Undergraduate / 'Great Barrier Reef documentaries' - Stanford Supplement - Intellectual Vitality essay [14]

Oriyanh, this is like a totally new paper :-) Congratulations on being able to transition the second and third paragraphs so effortlessly. It seems like you only needed a push in the right direction. How many words over are you at the moment with this essay? I would like you to try and edit the words count on your own so that the clarity and transition within the sentences will not be affected. Only you can properly tell if you have removed or revised the right parts of the essay without affecting the overall impact of the essay. Let me know if you need my help or if you want me to suggest edits. I will offer them to you. Otherwise, I feel that you can do that part of the editing all by yourself :-)

The work that you did on this essay is quite remarkable. Give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done :-)

Undergraduate / Before I could across the Civilization I was not sure which path to choose in life [5]

Alina, I am unsure about how to help you with this particular essay because the essay prompt seems incomplete. I am not sure what it is that they euniversity expects you to discuss in this essay. So if you can clarify that point for me, I will be much obliged. What I can seem to guess though is that you are trying to discuss your experience as a volunteer an an elderly person's home for some reason. Am I right? I am not sure how the prompt expects you to connect this experience with being the in the service of all nations though. Perhaps the essay is asking you to discuss how you dealt with the various races and nationalities of the people in the home? I really need some clarification about the prompt at this point. I am quite lost as to how to treat your essay.

I see the mistakes and there is advice that I want to give you. However, I am not sure if the advice I will be giving is correct because of my doubt regarding the prompt requirements. So I will reserve those comments until I hear from you about the theme of the prompt. In the meantime, I would like you to know that this is a very well written essay just the same. I can see that you are doing your best to adhere to academic integrity and the essay IBC requirements, which greatly help your essay's overall format. So keep up the good work. I'll work with you on this thread as soon as I get the clarifications from you :-)

Essays / Places that I like to visit are Charlottetown in Canada Dubai and Spain. [2]

Abdullah, you have absolutely no idea about how to write an essay like this do you? Or were you asked to write a statement instead? That is what you wrote you know, a statement. An essay on this topic would open with you talking about your love for travel, then expand upon your dreams of visiting exotic places, then you expand upon the travel that you have already done. Concentrating on relating the travel experience you had to us and why you like to visit these places. Discuss what makes them special to you. Be it the people, culture, or cuisine, those are all topcs you can discuss in this kind of essay.Then you can conclude it by leaving us with an idea of where you might be visiting next and why.

Writing Feedback / IELTS ESSAY: Many people are afraid to leave their homes because of the fear of crime. [5]


- Ginger, your introduction is incomplete because it fails to mention that people are afraid to leave their homes because of their fear of crime. You need to add that information in order to make the introduction truly informative and complete. There was also a failure on your part to add your own point of view on the matter as you will be discussing it in the essay. You need to reformat the paragraph to include that information.


- You need to discuss the other point of view as well. The view that the crime rate will not change regardless of whether the death penalty is implemented or not. So you should work on building up this discussion paragraph. Reflect that point of view. Don't forget, the essay prompt specifically asks you to discuss both sides of the matter.


- What you have here is an under developed paragraph that needs to be built upon in order to give it more reason and meaning. Instead, you chose to jump to another reason within the essay, which you also left without much discussion development from both points of view.


- This is a weak personal point of view that does not take both sides of the issue into consideration in your opinion. You, as the main speaker of the essay, must have the loudest opinion on both topics. Let it be heard.

Ginger, while the essay does have a number of grammatical errors and sentence structure problems, those cannot be addressed until you fix the content or theme of the paper. Complete that revision first and when done, we will address the grammar issues already. It is senseless to fix the structure and grammar of the essay if your theme is under developed and ill discussed. It defeats the purpose of a revision.

Undergraduate / Man's chest cavity suddenly filled with blood - I felt the seeds of uncertainty sown into my mind [2]

Jason, you need to scrap the whole essay because you took the prompt literally rather than figuratively. Experiencing failure is the topic of the prompt. Somehow, the story you related does not really come across as failure. Instead, it comes across as you being simply unprepared for what you were experiencing. That is not the same case as failure. As you can tell, the lessons that you learned were quite shallow and in no way affected the way that you did your job because you were just a student. Hence, the learning experience was limited. It would be in your best interest to look deeper into yourself for a time when you failed an how it affected you. For example, perhaps you failed to get into your medical school of choice. Discuss that failure, why do you think you failed? How did it affect you as a student? What makes you think that you have finally overcome that failure? What lessons did you learn from it? How did it change you as a person or as a student? There are specific lessons that can be learned from failure.Lessons that change your outlook in life or your attitude towards certain things. Find a life event that had that kind of effect upon you and then write about it. Then you will have answered the prompt properly.

Undergraduate / FELLING OF COCOON TO ADULTHOOD [8]

Adebanjo, I am thinking that you are trying to relate an event in your life that relates to your transition from childhood to adulthood within your family, or community. Am I right? If that is the prompt that I have to say the following; that being the case, I have to tell you that the essay does not depict anything that shows us how your mother's death affected you in such a way that you had to suddenly mature. The sadness that you felt, the emptiness, even the distracted attitude of your father, are all elements of mourning, but not a trait of maturity in a person.

Towards the end of the essay, you began to speak of the leadership stories that your mother used to tell you about. But there was nothing in your previous actions that will prove that you truly began becoming an adult either by taking on adult responsibilities or undertaking an adult outlook in life. There is actually no connection between your previous story about your mother's death and its effect upon you with the story of leadership that you were recounting. Now if the essay prompt is on a different topic, then present it in this thread so that your essay can be evaluated for content and relevance once again. Right now, the essay does not seem to be answering the implied prompt properly.

Undergraduate / Drastic Measures - Common App Prompt #3 [2]

Coby, I believe that this highly effective essay would be made even better if you were to present specific instances of your group experiencing the offensive treatment from the counselor. While you mentioned that there were instances of offense, you never truly let us in on what kind of offense it was, why your group was offended, and how you reacted to it. Instead you merely pay lip service to that part by saying your group decided to secede. You need to present the valid reasons behind that action in order to prove that you had no other recourse except seceding.

You also need to explain why your group was prevented from separating from the "community" by the Governor's staff in addition to that, it would also help the paper if you informed us of your answer to the last past of the prompt that asks if you would take the same course of action should you find yourself in a similar situation in the future. I did not see any reference to that question in your final paragraph.

Writing Feedback / Factory and its aftermaths [8]

Vns, one of the ways you can practice or improve the way that you express yourself in English is by writing creative short stories where you have dialogue's between people. This will help you practice your tenses as well. You can write the short stories in either present, future, or past tense. Using dialogue that you know will help your story along. You can also practice by reading news articles in English and then writing what you understand about it in essay form. There is no sure proof way of practicing writing, reading, and speaking in English. That only comes with years of daily practice. You can do your best to achieve that by immersing yourself in the English world and then practicing how to write in English. It is easier to express yourself in written English rather than spoken English because written English allows you to choose your words carefully, making sure it is suitable to the topic, before you use it. Unlike spoken English that does not allow you to revise and edit what you have said. I hope this advice helps you out :-)

Undergraduate / A woman, carrying her newborn on her shoulders, was selling utensils - Making a difference essay [10]

Pranu, you need to work that information into the essay because it will show why you are so passionate about the topic of education and what lengths you will go to in order to advance your advocacy for the cause. At the moment, that topic is a missing link in the essay that could provide the continuity that the essay needs in order to establish how important education is to you. By providing the explanation of your activity, we see how serious you are about education and how you have been affected as a person, how you have evolved and thoughts influenced, by this advocacy in your everyday life.

Please do your best to work it into the final essay form. I am sure that you will see the remarkable influence that paragraph will have upon your statement. If you have problems with blending it into your essay, just do your best and I will assist you in the final blending of the statement.

Undergraduate / Before I could across the Civilization I was not sure which path to choose in life [5]

Alina, post the essay here and we can give it a try. I am sure that the admin will let you know if you need to start a new thread for it. I believe I have helped some students before who also presented a new essay in the same thread. So it might be possible to do that. Give it a try :-)

The the essay that you wrote above is quite ready for submission if you feel it is ready to do so. I think it is but that opinion should not be your consideration. You need to ask yourself if it is ready. If you feel it is, they go for it :-)

Undergraduate / 'Great Barrier Reef documentaries' - Stanford Supplement - Intellectual Vitality essay [14]

Oriyanh, we need a transition sentence to connect diving with your love for learning about marine life. We need to show that diving is still very much a part of your life as a future marine biologist. Right now, the essay disconnects from the point where you were awarded outstanding solider and the questions you began asking yourself during your free dive lesson. I suggest that you develop a paragraph that will show how after your diving lessons, you studied books on marine biology and then found yourself wanting to get back into the water for a dive as soon as possible so that you could try out the new information that you discovered about marine life. This can then be connected in a paragraph that showcases how diving helped to build your academic interest in a vibrant kind of way. Write something up and I will look it over. If it needs work, I'll make suggestions :-)

Undergraduate / A woman, carrying her newborn on her shoulders, was selling utensils - Making a difference essay [10]

Pranu, the essay that you present is quite compelling and timely. With more and more children leaving school because of their parents wishes, you have managed to shed light on the problem of continuing education in most nations. There is however, a portion of the essay that I would like you to develop further. It is about the speech that you gave to the hundreds of students. We never really found out why you had to give that speech. What subject was it for? What did you discuss in it? How was the audience reaction? These are bits and pieces of information that you should share with the reader because it is part of the central theme of your paper. Without that information, the essay has a gaping continuity hole that remains unaddressed. I look forward to your plugging that hole by discussing the event surrounding the speech in the revised version. Once the them has been completed, we will pay attention to correcting the grammar errors next.

Letters / Letter to my Sister's Futile Principal [3]

Madison, the essay is too long when it does not need to be. These people do not have the time to read long letters so the more you can summarize it and present your facts quickly, the more chances you will have of getting the principal to remember your letter. I hope you can indulge me, I will be editing your letter to remove the portions that are redundant or unnecessary so that the letter and I will rearrange the paragraphs so that it will have a better flow and will be more interesting to the reader.

- This should be your second paragraph instead of the closing statement. This practically summarizes everything that you have said in the previous 2 paragraphs. This paragraph is strong and helps build your case for your dress code argument.

- Instead of using 2 separate arguments, you should collectively present the argument for both genders. That way you can limit the essay to only the most important information relevant to both gender issues. By doing so, you will be able to keep the interest of the reader and summarize the important facts of your argument. By the way, your letter has a somewhat rude slant while addressing the principals. You need to show respect for the principal in order to earn his respect as well. Don't forget that respect is a central part of your argument. Therefore, you need to give respect in order to get respect.

Undergraduate / Mowing grass; I find solace and determination in my work - Common app [3]

Michael, I wonder what the common app topic for this paper is? It is so well written that it seems to respond to the prompt about the place where you find yourself most content. Am I right about the prompt? If I am mistaken, kindly let us know what the prompt is so that we will have an idea as to how to review your paper. At the moment, it is hard to find fault with what you wrote. It was not only informative, but it also allowed us to see how you overcame the obstacles you faced in life. The fact that lawn mowing helped you recover from the horror of your parents divorce offers a unique perspective of how your character traits developed and the way that you used a family conflict to help you achieve more on life, with or without your parents help. I can't help bu t commend you on your excellent description of your life. It is quite engaging and very interesting to read about. My comments may change depending upon the prompt topic once you provide it. As of now though, you should definitely be proud of this essay and the work you did on it :-)

Scholarship / "Science is simply amazing" - Scholarship Trip Essay [2]

Rachel, a heading is not necessary in a personal statement such as this. You have included some very interesting facts about yourself as a student in this essay. But there is not enough information to convince a scholarship committee that they should fund your trip. The basis for your trip to Germany is a scientific field trip of sorts. Yet your interest and work in the science field is merely glossed over. Rather than talking about your socio-civic participation in school, you should be building upon your scientific background and the projects that you successfully accomplished in relation to your desire to travel to Germany.

You should be considering the requirements of the scholarship program while writing your biography. Present and develop ideas that you are sure will gain their attention and make them consider you as a serious candidate for the scholarship. Remember to look up their mission and vision objectives and be sure to reflect that in your personality as you describe yourself. You can and should keep the biography down to one page only, but in order to fit in more information, you can use single spacing. That way you can truly develop your personal presentation.

I hope you consider my suggestions. I look forward to your uploading the new version should you decide to make a new one :-)

Scholarship / 'MY CONTRIBUTION TO THE CLASS' and 'MY CAREER VISION' SOP for master degree scholarship [3]

knipod, I have some grammar errors to correct in your statements. Both statements meet the prompt requirements. I am just not sure about the word count. Do you have a limit on it? I would like to know if you are over or under the word count so the correct adjustments to the content can be made.


- ... South Koreans managed to develop their country's economy over a matter of decades. My country, Thailand, as everyone. .. makes me curious as to what kinds of obstacles... from South Korea's success .

Graduate / A society can prepare its young people for leadership by instilling in them a sense of cooperation [2]

Yunpei, while you do present a strong discussion as to why cooperation should be taught to young people in order to prepare them for leadership, you need have looked so far into the future for the examples to support your reasons. In fact, you should have only looked as far back as grade school. Remember how we used to have elections for class officers? How the school projects were grouped into teams ? How we all gathered in groups with friends during lunch and discussed our day and tried to help each other solve our individual problems? Those are all examples of how cooperation is the default teaching method of leadership among the youth. These samples prove the effectiveness of the power of cooperation in the creation and training of future leaders. I believe that you should revise your essay to present those obvious facts instead. This will make it stronger and more identifiable to most readers.

Writing Feedback / Factory and its aftermaths [8]


- I don't know where to begin with the errors in this statement. The grammatical errors abound and the way you expressed yourself has not improved over the past essays. In this paragraph, you were supposed to present your stance on the issue. All you said was that this was a stance that you support. What stance is that? You mentioned 2 stands on the issue and did not clarify which one you were against. Rephrase the paragraph please.


- Where are your examples to support this claim? Remember an advantage and disadvantage essay is useless without supporting facts and evidence.


- As proven by what? Discuss this as a separate paragraph.


- Again, this should be a separate paragraph. Never bunch your reasons in one paragraph because you fail to present supporting evidence when you do that.


- This sentence does not make any sense. What exactly are you trying to say here? Try to rephrase it in a simple manner so that you can hopefully present your thought more clearly. .


- You should instead be talking about the noise pollution created by their machines and operating equipment during sleeping hours for the neighborhood.


- Your conclusion should state that these are the reasons why you oppose the building of a factory in your neighborhood and summarize the facts.

Graduate / Chernobyl, Pripyat - My descriptive writing piece [2]

Alex, your descriptive essay is very engaging. Most specially because it deals with a real event in history. I really felt immersed in the horror that you were experiencing and wanted to come to your aid. It is a well developed essay that only suffers from certain grammatical errors that I will be correcting below:


- ... It felt like it lasted... until I realized I had a... that resonated nonstop in my head and in my ears.



- but found nothing...


- it now lay useless. ..


-... the bump car would...


- My eyes are swimming...


-... met by a metal...


- where I sat ...


Your essay will vastly improve in grammar content once you apply these revisions :-)

Graduate / IELTS: modern jobs and fast food are the main reasons for increasing average weight among people [2]

Katy, if you will take a serious look at your first paragraph, you will notice that it has several discussions running within it. All with its own specific topics and reasons for being discussed. By doing this, you have endangered the clarity of the essay discussion. In order to present a clear discussion based upon well developed reasons and point of views, you must give each reason its own paragraph.

A paragraph allows you to have a subject for every reason and allows ample room for thought development and discussions of the supporting and opposing sides. By doing this, you will be able to present your ideas in a more coherent manner. Each of your reasons are highly valid and acceptable in an academic discussion. The problem, is that you chose to merely mention these reasons instead of actually letting the readers in on the reasons that each point has helped increase the problem of obesity. You will need to choose only the most important discussions and then discuss these in at least 5 sentences each so that you can show us that you understand the reasons behind the point you are trying to make.

The same problem exists in your second paragraph where you group all of the solutions that you are presenting without thoroughly explaining how you plan to implement these or how you hope it will solve the problem. Again, it would be best to discuss the solution that you feel is the most effective in addressing the problem and then developing your last paragraph body around that.

Your conclusion lost its efficacy because instead of simply giving us a recap of the facts, you presented a new idea and then left it at that. There is absolutely no way that last statement can be accepted as a proper conclusion in any test or research paper.

Needless to say, a revision is in order. I hope will be willing to show the revised version to us so that we can help you with it :-)

Undergraduate / Black Market Organ Transplanting - Georgetown SFS Supplemental Essay [2]


John, What human right is being violated? Quote the law. then discuss the point of view of the seller that his right is not being violated because he willingly sold his organ in exchange for money. The black market participants argue that there is no violation because it is a human being's right to earn money, that is all the seller is doing, earning money. Defend your stance now on the violation of human rights.

Since you have a personal experience in organ donation, you should definitely share that story in order to show the reason why you consider this issue an important one. This will show the connection you have to the issue, the reasons behind your perceived solution, and why this is an advocacy for you. All of those parts when written, will create the hook that will keep the admissions officer interested in the essay you wrote.

Writing Feedback / War is a thrilling escape from the laziness of peace - essay [3]

Ororo, I am a bit lost about the actual concentration of this paper. I think it is because you presented us with an essay, the topic being war, but without the specifics that come with topic. What is the question that your essay is trying to answer? We don't know what the question is so we cannot tell if you have written an essay that answers the question. So please tell us what the question you are trying to answer is. An academic essay includes a restated prompt, overview of the discussion, and your opinion, I did not see any of that in your first paragraph which is known as the introduction.

William Tecumseh is an important part of your essay. You make reference to him several times throughout the essay. While it informs us about his point of view, for those of us unfamiliar with Tecumseh beg to wonder who he is and why his is so central to your paper. Therefore, you need to ease the reader into the background of this person. Who he is and why point of view on war is very important. Without that, he is just a name who is saying something about war. His inclusion in the essay does not carry any academic weight.

What is the connection of Tecumseh with the war you are discussing? There was no transition statement on your part that could have prepared us for the sudden discussion about the events of a war. Then you suddenly spoke of peace. Again, just as suddenly as you spoke of war. You need to prepare your readers for these topic transitions. It doesn't just happen. By suddenly changing topics, your essay becomes inconsistent in discussion. It comes across as lacking direction. So you need to adjust your writing style to include transition sentences.

Undergraduate / 'it offers engineering from my first year' - Columbia is the best place for me [3]

Maria, please make sure that you have structured your sentences properly. This means that you have a period in the right place and not a comma where a period should be, among other sentence structure problems. I will point those out to you for now and I hope you can correct them along with the grammar revisions I will make to help bring down your word count. Yes, I will be revising your essay in totality to meet the word count :-)

The appeal of Columbia University for me lies in its ability to allow Engineering freshmen to have hands on experience in the field of design by allowing them to bring their ideas to life. I am enticed to enroll by the thought of participating in research projects under the tutelage of well known enginnering professors with the possibility of being able to gain internships in New York as well. I am definitely interested in pursuing the vast academic and semi-professional background that Columbia offers to its successful student applicants.

To social atmosphere of Columbia is one where I know that I will be able to make my home away from home. Being thousands of miles from hom, it is important to be a part of a welcoming and warm community. I immediately felt that way upon my campus visit to Columbia. The student enthusiasm and passion for their studies and civic activities really made me want to be a part of the campus excitement.

All combined, I believe that these factors are what appealed to me best when I was choosing my Engineering school. Columbia offers me the best chance to become a well rounded individual during my 4 years away from my home country by offering me not only academic, but social stability as well.

Does this work for you? It is 216 words. Use it as your template for revision if you wish to.

Essays / Narrative Essay about Brother's death [3]

Latrina, there are a number of ways that you can approach this essay. Let me offer a rundown of possible thesis statements for you that could possibly be used in applying for schools (if that is your purpose).

1. The way his death helped to shape your dreams and ambitions.
2. How your relationship with your brother during his lifetime taught you lessons you would not have normally learned.
3. The death of your brother and how you coped with it, leading you to discover new things about you such as a career calling or ambitions in life.

4. How your brother's death led you to an unexpected achievement in life.
5. His death being the root cause of your own personal issues that you had to overcome

Those are just some possible thesis statements that you can use. You should be able to find a way to fit your brother's story in depending upon the common app or specific essay demands of the school you are applying to. I suggest that you fit the story to the essay app rather than the other way around :-)

Undergraduate / 'Great Barrier Reef documentaries' - Stanford Supplement - Intellectual Vitality essay [14]

Oriyan, I mean the other versions of this essay specifically. Sometimes, writing an essay takes a strange turn. You end up with numerous versions of the same paper and with each version, there is one body of words that completely stands out. When you take all of these essay highlight paragraphs and combine them into one new essay you end up with an almost perfect essay in your mind. Sure it will require some sentence revision and possibly the addition of some transitional sentences, but you will see that it will pay off in the long run by creating an essay that you will be ready to submit for consideration to the admissions officer. My role here, is to help make sure you achieve that level :-)

Graduate / The summer I turned 18, I held my first job at the USAFA; MS in Finance Application Essay [4]

- I can tell that you are familiar with the career progression of a Financial Adviser and yet you have refrained from actually presenting a 5 year career plan for yourself as the prompt dictates. YOu could have simply glossed over your E-Trade Roth IRA and totally skipped your parents participation of matching your earnings because their presence in the story did not really add any important information about your career development, which is the main focus of the essay. In my opinion, you should have taken the most important lesson you learned while dealing with the ROTH IRA and used that to present the basis of your 5 year career plan. As we know, the career path of a financial advisor does not have a tendency to progress upward. Regardless of how long you work in the position, you will still be a FA. However, with this success comes the power to grow your portfolio of clients with increasing incomes. So perhaps you should let us know instead if you plan on sticking it out with an investment firm for 5 years or more or if you plan to break out within 5 years and how you plan to grow your career once you have gone out on your own. That will remove the predictability of the answer to these types of questions.


- While your first two paragraphs came out strong and informative, you floundered with depicting your frame of thought with the third paragraph. It seems to contain an unfinished thought. That is why it seems confusing to read. You are supposed to be candid in your self appraisal. Yet the last sentence in your appraisal is anything but that. I suggest that you delete the last paragraph instead because it does not help[/quote]

- You are not being asked to defend the kind of student you will be if you are admitted into the school. Instead, the essay is asking you to concentrate upon how you can improve the student community of the university through your love of learning and your desire to share knowledge. You should concentrate on developing an answer along those lines. Maybe something along the lines of starting a mentoring / tutorial group for the students who may struggle in class before they fail. The mentoring group could be free of charge because it will your special contribution to the learning experience of others. Or something like that.

I realize that you have word limitations on the essays. If you keep paying attention to the word count though, you end up with these kinds of essays, solidly thought out but little developed. My advice to you would be to not worry about the word count for now. Just honestly answer the questions and when you feel you have the perfect answers put together, post the essay here so we can begin to revise the essay to bring down the word count :-)

Undergraduate / 'Great Barrier Reef documentaries' - Stanford Supplement - Intellectual Vitality essay [14]

This is an excellent addition to the essay! It is exactly what we need to interest the reader with the story hook. Merge this with the other parts and then post it here as soon as you can so that we can have a go at cutting it down word-wise and improving upon it content-wise.


- How did you do this?

I think that once we see the combined essays, we will be able to cut down the word count and also edit the essay into a manner that will make it respond directly to the prompt without any additional editing. Well, maybe a few corrections here and there, but nothing major. How soon can you post the new version of the essay?

Undergraduate / I am dedicating my life to service and excellence - TEXAS A&M Transfer Admission Essay [2]

Andrew, the essay that you present is informative but not in an interesting way. The introduction just lacks an interesting hook that can hold on to the attention of the admissions officer as he begins to read the paper. I found myself losing interest after the first paragraph. Then somehow, I managed to force myself to go back and read it all the way. I am glad I did that because in the last paragraph, I found the hook that could make your essay work in a more interesting manner. The hook I suggest you use is the following:


- This leads the reader to believe that you are about to embark on an interesting adventure. It gives us a sense that you are facing an unknown and that you will do your best to overcome it. Maybe you could do something to make your essay sound as exciting as this paragraph?

It is always more interesting to discover the adventurous spirit of the writer rather than having to sift through what are already formulaic stories in the application forms. By making yourself sound more exciting in a way, the better your chance of being remembered come final deliberation day. Take us on this journey of yours in the unmoored ship. Let us know what is truly going on in your mind and what your belief system is. That will help show a side of you that the normal essay prompts would not present.

Undergraduate / The Me I am Today - Common App; background or story of an international student [11]

Silverw, I swear the essay is near perfect already. There are still a few errors that we need to clean up. I think we will be all set with this version after :-)


- I think you mean" it was not till the beginning of high school." The way you wrote the statement does not make sense.


- ... and I were achieving eventually led to the ...


... greatest gifts ...

Undergraduate / I can become a convenient change maker, altering the issues and the approaches to them. [3]

Sa1na, you have presented very interesting activities that are sure to interest the admissions officer to learn more about you. The activities show that you are a social person who thrives on interacting with other people and helping them whenever you can. These are all good traits. Unfortunately, you failed to properly connect it with the desire of Changemaker campus to learn about how these activities can help you bond with their student community should you be granted a student slot in the next term.

Rather than talking about your past interactions with various people, you should have your statement look towards the future. Find out what you can about the Changemaker campus and revise the essay to reflect an integration of who you are with the social expectations of the university and its student community. That way you will be able to show how you will effect change within the student community. That is what the university wants to learn about and that is what you should be telling them about.

Essays / I've been thinking about the prompts for days but still got nothing yet; personal essay! [28]

In my opinion, yes, you should rewrite the essay using one of the prompt provided in the application packet. In fact, this is what you can do, write an essay for each common app question. That way you can talk about yourself in a wider manner. You can present various aspects of your personality and character traits in line with the expectations of the university admissions officer.After writing and perfecting 5 different versions of your essay, you will be able to not only practice writing in the English language, but you will give yourself the opportunity to choose which of the essays you wrote best represents you. That should be the essay that you present with the rest of your application documents. It may stand the best chance of catching the attention of the admissions officer who in turn, may seriously consider your application because of the essay you presented.

Of course if you want to just develop the essay that you wrote as a general essay, you will need to provide your own prompt and revise the essay based upon your perceived expectations of the admissions officer. In other words, you can either waste your time doing something you want to do, or you can use the time wisely by preparing essays that the university will actually read. The choice is yours to make :-) We will just be here to assist you.

Writing Feedback / IELTS : Children are engaged in paid job. Discuss both views and give your opinion [2]

Anh, your desire to learn how to write in English without help from actual classes is admirable. Your work shows your desire to learn how to write in English properly as well. That said, I have to tell you that while the essay that you wrote is filled with grammatical errors, the message of your essay is coming through. The format of your essay though is a problem that needs to be addressed before we fix the grammatical errors. I hope to be able to guide you through that process now. Note my comments in green. I will try to help you correct the format and content of your essay so that it can reflect your thoughts in a better manner :-)

- Anh, in order to properly present your introductory statement, you need to present the question the essay is asking in your own understanding, then tell us what kind of topics you will be discussing in the body, finally, you should present your own opinion on the topic as well. This will become the thesis statement or topic for discussion in the essay.Right now, your introductory statement does not offer that.

- Who is speaking in this paragraph? You need to let us know whose opinion this is. Is it yours? Or someone else? Never end your paragraph with etc. In fact, try to avoid using that word because it is not academically acceptable in a discussion.

- Review this paper for capitalization and punctuation problems. I see a comma where there should be a period. What kind of academic results would this produce for the child? You need to learn to develop your ideas fully in order to properly discuss the concerns of the essay. Do not use one liner statements then leave it hanging.

- Your personal opinion cannot be your conclusion. New ideas cannot be introduced in the conclusion of an essay. So you will need to reformat this statement into a paragraph and then formulate a proper conclusion for your essay.

My advice is this, revise the essay. It is the only way to improve this work. It is admirable, but it needs help to become better and we are offering you that :-)

Undergraduate / One "Personal" Word - UChicago Supplement [21]


- Alina, the essay is , as far as I can tell, good enough to be submitted. I just need to ask you to look at the portion where you say "but to a to Russians", please remove the extra to after the a in order to correct the grammar. I did that for your earlier but you put it back so I guess you did not notice the correction that I did. Do you feel the same as I do about the readiness of your essay? If you do, then you can go ahead and submit this. Otherwise, let me know what else you want to do and I'll try to help you work it out :-)

Undergraduate / "Poem reading competition" - 150 words about meaningful activity [5]


Alina, try this version out. It is 149 words:

I frequently participate in events promoting peace, equality and human rights. Through reading poems in public, I find it in my power to turn people's attention by the means of peaceful protest to quintessential social or political issues. So many faces hear me and my words have different influence on each.Getting ready for performing a poem, I experience variety of emotions from fear to pride, from agony when a right intonation is so hard to find to a sense of absolute confidence when I finish the prep-work. I obtain a universal skill of expressing myself logically and persuasively. Reading poems is doubtlessly my way to tell the world how exactly I feel about a problem. It's also rewarding to read poems in orphanages as I believe it helps children to grow emotionally and develop sense of social justice. A poem can do anything to human's heart if delivered appropriately

Writing Feedback / The problems that Facebook can cause for us. [6]

Van, you have some spelling and grammar errors. Let me correct them for you. By the way, is this supposed to be a statement or an essay? If it is an essay, you need to learn to divide the topic discussions by paragraph in order to meet the IBC essay requirements.


This is my take on your essay:

Nowadays people know how to use Facebook, but not many are familiar with the problems that using Facebook causes. Use of the website has been known to diminish the desire for direct contact among people. Since most conversations in this age of technology take place via the internet and webcams, face time is no longer necessary. This results in a breakdown of reality based relationships. People with millions of followers on Facebook tend to believe that they are popular even though they do not know the people who follow or like them. Facebook has also been noted to have caused a rise in cybercrimes being committed such as phising, spamming, financial scamming, and the like. Rape and terrorism are also a major concern among the users of Facebook. Facebook just wastes our time because it does not have a relevant function in our lives.

Now for the problems, based upon the premise that this should be an essay and not a statement:
1. The prompt indicates that you should be discussing the problems that Facebook causes for us. Yet you deviate from the topic because you mention conversations using web cams which is not a major thrust for FB users.

2. The statements can be made stronger if you lengthen the discussion of your ideas rather than just giving simple one liners. Present better developed ideas per paragraph and make sure to provide examples that at relevant to the topic.

3. Never use the acronym FB in a formal essay. Always use the whole world to display academic respect for the reader.
4. If the ending is your conclusion, you should not have presented a new idea in it because the conclusion should just be a summary of the essay contents.

Needless to say, this piece of work is in bad need of a revision. I hope to see it soon :-)

Undergraduate / "Poem reading competition" - 150 words about meaningful activity [5]

Alina, I have never read such an engaging and well thought essay from you yet. Not until you presented this one for review :-) Congratulations on a job well done. It is an essay that not only answers the prompt, but also show us a side to you that may not have been brought to light by your other common app essays. That said, I have only one comment to make about the essay that I hope you will take into consideration. I am not forcing a revision. The essay is alright as it is, I am merely saying that you can strengthen its message by rearranging certain parts :-)


- This is the sentence that I would open this sentence with. Then I would make the poetry reading relate to this by explaining how you believe in the power of peaceful protests. Adding that this is an activity that you also perform at orphanages because it makes you feel like you are able to influence the future generation by doing so. Influencing the future generation by leaving your mark in their young minds is something that impresses people. It makes you seem selfless and willing to give of yourself so that others may improve.

Essays / I've been thinking about the prompts for days but still got nothing yet; personal essay! [28]


- I am not sure what you mean by this. Normally, you look for ways to make your activity fir the topic.

I actually found a number of prompts that will allow you to relate your club experiences. If you are interested in writing about it, the topics are:

You could choose any one of these topics to be the basis of your essay using the club you founded as a subject of the paper.


- Pick the question that you feel you can best answer and work on it. Don't try to fit an idea into a question. That will make the essay very difficult to write.

The essay that you wrote is not effective. It sounds like your brain was just spinning its wheels trying to get your mind to come up with ideas to fill a page. If you want to make this essay work and make it worth the while of the admissions officer to read, you will choose a prompt from the 5 provided and write an essay that answers the question posed :-)

Undergraduate / One "Personal" Word - UChicago Supplement [21]


In the contrary, it will show why certain words must remain unique to a certain language or dialect. There is nothing selfish or greedy about it. That is the whole point of the essay prompt. Preserving the meaning of a word by using it in is original form rather than trying to roughly translate the word. to quote the reason directly from your essay prompt:


This gives you the authority to be selfish with the word that is uniquely Russian. You can say something to the effect of the Russians are willing to share the word with the world, but not in a rough translation because it will lose the very quality that makes it special or something to that effect. That selfishness or greediness is what makes the word "personal: to you and your country. So run with the sentiment. Let it be a part of the explanation as to what makes the word extremely personal to you.

Undergraduate / 'It was March 12th of 2006' - Coming to the US - CommonApp Essay [7]


-Mengyang, I am happy that you liked my little "nitpick" of a suggestion.You should devote a full paragraph or two to this part because it is central to your story of becoming an American. Use 2 paragraphs if you will be talking about 2 different events in your life.


- The flight story is not really connected to anything else in the paragraph that shows your assimilation problems so you can skip those 2 sentences. Devote it to adding thoughts about your grammar or culture assimilation woes instead. Tell us how you felt the day that you realized you had finally succeeded in becoming more American than you thought you were.That is , after you understood the full Colbert Report.


- If you can rephrase this sentence into something more touching about your bouts of homesickness immediately after arriving in the U.S. and you can position before your paragraph about school, I believe you will have a more well rounded essay that shows the way you slowly separated from the old country in favor of your new one

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Undergraduate / One "Personal" Word - UChicago Supplement [21]

I think we have just one problem sentence left to fix. Let me try to see how I can help you with it.


- Perhaps you can better say it this way "These eleven letters may seem random to foreigners but to the Russian people, it means preserving who they are as a people and as an individual."

With the application of this revision, I do believe the essay is ready for submission. I mean, that is if you agree with me :-) If you think there is still work to be done on it, then we shall continue to revise until you are happy and confident with it :-)