Essays / "Confessions of a Student" [25]

You can always make up something for this sort of essay. It seems odd, though, that you would prefer to confess to a wrong you haven't done rather than one you have, unless you have either never done anything wrong or have done only very serious wrongs! It is generally easier to write about things that have actually happened as opposed to those that you are inventing, though the latter can be easier to make interesting. In any event, the best way to start is by starting. Write down whatever comes to mind, and go into as much detail as you can. This will give you a very rough first draft that you can post for more feedback.

Undergraduate / Villanova University Supp. "Thai boy Chart" [12]

Yes, we are both nerds. :-) Continuing in that vein, I would say that "opposed to" is correct, as the "to" turns it into a prepositional phrase with its own meaning, which is roughly "instead of." So, I would use "opposed" as opposed to "apposed" in that construction. However, in that last sentence, I deliberate apposed the two words. However, if my reasoning is wrong, and the correct phrase turns out to be "apposed to," then that is what we should use. Just because a lot of people are ignorant and misuse the language doesn't mean they are right. That sort of populist sentiment strikes me as very, very American (No offense intended). I've noticed before that, rather than educate its citizens, America prefers to update its dictionaries. For instance, when I first saw the word "macabre," I thought it was pronounced "macaber," as many words that end in "re" are so pronounced. I eventually learned, however, that due to its French origins, it should be pronounced "muh-kah-bruh." At the time, even American dictionaries recognized that, but now most list macaber as a correct alternate pronunciation.

Undergraduate / how important the thesis is? [3]

You might want to connect the introduction a bit more strongly to the body of the essay, possibly by revising the first body paragraph rather than the introduction itself. The lack of an explicit thesis in the first paragraph isn't a particular weakness in this case, though.

Undergraduate / My first day at HUT, I felt an acute sense of disappointment; Significant Experience [8]

I see your logic -- the material you include is connected, but in covering so much you sacrifice the room to make what you are saying interesting. At the moment, your essay involves you telling the reader a lot of stuff about you. It doesn't, however, show the reader anything. You don't have room to go into a lot of detail about, say, a specific journal you read, what it said, and how it opened your eyes to the importance of a new topic, because you have to jump to your next subject. A more focused essay would be a more interesting one, too, because you could go into the sort of detail about a single point that would allow you to show instead of tell, but it's up to you.

Undergraduate / 'greediness in big business' - university of pennsylvania short answer [2]

This essay seems to focus more on your own view of the recent economic turmoil than on Dr. Core's research. I'd suggest that you find out a bit more about what exactly Dr. Core has been researching, then talk about which elements of his research, specifically, you would like to work with him on. A few other things:

"I will be able to work together with him "

"Dr. Core received his PhD from Wharton in 1995. I see this as a benefit because he will know how to fully take advantage of the extensive research opportunities at Wharton to a degree where other Wharton professors probably could not because he has experience as a Wharton graduate student." This seems trivial and not worth mentioning.

"I have recently gained an interest in these specific research areas due to the recent events with regards to the government bailout of AIG."

Undergraduate / summer courses through LPS - university of pennsylvania essay (courses that interest you) [3]

Well, the content is fairly good, and your grammar is generally decent, but your style is perhaps best described as soporific. I'd suggest you try rewriting the essay so that you say all of the things you say now, but in about half the word count. A good start would be to ruthlessly eliminate every instance of "the fact that" in your essay. Try using the phrase "unique characteristic" a bit less often, too. Once you've cut out all the verbiage, post the revised draft for further feedback.

Undergraduate / My first day at HUT, I felt an acute sense of disappointment; Significant Experience [8]

My first thought is that the essay seems to cover too much -- it lacks focus. You talk about your disappointment with HUT, your desire to go to an American university, your decision to learn English, your development of your interests, the importance of your family, and the help given to you by your friend Duc Ahn. Decide which of these elements you most want to talk about, then condense/eliminate the rest in order to make room to expand on that one topic.

Undergraduate / Metallism: a real unorthodox commonapp essay [8]

You should probably not submit an essay that compares Jesus to heavy metal music. The key to writing effectively is to know your audience. If you were writing for heavy metal fans, then your essay would be great. If you were writing purely for yourself, it wouldn't matter in the slightest. However, you are writing for university application reviewers. Some of them may be deeply Christian, and likely to be offended by the comparison. Moreover, even if they are not, the essay doesn't tell them much about you except that you are likely to pollute their campus with music they probably dislike, and that you have the political sensitivity of . . . well, someone with no political sensitivity. These are not qualities that are likely to get you admitted into the university. If you want to talk about heavy metal, get rid of the religious comparisons, and replace them with a discussion of how your love of heavy metal indicates something good about you.

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

It could be useful. The reasons why people watch reality TV will presumably influence the way it develops. If people watch it because they enjoy seeing other people backstabbing and plotting against each other, then we would expect reality television in the future to involve more contrived situations that force people to plot and scheme to succeed (so more Survivor type shows). If people watch it to cheer for the success of someone "normal," then we might expect more shows that give ordinary people a chance to become famous (so more American Idol type shows). If people watch reality TV for both of these reasons, then you might begin to see hybrid shows, perhaps versions of American Idol that allow contestants to find ways to weaken or strengthen their competitors.

Essays / Essay: how does a malls design affect the identity of a visitor? IDEAS? [3]

Careful you don't end up writing on the wrong topic. It sounds like you might be about to write about how the identity of expected visitors affects the way malls are designed. Or about how a mall's design affects visitors differently depending upon their identities. However, neither of these is the topic you have posted. Instead, you have been asked to write about how the design of a mall helps shape the identity of the visitor. So, ask yourself what identity/identities a mall might want to impose on its visitors. Certainly, at the top of your list would be "consumer," but "good citizen" might also apply (so they respect the stores and don't litter or damage the mall). You can probably think of a couple of others with a bit of effort. Then, ask yourself how the design of the mall is meant to encourage visitors to adopt those identities.

Essays / "Confessions of a Student" [25]

Yeah, it would really help to know if the essay were meant seriously or humorously, and how long it is supposed to be. In any event, I'd suggest making a list of things you could confess, i.e. of everything you would normally want to keep secret (make sure you don't leave the list where other people might find it!) Then, eliminate all the items from the list that you simply are not prepared to write about for whoever your audience is. Then, pick the most interesting item left on the list (if you are writing seriously) or the least interesting (if you are writing humorously). Then write about it as well as you can and post whatever you come up with here for more detailed feedback.

Essays / What are the "do's and dont's" of an introduction of an essay? [8]

The rule is really more of a guideline. Old-style university formats practically insisted you start your thesis statement with "I will discuss," but this became less popular with the rise of Modernism, which insisted on conciseness as a virtue in and of itself.

More to the point, that sort of beginning really isn't necessary in shorter essays of the sort you have to write in high school and your undergrad. There, the papers are so short that your reader should be able to follow your argument on its own without extra guidance. It's sort of like the "never use I" rule. That rule eliminates a lot of unnecessary "I believes" and "in my opinions," from novices, but is universally ignored by most published academics, who have to carefully differentiate between their opinions and those of others they are citing. In short, it is a convenient way of cutting out a lot of bad writing at the lower levels of academia, but is foolish if adhered to slavishly at higher levels.

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

You might find it useful to research where reality TV came from any why, in spite of its lack of popularity, it continues to dominate our sets. The number of television viewers has been declining steadily for awhile now, and reality television has exacerbated, rather than ameliorated, this trend. However, television studios continue to produce reality television series because they don't have to hire expensive teams of scriptwriters or pay the actors anywhere near as much as they would have to give to actors working on a scripted show. In other words, reality television is really cheap to produce compared to good shows, which makes it more profitable as it becomes harder to convince advertisers to pay for air time because of declining viewership. But, the execrable nature of reality television also speeds that decline in viewership, hence driving down the advertising revenues still further. How will studios respond as this trend continues?

Undergraduate / Question about grades (lower as senior) and admission [6]

The downward trend hurts a bit because universities typically expect to see a 5-10% drop in students grades as they make the transition from high school to college anyway. 81% isn't actually that bad a grade for a university course, which, depending upon the grading system, could easily translate into an A-. However, if you were getting 81% in your high school classes, then they would expect you to start getting in the 71-76% range in university, which is getting a bit low.

Writing Feedback / 'People use some drugs, always' - essay about drugs. [8]

Thanks Kevin. I think you were able to reduce the essence of my post into something a bit more accessible. :-)

Undergraduate / 'Golfing activity' - common app short answer [9]

This essay is a bit tricky to write, because the prompt just asks you to elaborate on a single activity, which you have clearly done. However, the idea is that the essay should tell the admissions officers something positive about you. Your essay doesn't really tell them anything beyond the fact that you like golf and have played it for a long time, something that they could probably have guessed merely from the fact that you chose golf as your activity to expand upon. Maybe you could talk about why you like golf, or what you have learned from playing it?

Undergraduate / Villanova University Supp. "Thai boy Chart" [12]

Actually, there is a very good reason for using the comma. Sometimes some of the items in a list will also contain the word "and." In such cases, omitting the comma can cause confusion, since it will not be clear if the last two items should be considered as one thing or two.

Consider the following sentence: "He recommended that we paint the rooms according to various preset color schemes, such as grey, black and white, red, blue, and orange and pink." Here, some of the color schemes are actually single colors, while others involve two colors. Now, imagine that you don't consistently follow the comma rule to separate items in the list. This gives you: "He recommended that we paint the rooms according to various preset color schemes, such as grey, black and white, red, blue and orange and pink." It is no longer clear what the last two color schemes are. They could be either "blue and orange, and pink." or "blue, and orange and pink." Or the writer could have simply omitted the last and altogether, giving a color scheme of "blue and orange and pink." The example sentence here isn't that great, and for that I apologize, but it should demonstrate the point.

Undergraduate / Short Answer Response, two stories. Which one to chose? [18]

Actually, I might go in the opposite direction here, and talk more about what you have done in the stock market, and what you have learned from it. At the moment, you say "I say investing in the Jamaican stock market is one of the things I do really well because I have been very profitable in my investments for many years. An added benefit gained from my experience with investing on the stock market is that it has really taught me a lot about finance and economics." But why have you been able to make a profit? Many mathematicians view investing in the stock market as pure gambling -- that is, they believe that stock price trends cannot be accurately predicted, even by those who study the business plans of the companies in which they invest, and that making or losing money on stocks is therefore merely a matter of random chance. What knowledge did you apply, or what research did you do, that allowed you to do particularly well?

Graduate / 'I was encouraged by my professors' - SOP for Master in Engineering [8]

In terms of content and grammar you seem on fairly solid ground with this essay. The style is a bit weak, though. You tend to use sentences of the same length and structure, which makes the reading dull. You also tend to use more words than are strictly necessary to get your point across. Combining sentences is one technique you can use to address both of these problems. So, for example

"I also read many Aerospace textbooks as a personal interest. Some of the books I read are "Introduction to Flight" by John D. Anderson and "Aerodynamics for Engineering Students" by EL Houghton."

could become

"I also read many Aerospace textbooks, including "Introduction to Flight" by John D. Anderson and "Aerodynamics for Engineering Students" by EL Houghton"

If you were to go through and revise the entire essay to fix these stylistic problems, you would end up with a very strong application.

Undergraduate / Question about grades (lower as senior) and admission [6]

It would have been better if it had gone up from 81% to 87%, but grades aren't the only thing that admissions officers consider in an application. Your app essays, extra-curricular activities, and personal background info all play a role too.

Undergraduate / Father's love is deep and silent, and always there it is; he influenced me [3]

A very sincere essay. Good job. Grammatically it is a bit rough, though. One useful piece of advice -- keep your tenses consistent. So, "When I matured , I still found it tough to communicate with him, for neither of us could find enough words and topics." Notice that the revised version puts all of the verbs in the past tense, whereas before you used a mixture of past and present.

Undergraduate / "From Bolivia" - American University Essay [10]

I look forward to reading the revised version. Be sure to post it here for more feedback.

Undergraduate / Short Answer Response, two stories. Which one to chose? [18]

I just posted a reply to one of your other admissions essays, and the advice I give you there could profitably be applied here, as well.

Undergraduate / 'Finance major' - International Student Essay - The Ohio State University [4]

Tighten up the writing style a bit. Try to be more concise, and avoid using forms of "to be" (is, was, are, were, etc.). For example, your first sentence, "It is often said that The United States of America is the land of opportunity and I agree with this statement" could easily be written as "I view America as the land of opportunity." without any loss of meaning. I'd suggest revising the entire essay with those principles in mind.

Undergraduate / Essay : Issue of importance (about a pessimistic friend?) [16]

And don't forget that the prompt asks you about an issue, not about a friend who influenced you. So, you have to start by identifying an issue that your experience with your friend demonstrates.

Undergraduate / Sharps and Flats - common app essay... [10]

Very well-written. The only criticism I can see is that you tend to switch tenses a bit more than is called for. Sometimes you have to, as when you move from recounting your anecdote in the immediate present to relating historical events in the past. But at other times, it seems a bit jarring.

For instance, at the end of the essay, you write:

"I take a shot at Nocturne once more. This time, there are no mistakes. No wrong sharps, no inappropriate flats. The melody is untainted, smooth and mellifluous.

I had done it."

But if you are going to switch back into the immediate present to bookend your essay with it, you probably don't want the last line to revert back to the past tense. Perhaps you could omit that sentence altogether, and just end with the smooth melody? Or maybe you could just stick to the past tense throughout the ending?

Undergraduate / common app essay, topic of your choice ("Mona Lisa smiles") [4]

Interesting essay. A different and sincerely written topic. Good job. Be careful, though, with your word order. Just because a sentence is grammatically correct doesn't make it strong stylistically. So, as an example, consider "An evil idea in my spiteful mind initiated." This is grammatically correct, but the word order and choice of diction makes it awkward to follow. Better would be "An evil idea arose in my spiteful mind," which is much easier on the reader.

Undergraduate / U Washington, How to contribute to this community [3]

"I hope to invite schoolmates to my hometown to see how exploded our buses and supermarkets are." Exploded is the wrong word here, unless you mean that the buses and supermarkets were successfully targeted by terrorists.

Undergraduate / 'Golfing activity' - common app short answer [9]

The first five statements give context that is important. You should keep them. You can make more room to mention why you stopped playing by being more concise elsewhere. So,

"During my freshman year I decided to try out for the school team. At the end of the final tryout day, I was informed that I had made the team." could become "During my freshman year I made the school golf team." You can probably tighten up the rest of the answer a bit, too: eliminating a word here and there can quickly add up.

Writing Feedback / 'People use some drugs, always' - essay about drugs. [8]

I agree with everyone else -- you need to narrow down your topic.

You then also need to expand massively on your thesis. Even "the harmful effects of illegal drugs," a much narrower thesis than you have at present, would require far more than a single paragraph to discuss intelligently.

First, you would have to justify your decision to focus on illegality as a criteria for categorization, especially since the illegality of drugs has little to do with their effects, either on individuals or on society. Tobacco, for instance, is far more addictive than marijuana, while alcohol causes far more social problems than the use of either ecstasy or cocaine. At the same time, legality is relativistic: what is illegal in America may not be so in, say, Amsterdam. Even within America, the way heroin addicts get treated by law enforcement in California may be quite different from the way they get treated in Dallas.

You might want to focus more on the effects of taking any drug recreationally, regardless of legality. You could then look at the potential downsides that may attach -- mental addiction, physical addiction, impairment of judgment, etc. If you have space (you didn't say what length, if any, you were limited to) you should also discuss, at least briefly, the benefits of recreational drug use. After all, people use drugs recreationally for a reason, right? If you want your case to be convincing, you are going to have to perform what is essentially a cost-benefit analysis, in which you show that the costs of drug use outweigh their benefits. If you leave out the benefits entirely, then you will end up doing little more than parroting anti-drug propaganda, which seems pointless, from an educational point of view.

Book Reports / What is a book that has inspired you? (Pourquoi) [7]

Pourquoi is the French word for why"

"In fact, however, there are just too few things in our life that are worth our pursuit - we age and discover that we lose most of the things we have struggled to gain throughout our lives."

"The biggest impact it has had on me is teaching me a new perspective to understand the world. "

Undergraduate / Villanova University Supp. "Thai boy Chart" [12]

Don't forget that when listing items, you should put a comma before the "and" that introduces the last one. So, "it was also highly instructive, as among the exploration of the dark and dangerous caves, snorkeling with sharks, and kayaking through the river . . . "

Essays / A letter to my first-year roommate. I have no idea what to talk about. [19]

Don't forget, too, that if this is just a general essay for school, you can of course be brutally honest about your shortcomings, which would make the essay more interesting while also making it more useful if it were really going to be read by a potential roommate. If it is a college application essay, though, you will probably want to accentuate the positive.

Writing Feedback / writing technique advices for the essay " regular and election days" [8]

It is better than it was, certainly. You now sound more thoughtful, and have gone into more depth on the similarities and differences.

The introduction needs work, though. You can probably combine the first two sentences into one and come close to having a decent thesis statement. Then you would need to add more. A lead-in to hook the reader would be good, as would a brief summary of the similarities and differences at the end.

The second paragraph could probably be broken up into two, one on similarities, one on differences.

All three body paragraphs could also benefit from the inclusion of specific examples and anecdotes to demonstrate your general points.

Once you have done all of this, you should be ready to start focusing on grammar.

Undergraduate / FSU essay ("traditions and customs that have become a part of my life") [11]

True, if you start playing around with formatting, you can make an essay seem slightly longer or shorter than it actually is. This is especially good when dealing with professors who give you both a page count and a word count if the two don't match up. So, say you are asked to write "1000 words, or approximately 4 pages." 1000 words is nowhere near four pages on a modern word processor using standard formatting, but if you set the line spacing to 2.1, it comes a lot closer. Also, it is much easier to compress than to expand, because people expect you to try to get away with doing too little work, but they don't expect you to try to hide the fact that you did more work than you had to. So, you can easily go to 1.8 spacing, which can allow you to sneak in an extra half-a-page if you are dealing with a maximum page count.

Undergraduate / 'In love with the sky' - Main essay. Influential experience in ur life [21]

You have several options, but one approach would be to say that when you first came here, you found that being a good listener made it easy to make friends, that people always appreciate a sympathetic ear, regardless of their cultural background, etc.

Undergraduate / Colorado State University Admissions [4]

Kevin's suggestions are excellent, especially the part about beginning with "Now would be a good time to explain how I shattered my lazy, arrogant life style." That would shift the entire focus of the essay to your moral development.

Essays / Allusion. Film as lit class [8]

Remember that the best allusions are indirect. In other words, make sure that your reference doesn't actually include the name "Jesus." Again, if you were to post what you have written, it would make giving further feedback easier.

Student Talk / Word count limits and restrictions in essays [44]

The general rule with word counts is that you have a 10% margin of error. That is, the word limit specified actually represents a range you can work within. So, a 300 word assignment is expected to be between 270-330 words. However, sometimes the assignment specifies that the word limit is either a maximum or a minimum, in which case the specific rule overrides the general one.

Undergraduate / USC essay "My best friend gone slim" - Tell us about an external influence that affected you [4]

Really strong essay. I especially like your conclusion, and the running metaphor that prepares for it. I found, though, that the first half of the essay was a bit long, in that you spend a lot of time establishing that most people find it difficult to lose weight, and that skinny people react negatively to those who are fat. I think both of those things are common knowledge, and so require less space than you give them to establish them.