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Posts by Holt [Educational Consultant]
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Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 29, 2017
Undergraduate / Me, as a part of the strategic planning board of one of the multinational corporations [14]

Ahmed, please change the term "corporate" to "corporation" that is the correct term for the collective office that you wish to work for. I am wondering, don't you have a particular corporation in mind to work for? It seems like adding a specific company name to the statement should help to further illustrate and direct your long term career plans. You see, right now, the career plan sounds very hypothetical in nature. There is no actual application of your studies after you graduate from the program. That is the requirement of the long term career goal. So you have to indicate your plans in (for example) the following manner:

1. After I graduate, I will spend my first year as an intern at XXX corporation. I will use this entry level position to help solidify my early presence in the company.

2. During my second year at the company, I will strive to make an impression upon my supervisor in order to gain a promotion to a team leader position.

3. I will celebrate my third year at the company by ensuring that I will become the newest supervisor in the fold.
4. I will be a junior executive by my fourth year. This will allow me to find a way to become a member of the planning board of the corporation. Hopefully, I will catch the eye of the senior executives who will take a chance on entrusting me with more complicated tasks that will show my ability to successfully plan projects.

5. Finally, I will become a valued member of the planning board within my fifth year at the company who will be able to contribute to XXX which hopefully, can help our company become a global leader in solution services internationally.

Of course all of these topic sentences should be expanded into full paragraphs. Since you only have 200 words, you will need to find a way to present your long term career goals within 100 words inclusive of your contribution to the community, country, or the world. The other 100 words should be used to further expand upon the example of your leadership skills.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 29, 2017
Undergraduate / Why are you interested in The College of Wooster? College Application Essay [4]

Teddy, I suggest that you revise your paragraph that explains how the IS mentor program can benefit you. The reason I am recommending this change is because you have focused the discussion on the way that the mentor program benefited you in high school. While I can understand the connection, the prompt is asking you about why you chose this college in particular. In order to respond to that question properly, you should instead show how you understand the mentor program of the college functions in relation to your chosen major. The reference to your high school mentor experience should only be an overview that indicates how you already have previous mentor experience and that is what caused you to be excited by this particular program at Wooster. Say something about how you imagine how similar the experience might be for you having come from a previous mentor experience.

Next, the paragraph about diversity works, but it could work better if you remove the reference to the percentage of foreign students at the university. While that information was of interest to you, it is irrelevant to the reviewer. If you remove that reference, the statement gains more traction in terms of explaining how that became one of the major reasons for your decision to apply for admission to Wooster.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 29, 2017
Undergraduate / Me, as a part of the strategic planning board of one of the multinational corporations [14]

Ahmed, it would be best if you can first present some sort of leadership ability or potential that you have displayed through community service or work services in relation to your long term career plan. You say that you see yourself as being a member of a strategic planning board of a multinational corporation. That is fine. You have 5 years to achieve that professional goal, discuss how what steps you plan to take after graduation which will lead to the eventual realization of that career goal on your part. If possible, relate your ambition and the steps you will be taking to achieve it with your extra curricular leadership examples. These two topics must relate in your presentation in order to convince the scholarship committee that you prepared for the demands that the academic course, as well as the fellowship demands, will be making upon you. The fellowship is granted only to those applicants who can prove to have exemplary leadership abilities, now is your chance to prove you have that ability and that it can set you apart from the other applicants. So be very specific in your explanation. Don't be so imaginative as you are now. Show a definite and achievable post study plan in relation to your 5 year career goals. Remove the reference to the movie. That does not have any direct relation to you and only takes away valuable word count. Concentrate solely on you, your ambitions, and clear and impressive examples of your leadership skills.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 29, 2017
Writing Feedback / Influencing good behaviour on children is a rising problem [6]

Nadeesha, my opinion is that your score for this essay would be around a 3. I know, it is an extremely low score but please, allow me to explain why from the point of view of an examiner, I decided that you would not get an overall score higher than this number. While you did a good job of explaining the prompt requirement to the reader, your discussion did not properly expand on the given topic. In fact, you accidentally changed the prompt discussion within your essay when it came to the discussion of the role of the school in teaching children how to be good members of society. By the way, you used the word "though" when you were supposed to say "taught" in the paragraph. Be conscious of your word usage, the wrong term used in the wrong context will drag down your individual lexical resource score.

Your second paragraph that dealt with how the parents taught children good manners and right conduct was right on the dot. It was informative, used proper examples, and had an enlightened conviction in the way that you presented the discussion from that point of view. I have no faults to point out in that paragraph.

The third paragraph does not discuss how schools and educators can help students becomes good members of society. You speak of a dark side regarding competition. That is a prompt deviation. Competition in schools does not relate to a dark side as competition is taught to the children as a trait that will help them succeed in the future. There is nothing negative about competition being taught in school. More importantly, schools often grade students in GMRC which stands for Good Manners and Right Conduct. Therefore, schools also teach the child to become a good member of society usually through social studies classes. So your discussion in that paragraph is flawed. That is the main reason why I believe that you cannot score higher than a 3 in this particular test. There were lexical problems, grammar and sentence structure issues, and shortcomings in your task accuracy that affected my decision.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 29, 2017
Scholarship / The Reasons Of Study Preferences - I chose the Journalism Department [12]

Dewi, when you speak of your study preferences, this means that you have to explain to the reviewer why you believe that studying journalism is important to you and most specially, how you plan to learn about the subject as a student at their university. Relate your study preferences to the career that you have planned for your future. The response should not be about your ideas or understanding of journalism. The response should reflect how journalism will be a part of your future as a career. Hence the requirement for a study preference explanation. What do you plan to concentrate on as a journalism major? Do you want to be an investigative journalist? An opinion writer? What? Those are the topics to be covered in your study preference.

Since you do not have any experience in journalism other than the extra curricular activities, you should not mention that you were a science major. Instead, tell the reviewer that your experience in journalism is extra curricular based. However, the extra curricular activity helped you to gain an academic understanding of the course to a certain degree. The prompt expects that you already have some sort of background in journalism which is why it was worded that way. So you need to explain yourself to the reviewer in order o help him understand why you do not have sufficient background academically in the course, but should still be considered as a contender for admission.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 29, 2017
Graduate / On my way to the Master's program in Digital Marketing in Smurfit School [4]

Thu, before you explain the reasons why you decided to enroll in this masters course, you should first, make it clear to the reviewer that you accomplished a different course in college, state the course, and then explain how that relates to your shortcomings in the performance of your duties in the digital marketing field. This will help to create a strong foundation as to your academic goals for wishing to enroll in this masters degree course. Your second paragraph will work well to explain your work problems in relation to your interest in these advanced studies. That paragraph is quite strong and informative in an engaging manner. The first paragraph is where you need to focus your revision work on for the aforementioned reasons.

Your current third paragraph deviates from the instructions you have been given and, in my opinion, does not really qualify as a study objective. The strongest study objective always has to do with self improvement. The information in the second paragraph is not as strong as your previous paragraphs. It does not even work as a transition paragraph. On the other hand, the immediate introduction of your 5 year career plan already has a short but effective transition phrase at the start. So the paragraph becomes effective. Once you remove the third paragraph, you can use the remaining word count to create a more detailed career progression plan from the time that you graduate. How do you see yourself progressing in the company over a period of 5 years? What are the steps involved (covering the time span indicated) that are required before you can complete your 5 year plan and how does your study in this field relate to your achieving that success? Once you relate all of the questions in a solid paragraph, then the study plan becomes more effective in explaining your interest in pursuing this masters degree at this school.

Somehow I feel like there are still some necessary points to be discussed in this essay. Can you tell me if this just serves as your statement of purpose, motivational letter, or personal statement? If I know which essay you are trying to write, I might be able to offer some better, more relevant advice regarding content. The comments above are what I can offer in terms of improvement based upon the questions you have provided.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 29, 2017
Undergraduate / Personal User Manual: Introducing Yourself to Your Instructor [2]

Vaidehi, I am sure that the term "joint family" makes perfect sense in your vernacular language. However, it is not a term that translates well to English so you will have to explain what you mean by "joint family" to the reviewer. Rather than using the term joint family, you may want to consider the more English term "blended family" or "step-family" instead. These are the terms used to refer to the combining or joining of children coming from divorced parents into a new family unit. I am explaining these terms to you for your reference as I am assuming that the term "joint family" is in reference to you coming from a divorced family.

As I read the information you presented, it appears that there were certain instances when you ended up presenting too much information or too detailed an explanation regarding certain information you presented. I wonder, where you given any guide questions to respond to in the writing of this self introduction? Or perhaps some instructions were given to you? Can you share that information with us so that we can help you better focus your response? The essay is actually running a bit too long, contains a number of redundancies specially in the first paragraph relating to how people you trusted always failed you. If I know what information is specifically required, we can edit the essay for content to make it more interesting and properly informative for the reader.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 29, 2017
Scholarship / Studies on disease prevention - MY STUDY PLAN FOR COMMON WEALTH SCHOLARSHIP [4]

John, I applaud you for responding to the questions provided in chronological order. The only problem with that approach, is that your information became mechanical and suffered in terms of discussion development. There is no fluidity to the discussion, which tends to suddenly change topics without warning. Use transition sentences to introduce the next discussions. It won't be hard to do provided that you revise your opening statement. Since you are applying for a masters degree scholarship. The committee is going to be less interested in the development of your academic interest in Public Health via Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Rather, they are more keen to learn how your professional life has led to your decision to enroll on this higher study. Note that you were asked why you were interested in this particular course of study. It does not ask you how your interest in this course developed. Those are two different things. When you are asked how your interest developed, you can go with an academic basis for your response. However, the response for that question requires an answer related to your professional experience. That is why you are specifically being asked as to how this course of study relates to your future career plan. So in the end, when you say that your career plan depends upon whether you get this scholarship or not, you are killing your chance to gain the scholarship. Show an actual career path for yourself based upon either your current employment or your ability to gain employment in a related field in the future. Your current future career path is too hypothetical. It should be something solid that you can actually show a measure of success in implementing either through an improvement in public health or some program to help a community. It cannot be a theoretical approach.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 29, 2017
Scholarship / Why should you be considered a good candidate for a given fellowship? [9]

Ahmed, if this is the version that you feel most comfortable using with your application. Then go ahead and do so. If I would make a suggestion for the further improvement of your statement, it would be to highlight any academic or work related honors or recognition that you have received. Such accolades will help you create a more solid idea as to why you would be a fitting candidate for the scholarship. Sometimes, the scholarships are not all about just work habits or study traits. It also has to do with proving that you have the ability to accomplish something so impressive, that others can't help but take note of your accomplishments. While your essay is impressive as it is, additional enhancements can be made if it you still have some word count available and if you have the accomplishments to indicate.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 29, 2017
Scholarship / Electrical engineer, with strong technical background - academic qualifications and study objectives [3]

Ahmed, when you speak of your academic qualifications, just mention the course major that you completed. For example, you can say;

I graduated with a degree in electrical engineering that led to my current employment at Haliburton. My collegiate academic training was further enhanced by my workplace experience and additional training in TQM, PMP, IPMA, RMP and CLAC (In progress). Combined, my college education and current training have shown me that I need to strengthen my abilities in XXX in order to further enhance my electrical engineering skills and theoretical knowledge. After completing my studies in XXX at XXX university, I see myself applying my newfound skills and knowledge in the process of XXX in my capacity as XXX at Haliburton.

If you will be interested in following the platform of my example, you will be able to create a concise response that gives the most important data to the reviewer without including unnecessary information. Since you will be submitting other additional documents to the reviewer, it is not necessary to get into too many specifics since your supporting documents will provide the in-depth analysis of your skills and credentials that your application requires.

If you received any honors as a college student, then mention it in this overview just to highlight it in the eyes of the reviewer. If you don't have any, then just say you graduated with a degree. Don't mention your grades in the essay if it is not accompanied by honors. The idea is to impress the reviewer enough through the essay that he will read the rest of your documents and consider your application regardless of your transcript GPA.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 28, 2017
Scholarship / Brown Fellows Program draft to pursue a leadership project [11]

Bear in mind that I can only advice you regarding this essay. That said, you are the only one who can decide if you think this essay has the potential to become the kind of essay that you need or if you should replace the topic with a different one. Right now, I can only offer you my opinion as to how you might be able to improve this essay.

Since the coverage of the dowry problem is within the Asian region, it can be considered international to a certain extent. Think of it in terms of the problem that exists in your country and how you can lay the foundation for the solution to the problem. That can be discussed as the first component of the thesis. That will be implemented over one summer. Then say that the solution to the problem will be developed during the regular year. The solution can be in terms of a foundation that will help women escape the dowry system. Think of how these women can be removed from that setting, that will be phase 2. Phase 2, will be the establishment of the foundation and its simple assistance through educating women about the evils of the dowry system in your country. Phase 3, will be planned during the regular year again and implemented over the summer. It will consist of your trying to win financing for your foundation through donors and sponsors during the year for the implementation of bigger assistance projects during that summer. Phase 4, will be the planning and launching of the international arm of your foundation in one or two more countries using an expanded anti-dowry program.

Try to use my suggestions to create your plan of action for this thesis. You know how to write a project proposal right? That is how the suggestions above should be formatted. The specifics will be up to you. Again, these are my suggestions and you have the option to not follow them if you feel that you want to go in another direction. The final decision is yours. I'll help you with your paper regardless of your decision for as long as you want or need my help.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 28, 2017
Scholarship / Academic Interests Essay (Scholarship) - to pursue a degree in political science [5]

Hi Rowlie, actually, the introduction that you wrote has a case of TMI or too much information. The best way to approach the opening statement would be, in my opinion, to present the way that you were enticed into the YAG instead. The reason that I believe you should focus on the YAG from the very beginning is because your membership in the organization is the very thing that fed your interest in your current major. As such, it perfectly illustrates how this academic interest has helped to shape your future. Make sure that you include a reference to the social sciences and government classes that you took in school as well in order to adhere to the academic interest part of the essay. As of this moment, you are presenting an extra curricular activity. You have to make it relevant to the response by offering a connection to your academic studies as well. I apologize if I spoke too much, I just want to make sure that your succeeding paragraphs won't miss out on any important information.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 28, 2017
Undergraduate / From a homebody to the active body. UW Madison Essay -- Something important but unnoticed [19]

Arnav, we need to make sure that you correct a few grammatical errors that are in this current version of the essay. These changes are necessary in order to create a clearer and more understandable presentation on your part. These are just simple adjustments that will not affect what you are saying in the paragraph or overall essay. Most of these concerns are located in the final paragraph. For starters, correct the opening sentence that says "heft electric bills" to say "hefty electric bills". Then "I got drifted towards energy conservation" should say "I was attracted to energy conservation". In addition to these corrections, please try to expand a little on the concluding statement you currently have. It sounds abrupt and does not really offer a solid conclusion as to how your father reacted to the lowering of the household electric bill. The essay needs to come to a conclusion regarding that particular anecdote that you shared in order to better inform the reviewer regarding the prompt requirements.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 28, 2017
Graduate / Architecture SOP; What experiences have either inspired your interest in architecture or sustain it? [4]

Memud, there has to be a sense of decency and decorum in the essay that you wrote. That said, you should remove the references to passing waste and needing to take a shower in the bathroom. The reviewer and pretty much everyone else is very clear about what goes on the toilet so there is no need to be graphic about it. It comes across as ill educated when you do that. As for the shower area in the bathroom, I guess you can retain that as your third place if you explain more about the sense of architecture in the design of the bath area rather than simply saying that it is the place where you get clean. In the book section, you cannot use a singular poem as a reference there. The precise requirement is that it must be an inspirational book. Had you said that the poem was the title of a book of poems, it would have been acceptable because a collection of poems that inspires you passes as a book. If this is the title of a book of poems, then indicate it as such to make it fall more within the criteria of the prompt requirements. If it is not a book of poems, then find a 3rd book, an actual book, that inspires you. It doesn't have to be a serious topic book, it can be whimsical if you wish.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 28, 2017
Scholarship / Short essay for merit based scholarship; your interest in the programme/field of study [2]

Surya, double check your capitalization work in the statement. You more than once failed to capitalize proper nouns / titles in your writing. The title of your thesis work should be capitalized as it is the name of a formal academic document. In your opening statement, just indicate that you wrote a complex thesis, give the title, and the graduation honor you received. The reviewer will already know what your grades where when you graduated because you are submitting your transcript of records along with this application statement. Cut the statement down to the bare and essential facts only. Correct the word "economic" in your thesis title to reflect the more proper term "economy" instead. The next sentence should also change the term to "academic proficiency". You should not mention that you assisted many professors because you cannot quantify the number of professors, the research topic titles, and the results of the research. That makes this information incomplete and as such, will only confuse your statement. Don't just say you worked at the biggest IT company, tell the reviewer what company that is because he may want to verify the claims you are making. That is part of the screening process these days. So far, those are the errors that require the most attention in this paper. Once you make the corrections, the statement can be considered to be in usable form already.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 27, 2017
Scholarship / My future perspective and why I deserve the scholarship [7]

Your motivation for wishing to continue your studies is represented in the essay. It is not as strong as it can be due to your lack of current employment, but it will do in a pinch. The reviewer will at least get an idea as to why you wish to continue your studies. You can try to strengthen that section by explaining how you plan to use the knowledge you will be gaining from the masters education for the betterment of those you will be working with. Try to deliver a clearer purpose as to why you are motivated to follow up with more advanced studies in this course. If possible, relate it to the mission or objective of the fellowship.

I am worried though about your lack of qualities that would make you a good candidate for the VFP scholarship. You can't seem to find some specific reasons as to why you would make an excellent addition to the scholarship program. You will need to look into the specifics of the scholarship and compare it with your existing experience, objectives, ideologies, or mindset. Then discuss your qualifications as a scholar based upon those similarities. That is the only way we can show some evidence of your qualifications as a scholar that we can spin into being the specific reasons why you deserve this scholarship.

By the way, please review the essay and use the correct past or present tense usage in the paragraphs. The essay becomes confusing to read due to the inconsistency in the way that you present the time frame or time basis of your discussions.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 27, 2017
Scholarship / Brown Fellows Program draft to pursue a leadership project [11]

Shivani, your proposal isn't really that impressive. It is more of a narrative than an actual project proposal. Since this will be your thesis paper for college, you should present it in the formal academic tone. That means that is should be composed of the following components:

1. The problem you wish to solve
2. The relevance of the problem you wish to solve on a local or international scale
3. The methods by which you hope to research the issue
4. The research implementation procedure (concentrate on highlighting your leadership of the said project)
5. The potential results you hope to achieve
6. The length of time you expect to need to complete the leadership project.
7. The divisions of the work based on the summer schedule

Make your proposal formal. Follow the academic format for submitting your thesis statement. Engage the reviewer by presenting an interesting problem that can have international relevance towards the end of your essay. If the problem is too localized, such as the dowry system, there may be a problem impressing the reviewer because, as far as I can tell from your current presentation, you will not be able to present the character traits that the Brown Fellowship requires. These traits are: Scholarship , Leadership, Accountability, Drive.

Review your essay, it doesn't really project these traits in the strongest manner due to the localized topic you have chosen to present. Choose a topic that is big, with international benefits if possible. Think out of the box, out of your comfort zone. Do something that will make the reviewer think, "I never thought of that! This kid has a point. Maybe I should give her a shot."
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 27, 2017
Writing Feedback / Internet make our communication easier, helps with getting information, business, and transaction [3]

Maito, the essay that you wrote has a major problem in terms of lexical resource and grammar range / accuracy. It would be best that you use a dictionary before you use a term in your essay. If you know the spelling, look up the meaning of the word first. That is because you have a tendency to use the wrong word even though the meaning of your sentence is clear to the reader. Grammar accuracy and the use of the correct term is of the utmost importance in scoring your essay properly. The major mistake that I saw in this paper was the use of the word "chip" when what you meant to say was "cheap". A "chip" is "a small piece of something removed in the course of chopping, cutting, or breaking something, especially a hard material such as wood or stone." While "cheap" means "at or for a low price." You meant the latter. So you can see how your essay would score low in terms of lexical resource and grammar accuracy. With regards to your sentence formation, please remember that this is an academic essay and as such should not contain ellipses (...) nor the word "etc." as those are more geared towards informal writing. Your overall score in this essay could be a 5 in my opinion.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 27, 2017
Undergraduate / I've been told that I'll never make it... Fashion Institute of Technology admissions essay [2]

Imani, the personal statement for FIT always has one pivotal requirement that your essay currently underrepresents, that of your experience in fashion business management. The related work experience or internship will always help to enhance your application. Since you already told the reviewer that you have experience in mounting pop up fashion shows as well as showcasing local designers, you already indicated that you have the relevant work experience. You need to be detailed in that respect. Highlight the fashion management that you had to implement in those scenarios. Problem solving using management skills would be the best example to use. As such, it will become clear to the reviewer that you truly have the qualification to be the perfect FIT candidate. Your essay is already good but requires more substance in order to strengthen your claims of related experience. If you write a paragraph or two based upon my suggestion, you will be able to accomplish that.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 27, 2017
Writing Feedback / Minimum age limit for driving - Discussion [6]

Ahamad, I cannot score this test accurately because the prompt instructions that you provided is incomplete. I have no idea as to how you were expected to argue the topic in the essay. Normally, the students that post their essays for review here include their complete prompt instructions, not just the discussion topic. The reason that they do that is because we cannot judge the Task Accuracy score without it. Since the task accuracy score is the first step in scoring, I am not able to judge your cohesiveness and coherence either. I am not so concerned about the lexical resource or grammar range and accuracy because those are the least of the concerns when judging the essay. Those 2 last points can receive a high score provided that the first 2 points, deliver a high score as well. So please present the full prompt, with the discussion instruction at the end so that I can properly score your essay.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 27, 2017
Undergraduate / From a homebody to the active body. UW Madison Essay -- Something important but unnoticed [19]

Use the prompt to discuss a more relaxed reason for the importance of the act of turning off the lights for you. I already indicated how you can prove the importance of this act in a previous thread. I suggested that you connect it to the electric power rates that your parents have to pay for monthly. Indicate how expensive it is and that your parents often complain about the monthly bill they receive. Tell the reviewer that you noticed how your father always leaves the lights on. So you decided to keep turning off the lights when it was not in use. Then the electric bill went down as the months went on and you were doing this. Then, a month came when you felt tired of what you were doing already so you stopped. Then the high electric bill came and your dad asked if you forgot to turn off the lights the previous month. Those two specific descriptions respond to the "unnoticed" and "important to you" parts of the essay prompt. The narrative will show that while you thought your father did not notice what you were doing, he actually did and just like you, considered it important enough to eventually mention to you.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Writing Feedback / The Earth needs both governments and individuals to cooperate for a positive change [2]

Hi Mai, thanks for posting the complete prompt and revised essay on your part. Having reviewed your work in reference to the prompt, I have to say that you cannot score higher than a 5 for this particular task. What is preventing you from getting a higher score in this essay are the problems that exist within it. For starters, you were quite careless when it came to using punctuation marks. You neglected to place a period at the end of sentences and, even more concerning, is that you used a comma and ellipses to close the essay. That is never done in this instance as there is no room for contemplative comments in a discussion essay. The use of ellipses makes it seem like there is more a conversation coming when in actuality, that is the end of the essay. It misleads the reader and causes the examiner to feel stress at the end because there was no additional information forthcoming.

Next, there is a lack of pertinent information presentation in the essay. The clear evidence of this can be found in the second paragraph where you begin to discuss the Paris Climate Agreement towards the end of the essay. You present the name of the agreement but then fail to explain its relevance and importance to the issue of climate change. Without the proper development of your last sentence line, the information you gave only serves to confuse the examiner. Keep in mind that you have to assume that the examiner is unfamiliar with your reasons and therefore, requires some sort of better developed discussion of it in the essay.

Your concluding statement is too short to be considered a valid conclusion. You must improve that presentation because the concluding statement is required to have at least 3 informative sentences within it before it can be considered as a proper concluding statement.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Graduate / Architecture SOP; What experiences have either inspired your interest in architecture or sustain it? [4]

Memud, you have developed a pretty good essay here. It is engaging, informative, interesting, and offers a clear insight into the development of your love for architecture and your future plans in terms of your career. That is not to say that the essay is without problems. In fact, it has some pretty serious problems in terms of delivering on the prompt requirements.

To begin with, you only indicate a spatial experience in the essay. While this is one of the major requirements that the reviewer will consider with your application, you neglected to address the 3 favorite spaces that comes with this particular prompt requirement. An incomplete response will result in the reviewer considering less of your statement of purpose as being responsive to the prompt. Keep in mind that each question provided as a guide to you actually signifies a truly important part of the application considerations. Therefore, you must go back and revise the essay to include the missing links in terms of your 3 favorite places.

When you discuss your favorite books, there is actually no sense in making the sports reference because that does not have a direct relation to the book you mentioned in the succeeding sentence. So you can remove that reference without affecting your response to the prompt. By the way, it would benefit your essay to have you lengthen your description as to why you have chosen these books as your favorite. Right now, the explanation you have given for each book sounds like you could have picked off the back of the book synopsis. Also, I am not sure if the poetry that you mentioned as part of your favorite books is actually considered a book in most circles. Please clarify that for us.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Scholarship / Why should you be considered a good candidate for a given fellowship? [9]

Yes, I believe that your response works well in the presentation that you decided to use. The reason that the essay works is because you took ownership of the presentation of facts by using the first person pronoun. The information you presented was matter of fact and lent an impressive image of you as a person and student to the reviewer. I would not worry about your tone because you sounded very professional in writing. As for the phrasing, I would not advice you to change anything because this preliminary interview should reflect your actual thought process and possible spoken form of your answers. It is a pretty solid piece of writing and should work well towards supporting your fellowship application. If you are still not confident in what you have written, then try to add information that you think will further help to enhance your statement. Then present it here so that we can help you assess the changes you have made. Otherwise, the essay is set for submission. Good luck !
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Writing Feedback / Minimum age limit for driving - Discussion [6]

Ahamed, kindly post the complete prompt instructions so that I can verify if the method of your opinion presentation is accurate for the essay. I would like to judge your essay accurately based upon the final line of the prompt that relates to how the prompt should be discussed. That is not presented in your instructions at the moment. Basically though, you have a pretty good essay that only suffers from a lack of clear discussion presentation. There is a lack of proper thought development for the ideas that you presented. You should have taken only one reason for each side to represent the discussion. As long as you properly developed your defense of the reason, there would not have been any need to present multiple supporting facts that were not properly developed for the essay. This scatter brained line of reasoning would have adversely affected your final score in the end had this been an actual test.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Scholarship / Why should you be considered a good candidate for a given fellowship? [9]

Ahmed, there is no need to define what a fellowship is to the reviewer. He already knows that information. The presentation of that makes your essay get a sense of word fillers, which does not really help to move your essay forward. That said, the unnecessary information should be removed in order to bring the focus of the reviewer directly to the proper information that you are presenting after those statements. By the way, there is such a thing as too much information in an essay. The indication of you being married with two kids is not only irrelevant, it is also inapplicable to the prompt you were provided. There was no need to mention your family in that light in the statement. Remove that reference as well. The essay is already strong with just the information you presented, sans the problem points I indicated here. So just present the essay under the word count. It doesn't affect the consideration of your essay if you do not meet the maximum word count. As long as you present more than 150 words, your application will be considered within the required word number.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Undergraduate / Applying in Turkish Universities, expectation from studying in Turkey and express the future plans [2]

Alinda, your response is good. However, it requires editing. Remember that you cannot start an academic response with the word "Because". You need to adjust the sentence in order to make it more professionally acceptable by removing the aforementioned word from the sentence. You can also remove the reference to the location of Turkey on the map. That is irrelevant to the reasons as to what you expect to learn by studying in Turkey. The multicultural environment sentence should be developed further by having you express what it is that you want to learn from the various races that live in Turkey. Make sure to define how you plan to gain these lessons apart from attending school and interacting with your classmates. The rest of the essay, specifically the second paragraph is good. However, you need to clarify how you plan to teach others how to speak Java after you complete the course. It is hard to imagine how you can do this after graduating because you won't have much of a chance to mingle with the Turks after you graduate as you will be returning home. Clarify that portion.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Scholarship / Being in Oil&Gas taught me a lot. MBA Admission Essay. [2]

Ahmed, most of the information that you placed in this essay is academic in nature. Therefore, these should be located in the statement of purpose as part of the academic overview of your application. These are all data about you as a student, there is not much information about you as a person. Who are you beyond being a student? What are your hobbies? What other interests do you have?

There is also a lack of information as to the development of your interest in this MBA is evident in the essay. A personal statement is tasked to explain the development of your interest to the reviewer. This is supposed to be an insight into how that interest became so important to you that you felt compelled to dedicate your life to pursuing the betterment of your career. Most importantly, it must indicate the specific reasons why you chose this specific university among all others to attend. You have to convince the reviewer that your career can be helped only by having your MBA completed at this university. Explain why you are excited to attend the classes there and indicate a desire to attend this upcoming semester. The rest of the discussion can best be served up in the statement of purpose and / or motivational essay / letter, if required.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Letters / Reference Letter for my employee teacher [2]

Sari, your reference letter is improperly written. It does not contain the correct references, structure, nor information that is required of a recommendation letter. It is important that you write a totally new letter that properly addresses the content of an authoritative reference letter.

Make sure that the person writing the essay identifies himself at the start of the letter. That will include the position of the person writing the letter, how long the person has known and worked with you, in what capacity the two of your work or worked together, and finally, his recommendation reference. With that said, I have to highlight the fact that a reference letter cannot be written by a person of lower rank than you in an office or academic setting. These letters are normally written by supervisors, team leaders, not people who were your student or something even lower than that. From the way your letter is written, it seems like the person writing this is a subordinate of yours. That will not work for a recommendation letter.

Focus the letter only on the direct work relationship that you had with the person recommending you. Just highlight your traits that make you a good student for this masters degree. Now, you are assuming that the reviewer will be highly familiar with the terms you are using this essay, that is the wrong assumption. Try to keep your technical terms in reference to your country specific educational tests and the like down to a minimum. Do not make it sound like the overall success of the students who took the test rested solely on your abilities as there were other teachers involved in their education and training prior to the test.

The list of mistakes in this letter is too long to cover in this single post. So let me just tell you this, write a new letter. One that covers your character as a teacher and your accomplishments in the field that can be credited to you alone. Do not take credit for group work, that is the wrong approach to this essay.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Writing Feedback / Scientists and the news media are presenting ever more evidence of climate change [2]

Mai, since you are a newcomer to the forum, I guess you do not know that we require you to post the prompt that you are responding to before you post the essay that you wrote in response to it. That will help us to assess the problems of your essay stemming from prompt compliance to scoring the bandwidth criteria. So kindly post the prompt requirement below my response to you for a more detailed assessment of your work.

As of now, I can tell you that the major mistake you made in this essay is that you placed your opinion as a separate paragraph before you presented the proper overview statement in the introductory paragraph that should have included a short note as to what your personal opinion will be as presented in the essay. That is the main problem that I found with your work.

The rest of the essay is acceptable enough at the moment. That opinion will change as you post the prompt you are responding to. By the way, normally, your personal opinion is presented in the fourth paragraph as that is meant to serve as the transition statement going into your conclusion. Just a note for you to remember when you write your next practice test.

I will reserve the additional review of your essay work for when you have already posted your prompt requirement. By the way, please identify if it is a practice test for TOEFL or IELTS. That way we can use the correct scoring system for your work. That is if you want to have your work scored. You should tell us if you want it scored as well.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Essays / Scholarship essay on describing career or academic plans [4]

Utkarsh, you should first start by explaining your current career path and how it influenced your decision to pursue a business degree. That means, you have to relate all of your business related opportunities to the reviewer. This includes any entrepreneurship experience that you have. Even if it was only selling lemonade on your street corner. The scholarship reviewer needs to see that you either have the inborn talent to run a business or, that you have the potential to succeed with your business plan after you graduate. Either way, you have to establish the fact that you have the experience and foundation to help you succeed in this college major should you win the scholarship.

For your academic plans, explain why you have chosen to enroll at a particular university. Present the kind of curriculum that the university has for its business students and highlight the classes where you are sure you will excel because of your high school grades in the related math field. Relate your experiences whenever possible with your academic plans because the experience helps to enhance the academic plan. The academic plan should show an overview of how you plan to use what you learn upon graduation.

These are the suggestions you can use to start your paper. Once you have written your draft, come back here and post your essay for further review and suggestions from us.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Scholarship / My Personal Statement for a community foundation scholarship. [3]

Keoni, the way I see it, there are two missing elements in your essay. The first, is the academic accomplishment if any. Since it is pretty obvious that you did not come from a family of studious people, you should indicate that you were only an average student who, although filled with potential to gain academic honors, got held back from achieving your full potential due to the "work" centered family life.

Next, I am worried about the employment part of the essay. My worry is that the reviewer might see your essay in a bad light because you indicated that you quit your job in order to prepare for college and now you are in financial straits. There needs to be an indication that you are actively pursuing other work opportunities that will suit your academic schedule. That way the scholarship committee will know that you will not be relying on the scholarship alone for your academic and personal needs. Bear in mind that not all scholarships give 100 % fees or allowances. So you will need to create an idea that you are a hard working person who just needs a break in life.

In the personal statement portion that discusses the reasons you went back home, cut to the chase, don't offer a whole paragraph just for the story of your stepfather's death and your mother's life after. Just say your step dad died, you went home to care for your mother and eventually, you both decided that it was best for her to go back to Canada. Put some emotion into that paragraph because right now, it sounds like you could not wait to get rid of your mother. Show some familiar ties if you can, but in a short manner that focus more on you that her and your step dad.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 26, 2017
Undergraduate / Medical Dietetics Undergraduate Application Personal Statement - 300 words of my life [4]

Hi Danielle, it is my honor to have you use my revision in your paragraph. I believe that your opening statement was strengthened by its addition. If you still have available word allotment, I suggest that you expand the information about your participation in Project Heal. The reviewer needs to see how your participation helped to open your eyes to the value nutrition and the dangers of fad dieting. Connect your experience there with your desire to become a dietician. That way the experience adds to the impact of your decision. I don't suggest saying that you will use friends and social media to start your career. That statement is too uncertain in focus. Rather, say that you will kick off your career by joining Project Heal as a counselor and also, gain employment at a risk center so you can promote your health advocacy. These additions should help make your statement stronger, impressive, and more informative. If necessary, adjust other parts of the essay in order to accommodate the changes.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Graduate / The Study Plan for Consulate General of Canada - recommended educational direction [10]

Hi Henry, I believe that this study plan is ready to be presented to the consulate for the consideration of your student visa application. It has all of the elements of a well thought out and presented plan for your academic future. However imperfect the grammar may be at times, it does not detract from the actual message of your letter. I would like to offer some final tips for correction before you submit this letter though.

In this opening statement, there is no need to introduce your English name to the reviewer since that is not reflected in your application documents. It will just confuse the reviewer if he has to remember two of your names. Just use your legal name in all instances. Then, in the second sentence, do not start it with the word "And". That is academically unacceptable so you cannot use that word to start the sentence in a professional letter. The rest of the content is acceptable though. You need not worry as to whether or not the consul will understand your letter, I can assure you that he will understand it.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Writing Feedback / IELTS TASK 2 - the reason why do fewer and fewer people appreciate art and how to solve it [2]

Ayu, I believe that your essay can garner an overall score of 5. That means that is the highest score that you can possibly get, in my opinion, for all 4 scoring brackets of the task 2 essay. The reason for this is simple. The essay does not completely and properly address the prompt requirements. In fact, there is a confusion regarding your presentation of the paraphrased prompt. You have a tendency to cause undue stress or confusion for the reader because of your lack of properly developed ideas and improper sentence structures. While I understand that you are trying to use more complex English words, you have to understand that complex words, used in the wrong context, ends up being hurtful to your score in the end. That is because you do not properly deliver on your thoughts or explanations. These are problems that can be fixed over time. The more familiar you get with the English vocabulary, the more proper your writing will become in terms of word usage and lexical resources.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Undergraduate / From a homebody to the active body. UW Madison Essay -- Something important but unnoticed [19]

No. That essay is nowhere near what the prompt is requiring of you. This has to be a nature of yours that you are not conscious about, but others would notice about you and point out when an opportunity arose. That is why I believe that the light story is the best way to present that response prompt. It shows a habit that you do not realize is noticeable to others. The scenario that I laid out for you in my previous response was the best way to tie up that essay so that you could use it in its most powerful setting with your other application prompts. I believe that you should keep this other essay for future use. There may be a prompt requirement that we could adjust this essay content to so that you won't have to develop a totally new essay. Use the light subject essay for this prompt. Save this other version for potential use in the future.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Graduate / Personal History Statement, University of California, Irvine's Human-Computer interaction Masters [3]

Ling, since you are now asking to be admitted to a masters degree course at this university, your personal history should no longer include the backstory about your parents and whether or not they supported your desire to study graphic arts. Your travails as a high school student are also no longer important in this case. Your personal history should instead, focus on your early interest in the arts in summary form, including a mere statement of fact about your college studies. Now, when you speak of moving to the U.S. it is best if you do not mention this person named Amanda in the presentation. She is not known to the reviewer and as such, doesn't really make an impact as a part of your personal history. Instead, try to shorten the essay to focus on your personal history in relation to your professional experience. Since this is a masters degree application, the concentration of the reviewer is more on your professional side because these experiences will help him determine your abilities in relation to completing your masters studies. Save the other types of information for either your motivational letter or statement of purpose instead. Right now, the focus of your history should be on your professional side.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Essays / Tagline for a fitness startup - No more excuses... [2]

Silkeisha, what is the name of your gym? When you are developing a tag line, it is important to consider the name of the establishment. The name of the place will help you to better tie in the mission and objectives of your gym, as well as allow you to present a lighter tone in terms of tag lines. I am not exactly sure how to develop your tag line at this point because I am not familiar with the name of your venue. Once i know what that is, I will be able to better consider the tagline for your gym. by the way, do you want just one tag line or a series of taglines to describe your gym? Normally, only one tagline works best, but that is up to you of course. If you want more than one tagline, then it will be that way.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Writing Feedback / IELTS1 - the number of diarrhea cases in Mashhad over ten years, some time ago [2]

Ayu, while your essay is well within the 150 requirement of the task, it feels like you did not try to impress the reviewer by completing more informative sentences per paragraph. This is specially noticeable in the first paragraph where you only have 2 sentences that do not really deliver an overview of the important keywords in the line chart. If you had included some keywords, you would have scored better in terms of task accuracy, lexical resource, and grammar accuracy. In the second paragraph, when you indicated that the figures remained stable, you should have indicated the consecutive years including the number of cases per year as the chart specifically indicates the rates on a year to year basis. That is important information that you failed to present. Simply picking up from 1986 is not as informative because you did not outline the years in the establishing sentence prior to it. In the last paragraph, do not use the term "violent" as that signifies and action instead of a charting trend. The more appropriate term to use would have been either significant or notable, in keeping with the academic trend of writing.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Writing Feedback / University should not specifically accept more girls or boys for whatever purpose [3]

Ho, you approached this essay from the wrong perspective. In fact, you seem to have decided to answer a totally different question from the one posed before you towards the end of the essay. This could not score any higher than a 1 in my opinion because of the way that you deviated totally from the standard IELTS task 2 presentation. The problems of your essay include, but are not limited, to the following:

1. Improper paraphrasing of the prompt requirement. A discussion of your personal opinion does not belong in the introductory statement. Only an overview of the prompt and its supporting discussions are required in this part.

2. You are posing questions in the essay that, although related to the original prompt, you do not properly respond to in the paragraph. Thus, the paragraph becomes weak, irrelevant, and inappropriate for the discussion.

3. Your conclusion does not relate to the prompt requirement at all. It discusses a totally different question from the original prompt. Which would in the end result in this essay totally failing in the task accuracy score.

These major problems with your essay show a lack of English comprehension abilities. As such, you need to practice your reading comprehension exercises more, prior to writing more practice tests. Otherwise, you will continue to make the same mistakes and not improve regardless of how many essays you practice writing.

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