Unanswered [8] | Urgent [0]
  

Posts by Holt [Educational Consultant]
Name: Mary Rose
Joined: Oct 17, 2016
Last Post: 2 days ago
Threads: -
Posts: 14,895  
Likes: 4795

Displayed posts: 14895 / page 324 of 373
sort: Latest first   Oldest first
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.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Undergraduate / Medical Dietetics Undergraduate Application Personal Statement - 300 words of my life [4]

Danielle, you should reformat the content of paragraph one in order to bring down your word count and also, create a more enlightening opening statement that can interest the reader / reviewer. If I were to revise your first few sentences in order to make it more impressive or informative, I would have said something like:

When I was younger, I followed diet fads, mostly because I did not realize that the health of mind and body are singular in terms of overall health. Each time I looked in the mirror, My brain saw a skinny kid, the result of constant exercising and dieting. If I gained even an ounce of weight, I would physically and mentally berate myself for failing. I saw food as my enemy because in my mind, eating meant weight gain.

Then attach the rest of the sentences in the paragraph. That would work better. Then start a new paragraph to present the events that happened to you during your 2nd year in college. Your third paragraph should start with your interest in becoming a dietician because of your exposure to Project Heal. The fourth paragraph should start with your present goal. Make sure to divide the sentences into these specific paragraph topics because the reviewer needs to keep track of what you are talking about in relation to the prompt.

Your essay actually responds well to the prompt. You just need to adjust the beginning like I said in order to create a more eye-catching essay. The paper should be usable once you implement the changes I suggested.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Writing Feedback / Writing an Essay on Personal Growth based on an activity [2]

Nina, it would be best if you just mention that your hobby is photography but your personal growth comes from the film developing activity that goes with it. That way you center the essay on the actual growth activity as indicated in the prompt. The explanation that you provided can be developed further using the freed up word space so that the reviewer will get a real idea as to the personal growth that you experience while enjoying the activity of film development. Rather than discussing how you plan out your week depending the due date of a photo at school, present more information as to how time management is more crucial based upon the results that the photographer wants to achieve in his photo presentation. Try to develop the explanations more with regards to patience and time management. The other parts that you presented are not really that important nor revealing in relation to the required presentation.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Undergraduate / I really want to earn this chance; Exchange student program - self-introduction [6]

Hi Muggy, let me try to help you better outline your self introduction. By following this outline you will be able to present the reviewer with a better idea as to who you are, what your life is like and what your dreams are for your future. I will explain it to you in paragraph form so that you will know what topic should be presented in which paragraph.

First paragraph - Where you come from and what your family is life. Tell the reviewer how many siblings you have and what your parents do for a living. Explain what your role in the family is. For example, if you take care of your siblings or if you help your parents to earn money to help support your family. This will tell the reviewer that you grew up a responsible person who is not afraid to do hard work or anything that can help you in improving your life.

Second paragraph - Talk about your academic life. Where did you go to school, what kind of student were you, and any academic accomplishments that you have.

Third paragraph - Talk about any experience that you have traveling abroad or within your home country. The portion about you visiting friends 4 miles away will be a very good topic for this paragraph. Just make sure to explain your travels properly. At the end of the paragraph, explain a lesson that you learned from these travels.

Fourth paragraph - Present your ambition in life. Who do you want to be in the future? How can this exchange program help you achieve those dreams?

Fifth paragraph - Close the essay by explaining why you believe that your life experiences have helped to prepare you to become one of the best exchange students that the program can admit. Present your excitement at the thought of possibly becoming a part of the program this upcoming semester.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Writing Feedback / Some people think that reducing air travel is the best way to protect environment [3]

Chathuri, it would be best for your essay if you can provide us with the complete prompt instructions. At the moment, I cannot decipher the point of your essay and how it should be scored based on the band requirements because the conversation you are presenting is highly confusing and as such, does not make sense to the reader. This sort of stress upon the reader is what will earn you a low to failing score in an actual test. I believe that once you provide the complete prompt, I will be able to better direct your essay towards a proper set up.

At the moment, your essay suffers severely in the areas of task accuracy and grammar range / accuracy. There is a lack of cohesive and coherent discussion because of the lack of focus in sentence topics. Finally, your lexical resources are questionable as they do not match the type of debate that you are trying to present. I can show you how to improve the discussion, but first, I need to know how the instructions are requiring you to respond to the prompt. Please post the original instructions in this thread as soon as you can so that I can offer you a more insightful review of your work.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 25, 2017
Graduate / The pain of losing friends. Setback/opportunity/challenge - 250 words only. [11]

Hi Rashan, it seems that you went over the word count by 4 words. I have reviewed your essay and found a part that can be edited in order to bring down your word count. Instead of saying "put me on the bench", simply say, "the coach benched me for the remaining season." that totally removes the 4 excess words, bringing you exactly to 250 words. The second paragraph should be divided into two topic paragraphs. Create a new paragraph at the part that indicates "Although it cost me a lot of money..." That way your paragraphs indicate the following topics in a cohesive discussion flow:

Paragraph 1 - Setback
Paragraph 2 - Challenge
Paragraph 3 - Success
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 24, 2017
Undergraduate / I really want to earn this chance; Exchange student program - self-introduction [6]

Muggy, since you are new to the forum, let me explain how this forum works, the forum admins have made it very clear that advice is to be given on a one essay per thread basis. Therefore, I will only be able to present advice to you regarding the essay that is topmost in the page. You will have to present the statement of purpose in a separate thread before someone can advice you on it. Also, please don't forget to advice the other students so that you can get more help for your own essay. Thanks for understanding. Now, let me get to work on your self introduction essay.

Please be very honest and tell me if you used an online translator for your essay. The reason that I am asking is because your essay development sounds like it was very badly translated from your vernacular. The sentences do not make any sense and create stress for the reader because there is no clear meaning in your sentence. I am sure that the words that you wrote make sense in your mind because of the transliteration of the sentences. However, that is not the case for the reader. Your essay doesn't really live up to the self introduction that it was required to create because it is hard to understand what you are trying to say.

Were you provided with instructions for the self introduction? Is there a list of questions that you need to respond to in order to write this essay? If you have a list of questions to answer, please share it with me in this thread. I should be able to help you revise this essay to make more sense to the reader once I know what you are supposed to present in the self introduction essay.

In the meantime, do not work on this essay. It is not going to benefit your application. There is a lot more work to be done on the essay before it can become an actual draft essay, which will be ready for editing and revision. This is very far from that point at the moment.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 24, 2017
Graduate / The pain of losing friends. Setback/opportunity/challenge - 250 words only. [11]

Rashan, that is exactly the kind of setback that this essay requires. I wish you had told us beforehand that you had that experience. It would have saved you the need to revise this particular essay. In fact, you should have written the essay using that scenario even before. It is the perfect depiction for the required statement. I would suggest that you write about that incident in an anecdotal nature. That means you should discuss the situation, what you did to create the setback, then discuss the opportunity to redeem yourself that arose from the situation, then finally, explain how you lived up to the challenge in order to get back to the team. I am not sure how you would write the essay but what I explained to you is how the paragraphs should represent the topic discussions. I believe that I can help you make this essay pop or become more noticeable once you present the new essay to me for review. I always work best when I have something to base my suggestions upon.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 24, 2017
Essays / How to create Erasmus Mundus scholarship motivation letter [4]

Muneeb, we cannot help you with writing your motivation letter. We are only here to help you with developing your letter after you have written your draft version. In order to write the draft letter, you should read up on the requirements of the Erasmus Mundus scholarship letter requirements. Some of the advice that I can give you regarding the development of your draft letter will be as follows:

1. Make sure that you are familiar with the requirements of Erasmus Mundus for the scholars and be sure to reflect that familiarity in the essay,

2. Indicate the program of study that you wish to pursue and why you feel that this would be the best masters degree for you to enroll in.

3. Create a connection between your past studies and your current masters degree interests.
4. Explain how your interpersonal skills and previous college experience creates a seamless connection with this masters degree.
5. Do your best to make your personality "pop" on the page by indicating some information that the other scholarship applicants may not possess.

Keep the writing of this letter on a positive tone. Portray an aura of confidence and deliver a forward thinking mindset in order to let the scholarship committee know that you are concentrated on developing a better future for all concerned, not just yourself.

The pointers above should be able to help you in outlining and drafting your motivational letter. Try to write the letter yourself first, post it in this thread when you are done, and I will get back to you with further comments and suggestions that are sure to help you enhance your motivational letter. Unfortunately, we cannot write the letter for you. We only offer free guidance and help in the development of your letter. I look forward to reading your draft as soon as you are ready to share it with us.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 24, 2017
Writing Feedback / IELTS: REASONS AND EFFECTS OF OBESITY AMONG HUMANS [3]

Suxrob, I can't even begin to think about which problem to present first with regards to your essay. It is simply too riddled with errors from the prompt paraphrasing, word use, punctuation problems...This essay would not get a passing grade in an actual setting. In fact, the work that you did was is so bad, I dare not score you on any aspect for fear of affecting your mindset. Review your essay, the first problem that will pop into your sight will be the lack of punctuation marks in a majority of your sentences. There are definitely missing periods and commas which could have helped to arrange the thought process being presented. Next, always use the correct keywords from the prompt when you develop your work. Therefore, it is wrong to say fatness because being fat is different from being obese. The correct term to use in this essay is "obese", not "fat". There is no clear progression in your presented thought process, the sentence lack coherence in most paragraphs, which had a direct effect on the cohesiveness of your work. Overall, this essay is sloppy, does not show a clear understanding of the prompt, and fails to show a proper English thought process. You have to be more careful when you develop your sentences and at least aim to get a good grammar range and accuracy score. Make sure that you understand the prompt when you try to paraphrase it in the opening statement. Most importantly, develop a logical discussion of your essay target points whenever possible. Right now, this essay is not going to work to your benefit even as a practice test.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 24, 2017
Writing Feedback / Nowadays celebrities are more famous for their glamour and wealth than for their achievements [4]

Mai, this essay would automatically fail in an actual test because it is very obvious that you did not understand the prompt instructions. In fact, for your opening statement, rather than presenting a paraphrased version of the prompt discussion, you presented a totally different discussion question. It is the question that you chose to present to the reader, in opposition to the actual prompt discussion, that you ended up discussing in your essay. The essay also has a problem with sentence structure as your punctuation marks as misplaced or missing in some instance. For example. a period should have been placed at the end of the last sentence in the opening statement. The lexical resource is also problematic because you are using terms that do not apply to the discussion. I think that is being caused by your lack of familiarity with the English language. Terms such as "trend to follow" should have been written as "tend to follow". This is the term that indicates the possibility that a person will imitate something he has seen or heard. Marihuana should have been "marijuana", and other problems, have created a lexical and grammatical nightmare in your essay. When added up, this essay will not possibly get a passing score. I hope that this is just your first practice essay. If you take note of the aforementioned observations, you should be able to show improvement in your next and succeeding essays. You can only get better from here.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 24, 2017
Scholarship / My future perspective and why I deserve the scholarship [7]

Yas, the VU Fellowship Program requires a more detailed explanation as to why you deserve this scholarship other than the fact that you live with your father, you don't have a full time job, nor can you afford to send yourself to masters degree school. In fact, these are the worst reasons that you can give because these do not serve the purpose of the essay.

For starters, if you want to convince the scholarship committee that you deserve this scholarship, you should do so based upon your previous academic excellence. Discuss your GPA, your academic achievements, or other recognition that can help to establish the kind of student you are and the type of study ethics that you have. Explain how these traits will ensure that you will not only complete the course of study, but also bring honor to the scholarship program whenever possible.

Next, if the quote you will be mentioning does not come for a notable alumnus of the program, then it is best not to mention any quote at all. Your mother is not a known personality in any field so her words means nothing to the scholarship committee members. Therefore, it would be best to remove the quote. As for the reference to your father, your lack of regular income, and desire to have a stable financial status in order to study, you do know that the scholarship will only pay for your tuition fee and not your accommodation and other expenses right? This is a tuition only program so there is no student allowance in this for you. These are the parts of the essay that I believe you should delete and replace with more valid reasons as to why you consider yourself an excellent candidate for the scholarship. Think of other extra curricular accomplishments that may tie in with the objectives of the scholarship foundation. That ought to work best for you.

The reference to Google in the first paragraph is irrelevant considering that you do not work for Google nor do you have a current job that could lead to employment there. You may want to rethink your opening statement and try to come up with something more personal and less commercial in presentation. The fact that there is even a copyright insignia in that paragraph makes the whole paragraph laughable and definitely unimpressive.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 24, 2017
Letters / Letter of postponing job appointment on November 15th. [2]

Jay, the letter that you wrote is good. It gets the message across to the reader but has a few problems with sentence structure and grammatical accuracy. If you won't mind, I would like to show you how this letter could have been better worded below:

Dear Mr / Ms. (name of letter signatory),

I was delighted to receive an offer to begin working on November 15 for MNC. I am truly excited about beginning my career with the company. However, I regret to inform you that I can only start working on November 18 due to some family obligations. My sister is getting married on November 15, the same day I am expected to start work. Our cultural traditions dictate an important role for the brother of the bride so my presence at the ceremony is of the utmost importance to my sister, as the bride. As such, I cannot renege on my duties as the formalities of the ceremony cannot be completed without me.

I am requesting for your utmost understanding regarding my situation. Please know that I am more than willing to start work after I have completed my family obligations. If it will be possible, I would like to start working on November 18 instead. I will require 2 travel days to get back from my hometown before I can report for my duties at MNC.

Due to the aforementioned circumstances, I am requesting that my start date by adjusted either to the date indicated in this letter or at the next possible start date that is convenient for the company. I look forward to working with you regarding this schedule adjustment.

Thank you in advance for your support.

Sincerely,
Jay (full name)

* Always write the full name of the person who wrote the hiring letter to you. That is indicated at the bottom of the letter, in the signatory section. The same goes for your name at the end because the reader will need to refer to your file in order to consider your request.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 24, 2017
Graduate / The Study Plan for Consulate General of Canada - recommended educational direction [10]

Henry, the essay is still too long and confused in the way you present the information. There is a lack of clear and logical discussion presentation that should be assisting the reviewer in making considerations for your application. You can still revise the essay in order to create a more informative essay that will make sense to the reviewer.

You can start by first, explaining the college course that you completed while explaining that you had always hoped to vary your career path later on towards something of more interest to you. Then explain that the path towards this career change has already begun, which is why it is imperative that you take this masters degree as soon as possible.

The second paragraph should introduce your Nicole Bridal brand to the reviewer. Offer a history of the business, as you did above, only this time, highlight the problems that you have with managing the business which you believe can be addressed by the completion of additional, higher studies. Explain how your college education proved to be lacking when you began your career as a businessperson.

The third paragraph should offer an insight into the kind of non academic training that you might have had while managing your business. Seminars in business management would help a lot to support your claims at this point. Even the work that you did at your family business will help, provided the work experience directly relates to management. Offer an insight as to how your family based training was able to help you set up your business.

In the fourth paragraph, explain your plans for after graduation. This way the consul will know that you have a desire to return to your home country after completing your studies. Offer a short term plan for your post study goals. Something about how you plan to use your education to help build a better business for yourself.

Finally, explain why you opted to study at the University of Manitoba. Reiterate your desire for a better education that cannot be accomplished by seeking masters degree studies in your home country. Then end the essay.

As a side note, please double check your sentences and make sure that you do not accidentally start and of them with the words "and, but, or because". That is not academically acceptable. Unless used to present a new idea in the same sentence, separating the thoughts using a comma instead of a period.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 23, 2017
Undergraduate / Describe the factors that have most influenced you and your hopes and dreams. [9]

Charlotte, I can tell that you did your best to deliver a totally new essay that would best suit the prompt requirements. After reading this version, I came to realize that there is only one paragraph here that truly adheres to the prompt requirements and that would be paragraph 2. The paragraph where you speak of reading as being influential in your life and hopefully, your own hopes and dreams as well.

Since reading opens the eyes and imagination of the reader to the possibilities of life and its opportunities, I strongly suggest that you take paragraph 2 and build a new response around it. Increase the discussion to illustrate how reading has been an integral and influential part of your life. Remember, the greatest minds develop their greatest accomplishments through reading the work of other people. It offers inspiration to improve oneself, strive to improve something in their life of the life of their community, or just simply offers an insight into how certain aspects of life can be led. A thorough discussion of reading in relation to its influence on your hopes and dreams will definitely help to explain how that factor, your habit of reading every Sunday morning helped to shape the person you have become.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 23, 2017
Scholarship / A short essay - of about 500 words in English - giving reasons for applying for the OFID scholarship [2]

Palma, it is imperative for your application that you manage to connect the ideals or objectives of OFID with your desire for higher study. Aside from the sponsorship based upon a masters degree related to the course offerings supported by the scholarship, what other strong reason do you have that can convince the scholarship committee that you will be an excellent candidate for the program? Your essay doesn't really explain anything that can convince them. What you wrote is all about your country and its trials and tribulations, with very little reference to yourself if at all.

In line with your educational goals, you must first inform the reader that you have the academic grades to match your application. Indicate the GPA of at least 3.0 in an overall 4.0 scale. Present your strongest college subjects in relation to your chosen major and explain how these subjects intertwine to create an interesting study plan or educational goal for yourself.

Rather than presenting such a complex but generic discussion of the problems in your country, concentrate on the problem that best relates to your chosen masters degree. For your educational plan, you can indicate an explanation as to how you plan to help resolve that particular issue upon graduation. Then explain how your studies in this field can help you achieve that goal. That way, you can clearly explain how your studies can help you to improve the situation in your country.

At the moment, your essay is nothing but a really rough draft that contains hits and misses in terms of delivering the necessary information for the consideration of your scholarship application. Try to refocus the essay using the suggestions I made above. You have a very interesting topic to discuss. It is all just a matter of proper discussion development on your part in order to increase your chances of winning this scholarship as the slots are highly limited for this particular scholarship program.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 23, 2017
Undergraduate / 1. How'd you like to learn about by attending this conference? [4]

Van, based upon the instructions / expectations of the conference hosts, it seems that there is a particular set of criteria that they hope the participants can meet. I would like to call your attention to these qualities in order to have you better reflect these in your application essay.

You have to tell the reader that you would be highly interested in attending this conference because you would like to build upon your relevant experiences to the field / conference topic. From there, you can explain some things such as your ideas regarding peace and identity by sharing your relevant experience in that field. It would also be helpful to your application should you be able to share some of your community service experience in relation to the common good reference in the conference description.

By writing a totally new essay that will address some of the conference expectations of its participants, you will be able to better reflect the foundation of your interest in attending the conference. Now, there may or may not be a word requirement for this essay. All I can tell you about that is that you should adhere to it whenever possible. Your current essay is too short and not relevant to the prompt description. I hope that you can expand upon the areas that I have indicated above. That way you can better represent yourself as a potential participant of this conference.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 23, 2017
Letters / Oracle technical skills, diagnosis expertness and other abilities. MS in Data Science recommendation [5]

Ashwin, first of all, the of the person recommending you must be included in the opening statement in order to properly introduce himself to the reader. He must also recognize the name of the company and department that you are working in prior to his acknowledgement of his own position in the company.

Next, the second paragraph carries a load of redundancy. It says the same thing about your ability to deliver reports to the project manner in a variety of ways. It would be in the best interest of your letter of recommendation if you reduce the redundancy in that paragraph by combining it with the depiction of your other skills in a single paragraph. In truth, all of your skills, which are divided into extremely short paragraphs at the moment, can all be combined to produce just a single relevant paragraph. Aim to produce that paragraph in your revision.

Finally, there is a sense of confusion delivered in paragraph 7. What exactly does your project manager mean by "due to the high no of defects" ? Unfortunately, this part of the paragraph development is not clear and leaves the reader wondering about what the meaning of the full sentence is. Kindly review that paragraph and try to restate the message in clearer terms by revising or rewriting the content of that paragraph.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 23, 2017
Graduate / The Study Plan for Consulate General of Canada - recommended educational direction [10]

Henry, let's start with some facts for this study plan. The study plan should include a properly developed statement of purpose in order to justify you desire to study in Canada. Right now, your purpose is not very clear. The way I see it, you are planning on a career change once you go back to your home country right? If so, make that the central purpose of your study. That way you can immediately focus the essay on your bridal brand rather than using so much word filler in the essay which does not help to move your purpose or discussion forward in the eyes of the reviewer.

To follow that up, you are spending too much time telling the reviewer about the world wide status of Canadian education, why is that? That is at least one whole paragraph of unnecessary information that does not help your application in any way. Rather, you should be discussing how you plan to pay for your studies in Canada. If you will be paying out of your own pocket, or if your parents will be paying for your fees or if you will be splitting the costs with them. That is more pertinent to your study plan. After all, if the reviewer doesn't have any idea as to how you plan to pay for your education, I sincerely doubt he will be impressed by your study plan.

Next, you will need to come up with some relevant information regarding your choice of university. This discussion should present the reasons why you chose to study there. The reasons should include, aside from the notable courses of the university, the opportunity to network with an international clientele or among your student peers, the training programs or internships that make you feel like your training will be unique if completed at the University of Manitoba, as well as any potential partnerships that the university may be able to help you cultivate during your time as a student.

By the way, it would be great if you could mention some specifics about your previous academic studies. Highlight the notable achievements that you have and make sure that the reviewer knows your highest possible GPA, even if he doesn't refer to your submitted documents.

You can begin to revise your essay content based upon my aforementioned suggestions. It should get your study plan on the right track and should shorten the length of your essay to a more interesting length.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 23, 2017
Letters / U.S. Naval Officer Motivational Statement Essay - Navy's core values in order to protect USA [2]

Alexander, I am wondering if your motivational statement essay came with some guide questions as most military officer school applications do. If you have a series of guide questions, I would appreciate it very much if you would post the questions in this thread so that I can better consider the content of your essay in reference to specific requirements. You see, as a general motivational statement, this essay does not hit the mark at all. I do not see a clear, compelling, and relevant motivation within your work. It is important that you display a strong motivation for this essay. Anything from being heavily influenced later, as in as a high school or college student by the battles that the military were involved in. Something along the lines of the battle to take down Saddam Hussein, the hunt for Bin Laden, or the growing discord in the South China Seas. You have to show a keen interest in world affairs where the U.S. Navy may have been heavily involved in order to create a strong connection within yourself and your personal motivation for wishing to attend Navy officer school. I'll wait for the guide questions, if you have any, so that I can point out which possible parts of this essay you can use for the required revision.
Holt  Educational Consultant  
Jan 23, 2017
Undergraduate / 1. How'd you like to learn about by attending this conference? [4]

Van, I can't really help you with regards to adjusting the content of your essay because you have not given me enough information about the background of the topic. The first thing I need to know is the name of the conference, then you need to give me an idea as to what the objective of the conference is. Those are the two most important factors that can help me in assessing your essay. Another factor that i need to consider is what the full prompt requirement is. I am not sure about how to respond to this essay because of the lack of background information. I hope you can provide me with some idea regarding the specifics of this conference so that I can better evaluate your essay for content and acceptability as an application paper.

Do You Need
Academic Writing
or Editing Help?
Fill in one of the forms below to get professional help with your assignments:

Graduate Writing / Editing:
GraduateWriter form ◳

Best Essay Service:
CustomPapers form ◳

Excellence in Editing:
Rose Editing ◳

AI-Paper Rewriting:
Robot Rewrite ◳