Undergraduate / LITERATURE TO MEDICINE; UT at Austin - TRANSFER (SOP) [14]

Great advice from Kevin. You could write on a personal issue, but taking a stance on a medical issue would do more to advance your application, because it would show that you are informed about the area of study you are applying to join.

Essays / Satirical Essay about embryonic stem cell research [6]

"I wish George W. Bush would end up paralyzed and in a wheelchair for vetoing Stem Cell Research" But this is not, in and of itself, an appropriate basis for satire. It is merely an expression of deep bitterness that lacks any real humor. This topic was satirized, however, by South Park, in which Christopher Reeve first recovers from paralysis, then gains superpowers, by sucking the stem cells directly from fetuses. This was excellent satire, in large part because, like much of South Park's humor, it satirizes both sides of the issue. It shows how ridiculous opposition to stem cell research is, because of course stem cells are produced in petri dishes and then injected, not sucked from fetuses ripped from the womb in the third trimester. On the other hand, for all the hype over their potential, they have not yet got anyone out of their wheelchair, much less augmented humans with superpowers, despite almost a decade of research in several first world nations (virtually all of them except America, and even America has done quite a bit using adult stem cell lines.) Thus, the South Park episode shows how ridiculous the issue itself is, being driven as it is by massive exaggeration of what stem cell research entails by both sides.

Essays / Reality TV essay - ideas to begin writing [35]

The threads close automatically after a certain period of inactivity, but if people keep posting, the threads continue to exist, even if the original author has no more use for the advice. I suspect this occurs mostly with threads that indicate an interesting topic. For instance, most people find the topic "Reality TV" interesting. Its something that most people on the forums can comment on intelligently, even if they don't really watch reality television themselves.

I'm sort of divided on how these threads should be handled. On the one hand, they distract from newer threads by people who still need help, so maybe they should be deleted. On the other hand, if people are still interested in the topic, then who's to say that they can't learn something by reading the thread and contributing to it?

Undergraduate / How is school meeting your needs? Columbia transfer essay. [14]

Good luck. Don't forget to post the revised version here for further feedback.

Grammar, Usage / Confused with MLA format and in text citations! [19]

Really? I've never met anyone who loves doing reference lists. Or for that matter, who even likes doing them. Even when I took an entire course in my Masters dedicated to explaining MLA format, I got the sense only that the professors believed that proper citation was very important, rather than particularly exciting.

Writing Feedback / wording problems in a paragraph [6]

Your friends are right. Try this: "Easy-going and often unambitious, I find that whenever I am faced with disappointing conditions, I always compromise my desires, sometimes even to the point of passively accepting that I will not get what I want." The second sentence seems to attempt to repeat the first one unnecessarily, so you could just cut it. This is of course merely my best guess as to your meaning, which cannot be easily determined from your original sentences.

Essays / Hamlet thesis - Gertrude's actions influencing Hamlet [4]

Your thesis statement in this case will merely be your answer to the question of how Gertrude's actions influence Hamlet. If you are not certain how Gertrude's actions influence Hamlet, start by listing her actions, and Hamlet's responses to them, then look for connections and commonalities between your examples. In other words, gather your evidence, then come up with your conclusion, which becomes your thesis, rather than trying to come up with your thesis first, which is really reversing the entire mental process you need to go through when writing an essay. Just because your thesis is the first thing you state in your essay doesn't mean it is the first thing you actually write on the paper, chronologically speaking.

Essays / Being Me is Special - Essay Help [8]

Start by coming up with your thesis. This could be a debatable statement. For instance, you could say that "Being me isn't really all that special. In fact, most of the key elements that define my life are virtually identical to those that define other people's lives." Alternatively, your thesis could merely be a statement of fact about yourself that you plan to discuss in detail. For instance, you could say, "Being me is special because I hear voices that tell me to kill people." Then, you could discuss how hearing voices telling you to kill makes you special.

Once you have your thesis, try to think of as many details as you can that relate to it. Then organize those ideas in some way that makes sense to you. That will give you a first draft that you can post here for more feedback.

Dissertations / Lit Review: How do I show I've critically analysed the studies I've read? [11]

Well, if people are telling you to critically review the literature, you might start by looking at where the literature contradicts itself. In other words, there must be some studies that indicate that some approaches to counseling psychology are better than others. However, they probably don't all agree on which approaches are best, or else everyone in the field would use the same approach. But, if the literature contains such disagreements, then you should be able to decide which side you are on, and explain your decision with reference to the strengths and weaknesses of the research you have read about. This is the best advice I can give you given the extremely general nature of your query. If you could post more information about your topic, that might be helpful.

Undergraduate / How is school meeting your needs? Columbia transfer essay. [14]

The essay at the moment tends to be wordy without actually saying much of interest. Try focusing more on the specific drawbacks of Edmonds, and on how Columbia, specifically, can help you address those drawbacks in a way that other universities could not. This would give you a more focused essay, while at the same time giving you something meaningful to say so that you could write concisely while still filling the page.

Undergraduate / Do you think that you are a particularly suitable candidate for an award [4]

The length is excessive. Cut stuff out ruthlessly, as Kevin suggested.

Coherency seems okay, though I tend to lose focus part way through, owing to the essay being long and wordy, rather than concise and interesting (see previous comment).

Other stuff you might want to consider:

"I still hated the sight of him in pain"

"The agony of seeing someone you loved in pain affected my whole being positively." I am certain you don't really mean this. Agony, by definition, is a negative emotion. If it affected your whole being positively, you would seek it out. Thus, logically, you would go out of your way to hurt those you loved so that your whole being could experience the positive effects of the agony of seeing them in pain. Revise.

Undergraduate / Personal statement for UW app; "How on earth did I get here?" [6]

The good news: you have a very, very interesting and well-written narrative essay here. You tell a solid story of a person who fell on hard times but who decided to turn his life around. Great job.

The bad news: "Mine has close to 1,500. Is that bad?" Yes. Yes it is. If you had gone over the maximum word count by, say, 75-100 words, the ad reviewer might not have noticed, but an extra 500 words in a paper meant to be 1000 is going to be noticeable right away. In fact the reviewer will probably notice this even before he starts reading. So, his very first impression of you will be that you are someone incapable of following simple instructions, which is not a very good first impression to make on the person responsible for deciding whether or not you get into the university.

So, you need to cut down the length of the essay ruthlessly. I would suggest you focus mainly on the material in the first half of the essay, in which you talk about your troubled relationship with your parents. You need to mention a bit of this background to explain how you ended up in the cop car, but you can probably condense a lot of it. Really, in these sorts of essays, it is good to focus as much as possible on the positive aspects of you. Your troubles with your parents, while interesting, don't really give the admissions officers a reason to think you would be a good student. So, only mention enough to support the narrative idea that you have turned your life around.

Good luck.

Writing Feedback / Essay On Comparisons of Trials and Their Respective Jury Proceedings [4]

If you are going to use 12 Angry Men as the text, you need to find a trial where one of the jurors wrote about the jury deliberations afterward. Otherwise, it will be difficult to compare the fictional trial to the real one. If you had chosen to use To Kill a Mockingbird, you could compare the trial itself to the real trial of McVeigh. For that matter, don't the assignment instructions specifically ask you to compared the trials, rather than the deliberations that followed them? As it stands, your essay seems to ramble a lot because you are trying to compare two somewhat different things, a trial with a set of deliberations.

Essays / Satirical Essay about embryonic stem cell research [6]

First, you would research the topic to learn about the subject. Then, you would decide whether you support the technology or not. Once you know which side you're on, you would look at the arguments advanced by your opponents, and ask yourself how those arguments are not only wrong, but ridiculous. Finally, you would decide on a scenario you could describe that would show your reader just how ridiculous those arguments were.

For instance, a while back here in Canada, Jean Chretien, our prime minister at the time, refused to replace our army's helicopters, even though they were falling apart and were the country's main search and rescue vehicles. A satirical television show did a skit that showed two soldiers desperately trying to keep their helicopter in the air, fixing mechanical problem after mechanical problem. A call came through telling them that a plane had run into engine trouble, and was about to crash into the Atlantic, and that they needed to change course to pick up the survivors.

"We're on our way," the pilot replied.

"Hurry," said the dispatcher. "This wasn't just any plane -- it was the prime minister's plane -- he was caught in a storm on his way back from Europe. We have him on the radio now, and he says they'll only be able to maintain altitude for another five minutes at most."

"The Prime Minister's plane?" replied the pilot. "And you have him on the radio? Oh. In that case, tell him we won't be able to make it."

"You won't be able to make it? Why not?"

"Tell him we're flying unabled"

"Flying unabled? I don't understand," the dispatcher said, confused.

"Just tell him we said F. U., He'll know what we mean."

The clip works by pointing out how ridiculous it is for a man to refuse to properly fund people that he personally might need to save him some day, while also capturing the resentment of the military in a humorous way. If you want to read some satirical essays written by other people, try the articles listed here cbc.ca/national/rex/ or else find a copy of "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. This should give you a sense of the general techniques used by satirists.

Undergraduate / LITERATURE TO MEDICINE; UT at Austin - TRANSFER (SOP) [14]

It's such a relief reading essays written by people who were once aspiring writers -- they have such a strong style and sense of grammar. A few minor proofreading things, though:

"In comparison to what the professionals were doing, the tasks I was given were small, like pulling the crash cart into the room, or getting rid of needle packaging."

"For now, I am completely devoted to my studies and want nothing more than to learn and retain every piece of information that I can; that way, I can be the best nurse to my patients."

"this time not as a volunteer but as a nurse, and I look forward to that day."

Writing Feedback / Yet another essay on television... [6]

Your essay is very well-written. If you have the room, you could improve it by addressing possible objections to your arguments. For instance, how would you respond to the following:

"I'm pretty certain that if my daughter went out to play, and noticed her friend had a new I-Pod Touch, that she would want one too." Yes, but she would only be able to want the things her friends had. Whereas, with television, she can see, and so want, an unlimited number of things. Moreover, she may see many things that her friends have that she personally has no interest in, whereas, most of the things she sees in ads will interest her because the ads have been designed to have that effect.

"In response to public concerns the television industry and the FCC devised a simple and easy to use guide: the T.V. Parental Guideline system." This assumes that parents are always around to make sure their kids aren't watching inappropriate material, or that kids always obey their parent's instructions.

"Obesity in childhood and adolescence can be primarily related to lack of exercise " Watching television is of course a completely passive activity. So, it is all television's fault.

"Putting your foot down and saying "no" can be a difficult task for many parents who want to please their child." Impossible, actually. Most parents today accept the notion that corporal punishment is always wrong. However, authority rests entirely on the threat of force, either directly or indirectly. A parent who cannot use corporal punishment is not in charge of the house -- the child is. Thus, they must do what they can to please the child. Television makes this more difficult. Ergo, it is a great household evil.

You don't have to address all, or for that matter, any of these objections. Your essay is fine as it stands. But, if you're looking for some way you could strengthen it . . .

Essays / essay- sell something absurd using propaganda techniques [7]

If the important thing is to live in the now, to seize the moment, then keeping track of time, looking to future, as it were, is presumably a bad idea. A watch with no hands would be a great way to avoid this. Also, if you were in the habit of constantly looking at your watch, every glance would be a reminder that you should be too busy doing something meaningful to be clock-watching.

Undergraduate / U. of Wash. -- Transfer Application Essay (Personal Statement) [8]

Great second draft. Make sure you use tenses consistently, though -- you tend to drift between two different ones in the same sentence, as in the following examples I corrected for you:

"it is important to surround myself with people who share the same work ethic and integrity that I do ."

"I wanted to use my intelligence to analyze data and make decisions, and after I spent time studying my career options, I decided to change from linguistics to business and economics."

"and also provide me with a great resource for any questions I have about the UW"

Writing Feedback / English Class -- persuasive essay -- School Uniforms [3]

I don't know who told you that hyperbole was an effective persuasive technique, but they did you a grave disservice. To be persuasive, you must either appeal to your readers emotions, craft a logical, well-reasoned argument, or, ideally, do both simultaneously. Hyperbole might entertain me, but it won't convince me of the validity of your arguments (quite the opposite), and while I might be amused, I probably won't feel particularly strongly about the issue of school uniforms. Thus, your essay fails to employ either of the two main persuasive techniques that you could legitimately turn to.

So, to revise this essay, you might want to start by doing some research and coming up with evidence that you can use to form a logical argument around your thesis and evidence you can use to support your main points. For instance, you write that "School Uniforms limit free thinking, and creativity." What evidence do you have for this? There must have been some studies carried out that would either prove or disprove this. Or, you could look at famous historical figures known for their creativity. So, Picasso, Einstein, Wagner, etc. Where did they go to school? What were those school's policies on uniforms?

"When kids are in school, they will always be distracted. If you remove one distraction, they will just concentrate on something else." Yes, like their schoolwork! You have disproved your own position. Even if you rephrased it, the logic will remain shaky: if kids are easily distracted, that seems like a good reason to remove as many distractions as possible, not like a reason for giving up on not distracting them!

"After kids graduate from school they would have no idea how to dress themselves because they have been told exactly what to wear since they were born." This is just silly. At worst, they would continue to dress relatively formally, hardly a catastrophe for the world.

"Also, schools are doing just fine without uniforms," Again, some evidence would be nice. I don't think anyone thinks schools are doing particularly well in America. Schools in other countries produce students with much higher marks. Perhaps you should look at the schools in countries with admirable school systems and see what their policies are.

Good luck.

Writing Feedback / Thesis Statement About Things I Like [4]

Not bad overall. You need to come up with a transition between playing football and fixing computers, though, and should probably deal with them in separate paragraphs. Some minor fixes and suggestions:

"The positions I played were tight end and defensive end."

"whom I was supposed to block"

"Determinedand dedicated to always be better than my opponent, I still live by that statement"

"I started playing football again, SEMI-PRO, last year and will continue to do so . " Also, unless you were playing for a league whose initials happen to spell out the word "semi-pro," lose the all-caps.

"After about 2-3 years of reading, studying, and fixing various computers," You read a computer? Did it have good character development?

Essays / Letter to a friend - a photograph of an important school occasion [7]

Good job. It meets all of the requirements listed in the assignment instructions you posted. Here are a couple of more suggestions, in addition to Kevin's:

"The photos we took at night, of our group, contained some weird things in them. "

"but this made me freak out, and realize how wrong I was"

Grammar, Usage / Confused with MLA format and in text citations! [19]

Citation is annoying because it involves an unnatural, arbitrary format that really doesn't matter to anyone except the professor, especially in undergraduate essays. Fortunately, most students only have to master one format, whichever one is standard in their field. Once they know which format they will be expected to use for most of their courses, it's just a matter of practicing it until they have the rules memorized.

Research Papers / Need a catchy funny title for a paper on desire causing motivation? [6]

The only criteria listed in the original post were that the title be "catchy" and "funny." I focused more on the latter than on the former, but I stand by my suggestions. :)

Undergraduate / Career goals and importance of college education in attaining them [12]

Your essay jumps about too much. I know that's difficult to avoid when the prompt list so many elements for you to cover, but try to come up with a clear thesis, a point you want to make about yourself, and tie everything back to that main point. Also, I'd say it's fine to say that Law and Order inspired you (its a great show), just make it clear that you recognize that the show shouldn't at this point be your main motivation, on a par with helping others. Good luck.

Research Papers / Global Warming - Research Paper, trouble writing an intro [5]

The Obama quote is neat, mostly because Obama is a historic president who hasn't been in office long enough yet for everyone to begin to hate him (though his poll numbers have already begun their inevitable decline -- on his inauguration day, 44% of Americans strongly approved of him, while only 16% strongly disapproved. As of yesterday, the numbers were 39% and 26% respectively, which, given that he hasn't yet had time to sign a single piece of legislation into law, is a dramatic drop in under a month). However, topical as he may be, he is not a trained climatologist, nor, to the best of my knowledge, does he have any special training or education in the hard sciences that would qualify him to give a more accurate opinion on global warming, than, say, me. In other words, he is actually a horrible source to use in a research paper on global warming (just as I would be), unless your topic is the power of the issue to prompt politicians and others to offer opinions they aren't qualified to hold (which it doesn't seem to be). So, quote him by all means, but then find some hard data to either prove or discredit what he says.

Writing Feedback / "Where is my Desktop screen?" [4]

"Desktop screen" Um, do you mean "monitor" perchance?

"they need to consider what gift will last longer given that I'm probably waiting at home with screwdriver in my hand." Excellent.

You have quite a few grammatical errors here. Go through and revise to ensure you have used the proper tense for each verb. For instance "I have always done a pretty good job in all my classes that I have taken."

Scholarship / Scholarship Personal Statement (my dream of becoming a doctor) [9]

What sort of scholarship is this, anyway? Some are predicated mostly on academic performance, some on financial need, and some on a mixture of both. If you are applying to one of the latter two types, then the prompt is essentially asking you to plead poverty. If you are applying to the first type, though, you will need to find someway of tying your academic performance and other scholastic achievements back to the prompt. "I have taken some of the most challenging classes at my school and aced all of them because I study eight hours a day, something I won't be able to do if I'm forced to slave at McDonald's flipping burgers to meet the horrendous burdens of tuition payment . . ." okay, that's a bit over the top, but you get the idea.

Writing Feedback / Geo Project - Vehicles in the Lower Mainland [3]

Please refrain from posting useless posts, such as "well . . ." over and over again in different threads just to boost your post count. These posts will merely be deleted by moderators, and so do not apply to your post count anyway. Moreover, if you keep doing it, we will begin to get annoyed, and suspend your account. The forum rules are meant to encourage people to help each other out by giving each other constructive criticism. This not only helps out other people using the site, it will help you out too, because there is no better way to improve in a subject, including writing, than by helping others to learn it.

Book Reports / food fight or the making of a soldier, descriptive essay [7]

Well, if it's supposed to be a descriptive essay, start by picturing the food fight you are going to describe in your head. Then, write down everything you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste as you imagine the scene. Then post your draft here for more feedback.

Grammar, Usage / Confused with MLA format and in text citations! [19]

You can pretty much find guides for any citation style simply by googling the name of the style you are interested in. Good luck crafting your works cited page.

Research Papers / Need a catchy funny title for a paper on desire causing motivation? [6]

Some more clarity on the topic would be helpful. How about "Wanting to want to want what you wanted to want: the connection between desire and motivation in the modern age." Or "If I had desired to write this paper, I would have been motivated to come up with a better title: the link between desire and motivation in human psychology."

Undergraduate / U. of Wash. -- Transfer Application Essay (Personal Statement) [8]

A 3.7 GPA is respectable. If you feel the need to give mitigating details about your high school grades, you could mention how high your GPA is now, but I'm guessing that the application reviewers will mostly only look at your last two years worth of grades anyway, so you should be okay letting your transcripts speak for themselves. BTW, the overall gist of your narrative, that you have reformed yourself after drifting into a sinful, dissolute lifestyle, is actually fairly good. People love tales of moral redemption. Just try to focus less on the old dissolute lifestyle and more on the new morally redeemed one. :-)

Undergraduate / U. of Wash. -- Transfer Application Essay (Personal Statement) [8]

Well, you certainly have lived an interesting life. Now, to cut this down to size, go through and cut out anything that portrays you in a negative light (i.e. most of the most interesting stuff). If you feel the need to explain some of the negatives that the admissions people might find out about, that's fine, but do you really need to belabor, for instance, the repeated drug use / weed dealing? Or keep mentioning that you hung out with people that society would consider bad influences? In these sorts of essays, you are essentially selling yourself, and these details do nothing to make you a more attractive applicant to the university. Otherwise, you've written a solid personal essay.

Scholarship / Scholarship Personal Statement (my dream of becoming a doctor) [9]

"I will be able to relieve a small amount of the large financial burden my father and I are looking to bear." Now that Kevin mentions it, this sentence is a bit odd. Why would you and your father look to bear a large financial burden? I mean, you might have to bear such a burden, but why would you go out of your way to have to bear it? You might want to rephrase.

Undergraduate / Common app Short Answer (cyber competition) [17]

Ping pong seems more suitable as a topic, especially if you played on the district team. You should definitely focus more on your involvement in the sport at a high level and on what playing there meant to you, though.

Research Papers / Thesis Statement for global warming research paper [17]

Yeah, global warming is a hot topic, pun fully intended, so you should have no problem tracking down research sources for an essay on it.

Writing Feedback / Help rewriting Lead paragraph and Conclusion - Computer History Paper [12]

Okay, then: "my readers should care because this is the story of the personal computer which ended up affecting many aspects of our lives." So simply refine this idea to take a debatable stand on the issue. Everyone would agree that the PC has affected many aspects of our lives. But, has the net benefit been positive (more convenience, greater access to information, easier communication with people around the globe) or negative (it's made us lazier, given us information overload with information that is often of dubious quality, and replaced personal, face-to-face communication with a ersatz substitute)? The key to a good thesis is that it provokes disagreement from at least some quarters. That gives you something meaningful to argue. There is no point making an argument for something that everyone already agrees on, after all.

Research Papers / Global Warming - Research Paper, trouble writing an intro [5]

Perhaps you should do your research and write the body first, then come up with introduction afterward. Until you know exactly what you are going to say, it will be hard to summarize your essay effectively. For instance, you apparently plan to talk about "hurricanes, tsunamis, and heatwaves" as part of the global warming phenomenon. However, once you have done some research, you will learn that tsunamis are caused by earthquakes with epicenters underneath the world's oceans, and that therefore they have absolutely nothing to do with global warming. At some point, you will probably also do a search in google for "global warming past ten years," at which point you will realize that, since 2002, the global temperature has held steady, and that since 1998 the Earth has actually cooled slightly. This will make it difficult to blame any of the natural disasters of the past decade, such as hurricanes and heatwaves, that actually could be affected by global warming, on global warming. So, do your research, write up your findings, then write your introduction once you know what you plan to introduce.

Writing Feedback / "I was running" essay. Grammar and punctuation help. [7]

Ah. In that case, you're fine. The confusion came, I think, from the thread title, ""I was running" essay," which did make it sound as if your post was supposed to be an essay, which it clearly isn't.

Grammar, Usage / Marking Stressed and Unstressed Syllables in Blank Verse Poetry [4]

I see what you mean about the meter not being what you would expect. The lines seem to drift back and forth from being iambic to being trochaic. Your scanning generally seems good, though.