Every house needs a good foundation. Short and long-term goals like building a house.

Prompt: In 500 words or less, please describe your short-term and long-term personal and education/career goals and what has helped to shape your goals. What specific steps will you take to reach your personal/education/career goals?

Please help me to check on the following essay. Thank you very much in advance.

Long-term and short-term goals are intertwined and work similarly to build a house from ground up. Each short-term goal is like a step in building a house.

Every house needs a good foundation. My short-term goals begins with graduating from high school within top ten percent of my graduating class and be accepted to a college of my choice. Graduating is by far the priority of most of my goals, because graduating with a high school diploma is the stepping stone for my long-term goal.

Like all house building projects, we need funding. My next step in building my dream house in the form of searching and applying for numerous scholarships in order to assist in reducing my college expenditures, APIASF is one of them. Hopefully these scholarships will cover a hefty fraction of the college estimated cost.

Every house needs approval and authorization from the authority. Once in college, I will proceed with my next step towards a master's degree in Accounting which would broaden my knowledge in accounting field. However, a piece of paper simply does not qualify someone for a career. Therefore, I'll need to make another step prior to getting a degree in order to be prepared. This can be done through participating in several internships related to my career and gaining knowledge about career related topics.

Now that I've gotten my house foundation done, secured the funding, built and certified by the authority, I am ready to move in and live my life in my dream house.

The items that have helped to shape my goals are everyone I have encountered throughout my life, whether they believed I would succeed or fail. I would like to prove to those who strongly felt I would not amount to much by being successful while at the same time satisfying those who have supported me thus far. I am a very determined person, I always keep in mind to work as hard as I can every day to make sure all of these goals are reached.

Yee, there is no problem with your word count. You are well under the 500 maximum at this point so you have plenty of room to further develop your scholarship essay. While I do like the concept of building a house, I believe that you should be more straightforward in your approach to your short and long term personal and career goals.

To begin with, when you talk about graduating at the top ten percent of your high school class, make mention of your current standing in the honor role. Then explain why you are confident that you can achieve this goal. Yes, we are talking about your GPA here. Make sure you mention it in a manner that will impress the reviewer. Don't make it necessary for him to search for information about you in your records.

For the funding part. It may not sit well with the reviewer to know that you plan to get by in college solely on scholarships. Most of these foundations look for a sign that the applicant is a self-starter who knows what it will take to finish college and goes for it. That means creating the image of a hard working person who is willing to work part time and full time jobs if necessary to finish college. That is alongside any scholarships that you might receive. Don't concentrate solely on the funding coming from scholarships. It sounds better when you are willing to do the work along with a few free rides whenever possible. Rather than saying you want a free ride all the way.

As for your career plans, please discuss your plans immediately after college first. The Masters degree will require you seek out a new scholarship so just make that part the next step in furthering your employment plans. Talk instead about how you see yourself progressing in your career within 5 years or less. The masters degree should not be the ultimate long tern goal for you. Maybe you could change it to setting up your own business based on your experience and training instead?

@Holt
Thank you for your valuable comments and suggestions, I really appreciate it. I will rewrite the essay after this. I think I made a mistake, my revised essay did not paste to the forum, I am sorry about that. below is the revised essay. Thanks.

Mun, what happened to the formatting of your paper? Why did you squish all of the information into one long and difficult to read paragraph? Do the reviewer a favor and use paragraphs. You should hit that enter key to separate the paragraphs by topic. Right now, the essay is a string of words that are hard to follow and doesn't allow the reader to create a fluid flow of thought. It's a very bad idea on your part to format the paper this way.

As for the content, seriously, the first essay you wrote was fine. It just needed a little tweaking. I offered your information to help you create a better paper. Somehow, when you revised the content, you forgot to retain the original formatting you got. I like the concept of building a house in the first essay that you wrote. Why did you decide not to use that format anymore? It was really clear and allowed the reviewer to scan the essay for important content easily. It also made your essay "pop" on the written page. Is there a chance you can retain the first format but include the important information that you added in this version of the essay?

@Holt
I am sorry about this, that was my mistake. Below is the revised essay with the paragraphs, please help to review it. Thank you.

I don't think that you need to mention that your family lives from paycheck to paycheck in this essay. It doesn't really reflect anything related to the prompt so it is a superfluous aspect of the discussion. Just make sure to present all of the necessary information as per the prompt requirements and the essay will be good to use.

In your short term goals regarding paying for your tuition fees, you should make mention about of some university based scholarships or student financing plans that you plan to avail of in relation to paying off your fees. That is how you can make it abundantly clear to the reviewer that you come from a single income family but you are willing to do everything that it takes to complete your education.

From the looks of it, these two adjustments are all that need to be done in order to finalize the content of your response. I look forward to reading your next version.

@Holt
I did minor adjustment to the essay, please see below the adjustment I made. Thank you.

Not bad. The essay comes across as analytical and well thought out. Your plan for action is actually feasible and should be something that you can achieve in the short term. Can you say something about your plans while in college? For example, looking towards internships at notable accounting firms or something similar? That training should be part of your college goals because it will dictate the success of your future plans.

Your long term goals are admirable but should include references to higher education if you plan on starting your own business. Normally, higher education is necessary when the person wishes to start his own company or work for himself. It isn't just about getting the proper training and internships. It is also about gaining more academic knowledge.

@Holt

I edited the essay, please comment on the revised essay below. Thank you in advance for all your kind assistance.

My long-term goal is to become a Certified Public Account. Long-term and short-term goals are intertwined and work similarly to build a house from ground up. Each short-term goal is like a step in building a house.

Every house needs a good foundation. My short-term goals begins with graduating from high school within top ten percent of my graduating class by maintaining my unweighted GPA of 4.2 and strike for a grade of A and B in all my classes. By striking the best in my academic, I definitely feel that the results attained reflect my hard work being recognized by many others; for example, I won 3rd place in the 8th grade science fair, award for excellence in social studies and mathematics in 8th grade, awarded recognition of superior in computing in 9th grade and given a chance to participate in Olympic Math competition in the 11th grade. Besides these considerable academic background, I increase my chance of being accepted to a college of my choice by participating in school extra curriculum, such as Florida Future Educator of America and Mu Alpha Theta club. Graduating is by far the priority of most of my goals, because high school diploma is the stepping stone for my long-term goal.

Like all house building projects, we need funding. My next short-term goal is to secure enough money for my college expenditures. I came from a family of five with my father's salary is the only source of income. I understand and realize that I need to depend on myself for most of the college expenditures throughout my college life. I will work part-time and full-time jobs to secure for enough college fund to finish my college education. Besides part-time and full time jobs, I will also applying for scholarships from different institutions like Florida Bright Futures Scholarship and APIASF in order to assist in reducing my college expenditures.

Every house needs certification from the authority. Once in college, I will proceed with my next step towards obtaining a bachelor's degree in accounting. However, a piece of paper simply does not qualify someone for a career and therefore, I'll need to make another step prior to getting a degree in order to be prepared. This can be achieved through participating in several internships at notable accounting firms to gain knowledge about career related topics. After obtaining the bachelor's degree, I will proceed with my next step towards obtaining a master's degree in accounting.

Now that I've gotten my house foundation done, secured the funding, built and certified by the authority, I am ready to move in and live my life in my dream house. After obtaining my master's degree, my long-term career goal is to obtain the CPA qualification and work for a big accounting firm like Deloitte and KPMG. I plan to set up my own accounting firm after a few years working with the big company. I am sure this goal is achievable with my hard working and determined personality.