Undergraduate / 'Ambitious goals' - Hofstra University! Educational, professional and personal goals. [NEW]

Please help me check this essay with any strict criticism whether grammatically, or just on the essay in general! Thanks a lot! :)

The essay/personal statement gives you the opportunity to share your thoughts on one of the following topics with the Admission Committee. Please select one of the following topics and prepare an essay/personal statement of 250 to 500 words.

1) Describe your educational, professional and personal goals.

Having certain goals is what differentiates person from person. To aspire to succeed in life is a hopeful way to keep looking positively towards the future. As I mature, my educational goals grow and I begin to expect more and more from myself. I no longer allow myself to 'slack off' as I may have in elementary school. I understand that my educational success only helps me begin to reach my professional goals.

I aim to go into criminal justice and become a prosecutor. It has been my dream ever since I started to comprehend and give the much-needed respect that people deserve in law enforcement and the justice department. I am constantly placing myself in that field's environment to really give myself a feel of what I have to look forward to.

I attended Bergen County Youth Police Academy this past summer as well as enrolling myself in the Bergen County Sheriff's Department Leadership Academy for the entire year. I absolutely loved, and still love, being trained by the men and women who went through the real deal: marines, army soldiers, air force personnel, in addition to drill sergeants and captains.

Along with Police Academy, I also interned at the Bergen County Superior Courts over the summer. I worked in the Family Court Department and was able to experience what it will be like to work in a courtroom. There was so much paperwork to deal with and so many cases to file, but even so, I loved every second of my internship.

Although I could've stayed home and relaxed all summer, I decided to put myself out in the field with my peers and get a basic, early understanding of what my career choice will be surrounded by.

Besides educational and professional goals, I have personal goals in which includes bettering myself in realistic ways that I know I will be able to reach. For example, I am currently trying to improve my learning abilities. By that, I am not just referring to academic learning abilities; however, the learning abilities that are skills needed to take a bad situation from the past and turn it around to learn the lessons it brings. When a negative event happens in one's life, he or she may reflect on that situation only for the worse, instead of understanding that there are precautions that can be taken in the future from preventing history from repeating itself. Learning exactly how to do this is one of my biggest personal goals.

To have aspirations in life, whether educationally, professionally, or personally, is powerfully motivating and causes more satisfaction from the feeling of accomplishment. I have ambitious goals, but I know I will achieve them through a good education, because as Horace Mann once stated, "A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated."

Undergraduate / 'Co-existed with Jewish people' - RUTGERS DIVERSITY APPLICATION ESSAY [3]

Rutgers University is a vibrant community of people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. How would you benefit from and contribute to such an environment? Consider variables such as your talents, travels, leadership activities, volunteer services, and cultural experiences.

Only personal essays submitted via our website will be considered. You may enter a maximum of 4000 characters including spaces.

Jews. I have coexisted alongside them for my whole life, elementary school, middle school, and high school. Why would my parents insist on keeping me learning that sort of education? The simple reason: I am Jewish, myself! However, what happens when I am placed in an environment when out of a group of 100 teenagers, there are around five or six Jews? How did I adapt? How was I able to benefit and grow from being in such a diverse atmosphere?

I attended the Bergen County Youth Leadership Police Academy for two weeks this summer and I couldn't have had more of a chance to learn how to interact with people from different cultures. When I arrived on the first day, all I noticed was how everyone was so used to seeing each other and how well they all got along. I first felt out of place, not knowing whether I'd make friends or not and whether I'd fit in.

After the first few days at the Academy, I already had a strong group of about five peers in which none were Jewish. I love every single one of them. There are so many interesting characteristics and ideas that can be learned from people who have been brought up either from different religious backgrounds, or just a general varied culture than what I've been accustomed to my entire life.

Besides for the Academy this summer, I have recently begun to become more involved in my heritage. My mother was born in Morocco and her family has much different types of customs and traditions than any other type of Jew. I learned as I have grown more mature, to appreciate the culture along with the special cooking habits, prayer styles, and even traditional ways to greet one another. This newfound understanding of the Moroccan culture can help me open the eyes of many students at Rutgers who have a wish to expand their knowledge learning about other cultures.

French is a huge part of the Moroccan culture because it is one of the main languages of the natives. Because of this, I have made it my personal responsibility to learn as much French as I can throughout high school, which is why this year I am finishing up my fourth year. I have also been studying intently the Hebrew language to coincide with my Jewish background. Learning languages that are important to me and my culture help me appreciate how unique I truly am and how much I can learn from my peers who have slightly varied 'personal responsibilities' in order to gain their own appreciation of their heritage.

Rutgers is a university stock filled with a very eclectic group of students from all over New Jersey and other states. However, it is not just through the college that one can find many different ethnicities and cultures amongst individuals. Rutgers is the microcosm of society as a whole. There are a numerous amount people with different customs and beliefs and in order to keep the peace in our world, everyone must learn to accept and get along with the communities surrounding.

Rutgers also has such a wide variety of clubs and sports that I would be so excited to participate in. Mock trial is my passion so anything law-oriented already caught my eye on the list of clubs. I also love playing softball and basketball so I'm happy to see how successful the Rutgers teams are. There are so many different opportunities to become apart of that coincide perfectly with my interests and hobbies, that I am pleasantly overwhelmed with the extra curricular activities at Rutgers.

I believe strongly that I could benefit and contribute to the thriving and eclectic community of students at Rutgers with my passion for languages, ethnic cuisines, and other cultures. I enjoy learning about others and how they go about in their day-to-day lives embracing their background and experiences. Rutgers provides such large center of opportunity to explore, in which I am positive I'd have much to gain as well as much to give.

Undergraduate / Israel School- PERSONAL STATEMENT [2]

THE ASSIGNMENT: Write a personal statement that tells the reader: what your family background is, your interests and hobbies, and what you plan on accomplishing in the following year in Israel and the future.

Making $160 in an hour is not something most people can say they did as a six-week-old baby. Well, that's what I did, for about a year, at least. I was a baby hand model and I probably loved all the attention and being in the spotlight, even though I was too young to talk.

Fast forward eight years later, and when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer seemed obvious to me: "a doctor, of course!" I loved watching all the hospital shows on T.V., and I loved the thought of helping people get better.

That ambition soon changed about a year later; I wanted to become an archaeologist or paleontologist. At first, it was the job names themselves that made me excited to stand out from all the other kids wanting to be doctors or ballerinas. Then, it became the actual interest in dinosaurs and digging up relics that were just waiting to be found. Soon, I was a full-fledged dinosaur and ancient civilizations researcher at the age of eight. I looked up the names and period of times when dinosaurs lived, I visited the Natural History Museum in New York City to see the fossils every chance I could get, and I read all different types of archaeologist books for children.

Soon, however, as I matured and started to realize that those types of jobs wouldn't support me financially, I began to look into other types of hobbies I had that I could make a job out of. By the time I was about thirteen, I was into a whole new genre of careers and interests, and this time, it was because of my mother. It all began watching CSI: Miami and other forensic type shows. I loved the criminal details and the solving and the different steps it took to get the final answer of who committed the crime. This led my interest in criminal justice to develop.

It wasn't until last year when I realized I really had a deep interest for law. I joined the mock trial team in high school and took my position in the team very seriously. I stayed up long hours of the night just because I knew putting my all into everything I had to work on would only make for better practice for my choice career. I'd like to become a criminal justice trial lawyer in my near future. Learning how the justice system works intrigues me and I enjoy every second of doing the paper work for mock trial if it gets me to be the best mock lawyer I can be during our trials.

Within the next year in Shalem I'd like to accomplish many things. First, my religion is a very important factor that I believe in when completing high school and moving on to college. I do not believe that learning Jewish studies stops after yeshiva high school. It is every Jewish person's job to uphold his or her own religion and to make sure that they control their own ability to grow spiritually. This is what I hope to do while on this program.

What really enticed me about Shalem is that it is not only a learning experience, but it is also a growing experience. There is so much more than the academics; there are trips, there are volunteer opportunities, and there is the whole concept of a close-knit family on the program. Hopefully, I will be able to become part of that family in the year to come.

I come from a Sephardic background with my mother born and raised in Morocco and my father's side from Turkey and Spain. Being born to such a special cultural background exposed me to traditions and customs that I would not have been able to inherit if I were to be born into a conventional American family.

During the holidays, my family sings the prayers in tunes not a lot of families are accustomed to, we eat foods that exemplify the passed down Sephardic recipes that have been in my family forever, and we practice different customs when handling weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and even births. I enjoy all of these differences and special qualities because it gives me a unique understanding of my family background.

At Shalem there is such a wide variety of people who come there, from Americans to Israelis, the range is huge. I will be able to share my customs, gain more incite on other customs, as well as meet so many new friends from different backgrounds.

The plethora of volunteer opportunities at Shalem fits with every single person's hobbies that attend. I have many hobbies that I'm sure will come into account in the following year. For one, I absolutely love to write. I am currently a published author with the book I wrote at the age of twelve, called "Abnora's Quest". I love to sing and dance, which is why my mom got me auditions to The Voice, I love to play guitar, which my dad teaches me, and I love to be creative, which is why I opened up and manage an online shop where I sell custom made IPhone cases. These are just a few of the things I love to do on a daily basis!

My personality and view point of Israel has changed dramatically since this past summer. I went with my family for the first time to Israel and that trip has truly changed the way I appreciate the Jewish homeland. From walking the hot rock of Masada, to exploring under the Kotel, and even to the busy modernized streets of Tel Aviv, I loved every single second of being there. Although I was there for two weeks, I still wish I were there right now, as part of an elongated summer vacation. Lading in Israel gave me the goose bumps as all the passengers cheered and cried all because of the one announcement the pilot made: "Welcome to Israel-לישראל ×"×'אים ×'ר×-כים!" Getting to stay in Israel and learn, and meet new people, and assimilate with the culture for a year would be the ultimate experience I'm sure would change me not only for my near future, but forever.