Scholarship / 'Challenges are always there to attack your weakest spots' - questbridge Biographical Essay [3]

Biographical Essay (800 word limit)
We are interested in learning more about you and the context in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors caused you to grow?

I grew up in a family just like any other families in Saigon, Vietnam; a family that has a dad, a mom, and a brother. Those were my ten years of a full and happy life until the day gastric cancer stole my dad from me. It was a coincidence that my dad had become an orphan at the same age of me when I lost him. However, I was way luckier than him in that I still have my mom- the person who plays the most important role in my life.

My family was mainly depended on my dad's income. Soon after his disappearance, we went on a financial crisis. My mom had to work days and nights in a clothing factory with a small payment just enough to pay for foods, bills, and her sons' educations. I couldn't bear to see her coming home late, exhausted without a word of complaints. My mom has sacrificed what was supposed to be a happy life to make sure me and my brother get educated in a country where tuition fees for elementary schools are expensive, let alone colleges. There is no reason or excuse for me to disappoint her. Keeping my promise to do well in classes, I made it into top 5 students with highest academic achievements in the most one of the most selective middle school in Saigon. My very first success, together with my brother being accepted to a medical college, made my mom happier than ever.

Life is never smooth and stable like the surface of a lake. It is the ocean where waves come after waves without any cautions. Once again, my life started to change when my mom remarried, and we moved to America. In the first month, we lived with my dad's uncle and aunt who had adopted him after his parents' deaths. Everything was perfect except the frequent arguments from my dad's side not letting my step-father stay with us. My mom, with her dignity, couldn't bear living under others' control and decided to move out to live in an apartment. It is beyond horrible to be turned away by my own relatives. Life in the apartment wasn't easy for a 4-members-family whose incomes came from only my step-father. Situations like this have taught me a lot of about the value of money. Three years living in here, I've never owned a phone that is higher than thirty bucks. Despite the fact that my friends keep switching their phones from 4s to 5, and now 6, I prefer using a cheap one until the day I can make my own money.

Language barrier was the biggest challenge I've ever faced. Because of it, I lost so many friendships and opportunities to achieve more than what I had got. I wasted most of my time in freshman and sophomore year for classes I wasn't interested in at all, because they were chosen by my counselor since I was new to this American school system. I didn't even know what an "AP class" is until the end of my 10th grade. I struggled with classes as well, especially team sports. Yes it sounds ridiculous, but I actually got a "B" in my first semester of team sports for not dressing out, because I couldn't understand a single word from my coach. So I decided to concentrate more on learning English by reading books. I started with very easy ones such as "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." Though my reading skill is not perfect, I can tell that it has been improved significantly. Now, I am able to read a long novel like "Harry Potter" and understand tough articles which used to be my sleep pills. However, I realized that learning English by myself wasn't enough. I started to make new friends, join school's clubs, and try to blend in the new society to be able to master my English skills as well as the knowledge of this new culture.

Challenges are always there to attack your weakest spots. There is no way to avoid but to face them and show them that your weakest spots are now strongest ones. Losing a person I love, fighting against poverty, struggling with a new language, or being isolated didn't pull me back away from my goals. Instead, they proved me that I am stronger than I thought. I can see the challenges waiting ahead: going to college, paying for tuition fees, dealing with higher level problems... In fact, writing this essay and applying for Questbridge are something that I've been struggling with, because I knew I have more disadvantages than other students. However, I accepted the challenge anyway, because there is no loss for trying, because no matter how hard the situation is, I always have my mom by my side giving me supports and motivation.

Really appreciate if you give me some feedbacks, correction and constructions so that i can improve this essay. BTW, the total words of this essay are 809.

Scholarship / "Journey to Become a Salad Lover" - QuestBridge Essay [7]

Prompt: A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your background, please describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.

Journey to Become a Salad Lover
Did someone say "meat?" I was never a fan of any kind of vegetables or fruits, except orange. I guess I can never become a Buddhist. In fact, the only times I had a fresh bowl of salad were when I had no other choice. I would put all the lettuce and broccoli aside searching for some slim slices of grilled chicken like men digging for diamonds. Living in America is like eating a salad bowl. Many people would like to eat lettuce, broccoli, tomato, and chicken all together; however, a few people, like me, would stick with chicken only, just like I would stick with my own racial group thinking nobody could understand me more than them.

When I first came to the U.S., I was a shy and nerdy 14-year-old kid according to other students who saw me carrying textbooks as I walked in the hallway with an old-fashion pair of glasses on. It was hard to make friends, but luckily I had a few Asian friends who I could hang out and sit with as a small group at lunch. I thought that surrounding myself with these people was the only way I could survive my 4 years of high school. In sophomore year, I started to change myself to become an out-going person by joining the school volunteer club. I'm still proud of myself for making that decision. Over the years, I've met and had a chance to help many people from different backgrounds facing obstacles in their lives. One of my best experiences was tutoring a class of freshmen who struggled with math.

On the first day of being a tutor, I was pretty impressed when I saw the lunch ladies passing out "free" pop-tarts and juice to the students as awards for attending "free" tutorial classes. Children in America are given many more opportunities than ones in Vietnam, where education is unaffordable to many families. My tutorial class had about 15 students from different races, and most of them had no idea what they were doing in math class. I started showing them how to solve some basic equations and understand the graphs. During the lesson, I told them my stories of how hard a student's life was back in my home country, showed how much we value education, as well as shared my tips to get a better grade in school. They seemed to be interested as I talked and started to ask me questions about my childhood as well as my culture. At some moment, I thought I was in the middle of a job interview. Then I asked them what they want to be in the future. Many of them had no clue; they wanted to have lots of money without doing any work. Well, overall, we at least had a pretty similar goal, but their ways to get there are way different from mine, and that is why I wanted to be in that class: to help them make the right choice and find another way to walk around obstacles of life. Being with these students made me realize that I actually enjoyed our conversations more than with friends who I have everything in common.

Through teaching, I did not only give others my knowledge but also got a chance to know what they are thinking, too. Learning from people with different backgrounds and experiences sharpens my knowledge and self-insight by allowing me to compare and contrast my life experiences with theirs. The diversity helps me move beyond myself to gain the perspectives of the world around me and more complete picture of myself in it. A college campus is an opening door to the entire world without paying for traveling. Like each individual man, salad ingredients do not change even when they are mixed together; however, with their own unique tastes and nutrients, together they make a delicious and healthy bowl of salad.

My questions: 1. Did I respond to the prompt correctly?
2. Did you enjoy reading it?
3. Is there any way I can improve my writing? ( how to make it sounds smoothly)
4. The words limit is 500, but there are 650 words in here. What unnecessary details should I delete?
5. I'm pretty sure about my grammar, but please point out if I have any mistakes.
Thank you very much.