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Posts by Mah_Bad
Joined: Nov 12, 2010
Last Post: Nov 14, 2010
Threads: 1
Posts: 5  
From: United States of America

Displayed posts: 6
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Mah_Bad   
Nov 14, 2010
Undergraduate / "to become a useful member of the medical profession" - Personal Statement [3]

As a child, my parents always use to ask, "What do you want to be when you gotget older.? " Back then, bB eing grown seemed far ...

After a long time ofmuch thinking, I know I want ...

I don't think this paragraph is necessary. Your essay is long as it is, and starting with an anecdote is more attention grabbing, along with less cliché, than a thesis.

Since I was about thirteen years old, I have wanted to go into medicine to help sick people.

After a couple of weeks, I was not feeling goodwell and I was always getting headaches ...
So mM y parents took be back to the hospital andwhere the doctors told them I had to getneeded surgery in my head. At my time spentWhile in the hospital, I had MRIs and EEG ...

After the surgery, I feelfelt like I had a big personality change.: I went from being really talkative and outgoing to being shy. I do not know exactly what this change happened though.

This is much more interesting than your first paragraph. It, along with the following paragraphs, gives a better sense of your love for medicine by showing your experiences. I would suggest starting with the accident though. It's much more attention grabbing and adds some continuity.

It really seemed like they enjoyed their job ,. They have really changed my lifechanging lives for the better.

What you wrote before works fine. I think these edits increase the scope of what a doctor does, but either work in my opinion.

I want to get that feeling of satisfaction from knowing that I made a difference in someone's life. People look to doctors when they have nowhere to go; doctors helps keep a ...

When there is no other hopeand it will be my responsibility (...) life gives me ? .

You seem to be missing some content in the last two sentences. Also, you might want to restructure your paragraph so that "People look to doctors..." is before "I want..." You can then tie in the last two sentences after "People look to doctors" and use some parallelism before finishing with "I want that feeling of satisfaction..."

I know I still have a lot of learning and hard work to do., but I believe that I can achieve those goals.and wW ith the help of a good university, ....

It has everything that I want in a university,: a beautiful campus, an ...
... I believe that I can be a great student at there.

You might want a second opinion on this, but I believe that this paragraph is a large, unneeded digression from your main point. Most answers to "why do you want to come here?" sound similar, and as true as your reasons are, they've heard them before.

I understand that this is a career withhas many demands, both ...

I also feel like this paragraph is unnecessary. College application essays should be as short and succinct as possible, as adcoms have a lot of people to read through. In addition, short writing packs a more powerful punch, and I feel like your fourth paragraph conveys your desires and drive much stronger than this one.
Mah_Bad   
Nov 14, 2010
Student Talk / Exam passing tips - its my final year [71]

Look into Anki on Google. It will help in long term memorization as long as you use it.

Study guides for AP classes have greatly helped me as well.
Mah_Bad   
Nov 14, 2010
Student Talk / Do SAT scores really count? [63]

Standardized testing is an important part of your application. Know that with inadequate scores, the rest of your app will need to make up for them. By no means are they the be-all end-all of application criteria, but if another applicant is similar to you, but they have better scores, they're getting in over you. Fret not, good grades matter more, and your essays are a chance to rise above the average applicant, but if you have a chance to improve your score you should take it.

Have you tried the ACT?
Mah_Bad   
Nov 14, 2010
Undergraduate / Insight is overrated - Amherst Supplement Response [4]

Thanks for clicking! I am mainly looking to see that this essay conveys who I am (in a positive light), makes sense, and is well written (or at least stylistically acceptable).

Prompt:In addition to the essay you're asked to write as part of the Common Application, Amherst requires a second essay of no more than 300 words. We do not offer interviews as part of the application process at Amherst. However, your essays provide you with an opportunity to speak to us. Please keep this in mind when responding to one of the following quotations. It is not necessary to research, read, or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken; we are looking for original, personal responses to these short excerpts. Remember that your essay should be personal in nature and not simply an argumentative essay.

1) "Rigorous reasoning is crucial in mathematics, and insight plays an important secondary role these days. In the natural sciences, I would say that the order of these two virtues is reversed. Rigor is, of course, very important. But the most important value is insight-insight into the workings of the world. It may be because there is another guarantor of correctness in the sciences, namely, the empirical evi-dence from observation and experiments."

Kannan Jagannathan, Professor of Physics, Amherst College


Insight is overrated. That's not to say it isn't important, but frankly it isn't as prevalent as AP Literature would have you believe. Still, a world without meaning is a world without motives, depth, and double entendre. When cigars are always just cigars, Freud is without a job. Boring. When I play chess, every move of mine has a plan, and every step my opponent takes tells me a part of theirs. Early pawn to g3 is King's Indian. Black to f5 is the Classical Dutch. Complexity has its merits.

Writers still give meaning too much credit. When I wake up at 4 a.m. to feed and pet my cat she still meows incessantly. Reasons don't necessarily make things better. Everyday ironies and quirks don't need Cliff's Notes to have zing: PETA has gone to the dogs, and sometimes restaurants give Native Americans reservations. Simple can be beautiful. Is Earth more awesome because a poetic god sculpted it and all her inhabitants, or because out of the billions of spheres in the billions of constellations ours had a balance that would allow the seas to carve mountains, and life to form from a struggle against itself, with endless mutations competing to make us the even now imperfect species that we are?

Maybe I'm a cynic. Maybe I'm tired of analyzing Emily Dickinson. Maybe I'm wrong. Regardless, sometimes the best reason is none at all.
Mah_Bad   
Nov 13, 2010
Scholarship / My interest in Science that is constantly expanding - interest in science essay [4]

Science is a subject that is constantly growingconstantly grows . I am the kind of person who isa curious person. MyWhose brain is always growing with knowledge. Since, I was young I have always had an interest in the animals I saw in the woods, or the fish I saw in the lake. I wanted to watch them live and see what they dodid . Biology is a science that is the study of ever-changing life. Life itself is an ever-changing thing. New things can be learned every day. New species can form any second. In my brain , and in my mind those changes bring new things can be learned and new ideas can be formedlearnings and ideas . Science has always been and interest tointerested me because of the never ending knowledge.

Your sentence structure needs variation. There is also a lot of redundancy in your sentences. We know science is a subject, that you are a person, and that biology is a subject.

By being interestedMy interest in biology as a young girl I have gainedgave more knowledge than a person who just began learning. As a kid, I used to ask my parents to buy all of the science books at book fairs they would have at school book fairs . I would want the mini labs that they would demonstrate like digging for dinosaur bones in sand. I looked forward to learning more.

More vivid detail would add to this paragraph. Do you have an anecdote you remember?

Throughout middle school, I longed to get into high school so I could learn more. The middle school science classes in middle school were too simple for me.: They were very slow moving and I just wanted to learn as much as I could. When high school startedFreshman year I got intotook the sophomore biology course as a freshman even though it was a sophomore level class . I waited for that class to come every day because I knew that biology wasI enjoyed the biological branch of science that I enjoyed the most. While other kids were grossed out by the dissections of the squid or the frog, I was pre-occupied with all of the new things to learn! For example, I was so excited to learndiscover that the squid has a plastic-like spine, or that... . I wasn't the girl who was afraid of touching a dead frog. I didn't care. All I wanted to do was learn.

Watch out for repetition of words in near-by sentences.The story reveals more about your character than merely describing what you like about science. Making the whole paragraph an anecdote would be stronger than talking about your love of science because it shows the reader, rather than telling them:

"Freshman year I took the sophomore Biology class, looking forward to it every day. While the teacher droned to other students, I ate up the lectures which fed my eager mind. While other students squirmed at the frogs and squids ready for dissection, I dove in, incising and prodding; I marveled at the squid's plastic spine and the frog's maze of arteries. While some merely learned, I experienced.

To me, science is the most important subject. It is always expanding. In science, new things are discovered every day. I am the kind of person who wants to know all of the new things. I am interested in science because it is by far the most exciting thing to learn about.

This paragraph is unneeded. By now, your essay should already have told your reader why science interests you, and this just serves as a cliched ending.
Mah_Bad   
Nov 13, 2010
Undergraduate / "Difficulty need not foreshadow despair or defeat." Bikes, Amherst Supplement [3]

If I'm not mistaken, the Amherst supplement limits you to 300 words. These copy edits should get you started in cutting down to that limit. With that being said, your first paragraph seems unnecessary. It is an oft stated remark, and even the prompt delivers something similar to its message. Starting straight with your anecdote is a stronger lead in. Even then, your story lacks a strong lead to keep the reader interested. Also, I feel you can cut the final paragraph, as it's a cliche statement and that conclusion is expressed by you successfully riding the bike anyways. Best of luck!
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