Undergraduate / 2001: A Space Odyssey - A book that has greatly impacted me. Carnegie Mellon Essay [3]

You do know that it asks you for one sentence about the book's impact on you, right? It's not supposed to be an essay about the book.

Undergraduate / The Trial; For as long as I can remember, my biggest fear has always been failure. [3]

I will suggest taking out your first paragraph until "Throughout.." because the first part of your essay is stating the obvious about failure and it is very cliched. I feel like this essay is more appropriate in the addition information section of the common app. If you think about it, what did you fail at? You failed at maintaing a spotless record? You ruined your reputation? What did you try to achieve that resulted into a failure? Your essay doesn't have a clear answer and it mostly talks about your feelings and experienced during this unknown "failure."

Undergraduate / "Hosanna" UVA supplement - What work of music surprised you? [3]

The prompt isn't asking about your reactions to music. You write about how your friend died and felt depressed; however, because of the music, it has healed you. This prompt is asking you to show your intellectual analysis about art, music, science, math, or literature.

Undergraduate / Center for Career Development - NYU Supplement for Stern [5]

Your essay sounds very pretentious. You state that you want to understand the issues of wealth distribution but you want to study at Stern? Why not at CAS? The feel I get from your essay is that you want to go to Stern to become the 1% and not for understanding wealth distributions. Try editing your essay so it doesn't sound like you're trying to BS yourself into NYU.