Essays / Elizabeth I never married - how did this effect her reign? [2]

Monica, you have chosen a very interesting historical figure for your paper. I agree that her reign had good and bad points and that things may have changed if she had married. For one, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots would not have been able to ascend to the throne thus changing the entire history of Great Britain. Most historians believe that she was one of the first independent women who proved that women could actually be more than just child bearers in an era when women were mostly looked down upon. It is from this point of view that I believe you can effectively discuss your paper.

Read the historical accounts of her reign and pay particular attention to the suitors and marriage proposals she received. Try to get into her mindset and explain the political situation she found herself in at the time. There are many papers written about her suitors and the political campaigns that they tried to mount based upon a marriage proposal to her. By trying to get into her mindset and understanding why she chose to turn down the proposals, you will find the reasons why her reign became one of the most successful in British royal history :-) You will not lack for resource material on that topic, there are plenty to be found on the internet, library archives, documentaries, and the like.

Good luck with your research paper. Don't hesitate to see us again if you need more support :-)

Undergraduate / My Best Worst Experience - Summer Camp Abroad (alone) at the age of 8. -- Common App Personal Essay [6]

Salma, I can understand how traveling alone for the first time and attending camp can be a traumatic experience for an 8 year old. However, you are trying to present an autobiographical account of your stay at the camp instead of just presenting a life altering event that occurred there for you. That is why the essay has become cluttered with too much information, lacks direction, development, and a central theme. The only way you can do that is to concentrate on the one event that affected you the most while you were at camp. Try not to discuss religion because there is a great chance you might end up offending the reader of your essay. Religion is always a topic that causes misunderstandings and is best left out of an academic essay. Traveling alone is a good topic, as is bullying since these two are almost standard essay responses to the given prompt. If I were writing this essay, I would concentrate on the talent show instead and how I performed in it because by discussing that, I can effectively touch on discussing bullying, camp cliques, and other related information, without having to go into too much detail about the experience. I hope you take my advice into consideration as you continue to draft this essay :-) We are all looking forward to reading it.

Undergraduate / Sassy afro'd women-UVA sup. essay [2]

Taylor, the first thing that I noticed about this essay was that although you presented a very detailed description of the painting that you say, you remained on the technical aspect of its description and your reaction to it. Instead of remaining on this superficial level, you should have tried to explain how you felt the minute that you saw the picture. Aside from standing mesmerized, your brain was telling you something, your emotions were reacting to the images before you. That is what you should have immediately tried to present in the essay. No, there is no possible way that you cannot explain what you were seeing and experiencing. There is a way and you have to find it because the essay is not about abstract feelings, it is about your reaction to art. This essay wants to know if you have the mindset of an artist and how it emerged in your personality to lead you towards the major of your choice.


- Fall short if you must, but detail why this painting unsettled, surprised, or challenged you.

Try to discuss the painting from the point of view of being surprised by seeing the painting. That is a keyword that I found in your current version of the essay that I feel will help you better express the way the painting affected you. By doing that, you will be able to put your thoughts, emotions, and sentiments into words. No matter how hard, you must describe the feelings. Otherwise, you are not truly answering the prompt.

Graduate / What are your specific post-MBA short-term and long-term goals? Why Smith? Why an MBA? Why now? [20]

Sam, you should not combine your hook in the introduction with your short term plans. Either discuss the introduction separately or discuss your long term plans immediately. You do not need to be very wordy in an essay that has a word count. The less words you use to state your case, the better and more interesting your paper will be. The reason for the word count is to make it easier for the reader to finish reading your essay. Being direct to the point is always a point in your favor :-) Aside from that minor revision suggestion, I would say that the essay is on track and really answers the prompt. However, if you feel that you need to work on it some more, then we will be happy to lend you a helping hand in doing that :-)

Graduate / My test taking skills improved after I discovered my calling for the Speech Language Pathology field [3]

Hanh, a personal statement is not formatted as a letter to the admissions committee. You need to reformat the paper into an essay format. All you have to do to do that is to remove the greeting portion at the start of your paper. Using a scale of 1-10, I would grade this essay an 8, only because of the formatting problem and the wordiness of the essay. You can actually delete the first part of your essay that only contains word fillers. This is the part of the essay that does not actually say anything about you and your application in a direct manner and is therefore useless to the admissions officer who has only a few minutes to decide whether the essay he is reading is worth reading to the end or not.

You also need to revise the following:

- You should instead be talking about how the university course offerings specifically have motivated you to pursue a degree there. Mention some specific programs that the university offers which helped you come to this decision.

Finally, delete this last part:

- Try to avoid discussing any negative aspect of your academics in your personal statement unless asked by the prompt to do so. You do not want to leave an impression that you are not worthy of attendance at their university. The admissions officer will find out about your grades through the transcript of records you submitted anyway and that will speak volumes more about you than any defense you can present about why you had bad grades. If they don't ask, you don't tell. That will be sure to help your essay along as well.

Undergraduate / A girl who loves engineering; WHAT motivated you to apply Rice Unversity? [14]

Nicole, I will need information from you in order to construct a template since I was not present at the meeting. If you can give me the necessary information such as how you met the student and what discussion transpired, I should be able to come up with something for you. Since this was not an actual meeting, it will be a very bad idea to create a scene for it. Instead, I am envisioning how I can take the scene as it happened to you and then make it interesting to read about. I may be able to come up with some suggestions for the introduction treatment when I hear more from you about it. Give me any and all the information that you think I should know about the meeting you had so that I can develop a idea of how it might have transpired and how to translate that into the essay :-) I look forward to that post from you soon. Time is running November 1 is practically around the corner so we have to move fast :-)

Undergraduate / A girl who loves engineering; WHAT motivated you to apply Rice Unversity? [14]


- It's never a good idea to mention that you met an admissions officer. It is an even worse idea to mention what transpired during that meeting. It would be like trying to name drop and exert influence over the opinion of the current admissions officer reviewing your application. My advice is, don't do it :-) Let your essay apps pass or fail on its own merits that way you won't feel bad if mentioning something that you hoped would have had a positive effect did not have any effect at all.


- Nicole, don't worry, I will help you polish this essay just like the others :-) We will polish this till it gleams in your eyes :-)

Now for the essay content itself. Nicole, will you be extremely angry if I ask you to revise the essay because this current version does not answer the prompt? The question being asked is


Discuss the meeting with the Rice student in great detail instead. Explain what kind of impact that meeting with her had on you. Tell us about the things that she told you about the university, its academy and student community. What image did that conjure in your head about your future at the university? Among all the things that you learned about the university from the student, what was the information that had the most impact upon you that made you decide to apply to the university ?

Those are the kinds of information that will answer the prompt and will help to create a positive image of yourself with the admissions officer.

By the way, to answer a question you posed in a previous thread, you will learn about creative writing in college. It is actually something that is taught at the high school level in most American high schools but since you did not go to an American high school, you may need to enroll in a creative writing class or two in college as an elective if it is not offered as part of the course curriculum but is offered as an optional course instead :-)

Undergraduate / a personal quirk is a part of who you are; supplemental essay [8]

Hi Nicole, yes, make our selves one word. I did not notice that I wrote it as two words :-) I have your essay down to 250 words now. You can use this as the final version. There is no such thing as a final draft.

Undergraduate / a personal quirk is a part of who you are; supplemental essay [8]

Nicole, the terms that you do not understand are actually creative English writing techniques that are quite commonly used in advanced essay writing. There is nothing wrong in the way that it was written. It is just that it is a far more advanced method of English writing and expression that you have not yet achieved at your English writing level but will certainly make a highly positive impression upon the admissions officer because it shows an advanced grasp of the English language. Let me explain it to you as best as I can.


- Can you see yourself without a mirror? You can't right? That is why when you look into the mirror, you see the physical representation of yourself. You see the whole of your embodiment that you do not normally see.


- The use of the hand is to deflect negative things or show us things that we don't normally see. The mirror represents that in this case. It can also be said in this manner "The mirror truly reflects the way that people see us."


- A guilty habit is another way of saying "quirk". It is something that not everyone knows about you and you have no intention of letting them really know about it. Hence if they caught you, you would feel guilty because this is a side of yourself that is so personal, you try to hide it from others.


- In this case, your quirk is not a negative thing hence it enhances certain aspects of your personality.

The additions that you made are creative and are acceptable in this case. It helps to lighten the mood of the essay :-)

Graduate / What are your specific post-MBA short-term and long-term goals? Why Smith? Why an MBA? Why now? [20]

Hi Sam, let's see if this edited version of your essay will be acceptable to you. It is 316 words.

My short term goal is quite simple, to achieve a position as a Supply Chain or Operations Analyst for a major manufacturing firm within the next 5 years. From there, I will give myself another 5 years to take on a Product Management role within the company. These short term goals are easily achievable for me because of my previous background working the past 5 years as an IT SAP PLM consultant. The long term goal, is to move me slowly into a CxO role by becoming a principal contributor to the company's success worldwide. It is because of these short and long term goals of mine that I chose to attend Smith.

The first reason is that the dual degree MBA/MS in Supply Chain Management will allow me to make a career switch when it becomes necessary for me to do so. Next, is that being an introvert, I tend to thrive and succeed more in a small classroom set up such as the one that Smith offers.

I have 3 objectives for want to complete my MBA in relation to career transitions. First, I need the theorietical knowledge of advanced studies that will help me improve my understanding of business concepts. Second, the experiential learning process will allow me to implement the theories in real world working set ups through the consultations projects with sponsor companies. Finally, I will be able to gain an international perspective while growing my network of friends and contemporaries who careers will flourish alongside mine and thus, provide us with a symbiotic working relationship in the future.

Keeping in my short and long term goals, as well as the factors for choosing Smith, I am more than convinced that the university will be able to provide me with the necessary technical training and competency development in order to gain an advantage over the other job applicants in the future.

Use this as your template for your own revision. I hope you can use it :-)

Undergraduate / Travelling back to my past - Stanford [5]

Khaliun, the essay does not clearly state the reason that you went to Singapore to study. Was this a decision your mother made after your father died? Why was there a need to send you away for school? During that year away from your family, what life and personal lessons did you learn? Can you reflect upon those moments in your essay? I believe that you should delete the story about your professor at the start of the essay. It does not really relate to anything in the main theme so you can just state your case directly.

The essay suffers from grammar and sentence structure problems but I feel that we should only address those problems once the main content of the essay has been polished. There is no use fixing those issues because the structure of the essay will change as we revise the content. So please, work on my suggestions for now so that we can further align the essay with the prompt and polish the content :-)

Undergraduate / a personal quirk is a part of who you are; supplemental essay [8]

Nicole, I am going to revise the whole essay for you but still keep within the theme and word count. Please feel free to use or not use this version of the essay. It is for you to use as a template if you wish :-) This comes in at exactly 250.

We look into the mirror and see a physical representation our selves. So we fix our hair, retouch our make up, or straighten our clothes.That is what I normally did with the mirror until I discovered that it could be used for something greater, a quirky characteristic of mine that helps me to learn more about myself and the world around me.

It all started when I had a roommatewho snored every night She once snored so badly that I decided to get out of bed, march up to her and shake her awake. That was the plan, but I passed by the mirror in our room, saw my facial expression and held back. I had never seen my look of anger until then.

That was when I realized that the mirror is truly the hand that reflects how other people view us. Looking into the mirror has become a guilty habit of mine since then. I learned that the mirror can be effectively used for self-ontrospection and thus, allows me to think twice before taking any action. Looking at myself in the mirror helps me to create harmony in my life because I can see how other people will judge my facial expression, which is the first thing people judge before my actual action.

That is the quirk that the mirror helps me enhance, I look at myself in the mirror as often as I can because it is a part of my self analysis, realization, contemplation, and acceptance.

We can work on improving this essay if you'd like. There is room to play with the content if you choose to do so :-)

Undergraduate / I am keen to develop essential design skills via Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen - Rice University [7]

Nicole, statements are not meant to be entertaining. These are supposed to be pointed comments that answer the question being asked. So you don't need to get creative about how you present your answer. Just present it direct to the point. That is why a word count limitation was placed on the statement. They don't need a flowery answer, just an answer. What you added in blue us not really necessary. Remember, you are not supposed to commit to attending the university. By adding that statement, you will be violation the essay prompt because you will be committing to attending the university, which is not required. Once you remove the sentence you added at the end the statement in my opinion, will be ready to use :-)

Undergraduate / I am keen to develop essential design skills via Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen - Rice University [7]


-Nicole, never end your statement or essay with a question. You need to conclude the statement remember? This way it sounds like you are opening up the discussion in another avenue.

Now, about the long sentences. There are times when that is acceptable such as when you are writing a statement. Specially when you are trying to create connections between the ideas that you need to present in the quickest possible manner. You don't have the time for paragraph development in a statement so the long sentences are what we call a necessary evil :-)

Graduate / My decision to choose a career in nursing was not a lifelong childhood dream of mine; Statement [2]

Joanna, don't worry, your essay speaks of the why and not the how of the prompt :-) I understand that this is still a draft but I need to warn you about the wordiness of your essay. It is already too long as it is and contains too much information. I suggest cutting back on the information and concentrating on the why reason of the essay. If you want to get personal then open the essay with the illness of your mother and use that as the driving force behind your desire to become a practical nurse. If you want to get technical, then use the the educational aspect that you mentioned. By concentrating on exactly how you want to portray your image to the admission officer, either as a student with a calling or a caring child wanting to give back to the community, will change the way your essay is presented. Choose one of the two identities to present and build it up for the essay. That way, you can discuss and fully develop the answer that you want to deliver in the prompt. If you divide the reasons behind your desire, the essay will end up being under developed. My advice is, choose how you want to present yourself and then go with it. It is still early enough in the game for your to change your essay. You are still in the drafting stage :-)

Undergraduate / Studying the brain - Cognitive Neuroscience- Brown Supplement [4]

Erica, your introduction has greatly improved. Now, let me tell you why your essay sounds dull. You have not created an engaging hook that can reel in the reader to learn more about what you have to say about your journey towards your choice of college majors. I would work more on the essay by presenting a more interesting introduction. If I may take a shot at offering you a sample introduction;

When I first saw the picture of a the human brain, I thought "Our brain is made up of worms?" I could not believe what I was seeing and I had so many questions about how the worm like part of our nervous system could be the very essence of our humanity. I began studying what I could about the human brain from a child's point of view and this was the passion that I carried with me all the way to my AP studies in High school. The worm was now the most intricate part of the human body that intrigued me no end. It was after I enrolled in AP classes and became more enlightened about the human psyche that I knew what I wanted to study in college.

From this point, you can discuss how the AP classes further developed your interest in the field. Discuss the research that you have done and if possible, present any results of the research you did. If you revise the essay in this manner, we may be able to liven it up a bit more :-) Use my introduction as a template for you to use. Be creative but don't present your interest in the brain from your younger years in a negative light. Be careful about how you present yourself :-)

Undergraduate / Another cool summer night in Hobi - common app [5]

Gene, I don't find this essay cliche-ish at all. In fact, I find it to be a very heartwarming tale of reconnecting with your roots and in the process, finding your self. Any reader will perfectly understand why the place is important to you. I just have a suggestion to make though. Rather than bringing us into the world by telling us what you saw, heard, and observed, why not tell us how you were affected by the events that you were seeing and how it helped to change you for the better as a person? That way the connection between the place and its importance to you will become clearer for the reader. Then you can close the essay by explaining to us the contentment that you feel each time you go to Hobi and how it relates in importance to you :-)

Undergraduate / Studying the brain - Cognitive Neuroscience- Brown Supplement [4]


- Erica, you may want to reconsider this statement. It is not a good idea to let the admission officer know that you were repulsed by the brain since you are applying to the college of nueroscience. I would advice you to instead, present how your interest in the human brain developed during your AP classes by explaining what drew you to study the human brain and its psychological functions in the first place. From that point on, the rest of your essay fits in quite well with the prompt. I can further assist you in developing this essay once we have addressed the opening statement problem. As I learn more about your interest in neuorscience, I will be able to help you further polish the content of the essay in alignment with the prompt :-)

Undergraduate / I am keen to develop essential design skills via Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen - Rice University [7]

Nicole, I hope you don;t mind my rewriting your statement. I felt I could better shorten it that way :-)

I was attracted to the unconventional and personalized education that the school of engineering offers. The uniqueness of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen and fusion of engineering projects in the curriculum leads me to believe that I will be able to develop my essential engineering skills and problem solution deployment abilities in real world engineering settings. More importantly, the FabShops held by OEDK will allow me to reach my full potential by allowing me to turn my ideas into physical realities. Furthermore, the Rice Center of Engineering and Leadership is an internship experience that I know will groom me into an engineering leader at the forefront of engineering breakthroughs.

I hope that this 109 word count is acceptable to you. I tried to keep the essence of your original essay in the rewrite :-)

Undergraduate / Travelling back to my past - Stanford [5]

Khaliun, I strongly advise that you pick only the most important event from your life to discuss in this essay. You should only concentrate on one topic because that is the focal point of the essay. That one life event that, had it not occurred for you, would not have helped you reach the point in life where you are now. I would suggest that you develop the part where you talk about going to Singapore to study alone when you were eleven. This shows a strength of character, development as a person, and maturity of point of view at an early age because you had to take care of yourself since your parents were not around to assist you. This is the story that is central to your identity and your development as a person and should not merely be told as a part of other stories. This is to me, the most important achievement of your life that you should be proud to tell people about because it helped shape the person you are today.

Trying to discuss too many topics in one essay like this one will only provide an identity complex for you because it will be next to impossible to create one solid personality for you from all the experiences. In each experience, you developed in a particular way. However, the most life shaping experience was the one you had in Singapore in my opinion which is why I am asking that you concentrate on developing that aspect of the essay alone. It more than answers the essay prompt in my opinion and will help enhance your paper theme and central idea.

Undergraduate / "One Piece"; "dad's old laptop"; "two years between graduation and moving to US" - essays for MIT [3]

Thawsitt, from what I can tell, the answers you have given answers the prompt very well. However, I would like you to avoid any negative references in your answer about the gap year in school. We want the admissions officer to believe that you took the gap year because you wanted to experience a natural learning process rather than having him picture you sitting in front of the computer playing online games for days on end. That is not a good image to share with the most important person representing the university in your life. Instead, portray yourself as constantly learning and striving academically. The story about preparing for the SAT's is a good one that you should further develop. Expand upon your volunteer activities and your learning to do animation. Those are all aspects of a gap year that will help to show that you spend the time away from school quite productively and that you are more than ready to return to the rigors of the academic halls of higher learning :-)

Undergraduate / "Do what you love"; "what do I love to do though?" -- my family [7]

Jay, it would seem that you did not provide the proper answer for this essay prompt. If you had indicated anywhere at the beginning that your idea of a "Good Life" is one that involves having a happy family life then yes, your essay would have fit the bill. Right now though, that reference is missing so the whole essay sounds more like you trying to figure out what you want out of life and the importance of the presence of your family in your life rather than actually having a definition of a good life.

My advice would be to rethink the way you approach this essay. I suggest that you reflect upon the life that you are living to day and your plans for living your life in the future. Who do you see involved in that life? What would make it a complete and happy life for you? If you had all of those things present in your life today or in the future, would you say that you are living a good life? If you answer yes to these questions then you have your definition of the good life :-) Now for the hard part.

After discovering what your definition of the good life is based upon your opinion, you now need to look at the mission, goals, and objectives of the university. Study the community and the academic life that it offers. Then look at which parts of those communities will help you further enhance your definition of a good life. Discuss those two in relation to one another. This will then be the answer to the second part of the prompt about how the University of Florida can help you achieve that definition or enhance the definition of the good life for you.

Undergraduate / The Garage and HiBay- Common App [5]

Having read both essay excerpts, my opinion, is that you should also stick to the first essay more because it reveals the personal aspect of your personality that may not have a chance to be discussed in the common app essays. The second one, although it reveals your internship experience at Boeing, is sure to be discussed as a part of the other essay prompts provided and will be noticed by the admissions officer upon review of your submitted student documents.

The garage story is unique because you personalized the space to your needs and wants, thus ensuring that it will be a place that you will be perfectly content spending time in. Developing that aspect will reveal the kind of work attitude and personality that you have which will be of valuable consideration in your application process. Remember to thoroughly discuss how and why you feel content in the garage though. No need to be wordy, just state the facts.

I hope you can post the completed essay here soon so that we can help you polish the content and enhance certain parts to your benefit :-)

Undergraduate / "Oh, you got that grade cause you're Asian" - Challenging a belief or idea [7]

Esther, this is a very good revision. You have made it very informative and your position on challenging racial stereotypes is something that needs to be heard more about in these kinds of essays because the readers themselves sometimes have a prejudiced idea of certain racial types. The way you challenged your friend's belief and ideas is the kind that any any person, pushed to the limits would have done. I have a request though, can you cut back on the stereotype information so that you can go directly to the challenge that you posed to your friend? I would suggest that you bring it to the introduction of the essay so that you can answer the prompt directly and cut back on the side stories and comments about race. In this type of essay, it is important to answer the prompt as soon as you can to make sure that the hook is clearly established. The introduction need not be too wordy nor retell too many stereotype stories. In fact, your experience with your friend was more than enough to establish that.

Graduate / What are your specific post-MBA short-term and long-term goals? Why Smith? Why an MBA? Why now? [20]

Sam, here is my take on how you can replace "Therefore" in the last sentence:


- The Smith program of education has the ability to ensure that I will be equipped with the right techniques and competencies in order to get ahead of my competitors in the future. It is a program that I believe will best prepare me for the demands of my future career and will offer me the opportunity to learn from the very best mentors that have worked in the field of Production Engineering. I am looking forward to coming under their tutelage and mentoring as a future student with the hopes that my exposure to their ways will help me achieve my short and long terms goals while quite possibly, giving me something new to envision achieving for myself or my field of expertise in the future as well.

Undergraduate / "daddy issues" complex form - My dad influences me in a way that he sickens me to my stomach [2]

Charlie, the essay you wrote is too wordy. As a common app essay, you should make sure to be as short and concise as possible when presenting your story. The essay you presented was more about your dad than anything else. It was all about him instead of the essay being all about you. So you need to fix that situation. Let me offer my take on your story and how it can be better presented.

Most children grow up knowing a loving and caring father who would be willing to do anything for his family. A loving father would never hold back on financial support for his children and wife, he would put their needs above his own selfish whims, and he would be the role model for his children to follow. Sadly, I did not grow up with such a father. Instead, I had the gambling, alcohol chugging, could care less if his family died from hunger type of father. He was definitely no role model for me. My dad calls himself a dreamer, looking for his jackpot. I don't think he will find it though since he has been looking for it for the past seventeen years to no avail.

It was because of him that I learned to grow up fast. I had to be responsible for helping my family at an early age because the lack of financial support meant that we more than struggled for day to day living. Somehow, we managed to survive in spite of my father's existence and negative effect on our family.Despite the hard life that we still continue to have and the fact that my father is not a role model of any sort, I still feel that I owe him a debt of gratitude. I know, you think I am crazy but there is a really good reason behind that.

Since my father forced us to support ourselves and disregard any help from him in our lives, my siblings and I grew up to be strong and resilient people. We never let any kind of obstacle or hardship stand in our way. I in particular, became highly resourceful and managed to find a way to stay in school, even though there were days when there was no money to support it.

I am living proof that when a person knows how to use adversity to his or her advantage, the time will come when the forces of the universe will converge to offer you a chance to get out of the rut that you call your life. I have always taken every opportunity that comes my way leading me out of the gutter that my family currently dwells in because of my father. I hope that by completing my college education, I will be able to finally pull the rest of my family away from the negative and destructive force we have come to call "Father".

This spin on your father's story makes the essay all about you instead of him. Remember, you are the one applying to college so all the essays you write should showcase only you and your struggles. Everyone else is a mere mention on this road towards to success. So use their presence in your life to your advantage with every chance that you get :-)

Undergraduate / College of Arts and Sciences, School of Nursing, The Wharton School, Penn Engineering; school choice [12]

Yes to all of your questions. Let me explain why I answered the question so early into the essay. I answered the question immediately because it gives the air of knowledge and authority over what I have to say. It shows my confidence in my academic goals and ambitions and that I have a career path charted for myself. By showing confidence early on in your essay, you can actually impress the admissions officer. Specially if you are able to speak about the university offerings immediately. Remember, a serious business person has no time to waste and as a business student, you don't have time to waste either. Therefore establishing your mindset at the very start of the essay will show that this is a serious application that they should consider for early acceptance. Good luck with your revision!

Undergraduate / College of Arts and Sciences, School of Nursing, The Wharton School, Penn Engineering; school choice [12]

No problem. No harm, no foul :-) I can understand how you can come home from a hard day of academics and be pulled down by even the slightest of negative feedback. I apologize fro coming down hard on you. Now about how to best start this essay. I would like you to consider doing the following in outline form.

1. List down your ideas for future accomplishments relating to your career. Don't forget to list the foundation of these ideas from your past as well.

2. Write down how you plan to lay the foundation for achieving those goals and objectives as a student.
3. Compare the course curriculum and program offerings of the school you applying to in consideration of steps 1 and 2. Find the ways in which they connect.

4. Write your opening statement based upon these connections and then build specifically upon the connections in your supporting paragraphs. Making sure to present the end result of the strong academic foundation in your concluding paragraph.

If you follow steps 1-4, you should be able to satisfy the essay prompt and maybe even have a little room for some additional comments that relate directly to the prompt :-) If you write a creative hook at the start, your reader should read the whole essay :-)

Here is an example of an introductory statement from my point of view:

The Wharton Business School offers me the opportunity to build upon my previous inclinations in business. Ever since I started my first Lemonade stand in the summer of 2004, I somehow knew that I would end up running a business. As I matured, so did my interests in the business field. Upon discovering that Donald Trump, my business role model, and his children graduated from your school, I knew that I wanted to attend your university. What I learned upon further research was that, your school creates business leaders because of the opportunities you offer. Opportunities such as the ... which I hope to take advantage of as a student at Wharton.

Then you build up from there. Remember, that is just my idea. I just want to give you something solid to plan your introduction by :-)

Post your introduction here first if you want, we can work on creating the solid foundation for your essay first and then take things further from there. I'm looking forward to assisting you :-)

Undergraduate / College of Arts and Sciences, School of Nursing, The Wharton School, Penn Engineering; school choice [12]

Most of the students we work with here ask us to be very blunt. To the point of pointing out the reasons that your essay will not pass the reading standards of the admissions officer. While I can understand that you would prefer to be treated with kid gloves, rejection letters will come to you and you will not even know why you were rejected because you feel that you wrote excellent essays. Part of the reason why you are asking us for advice is because you want to avoid that.

By the way you claim that I told you :


But what i really commented was:


So I am not sure where you got the idea that I told you this essay would end up in the trash. I have reviewed my comment for this essay carefully and looked for the comment you posted but I did not find any portion where I said that. I gave my opinion to you as respectfully as possible. Remember, as a reviewer, I am supposed to be in the mindset of the admissions officer and tell you exactly what I think about the essay from that point of view.

I will take your advice under consideration though and treat you with kid gloves. The others here though, prefer the blunt comments so I will reserve my straightforward comments for them.

Please do not start a flame war here with me as that is against forum regulations and can get you account suspended when reported or seen by the moderators so please do not respond to this post with any comments that can be misconstrued as such. I am merely pointing out what I believe to be a mistaken post in this thread. Thank you :-)

Undergraduate / Penn M&T Supplement Essay - Robotics, Business, and Engineering [9]

Hannah, no, it does not mesh better with the prompt. You still failed to answer the prompt of the essay. I believe that you do not clearly understand the essay requirements. The university is not asking you about your past experiences with robotics and engineering, it is instead asking you to be a visionary who looks to your future goals and achievements. Discuss those career ambitions that you have and relate it to the programs and university offerings of the school you are applying to. The admissions officer wants to see if you carry the same vision as their school. So you need to think forward instead of backward in this essay.

Stop going back to the past. It is not relevant to the requirements of this paper. Focus on the future. Remember you are trying to prove that the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology can help you pursue your specific interests in both engineering and business. Are you already clear at this point that the school is asking about your future? Your past has nothing to do with their programs. Your past accomplishments do not explain nor do you relate them to the Jerome Fisher Program. So you cannot use that information for this essay. Talk about the future and how you plan to use the university programs to reach your future career goals instead.

The admissions officer needs to get an understanding of how you will apply yourself to your chosen major using their course curriculum and student opportunities for hands on training or future internships. So while it is admirable that you have accomplished so much in the past, what they need to learn about is who you plan to be in the future through the support of their academic mentoring.

Writing Feedback / IELTS Essay: The government should allocate more funds to public services instead of arts [3]

Reza, work on further developing your essay on a per paragraph basis. While you present some very solid and informative ideas regarding your stand on the issue, the true value of what you have to say is not seen due to the extremely short paragraphs you used. This made the essay suffer from proper content development and therefore made the essay seemed to be written in a rush. There was no concern from your end about ensuring that you would be able to present your reasons in an acceptable and evidence supported light.


- This paragraph alone can be developed further by discussing the two reasons within as stand alone paragraphs in support of your stand. Do not waste the opportunity to share your knowledge with others. Always develop your ideas and properly support these with personal experience of research that you know of. This will help to get your essay a better grade as well.

Undergraduate / Upload a short essay about your most memorable musical experience. (Peabody Institute) [2]

Will, the first thing that i noticed about the essay is that you need to revise the tenses usage. This is an event that happens in the past and yet you use a mix of present and past tenses in discussing it. Review all the tenses and change all of the ones that refer to present tense such as the following:


- This should use the term included since you already experience and accomplished these tasks.
Aside from that particular tense usage problem, the essay does not seem to suffer from too many problems. It is well written and developed. The response to the prompt was quite concise and thorough. I have to ask though, does this have a word count and did you adhere to it? Or do you feel that the word count needs to be brought down? There are certain portions that I read which could have easily been merged with other sentences and paragraphs. That is why I am asking :-)

Graduate / 'I felt uncomfortable for breathing too much waste gas of cars' application--Mechnical Engineering [4]

The reason that I thought this was for a masters degree was because it does not really cover the requirements of a PhD SOP essay. While you did introduce yourself and your past undergraduate accomplishments, you did not really present a solid previous graduate career that would indicate the need for a PhD level of education at this point in your career and life. Normally, that is the first kind of information one sees in a PhD application. You spend too much time talking about your childhood exposure and other matters that do not directly concern your career ladder at the moment. The relevance of your current studies and career accomplishments to your chosen PhD and how it will help advance your career further is also wanting in development.

Since you mentioned that you are just about to complete your masters degree and will not be entering your PhD Level studies until next year, I believe that you are jumping the gun here. It is a false start to writing an SOP because you are not sure where your next career path will take you yet. It is because of this lack of future career direction, since you have not worked in an advanced position capacity at any company yet, that makes your SOP look like a masters SOP instead. You don't really know what position you will hold in the future and how it will apply to PhD studies, you need to hold off finalizing this essay at least until you know where your next phase of studies should take you career-wise. Right now, you are still stuck in the masters level mode of writing. It does not cover PhD level information at all. Let me be clear though, this is my opinion If you feel that it does cover you PhD requirements then by all means, go ahead and use this essay for your applications :-) I would advice you however, to at least wait until you graduate from your masters degree before applying for higher level studies admission.

Graduate / Large factories bring pollution which affects people both physically and mentally - TOEFL [3]


- Gulsah, while this is a very good introductory statement, it does not indicate the restated prompt so if anyone were to read this essay without the prompt attached, their idea of the topic being discussed will be limited. You need to always completely state a rephrased prompt as part of the IBC essay requirements adherence So restate the part about the plans of a company to build a large factory in your town before you present the pov. .


- ... this smog adversely affects people's health.

a big city where a great amounts of factories locate[ /quote]
- ... where a great number of factories are located

[quote=gbekil] I realize that everything is covered with dust,additionally a multitude of people get health problems because of air pollution. Moreover, the large factory make a lot of noises, because of the large machines. According to the researches, this noises causes mental illness.

- It would help to mention a number of illnesses that air pollution and noise pollution causes since you mention research into the topics. A good way of dealing with these would be to mention how living in the city near factories has affected your aunt's health.

a great amount of people migrate to our small town to have a job in this factory, therefore the population will increase, this migration firstly affects the price of renting a house, because there isn't enough.

- there is an influx of migrants into our small town, these new residents work in the factory and cause a population increase in our area. This affects the cost of housing rental in the town because there are not enough houses to accommodate the newcomers.

- This paragraph became too long sentence wise because you used commas where you should have used periods. I am trying to show you a better way of discussing this particular statement above.

Last but not least, factories causes also traffic problems, since a myriad of trucks will come to factory to bring raw materials, or any other materials, furthermore the products which be sent any other places to be sold, so this actions causes traffic problems. In addition, increasing of the populution makes the traffic crowded, one day we may not find a space to park our cars.

- Last but not the least, factories cause traffic problems due to the various trucks coming to deliver raw materials and pick up the final product for delivery to the merchants. Traffic will become overcrowded and eventually, the resident may find that they do not have a place to park their cars anymore.

Undergraduate / Harvey Mudd, Why Its a Good fit for Me, Rocketry and More [5]

Bryan, when answering an essay like this one, expect to cover more than one topic. The reason behind that is that you need to present the academic, social, and personal reasons that you have for choosing a particular university. I applaud you for being able to actually do it all quite effectively without going over the 500 word limit. Coming in only over 400 is quite an accomplishment on your part that you should be proud of.

If you choose to concentrate on only one topic for the essay, you may come in under the word count, but then you will also not be able to fully explain your reasons for joining the university. There is no one single reason that a student chooses a particular school. There are always a number of combined reasons for the decision and it will always help the admission officer consider you for suggestion to the admissions committee if he feels that you have a shot at getting their nod of approval as a student. So don't limit yourself to just one topic. Discuss all 3 important areas in order to give yourself a better shot at gaining acceptance into the school.

Undergraduate / Harvey Mudd, Why Its a Good fit for Me, Rocketry and More [5]

Bryan, I have just a few pieces of advice that I hope will help you better the content of your essay. See the listing below :


- ... made me laugh as he explained...


- The statement becomes more effective and delivers a stronger impact when that sentence is deleted. It is important not to lecture the admissions officer about the school policies he is already familiar with.


- Can you mention some specific university programs for struggling students that you know you will benefit from should you begin to struggle in class? This will show your familiarity with the school programs.

Writing Feedback / Parents help their children to make decision [5]

Ji, I am unclear as to whether you are writing a statement response to a prompt or if you are writing a TOEFL essay. Kindly provide the full prompt so that we can judge if you wrote the statement or essay properly. As of now, the essay needs to be divided into paragraphs and in the process, the ideas that you presented in the essay can also be further developed and edited to comply better with the prompt. While you have a number of grammatical errors that greatly affect the essay, I will refrain from advising you about how to correct these errors until I have learned what the prompt is and whether this is a statement, essay, or TOEFL essay. Those are 3 different types of essays that need to addressed in specific ways. We can offer you better advice once we know where the essay is supposed to be headed and how :-)

Undergraduate / Common app essay - How i conquered my inner fear and challenged a belief. [4]


- What camp is this and how does it relate to your conquering an idea or belief? What went on at this camp? You need to develop this idea further because right now, the camp story just came out of nowhere and your reader is officially lost as to its relevance in your essay.

Ayoni, while this essay is interesting since you presented a story that showed how you challenged a belief or idea about women in India, you forgot to mention and discuss the reasons as to why you will still make the same decision in the future. This will help establish the fact that you will continue to fight for your beliefs and that you are serious about solving a particular social problem.

Undergraduate / Travelling back to my past - Stanford [5]

Khaliun, can you please tell us what the personal essay prompt you are trying to answer is? The reason we need to know this is because right now, the essay is too wordy and suffers from too much information. While I realize that you consider all of these events very important in your life, not all of it may be relevant to answering the prompt that Stanford has provided to you. We may be able to tighten the essay and focus it more on the prompt requirements, but I need to know the question so that I can advise you about what to delete, shorten, or lengthen in the paper.

The essay is also suffering from a lack of a central theme. That can be developed by a thorough understanding of the prompt which will then lead to a better developed and prompt aligned essay. I hope that you can supply the needed information soon so that we will not waste time in revising your essay :-)

Undergraduate / "A competitive problem solver" - Georgetown MSB Supplement [3]


- Jenna, believe me when I tell you that you do not want your admissions officer to have the first impression of you as a clueless student who has no idea where she is headed in the future. You should definitely skip any part of the essay that makes your appear in a negative light. I would instead open the essay with the paragraph below this one which still mentions your desire to find answers to questions.

The rest of the essay actually answers the prompt quite well and should not be changed. You did a good job at explaining how your interest in business developed using the various influences in your life. By the way, don't you have a person whom you can mention as being an influence also? It would really help your essay to mention someone who influenced you to concentrate on the study of business. The influence of a family member will carry more weight than any Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Marck Zuckerberg, or Bill Gates reference.