Undergraduate / 'masterminding an overseas travel to USA' - Short essay of Common app [5]

I'm a applicant from China and I really appreciate somebody can give me comments on my essay :)

I have to say masterminding an overseas travel to USA is a tough job. Visa part can be very nettlesome. The application form is even more complicated than that of the university, not to mention the irritating procedure to certificate the property at banks and the most important part, the interview with Visa officers, where you should be very prudent about the question they ask. As the planner, I had to check the every detail of the materials and the forms of our group members incase any mistake and told them about the things to notice when interviewed. However, Visa was merely the start. From the design of different travel routes, flight booking to the local hotel reservation, decision was hard to make because everybody had their own opinions. We even argued whether we should first visit east coast or L.A. After a three-day discussion, we finally reached an agreement that the trip began at Hawaii and ended at New York. Nothing is more delightful when you get to the destination you designed. I sensed blithe even if I still had to be the interpreter at airports, hotels and cafés. So far I've successfully schemed the visits to America, Australia, Europe, and Dubai etc and I sincerely feel grateful that my parents gave chances and let me be the leader. My horizon was broadened and my leadership was cultivated at the meantime, which paves a smooth way for my long living and learning in USA.

Undergraduate / 'foreigners love to remark on Chinese education system' - Common app [10]

It's a bit longer than required, so I really want to know where to cut and where to improve!Any comment helps! Thanx, guys!

As I finished the last derivative question of a weekly math test, my "boss" shouted "TIME UP!" and coerced us to submit our pieces. Then I walked to the front of the classroom, filed all students' answer sheets, sent them to teacher office and went home. That's a quintessential day in my senior year life, also in every other Chinese student's. Boring? Yeah, but that's merely ostensible.

When heard that there would be a sea of monotonous tests in our formidable last year at high school, dread and pressure occupied my mind just like everybody had. I experienced the first examination shortly after I began my final year, when I was a bit morose but didn't endeavor too hard with my preparation. However, things just went by contrary. Never had I expected that I would did such a nice work that I got the highest mark in my class and ranked 28th in the whole grade, for I didn't even strive whereas others spared no effort. Was it haphazard or owing to my potentials? My ludicrous confidence began to expand and I blindly supposed that I could get a content mark without much effort. Predictably, this wrong suggestion evaporated instantaneously. In my second monthly exam, my rank declined to 55th and my math was in a completely mess. I became strained and took several academic measures promptly. Picking up all the flaws I had in the past two tests, I put them altogether in a notebook for reference to shun similar mistakes. Extra time was spent every night on doing math exercises and reviewing all the errors which I had made before. Discussion with my teachers would last for hours just to figure out why a step in my solution of a Cartesian geometry question was inaccurate. My spirit of assiduous and initiative helped me free from the irritation of the tedious exams. I even longed for the next exam, in which I could find where my drawbacks were. I did pay off and reaped huge fruits not simply in study but in psychology. In the ensuing exams, I was invariably the peak in class and top 10 in grade, which made me assigned as the representative in class to share my special experience as well as the strategic learning methods with others. "Score doesn't matter anymore when I've took enough exams", I told them, "What seems to be the question is that how much I've learned from my lapses."

Holding that thought in mind, I walked in the classroom for the very last time also for the final "final test", college entrance exam, a test which could somehow determine one's whole life. I didn't freak out as I would as usual, but sat peacefully in the chair for 9 hours without any impurity in my brain and answered the perplexing but familiar questions. I believed it was countless exams that favored me and eliminated my distracting thoughts. Though not astonishingly high, the result was within my expectation. I felt satisfactory.

Find flaws, keep a peaceful mind and improve.
No wonder why the foreigners love to remark on Chinese education system, the so-called exam-oriented system or "cramming", and disdain it, for the quantity of exams is undoubtedly marvelous. Nevertheless, retrospecting the past "hell year", I clearly know that I didn't have phobophobia of test nor become an exam machine. I must say the senior year experience is my golden days, a time for me to evolve from a naive and depressed teenager to a thoughtful yet passionate youth, a time when my thought matured both academically and philosophically.