition of the anecdote should make it even lighter and more involving for the reader.

Graduate / HOW TO STRESS MY JOB AS A RESEARCHER MORE EFFECTIVELY? sop-civil Eng. [9]

Hamed, an SOP specifically states that you talk about the "Purpose" of your application. That discussion is based solely upon your professional qualifications at present. Answer only the required questions, provide only definite answers in relation to it. Answer only the 4 questions I provided to you. That is all that is required of you at this point. You can talk about your other qualifications in another prompt. Possibly your personal statement or any prompt better suited to a qualifications discussion. If you are looking to find work at the university while you are a student there, the statement of purpose is NOT the place to offer your credentials. Wait till you are already a student at the university and look at the work employment or apprenticeship positions that will be posted in the student bulletin board and see what you qualify for. Present all of your relevant credentials during that application process. Do not muddle the issue by trying to make yourself a viable candidate for a job with a professor who does not require an assistant at this point. Just state the purpose of your application. Don't present anything else that is not required or will only make the essay boring and confusing to read. Keep it short and your application will be better off for it.

At this point,YOUR ONLY CONCERN is to MAKE A GOOD IMPRESSION ON THE ADMISSIONS OFFICER AND COMMITTEE. Work on getting into the school first and do not rely solely on the credentials you have already submitted. Each document you submit for their consideration is a part of the evaluation process. Don't rest your laurels on what you think is a strong application. The admissions officer and committee may have other ideas about what constitutes a strong and worthy student application. In other words, what you think is strong may be weak in their point of view. Any student assistant application can wait until you actually are a student in the school already. Don't jump too far ahead because these assistant positions will open up during the school year and you will have to apply for the position then. Ask yourself this, are you applying for admission to PhD school at this university or are you applying for a job at the university? If you are applying for a job then write a job application letter. If you want to attend PhD school, then write a statement of purpose to get into the school, not to get a job at the school. The choice is yours. This is all I can advice you.

Writing Feedback / Advantages and disadvantages of arranged marriages as compared to love marriages [2]

Ahmed, is this paper to be submitted as a response paper, comparison essay, or opinion paper? Can you providing the guiding prompt that you were given for this paper so that we can offer a better suited review regarding the content and format? I somehow feel that this is supposed to be some sort of formal academic writing paper either in the MLA or APA format but since you did not provide such information, I am not sure which format to use for advising you. Also, I see that you have in-text citations in the paper. Those in-text citations need to be properly formatted in order for it to become academically acceptable and verifiable. The essay is also too wordy. It is longer than it should be in my opinion and I know that it can be brought down immensely in length once you have provided the prompt or directions for the essay. Please do so at the soonest possible time so that we can better assist you with your essay review requirements :-)

Undergraduate / "The Code is Mightier Than The Pen" - NYU Supplementary Essay [10]

HI Lan, you have certainly written a very convincing essay here. It is quite informative and has adhered to the prompt requirements very well. However, I feel that you have concentrated too much on the academic side instead of offering a more well-rounded essay covering the academic and social aspects of your future relationship with NYU. You can actually do away with your introductory sentences and simply provide an immediate answer starting your essay off with


, which is the direct and immediate answer to the provided prompt. After that, you can offer a second paragraph that states something about the vibrant social life at NYU, what it has to offer you and how you look forward to participating in it and how you may be able to help bring a new kind of energy to the vibrant community. I believe that by covering the academic and social aspects of the university life in this essay, you will have a better and even stronger essay to present for their consideration :-)

Graduate / HOW TO STRESS MY JOB AS A RESEARCHER MORE EFFECTIVELY? sop-civil Eng. [9]

No Hamed, that still does not work. Do not waste the time of the admissions officer by placing so many word fillers at the start of your essay.He or she does nto have the time to wade through a wordy essay just to find out what your purpose for study is. He or she has more essays to read and finish analyzing during his or her work day. Go directly to the point. What field of interest are you applying for a PhD degree in? Why are you interested in it? What is the purpose of your higher studies? Those are the questions that you must provide overview answers to within your introductory paragraph. Steve Jobs and your dreams and aspirations from earlier in life have nothing to do with it. This course and all its elements are all about your views for your future and your future in your chosen profession. So look forward instead of backward. Inspiring quotes from other people are good in high school and college applications but do not really work at the PhD level where your only inspiration should be your personal desire to compete, achieve, and lead in your current profession :-) That is what you need to reflect in your essay. Nothing more nothing less, most specially for the introductory paragraphs.

Undergraduate / My life, for as long as I can remember, has been rather good. I have always had advantages. UC essay [4]

Navin, can you provide me with the UC prompt that you are planning to use this essay for so I can better decide upon whether you can repurpose this essay or not? I would really appreciate it :-) That said, I have to tell you that repurposing your essay for use in a different school prompt does not come without hardships. You see, the essay will need to be carefully reworded, rephrased, and rewritten in order to make it seem more different than the original. When that process is done, you may find that there were portions where things got lost in translation or totally disappeared content-wise. I think you can avoid such pitfalls if you work with us here to make sure that the essence of the essay has remained the same even if you repurposed the paper though :-)

Undergraduate / The world I come from : small city / digital world (Two ideas - choice) - MIT [6]

Melati, I am offering a different opinion regarding your choice of worlds. As per my analysis of the requirements of the essay, the true world that you come from is best described by the first essay that you wrote. Why did I say that? It is because the first essay relays the message that your parents served to inspire your desire to become a doctor. As the essay prompt states, you need to describe a world where your parents, peers, or school helped to shape your dreams and aspirations. You have made the point that your parents were an integral part of the world you came from with regards to supporting your medical school ambitions. That clearly answers the prompt requirements.

However, you are mistaken when you say that you come from the online world just because the opportunity to apply to MIT would not have existed for you before. The limits of your dream were not hindered by your location or the abilities of your country to send students overseas for school. Long before the internet became the method of choice for applying for studies abroad, there were already students just like you from other countries who attended MIT, Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and other universities. No Melati, your dreams are not limited by the world you see. You are the limitation of your dream. If you say you cannot do something, then it does not matter what the online world, offers, you won't be able to do it.

So here is what I suggest, use the first prompt since it best answers the requirements of the essay prompt. Delete the part about the limitations of your dream and instead, develop the paragraph about your world where your parents support you and your dreams. Discuss how they did that since they are an integral part of this essay. 3 paragraphs should be complete for this essay. The first paragraph introduces the world you come from (your parents supporting your dream), the second describes how that world evolves (your parents doing what they can to help you achieve your dreams), then the conclusion which explains how everything they did to support you and your dreams has shaped your dreams and aspirations for the future.

As for your second essay, I do not feel that it completely provides the information required by the prompt and cannot compare to the possible improvements and enhancements that you can easily provide in the first essay, which already carries the elements in the essay prompt that just need to be polished and expanded in order to make it even better. My opinion is that you have a better shot using the first essay :-)

Undergraduate / I'll tell you something about me: I am alive... Penn State Personal Statement [2]

Kyra, I have a bit of advice for you. Rather than positioning the essay to show that you are alive, why not make it show something else? Instead of saying "I am alive", say "I was lost but found my way back" and then start with how your parents divorce affected you and then go into some details about your downward spiral, highlighting the event that made you realize that you could still turn things around for yourself. Then expand upon how you found yourself and continue to improve yourself by using the tragedy in your life as an inspiration to always do better in your life. Show us that you want to prove your detractors and your parents (if it applies to them as well) wrong. That will be a better statement than saying "I am alive" because you were never dead and neither did you have a health scare that could have ended with you dead. If you meant you were dead spiritually then you have to revise the whole essay to reflect that :-)

Undergraduate / People around me always consider me as a bird of a different feather. UC Prompt 1 [8]

Alan, what you wrote is a personal statement, not an essay about the world that you come from. While there are points in your essay that touch on that prompt, the overall essay does not fully describe the world you came from and how it helped shape your vision. The reason that this happened is that you included a few statements that do not relate to the prompt. The paragraphs that I am referring to are as follows:


Once you remove these paragraphs and then develop more paragraphs around describing how your world made you feel restless and depressed. Then use that emotion to describe how you slowly realized that you were being stifled in Chinese schools so you developed a desire to break free and study where you could enjoy freedom and a sense of self that was not influenced by your traditional culture and tradition. This is not an essay about wanting to become an architect. That is not the question being asked. You are being asked to describe how the world that you came from helped you to become the person that you are today. So any references to your chosen major does not have a place in this essay.

Undergraduate / Samsae-third generation Korean immigrant-born in Japan - learned of my Korean and Japanese heritage [10]

Here is what you can do in order to highlight your hybrid personality. Leave this particular essay as is for now and write a second one. A totally new one in which you discuss the positive and negative aspects of being a third generation Samsae. What was it like growing up? How did you feel when you're heritage was questioned? How did you manage to merge both worlds on your own? What makes your story special is the fact that you have two highly different and unique blood lines to call upon on your world. Try to make the specialness of these two worlds reflect in your essay. Be sure to let us know that in the end, you were the only person who knew how to merge these two worlds into one person in order to create a unique Samsae in your person.

After you do that post the essay here so we can compare the two and talk about which particular version would work best for you. It is the only way we can play up the hybrid heritage on your part. I hope you won't mind having to write a new essay. I am willing to work with you on it if you feel that you want to try that route :-)

Undergraduate / I come from a world of fantasy - The World that inspired me is the Anime World. [7]

Andrew, while you present a very vivid and inclusive description of the two worlds that you come to, I am afraid that your essay did not manage to go beyond that. You were not really able to explain how belonging to these two worlds helped to shape your dreams and visions because you did not present any dreams or visions in your essay.All you presented was an idea of how your dreams and hopes would continue for as long as your excitement for these two worlds exist. We need to see something more solid in this essay. Something along the lines of the two worlds merging and developing your interest in a specific field of study, hobby, or view about life. That is the message that the essay is asking you to deliver as you discuss the world that you came from. It is in understanding this world where you developed into the person that you are today that we will truly understand how you arrived at this point in your life. Try to revise the essay to be a reflection of that need in the essay.

Undergraduate / Samsae-third generation Korean immigrant-born in Japan - learned of my Korean and Japanese heritage [10]


- Since my sophomore year in high school ...

The essay is as good as it can be in my opinion. It already represents you in a way that I can tell truly satisfies your wish to be identified through this essay. There are still some portions that you can edit to make the essay shorter, such as the events that happen to you at the museum. I am suggesting this because the museum is not the world that you come from and yet it takes up half the essay content. The world that you come from is the hybrid Japanese and Korean world. I believe you should be concentrating more on that aspect of your personality in the essay but I believe you do not feel too comfortable discussing that so we can stick to what you want to discuss :-) If you feel the same way as I do, then the essay is ready to use. If you think you want to work on it some more, then let me know what you want to do so that I can help you with it :-)

Undergraduate / Criminology as my planned major - UC Transfer Personal Statement [3]

Oscar, I was wondering if you have given any thought of how you can connect your volunteer experience with safety and security which is a major part of law enforcement? The reason that I am making this suggestion is because you were always placed in a position of responsibility with children or members of the community who would not know how to protect themselves in instances of danger. You being a law enforcement minded individual would always have their safety at the forefront of your mind. It would be very possible that while you were doing these other activities, you would also be looking out for them and keeping them safe somehow. If you can present something in that light, I am sure that you will be able to present a side of you that has relevant volunteer work experience :-)

Graduate / Without continual growth and progress - improvement, achievement, and success terms have no meaning. [5]

Dan, the problem with your essay is that you rely too much on your college experience rather than your professional experience. As a masters degree student, you are expected to have completed at least 2 years of hands on work experience in the field of study that you are requesting to be admitted to. That means that more weight shall be given in the consideration of your application to your professional rather than academic experiences. That said, you can still revise the essay to better suit a statement of purpose for masters studies. There are really only a number of factors you have to present for consideration in this particular essay. These factors are:

1. The field of study you are interested in in relation to your current career.
2. The reasons for your desire to achieve higher education levels in this field.
3. A brief summary of your college education.
4. Your current work experience in relation to the field of master studies.
5. Your short and long term goals that relate to the the need for higher academic training.

Once you shorten the essay and reflect these information in it, I will be able to help you further with the word count and paragraph editing to tighten the essay while keeping it informative just the same :-)