Undergraduate / 'a good mechanic' - The Ohio State University admissions essay (engineering) [5]

This and another of your recent comments are inane. I hope you're not planning to post yet another essay, justifying doing so with these two useless pieces of "feedback" for other users.

Now, to the statement: The story that starts it is excellent, demonstrating you to be somebody who is exactly the kind of student engineering schools are looking for. But then, when you say "unfortunately too late," that makes it seem like you don't hope to get into the school. Try rephrasing that bit. I know that you are perhaps needing to explain your initial grades and/or the time you've been out of school, but I think you can do so in a more positive tone. Also, the science guy takes us off track. Keep the essay tightly focused on your love of engineering in particular.

Essays / Essay on the poetic features in "Selling Out" by Major Jackson [5]

You may want to include a summary in your introductory passages, but I wouldn't lead with that. How long is this essay to be?

Undergraduate / RISD: Extended Rough Draft; I am an Oyster. [3]

I like the overall theme, but the essay begins to go astray when you go into details about your mother and loses it's thread altogether when you talk about your father coming home. So, my advice is to cut those bits.

Writing Feedback / Response paper for Bill of Divorcement [2]

The focus of the essay is supposed to be the smoking, but you do not mention this theme until your third paragraph. I suspect that your teacher would like to see an introduction that includes your thesis about the smoking. You probably could do with less plot synopsis. In terms of grammar, watch out for a tendency to insert commas where they are not needed. Remember, a comma signals a pause. Read your sentences aloud, pausing at every comma, and perhaps you will be able to detect the unnecessary ones.

Undergraduate / "I thank God for each one of my blessing" - University of Michigan essay [4]

Sean's advice is sound. Use this opportunity to continue healing from the experience by writing about it from the heart.

Undergraduate / "Being a Beijing Yatou..." [university of michigan (diversity)] [5]

The content of this essay is quite strong, except for the conclusion, which is cursory. However, your frequent grammatical errors undercut the strength of the essay. I challenge other forum members -- especially those from China -- to offer specific corrections.

Writing Feedback / "experience is the best teacher" - Practice essay for CLEP Exam [4]

Hmmm... I'm not sure how CLEPs are assessed, content-wise. This is fine but very rudimentary. I wonder if, perhaps, it is too rudimentary. In other words, I'd like to see you tackle the topic with somewhat more detail and complexity.

Undergraduate / "ainy Monday summer morning" - Common Application Essay - topic of choice [2]

I did not feel...
It is too early...

Do you see the problems -- one grammatical, the other stylistic, here?

I like the story and the vivid details you include.

Writing Feedback / TOEFL: Media are paying too much attention to public figures' personal life? [2]

This looks good for a TOEFL essay. Just a few punctuation problems...

The interrogations of the media often focus on information that is too personal, and they make the public figures embarrassed.

The public figures have been sick of this, and they hope that the media may go easy on them since they are just like anybody else--- a human beings .

The media should focus on the public figures' careerswhich they are supposed to do well in and leave the rest of their life alone.

(If you were to keep that clause, you would need to set it off with commas.)

Book Reports / Scout's understanding of Atticus' life - To Kill A Mockingbird -- grade 10 essay [5]

What instructions did your teacher give? Be sure to follow those! In general, it's a good idea to do some kind of "pre-writing," such as brainstorming or free writing, in order to discover what you have to say about a topic like this. Once you have gotten your ideas onto paper in that way, you can go back and organize them into an outline. Once you have your outline, you can begin writing.

Undergraduate / Intro to CommonApp Essay "Evaluate a significant experience & its impact on you" [11]


This doesn't quite make sense. "Strength in numbers," occurs only when people are united by some common cause or experience. Since there's no mechanism by which people who lost their fathers early in life can or do get together, we can't really say that this group of people has "strength in numbers."

Also, I personally find your opening a bit melodramatic. It's not that I don't have empathy for you; it's just that you seem to be setting the stage for an epic tragedy but turn out to be talking about a relatively common experience.

Undergraduate / "develop expanded thought" - UT admission essay [3]

I'm not sure that your time-traveling introduction is well suited to your subject. I'd like to see you expand and deepen your points about flat thinking, etc. with some specificity rather than going on and on about the history of our species.

Writing Feedback / Comparison essay with subject on tolerance and power. [11]


Be careful, whenever using a well-known quotation, to double-check to make sure you've got the wording exactly right, as these sayings tend to be remembered by different people differently. I'm not quite sure you've got this one quite right, but I may be wrong.

Undergraduate / Common Application Essay on Cousteau [4]

This is a good topic and a good story, but your efforts to show off your skills by writing ornately tend to backfire.


This, for example, is an unnecessarily ornate sentence that ends up making you look bad because it becomes ungrammatical before it is done. You could say the same thing much more simply breaking the sentence into two sentences and asking yourself, "really?" when you find yourself wanting to use a phrase like "vaguely obscure."

Writing Feedback / Toefl topic -- why should people attend the university? [4]

I see a problem with articles (a, an, the), which begins in the way that you have rephrased the prompt. In American English, we would say "why should people attend a university?" while in British English, we would say "why should people attend university?" Either would be acceptable. But "why should people attend the university" implies that one particular university, rather than universities in general, is the subject of the discussion.

Elsewhere in the essay, I see:

...getting a higher education will make one's personality more mature and rational...

Furthermore, the campus life helps students realize the importance of the team work.

Writing Feedback / Reserve Readings - What did I do wrong in this essay? [7]

The way that you have phrased your introduction makes it seem like you are offering only two pros: 1 - mitigate coverage breaches associated with current insurance industry practices, and 2 - eliminate privacy violations. Also, the way you have phrased it doesn't even signal that these are the pros you will address. Instead, it seems like a general introductory sentence.

Essays / Professional experience essay using I Can I Will [2]


You can't determine how to start the essay until you've decided what you're going to say in the body of the essay. Decide which aspects of your professional experience you are going to write about and to which elements of the book you are going to link them. Sketch out a rough outline of that. From there, you may get your own ideas about how to introduce the essay, or you can post the outline and we can help you.

Grammar, Usage / Structure is not as difficult as writing. [6]

Are you asking a question here, or just sharing some thoughts? If you're just sharing thoughts, I'll move this to "Student Talk."

Undergraduate / Common app essay about AMERICAN CREAM PUFFS! [14]

Your decision to be "creative" paid off. This is an engaging essay. There are a few minor grammatical fixes I'd make -- e.g., "transfixed by" not "transfixed with," unless the two of you were joined in common thrall with a third thing -- but otherwise this is excellent. Or so I think. Let's see what others have to say.

Undergraduate / I learned to enjoy spending hours after school running and spending time with my team mates [7]

This is all so vague and generic. You include a lot of pointless information, such as the facts about the new school buildings. What is the purpose of this essay, in your mind? What do you hope to convey about yourself? What is the central idea you want readers to grasp?

Essays / The prompt asks - A/D: teachers should be compensated based on how well their students do [9]

You have to think about the question a bit in order for the controversy, and your own views, to become clear. At first it seems simple: Of course teachers should be paid according to whether their students learn! But then complications creep in: Should the teacher lucky enough to be assigned a class of gifted students be paid more than the unlucky teacher struggling with a class full of students with learning disabilities? Should the teachers in districts where the students are well-fed and living in nice houses filled with books and other learning materials be paid more than the teachers in districts where students come to school less ready to learn because they haven't had breakfast, don't have a safe home to go to, and never see a book outside of the classroom? How does one measure learning anyway? Standardized tests? But those are devilishly difficult to devise without cultural biases. Etc. Etc.

Speeches / persuasive speech writing on I WILL BE THE RULER [9]

Right: That's where democracy often goes wrong, when the representatives of the people start to think of themselves as rulers rather than representatives. It's even worse for the person tapped to fill the central coordinating position, whatever that might be called. Representative democracy seems to work well at the local level, where people see and really are accountable to those they represent, but the representatives becomes more and more ruler-like as the size of the government body in question grows. However, I do seem to see a reversal of the trend in the EU these days. Something about each country being only one of a collective, the rules of which must be followed by all, seems to have an inhibiting effect on the hubris of national leaders.

Undergraduate / DISCUSSS POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SIDES OF FASHIONABLE CLOTHES [3]

The sheer number of grammatical errors in each of your essays is exhausting. Again, I am telling you that simply writing one or more essays for this forum every day is not improving your writing. The level of error is too high for simple feedback to be particularly helpful to you at this point. You ought to be in an ESOL class. If that is not possible, you should be using books and other internet sources to study basic grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Please write back to say whether you understand this advice.

Essays / Questions about starting some sentences.. [7]


Which is what happens when you ask strangers to take tests for you! It's one thing to use this forum to get feedback on your writing: Research shows that peer feedback one of the best ways to improve one's writing. It's quite another to ask an unknown peer -- who might or might not know the right answer -- to supply the replies to test questions for you!

Writing Feedback / the problems of balancing school, job and a family. [7]

What is the point of this essay? For what purpose is it being written? Have you just come up with the example of the student balancing school, job, and family obligations out of the air or is this your situation? I need more information before I can say anything useful.

Undergraduate / Question on what topic I should write about (math/science applicant) [5]

What do you want to do with your math/science degree? Do you know yet? Why are you a math/science applicant? Do you have a passion for maths or sciences that you might describe vividly by means of some story? You can't really tell the fire story unless there's some point to it; otherwise it's sheer sensationalism, which might not hurt you but won't help either.

Speeches / persuasive speech writing on I WILL BE THE RULER [9]

I was questioning the singular -- a ruler, which implies a single person ruling over everybody else, rather than people making decisions collectively, perhaps through their representatives in government or perhaps in some other way.

Speeches / Does America Still Have Heroes? [28]

Or, you could start with that recent incident where the pilot landed a plane in the Hudson River and everybody went mad with admiration, demonstrating how hungry for heroes the country has become.

Undergraduate / UF app essay two, I decided to write a completely different essay [6]


This, for example, is vague. Why would the opportunity to go to that particular school push you harder? What, exactly, would you do to maintain your academic integrity? What do you mean by "academic integrity" anyway?


This is where it really goes vague. Without knowing what your mother's disease might be, we have no way of knowing how you, or anyone else for that matter, might contribute to finding a cure. You don't say what you might want to do. Raise funds for research? Become a researcher yourself? What?

Graduate / 'Life without light, gas, food..' - diversity statement for law school [7]


Right. And draft 2 is much weaker than draft 1. As a law school diversity statement. I didn't mean that your advice was bad in general, only that it did not take into account what law schools in particular want to see in such statements.

Undergraduate / Illinois State Academic Personal Statement [6]

Right, if -- as they say -- there's something about you they should know that will not be evident from your other admissions materials (such as the reason for a bad semester that lowered your GPA or, conversely, some interests or extra-curricular activities you were not able to list elsewhere), this is your chance to share that information. Other than that, you can use the chance to say anything you like that might increase your chances of admission. Show off your creative writing, if that's your strength. Talk about your acute interest in botany if that's where you plan to go in your studies.

Essays / Stronger argument claim needed. [4]


Unless you want to come across as anti-immigrant, try to phrase this differently. For example, your theme could be that it's hard, when learning a new language, to grasp the nuances of tone and meaning that are evident to native speakers. This is true whether or not one is an immigrant. Tourists, students, ambassadors... all may err when trying to make themselves clear in a second language.

Book Reports / King Lear Essay - "abuse of power" [5]


Who made that statement? Since you are basing your essay on it (or, rather, on the refutation of it), you need to at least acknowledge who said it. Also, you need to be more clear about your thesis in your introduction, stating clearly that you agree that abuse of power is an important theme in the play, but that you believe that other themes are of equivalent or greater importance.

It's not enough, in the body of your essay, just to show that other themes exist. The statement you are refuting does not deny that other themes exist but, rather, states that all other themes are subordinate to the theme of the abuse of power. So, if you think that reconciliation or blindness are of equivalent or greater importance than the theme of abuse of power, you need to cite some evidence to support that belief.

Undergraduate / My essay is about my stream change and its benefits (hospitality management) [6]

Before we work on grammar, let's work on content. At present, your first paragraph is vague. You want to be a professional. Hospitality management is a profession. So, you want to study hospitality management. Do you see the problem here? There are very many professions other than hospitality management, many of which also may be studied by means of professional programs. You must explain why you have chosen that particular profession and, most importantly, what characteristics you have that will allow you to succeed in that profession.

Undergraduate / I've recently realized how desperately I have been searching to find myself [4]

Your grammar is fine, but you could make your writing stronger by using more active verbs. Rather than saying "the eye is... which allows us..." say "the eye allows us..."

Writing Feedback / CBEST: Bad memories should not be treated as a hindrance but as a learning opportunity. [5]

There are plenty of online sources for grammar worksheets and the like. Try The Owl at Purdue. Also, go to a bookstore and pick up a writer's handbook. Any one will do; they all have the same grammar rules in them. Browse through the options and find the one that will be most comfortable for you to use.

Speeches / persuasive speech writing on I WILL BE THE RULER [9]


A ruler? Really? That's not at all self-evident to me.

Writing Feedback / a machine that many people,including myself,are dependent on is.... [5]

Niraj, We have asked you repeatedly, kindly STOP SHOUTING at everybody. Do not, repeat, do not type your comments in all capital letters.

Kutie_9x, this is a very coherent paragraph, but I wonder for what purpose you have written it. You've posted it under "graduate admissions essays," which can't be right. I'll move it, but please give more information about why you are writing and what sort of help you want to receive.

Writing Feedback / WILL WOMEN LEADERS BE LESS VIOLENT THAN MEN, GIVE EXAMPLE AND OPINION [6]

No, Niraj is practicing for the IELTS. I moved the essay.

Niraj, your essays are not getting better. I repeat my suggestion that you do some basic grammar work rather than continuing to write essay after essay after essay.

As to content, you may be interested to know that the President of Liberia was recently quoted in the New York Times making a similar argument. However, she and others who make this argument tend to understand that the well-documented differences in male and female levels of violence are determined by a complex web of factors.

Your example of Indira Gandhi is very strange. Indeed, most people would use her, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher as counter-examples. After all, in 1972 Indira Gandhi gave the authorization for India to produce a nuclear bomb, thereby setting off the India-Pakistan arms race that continues to menace the region today.

Writing Feedback / Teacher lecture or students do some of the talking? which do you prefer? [5]

I'm not sure how "new" the discussion-based style of teaching should be considered. In American pedagogy, that style has been advocated at least since the early 1900s, when John Dewey wrote his most influential texts. And, of course, Socrates taught that way, back in antiquity!

I'm assuming you've written this as an English proficiency practice test. For that purpose, it's fine, although you will want to watch out for overly wordy ways of saying what you mean to say. Try to state your ideas in as few words as possible. Also, watch out for a tendency to combine what ought to be two or more sentences into a single sentence.