Posts by gchoi363

gchoi363

Nov 29, 2008

Undergraduate / "my first-ever vacation" - UC app- prompt 2 [5]

First, I think you do a bit of switching tenses throughout the essay from past to present so check for that.

Few grammatical errors with phrases that are kinda hard to understand

Ok, Im going to take a big guess of what your theme is: Came from multi-cultural world influenced you to major in international affairs.

I think you do a fairly good job on describing your multi-cultural world but I can't find any of "how" it shaped your dream. In fact, I think your entire essay is describing your world and answering what your dream is at the end.

Hope this helps.

gchoi363

Nov 26, 2008

Undergraduate / Trip to Europe: my curious traits - UC essay [5]

Thanks for the help with mine :]

I agree with our elite member up there in that it does not quite accomplish the "What makes you proud" portion of the prompt. However, I think the structure and details of your examples are very nicely tied in together in that it shows that you are a "curious" person. I enjoyed reading this one also because this is very similar to my life, I've also spent time in France for 2 years and I think your details on describing your difficult life there describes it quite well.

I thought it was quite a bit repetitive in the conclusion along with few grammatical errors as mentioned above but perhaps the repetition was intended to emphasize your point. Other than that, I think it's a pretty nice essay.

gchoi363

Nov 26, 2008

Undergraduate / "My high school experience was different" - UC Undergraduate Prompt #2 [5]

Thanks for both of your thoughts, and I've actually reconsidered the entire prompt. One reason why I chose to write the whole essay on grades is because my grades as mentioned above aren't great and I've been informed that I should write to descirbe what happened and why I am better now. But regardless, here's the changed essay and I hope this has less grammatical errors in it. Again, I'd appreciate any thoughts!

Same prompt, prompt #2 for UC

A quality that is important to me is my willingness to take on challenges. Challenge has kept me motivated throughout high school and helped me to find out who I was. I was a person who wanted to take the challenges which others are afraid to take to help out the people who are in need of help. I decided that I wanted to be a doctor who studies to cure cancer. There has been countless number of researches done on the subject of cancer, but the answer has still not been found. I was proud of my quality of seeking challenges because regardless of how difficult my goal seemed to be, my desire to find cure for cancer was simply another challenge which I enjoyed.

My life has been filled with many different challenges. As a child, I've moved to several countries, totaling up to four different countries. This was a challenge for me because each time I moved, I had to adapt to the new culture, new language and new people. Not knowing the language, I'd struggle everyday to get my message across in school and occasionally, I had to use hand signals to barely describe what I was trying to say. Although it was quite difficult trying to adapt to the new environment at first, I enjoyed putting endless amount of time everyday trying to learn the language and the different aspects of the culture and soon enough, it became a second nature to me.

In school, I began my freshman year as a person not knowing what to do with future. Although my freshman year grades ended very poorly, I found myself interested in the subject biology by the end of the year. I decided to take chemistry during my sophomore year in an attempt to continue another year of biology in my junior year. Already knowing that biology seemed interesting to me, I wanted to take a challenge and take other extracurricular activities which related to biology such as Science Olympiad and as I hoped, one of my events was cell biology. Although I was taking other courses at school than biology, I wanted to spend more time reading the biology book than any other ones such as calculus or physics. Both school and cell biology event further helped me to see what I wanted to do with my future. I wanted to be a person to study the mystery of cancer. I spent part of my day trying to finish all the school work and spent rest of the time studying for Science Olympiad. Although it was difficult trying to balance out my academic and social life at first, I soon adapted to the new working environment. In the end, I was able to place in Science Olympiad and I did very well with my advanced placement exam for biology.

What motivated me to live through my life is the countless number of challenges which I had to face against. Although at times I was stumbled and did not know what to do, I enjoyed trying to think of all the different solution to the problem and trying them out. I value this quality very much and I appreciate it even further because it's what will help me in the future to accomplish what I want to do with my life, to help the people in need of help.

gchoi363

Nov 25, 2008

Undergraduate / "My high school experience was different" - UC Undergraduate Prompt #2 [5]

Prompt #2 (all applicants)

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

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My high school experience has been much different from what most people have experienced. I began my freshman year in which I was not motivated to do much work and rather expected the year to be easy because I had done well in middle school. Instead, my low expectations had led me to further lack of motivation and my freshman year ended with poor grades.

Having been turned down by my first year of high school, I was reluctant to do much during my sophomore year. Regardless, I chose to move up a rank in academic level and take advanced placement classes. I began to think about where my lack of motivation came from in an attempt to do better in school and as the advanced placement classes which I was taking got gradually harder, I began to notice myself gradually putting more effort into my works. Although I was not able to do very well by the end of the year, I was inspired that I had improved and decided to move up another rank in academic level for my junior year.

Junior year was perhaps the biggest challenge that I have faced against in my life and the most important experience during high school. After filling my schedule with advancement classes, I knew that I would have to work nearly all day to just finish all the homework and prepare for upcoming tests. I also decided to begin my extracurricular activities such as volunteering, academic related teams, sports and start preparing for standardized tests. Having been overwhelmed by excess amount of work, the year seemed much more like an impossible puzzle piece, but much to my surprise, I enjoyed trying to solve it. During the weekdays, I'd be at school in the morning, sport team meeting after school and doing schoolwork by the night. During the weekend, it was mostly volunteering, preparing for any academic related work and a bit of social life. Although my life seemed like getting nowhere, I knew that I had put a lot of effort because in Science Olympiad, I came in 4th place for my event and 3rd in the KMC math competition. In my track & field team, the amount of distance that I jumped gradually improved throughout the season which totaled to nearly five feet. One thing which I was very proud of is that I ended the year with a satisfaction in both grades and myself. I was satisfied that I was able to solve the impossible puzzle and find where my motivations came from.

Throughout my high school years, I was faced against challenges which gradually got harder and each time, I had shown an improvement. By the end of junior year, I was satisfied to say that my motivation came from difficult challenges which I faced against. My source of motivation have also shown me that I am a person who awaits challenges and is willing to take on those challenges regardless of how difficult they may be. My high school experience was different from what move people have experienced. It was more of an adventure to discover what motivates me rather than keeping a constant high grade, and I was proud of all the different experiences that I was able to go through.

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I know there's quite a lot of flaws/grammatical errors in it so I just wanted to see different views on it like is the essay going in a correct directions in terms of answering prompt, maybe other errors and etc. Thanks