Student Talk / "Economic reason" - what does it mean? Scholarship [4]

Usa, when you apply for a scholarship, it is usually because you cannot afford to pay the school tuition fees related to the course you wish to study. The economic aspect of the scholarship question refers to that part of your life or status. Why can't you afford to pay for college? How do you plan paying for college? What are the main reasons that you think, based upon your economic needs, you should be given the scholarship instead of another student?

Economic reasons could stem from a financial crisis in the family that forced you to start working or made your parents lose your college fund, the inability of your parents to fully cover your tuition expenses because their savings will not suffice, or you come from an indigent part of the community with high aspirations but no way of being able to afford to turn it into a reality. Any or all of these reasons prove economic need for a scholarship and should be discussed in your essay. If you have a unique situation that applies to your scholarship need, then mention that too.

Undergraduate / MSU- Diverse Community; I have always wanted to become a teacher [2]

Riley, you should delete the following paragraphs in order to create a more informative essay:



- Those are 2 statements that belong to a different kind of essay. Not this one. To replace those lines, you should instead mention methods by which other people have benefited from your teaching skills and passion for teaching. Perhaps mention your most notable successes as a Sunday school teacher and how you think you can apply what you learned about teaching there towards the betterment of the student relationship on campus. Something about learning to deal with different personalities among children should do the trick of showing how you can help warring students balance their relationship on campus.

Undergraduate / My leadership role was to introduce and mentor incoming cadets to facets of Culver life; AIR FORCE [4]

- Seth, when writing an essay as important at this one, you must always look for that statement that will keep the admissions officer interested in discovering more about you through what you wrote. This particular passage of your essays is highly effective in achieving that and I suggest that you use it as such. It would also help if , for the benefit of those who are not familiar with CMA, you gave a short introduction to the military academy and the code of ethics the academy cadets live by. It will explain why you live by the honor code and how important and valuable it is for you to uphold it.

The essay in itself presents a very interesting dilemma that any student could face on a daily basis. Your story becomes more compelling because of the military background attached to it. It is nice to read an essay about a true ethical dilemma that was dealt with properly. Even your convictoon at the end that you would do it all over again if you need to showed your strength of character and self-discipline.

There are a few spelling problems that need to be fixed but those can wait till after we have the main theme of the essay polished Shall we work on that part now? :-)

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

Fiona, please let me rephrase this for you. Hopefully I will be able to capture the essence of your paragraph. If not, I'll work with you till we sort it out :-)

I founded the Mandarin Orange Club because of a question that arose in my Government class. During one particularly interesting lecture, we discussed what methods could be implemented in order to help the American system of government become more effective. We were taught that the government currently could not handle the problems of gun control, illegal drugs, and other very "American" problems. Feeling like I understood the American system very well, I came up with a smug answer" They should be run under Communism." It seemed to be the logical answer to the problem. After all, Communism works very well for China.

Now comes my problem with your essay. You explained the basis of the club, but did not really tell us how the club functioned and how it succeeded or did not in helping bridge the gap in social understanding between the two nations. Kindly explain that part to me and I will see how I can polish it into a paragraph that will work well with the one I developed above for you :-) Take your time. Rushing will get you nowhere when writing an essay like this :-)

Undergraduate / The realization that altered my life course (Work in progress)- Commonapp [3]

Zachary, I totally agree with your statement that grammar problems are only secondary to the content and theme of the essay. This is very well proven by your own essay which not only came in under the maximum word count, but also responded to the essay prompt very well. I will admit that at first, I thought this was going to be a comparison of a violent father to a submissive son. That is how the hook affected me and it kept me reading until I discovered that it was nothing like what I first thought. Yet the comparison between an ambitious son and an easily satisfied father proved to be more interesting that I had originally envisioned. I stuck with your essay till the very end and learned all about you as a person, a son, a student, an achiever, and an incoming college freshman. Excellent work! With all of that said, do you want me to help you with the grammar errors or would you like to correct those yourself?

Writing Feedback / Life is a complex thing. Every single second is our lesson as well as experience. [2]

Vns, I would like to suggest that you draw the example of this essay from your personal experience in order to make the paper more personable and authoritative in image. By speaking from experience, you will be able to present a solid example and reasons for your support of the statement. It is always more impressive for the reader to know that you speak from experience and not from third party experience or assumptions. It delivers a more solid foundation for your line of reasoning and is almost always inarguable in a debate setting, which is what this situation is. I noticed that you did not present a supporting statement prior to your opposition. That is alright. However, a well developed essay will discuss the agreeing and disagreeing side in order to make your personal opinion more believable at the end of the essay. These are just some suggestions I have to help you with your essay development. I hope you will take it constructively :-)

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

Oriyanh, this is not an academic essay in an English class, nor is it an essay in creative writing class. This is an application essay to a university where the focus of the essay is on your ability to express yourself properly. Regardless of the run-on sentences. It is negligible because it does not affect the overall impact of the essay. In my opinion, the most important aspect of the application essay is not the sentence structure in terms of sentence development, but rather the content of the sentence. Does it make sense? Does it help the essay answer the question being asked? Am I able to gather more information from the student in the current state of his essay? If the answer to those questions turns out to be yes, then the run-on sentences do not matter. Don't get me wrong, I am not dissuading you from correcting these errors if you want to. I am just giving you my opinion since you asked for it :-) You have to decide if you can let those run-ons go or if you feel a need to revise them. Your choice :-)

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

Fiona, there is actually a way to bring down your word count by deleting the dialogue in the story that you are telling. I find that it is always best to keep the dialogue as minimal as possible when writing essays like this. That is because this is not a creative writing assignment. It is a common app where you should mostly "tell" the reader about what happened and how you reacted to it rather than letting the dialogue tell the story. Let me offer a sample of this.


- Keep this as your introductory dialogue but then skip to the most important part of the essay. You will totally have to skip the dialogue exchange in order to bring up;

Let me show you how an effective introduction would work with this quote:
Chinese have a very different view of Americans, their culture, and their way of life. As a society, Chinese tend to make fun of the Americans because we understand very little about the society and its culture. All of that changed for me the year I went to the United States as an exchange student. I learned more about the Americans and how wrong the Chinese were in their beliefs. I felt compelled to alter this image. Leading me to found the Mandarin Orange Club.

Now, you can introduce the Mandarin Orange Club and why you consider your founding of this club to be a serious accomplishment on your part. Use the following as the basis for your revised paragraph:

...
Build up the reasons that you had for founding this club and what accomplishments it has achieved so far. This will show the accomplishment of your activity and the sense of maturity that has developed within you because of your interest in helping bring America to China and vice-versa.

If you can develop these parts, you will be able to bring down the word count and answer the essay direct to the point. Once you post the drafts here, I will personally help you edit and revise the essay until you are quite satisfied with what you have written :-)

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

Hi Fiona, if it's alright with you, I would rather that we just work on your essay here :-) Company policies do not allow me to provide you with my email address. However, you can send me a private message each time you upload a new essay with the link to it so that my attention can be called to the post and I will be able to concentrate on helping you each time. There are numerous essays uploaded to the server per hour but I make sure to always go back to help the students who have relied on my advice in the past. Don't worry, I won't stop helping you with any of your essays as long as you are not comfortable with the essay that you have :-) I'll always be here to help you out. Just sent me the PM every time you upload a fresh essay. I'll respond as soon as I can :-) I look forward to helping you out as best as I can ;-)

Undergraduate / I wish to become an entrepreneur. I have the needed initiative - NU application essay [5]

Shachar, there is room for improvement in your essay mostly because you deviated more than once from the essay prompt. This is not an autobiographical essay, to mentioning your experience in the navy is not relevant to the essay. It is also the main reason why you went over the required word count. If you start the essay immediately at this particular point;


you will have established your answer the the prompt immediately that requires you to connect the undergraduate school you are applying to with the unique qualities of Northwestern University. Follow it up immediately with;


and you will have established the qualities that you share in common with other Northwestern students. Adding this following will establish the way that you plan to utilize the opportunity to study at the university:


If you will kindly revise your essay to reflect these changes, I believe that you can be assisted in further strengthening the essay within the proper word count. Don't worry about the actual word count while you are revising the essay. The word count, grammar problems, and other situations existing within the essay will be fixed as the content of the essay is revised.

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.