Biographical Essay (800 word limit)
We are interested in learning more about you and the context in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors caused you to grow?
I grew up in a family just like any other families in Saigon, Vietnam; a family that has a dad, a mom, and a brother. Those were my ten years of a full and happy life until the day gastric cancer stole my dad from me. It was a coincidence that my dad had become an orphan at the same age of me when I lost him. However, I was way luckier than him in that I still have my mom- the person who plays the most important role in my life.
My family was mainly depended on my dad's income. Soon after his disappearance, we went on a financial crisis. My mom had to work days and nights in a clothing factory with a small payment just enough to pay for foods, bills, and her sons' educations. I couldn't bear to see her coming home late, exhausted without a word of complaints. My mom has sacrificed what was supposed to be a happy life to make sure me and my brother get educated in a country where tuition fees for elementary schools are expensive, let alone colleges. There is no reason or excuse for me to disappoint her. Keeping my promise to do well in classes, I made it into top 5 students with highest academic achievements in the most one of the most selective middle school in Saigon. My very first success, together with my brother being accepted to a medical college, made my mom happier than ever.
Life is never smooth and stable like the surface of a lake. It is the ocean where waves come after waves without any cautions. Once again, my life started to change when my mom remarried, and we moved to America. In the first month, we lived with my dad's uncle and aunt who had adopted him after his parents' deaths. Everything was perfect except the frequent arguments from my dad's side not letting my step-father stay with us. My mom, with her dignity, couldn't bear living under others' control and decided to move out to live in an apartment. It is beyond horrible to be turned away by my own relatives. Life in the apartment wasn't easy for a 4-members-family whose incomes came from only my step-father. Situations like this have taught me a lot of about the value of money. Three years living in here, I've never owned a phone that is higher than thirty bucks. Despite the fact that my friends keep switching their phones from 4s to 5, and now 6, I prefer using a cheap one until the day I can make my own money.
Language barrier was the biggest challenge I've ever faced. Because of it, I lost so many friendships and opportunities to achieve more than what I had got. I wasted most of my time in freshman and sophomore year for classes I wasn't interested in at all, because they were chosen by my counselor since I was new to this American school system. I didn't even know what an "AP class" is until the end of my 10th grade. I struggled with classes as well, especially team sports. Yes it sounds ridiculous, but I actually got a "B" in my first semester of team sports for not dressing out, because I couldn't understand a single word from my coach. So I decided to concentrate more on learning English by reading books. I started with very easy ones such as "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." Though my reading skill is not perfect, I can tell that it has been improved significantly. Now, I am able to read a long novel like "Harry Potter" and understand tough articles which used to be my sleep pills. However, I realized that learning English by myself wasn't enough. I started to make new friends, join school's clubs, and try to blend in the new society to be able to master my English skills as well as the knowledge of this new culture.
Challenges are always there to attack your weakest spots. There is no way to avoid but to face them and show them that your weakest spots are now strongest ones. Losing a person I love, fighting against poverty, struggling with a new language, or being isolated didn't pull me back away from my goals. Instead, they proved me that I am stronger than I thought. I can see the challenges waiting ahead: going to college, paying for tuition fees, dealing with higher level problems... In fact, writing this essay and applying for Questbridge are something that I've been struggling with, because I knew I have more disadvantages than other students. However, I accepted the challenge anyway, because there is no loss for trying, because no matter how hard the situation is, I always have my mom by my side giving me supports and motivation.
Really appreciate if you give me some feedbacks, correction and constructions so that i can improve this essay. BTW, the total words of this essay are 809.
lannn, while you wrote a highly comprehensive essay about your life, I feel that for this biographical essay, there is too much going on within the essay so that the information contained becomes overwhelming. Making the reader wonder as to how these all connect to your development as a person and the formation of your dreams and aspirations. I would like to suggest that you cut down on the content of the paper, concentrating on only one focal point, one, two, or three connected life changing events that could highlight this development. I am suggesting that your center the paper on the death of your father, remarriage of your mother, and the eventual coming to America.
The reason I want you to do this is simple, it was during these events in your life that you actually began to develop as a person, creating your dreams and aspirations based upon the needs of those around you and your own ideas of how to best achieve those expectations. It will show your strength as a person and your ability to form ambitions and aspirations even when faced with adversity. Don't concentrate too much on what happened to your mother or your relatives. Not even your living conditions, think about you in this instance. How did you feel? How did you react? What did you expect of yourself? Why were you held back from achieving your full potential? How did these struggles help you develop dreams and ambitions for yourself? Don't you think that would make for interesting reading in your essay?
You have all the life experiences to make that kind of portrayal work on paper, we will just need to work on connecting the factors and building a solid foundation that will be enhanced by the person you finally became. In fact, this is made very evident by the conclusion that you used. There are some grammar and sentence structure errors to be addressed in that part but I would keep it because of the strong conclusion is makes for your biography.
The overall paper does need some grammar work and corrections, but we can only address those once you perfect the theme and content of the paper :-) So don't worry about those for now. Let's clean up the theme first.
Praise: I really like your introductory paragraph. It demands the attention of the reader with tragic drama.
I liked your comparison of life to the waves of the ocean.
Suggestions: It seems like you tried to cram a lot into your paper. It's overwhelming to the reader.
It would be easier to follow and understand if the focal point was tied to one or two of the challenges you mentioned.
I think you should leave out the sentence, "In fact, writing this essay and applying for Questbridge are something that I've been struggling with, because I knew I have more disadvantages than other students." It sounds like you're asking for pit in my opinion, and the struggles in your life should be enough to show that you've had disadvantages.
