Undergraduate / 'helping hand at the end of your arm' My Common Application Essay for the Ivy League Colleges [5]

Hi guys, I am applying for Undergraduate admissions in the US universities. I have written the following response for the Common Application writing portion. I showed it to a professional counselor and she said there are several grammatical errors and structural problems in the essay. She did not tell me what to change, hence I am uploading it here. Please read it and tell me what is wrong with it. I need it to be perfect for the most competitive schools like Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Stanford etc. My future hangs on this essay. Thanks in advance.

Question: Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

Response:

It has been rightly said that some events in life have such powerful and indelible effects that they transform the personality of the individual for positive or for negative. One such incident happened in my life when my father decided to invest all of our savings in a business and lost it.

It was 2011, I was in Grade 10 and about to start my college. My father knew that this would mean an increase in my educational expenses. My sister had also started High School. This made my father to take steps to increase the family income. So he invested in one of my uncle's business. But owing to my uncle's selfishness and my father's inexperience in the business world, the venture failed terribly. This changed everything for us. My parents were forced to ask for help from our relatives in order to keep the house running. My father started a part-time job at a call center. But we were unable to have our both ends meet. My parents realized that they can either support my education or my sister's. Being the eldest among my siblings, I thought that I cannot be the reason my siblings are denied education so I told my parents that they should not worry about my expenses.

When I started education in Government College University, my High School paid a portion of my tuition as a cash prize for securing admission. This helped me for a while but I had to find a permanent solution. Therefore, I started teaching students of grades 7-10 at home and earned enough money to cover both my educational expenses and contribute towards my family's income. By the time I graduated from GCU, my father finally got a job in UAE that paid him enough to support our family.

This was a difficult time for me as I was spending a major portion of my day teaching students. It affected my studies and grades and I had very little time to focus on extracurricular activities or sports. But just like every cloud has a silver lining, there were many positive changes that came to my life as a result of this financial turmoil. It changed my perception of reality and this world. My problem solving and critical thinking improved a great deal and I learned the essence of leadership and the courage to face the world. Juggling between my studies and teaching taught me time management. My decision making power became stronger which further strengthened my determination and perseverance. As a result, it enabled me to keep moving forward and succeed.

"The best place to find the helping hand is at the end of your arm." This quote has been my source of inspiration throughout my life and it has helped me every time I faced an obstacle. It taught me that I cannot rely on someone else to solve my problems. When I started teaching students, it seemed impossible to manage. But I remained consistent in my struggle and depended on my own wit to handle this difficult situation. And in doing so, I miraculously found the will within me to overcome the hurdles and I realized that God helps those who help themselves. Moreover, becoming a teacher instilled a sense of achievement and satisfaction in me as I knew that I was not only helping other students with their studies but also empowering them to trust their own abilities. I was able to share my experience with my students and in turn, I received their feedback which added to my knowledge. I believe that knowledge is not just acquired through books but it is also shared through practical experiences. Although this event was a negative one but it marked my transition into a successful adulthood and it equipped me with the skills and practical knowledge needed to be a refined individual and a fruitful member of society.

Undergraduate / "I learned MAGIC!" Harvard/UChicago Essay "What makes you Happy?" [4]

I need a little help with this essay. It is a supplementary essay for University of Chicago with a topic: What Makes You Happy? I am also thinking of using it in the Harvard Supplement under "Topic of my own". Please suggest if this is Harvard ready?

This is what I come up with. Please check it for any mistakes in its content or structure or grammar usage.
Thanks in advance.

"I learned MAGIC!"

This is what I told my friends who were gathered at my place, playing video games on PlayStation 4, two years ago. After hearing this, they stopped and stared at me like I had said something strange. One of them asked: "Magic with playing cards?" to which I replied "Yeah!". "Why don't you show us something", another remarked. I have been eagerly waiting for someone to say this. I brought out my deck of cards, shuffled it and handed it over to my friend. I asked him to cut it once and requested all five of them to pick one card from the top and memorize it. Then I demonstrated my abilities in the Magical Arts by accurately guessing every card. They were all astonished. Since that day, my friends think of me as some sort of supernatural human being capable of performing feats that are almost impossible to be comprehended by an ordinary brain.

I enjoy performing magic because it brings a smile to other people's faces. I first came across this form of art when I was watching random videos on YouTube and found a video of a magician performing onstage at America's Got Talent. I was amazed to watch him perform and my intellectual curiosity kicked in, urging me to google how he did it. A few clicks here and there and I found it! The Holy Grail! A website full of free videos dedicated to teaching Muggles (Non-Magic Folk) some really wonderful tricks. I got myself some playing cards and started practicing in my free time. Soon I was able to perform a variety of different tricks which enabled me to entertain and surprise my family and friends.

Curiosity is the wick in the candle of Learning and I feel blessed to have curiosity and intrigue about the world we live in. I am curious about Mathematics and Physics and I can regard my academic success to the inquisitiveness I possess. As a man of science, my intellectual curiosity motivates me to relate everything in my life with Mathematics. In case of magic tricks, there is a lot of science involved. For example, for the first trick that I showed my friends, I had to prepare the deck beforehand. I arranged them in a specific order that allowed me to calculate the value of a card by looking at a card placed before it but appeared random when I showed someone else. As long as I am employing the use of fake shuffles to make sure that the order is not disturbed, I can guess any card. Similarly, some tricks require the memorization of the positions of certain cards while others can simply be performed with deceit and distraction. By utilizing the rules of probability and statistics, math allows me to create tricks that have a profound effect on the spectators as it leaves them dazzled.

Performing tricks on someone and fooling them in front of their eyes gives me an odd type of satisfaction and other people seem to enjoy this too as long as they are on the receiving end. Most people do not consider magical arts a productive activity as opposed to athletics or music, and it's not like I don't partake in hobbies that are beneficial to the mind and body alike, but sometimes, we need a little 'different' in life. I believe that every grown person has a child inside of him/her. Our daily chores and stressful workloads have turned us into robots that are programmed to repeat their routines. A little magic now and then tends to wake up that playful kid who, for just a couple of minutes, forgets about all the worries and responsibilities and enjoy the trick that is being performed. That one moment, where I make the Big Reveal or use sleight of hand to conjure the impossible, that one moment where everyone enters the land of wonder and amazement, that one moment makes me happy.

Graduate / Personal Statement for IAESTE Mechanical Engineering Internship [3]

"The best place to find the helping hand is at the end of your arm"

I am applying for a one year paid internship offered by IAESTE for Mechanical Engineers (Final Year students and recent grads, I am a recent grad). They have asked for a personal statement that is 1 to 1.5 page long, so 1000+ words and discusses one's interest in engineering, why chose mechanical engineering, the details of projects and related activities carried on during studies, general stuff like why you think you are well equipped for this internship, how the university studies prepared you for a career in Mechanical Engineering etc. My essay is 1342 words, but I would appreciate if someone could point out redundant stuff so I could shorten the length a bit. Or offer any advice or modifications and corrections, grammatical mistakes etc. Thanks. Here it is:

Curiosity is the wick in the candle of Learning and I feel blessed to have curiosity and intrigue about the world we live in. I am curious about Mathematics, Physics and Engineering and I can regard my academic success to the inquisitiveness I possess. As a man of science, my intellectual curiosity motivates me to relate everything in my life with the fundamental principles and concepts of science and engineering. It is due to this relation that I discovered my interest in Engineering in general and Mechanical Engineering in particular that shaped the path I took and influenced almost every decision I made regarding my academic and professional life.

My intellectual curiosity and my passion for engineering has been the prime driver behind most of my life decisions. It has been rightly said that some events in life have such powerful and indelible effects that they transform the personality of the individual for positive or for negative. For me, it was the rigorous journey that I undertook to become an engineer. It is not a mere qualification, instead it is a lifestyle choice as it changes the way you understand and perceive the world around you. Learning about scientific concepts and engineering principles and finding out how things work felt like someone had drawn the curtains on the mysteries of the universe. Machines like aircrafts, rockets, or cars, that fascinated me when I was a child resolved into quantifiable objects and solvable equations. It changed my perception of this world. While others saw a smart phone as a communications device, I understood the function of small components that work in unison and the programming behind it, supporting its multitude of features. While others enjoyed the comfort of an automobile, I experienced it as a living and breathing machine comprised of several assemblies of engineered components. My problem-solving skills and critical thinking improved a great deal through assignments and projects and I learned the essence of leadership and cooperation while working with fellow students and friends. Juggling between my curricular and extracurricular activities taught me time management. My decision-making power became stronger as I took more initiatives, welcomed risks and explored the different venues of learning offered throughout my university life and it further strengthened my determination and perseverance. As a result, I transitioned from an ordinary student into an engineering professional that has the ability to creatively take advantage of the acquired knowledge and skills to turn ideas into reality, create working engineering designs from scratch and solve real-world problems.

Throughout my engineering studies, I undertook several projects to not only test the practical aspects of science and engineering but also the idea of building something with my own hands is rewarding for me. My first ever project was a miniature building water supply design, a simple Fluid Mechanics project in which I planned the supply of water from one source to several outlets based on provided parameters of flowrate, height and pressure. As semesters passed, the concepts increased in technical complexity and the courses became difficult but so did my motivation. From improving an Inclined Solar Water Heater in a Heat and Mass Transfer Project by incorporating a black fleece wick into its design as an absorber thus increasing heater efficiency to designing an electronic circuit and programming an Arduino to create an energy-efficient Night Lamp that turned itself on in the evening and remained off during daylight through effective utilization of a Light Dependent Resistor (LDR), I got the chance to engage the creative side of my brain and learn through experimentation. The most interesting project was designing a sub-marine that could survive the enormous and extreme pressures of Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean. The project was part of the Mechanics of Materials course and required knowledge of several engineering domains. Its design, mathematical analysis and theoretical calculations were all done from scratch. My biggest achievement to date however, is my Final Year Project titled "A Parametric Study of a Turbo Fan Engine of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" for which not only I was awarded the highest grade but it was also sponsored by an engineering company and is in the process of being patented by them for commercial applications. I was able to provide a working solution to the engineering problem presented by the industry and develop a complex prototype that acted as proof-of-concept for the employed idea and fulfilled the industry's requirements as well as exceeding their design and operational expectations. The project was based on a NASA and Boeing joint research regarding successful conversion of Turbo-Propeller Engines into Small Scale Turbo-Fan Engines. This project was the culmination of everything I had learned and studied throughout my degree and employed complex concepts of Aerospace Engineering and Aerodynamics, Fluid Mechanics and Computational Fluid Dynamics, Engineering Design and Structural Mechanics, and Physics and Thermodynamics. This achievement is a testament to my engineering skills and the cultivation of four years of hard work, learning and perseverance.

Besides academic pursuits, I engaged in several co-curricular and extracurricular activities. In high school, I was the member of the school's student council, participated in speech and creative writing competitions and won several awards, wrote and acted in plays and skits and took part in sports. I continued this trend during my university life to improve inter-personal and communication skills, engage my intellect and socialize with my peers. The same intellectual curiosity that made me chose engineering as a profession also instilled in me, a love for Astronomy. Therefore, I joined the NUST Physics and Astronomy Society right when it was founded and then served as its President, the first engineering student ever to lead a society that was previously run by students of the Physics department. I even enrolled in Astronomy as a course at the School of Natural Sciences. Despite an extensive study load and a multitude of extracurricular activities, I still managed to find time for an engineering job as I worked part-time throughout the last two years of university as a Trainee Engineer in an Oil and Gas Company, and upon graduation, worked full time till the COVID-19 lockdown in the country. Moreover, I actively volunteered for Community Service projects like blood donation drives and helping out the underprivileged communities by organizing sewing training for women of low-income households enabling them to become financially stable and teaching their children STEM subjects. This service offered me such satisfaction and peace of mind that is otherwise nigh impossible to achieve. It instilled a sense of responsibility, achievement and compassion in me, which serves an engineer well throughout his life.

"The best place to find the helping hand is at the end of your arm." This quote has been my source of inspiration throughout my life and it has not only helped me every time I faced a challenge but also empowered me to take on added responsibility. The IAESTE Mechanical Engineering Internship in Sweden is a similar kind of engineering challenge that I am more than ready to take, as everything I have done so far has only prepared me for such an opportunity. To work in a country that is a hub for engineering excellence and entrepreneurial initiatives, with talented and experienced individuals belonging to different walks of life, I will get to learn, engage in the creative process of solving engineering problems, prepare myself better to serve the community and improve altogether as an engineering professional. My previous track record not only serves as evidence of the fact that I do not shy away from hard work but demonstrates my ability to thrive under pressure, carefully plan and execute tasks, and employ my scientific, engineering, and management skills to successfully deliver practical and efficient solutions. I believe that knowledge is not just acquired through books but it is also shared through experiences. Therefore, this international internship is the perfect opportunity for me as it will equip me with the skills and practical knowledge needed to become a refined engineer and a fruitful member of society.