HSF:Describe a recent academic challenge you have faced. Explain how you overcame it.

This is one of three essays I'm writing for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. I was asked to "Describe a recent academic challenge you have faced. Explain how you overcame it." It needs to be 400-600 words and is about 15 words over. What could I shorten or take out? Is it too personal and informal for a scholarship application? Any type of input is appreciated. Thank you!

For two years, I had been a student at Campbell High School. I was one of the illustrious IB breed. We were a strange bunch, making jokes about parabolas and speaking foreign languages to each other in the hallways. I had fallen in love with the program-the passionate teachers, the supportive network of students-but during my sophomore year, I realized the toll the program was taking on my parents. The school was forty-five minutes away, making extracurriculars difficult to impossible. The students were so spread out that getting together for a project was as hard as the project itself. The greatest problem though, was that I needed to help my parents pay for my college education. I transferred to my home school, Sprayberry, and found a job at a daycare.

A few weeks before school started, I went in for a meeting with my new counselor. As I walked through the door she said, "Congratulations, you're a senior!" Perplexed, I managed to utter a confused "What?" I was going into my junior year. Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. That was the order, right? The counselor began to speak and I listened intently. She told me she had looked at my transcript and that I needed only four more credits to graduate. At first, my thoughts were those of celebration but soon I became apprehensive. Was I ready for this? After weighing the pros and cons I eventually decided to follow through. I would graduate in the spring of 2013. The decision led me to take a load of challenging AP courses and study intensely for the SAT.

I had taken AP classes before but they seemed all-new at Sprayberry. My US History class in particular gave me trouble. After each quiz, the teacher would post a list announcing who had earned the top three grades. When I checked it after the first quiz and didn't see my name, I was crushed. Anxious to claim my spot at the top, I started creating outlines and defining important terms for each chapter. I put in my best work and it showed on the next quiz; I made it to second place. I'd met my original goal but now I had caught a fever. I made flashcards to study on my phone and in any spare moment I could find-on the bus, in the car-I would pull them up and go over them. We took the next quiz and a few days later the list was posted-first place. Since then, I've come in first every time.

With college deadlines bumped up a full year, I hurried to study for the SAT. I spent at least an hour a day on practice tests and as the test date got nearer and nearer, I began to dedicate three, even four or five hours a day to studying. I kept myself motivated by organizing study groups with friends. We took practice tests together, compared our scores, and rewarded ourselves with frozen yogurt for especially good results. The support, competition, and set scheduling of our weekly study sessions helped me tremendously. When I got my test scores back, they had risen 300 points from my first diagnostic test.

A new school presented a new set of difficulties. My sudden transition from junior to senior status came with serious challenges, demanding coursework and a looming standardized test, but I refused to accept anything less than first place. After an initial struggle, I pushed myself to overcome the obstacles I faced, putting my best foot forward and facing my problems head on.

Hi Amandaco

Thank you for your detailed editing of my essay, so here I am to help yours.

Since you specifically asked me how to make your essay more interesting I will not make any editing instead I will present you with some ideas.

First of all I would like you to read this blog:

mit admissions/blogs/entry/show_dont_tell_the_college_essay

This will tell you how to write an interesting essay.

Now lets talk about your essay. The first part of the essay is great. It is very interesting and it shows that you are a very passionate student and you also care about those around you (Especially your parents). Besides that in the first part of essay you also show yourself to be mature and thoughtful (you considered the difficulties of transitioning from junior to senior).

However the second half of your essay (paragraph 3-5) is trite and boring. Thousands of people have, through hard work, earn the first place of the class and improve 300 points in the SAT. (In fact I improved from 174 in PSAT to more than 2000 in SAT) I am not saying that you shouldn't use the history AP class as an example, but you should present it in a more interesting way. For example you can start the second part of the essay with this sentence "Failing to see my name in the top scorer of the month, I was disheartened". Another thing I want to ask you about is this: do you work hard in history for the 1st place or do you work hard because you love history?

Take this as food for thought and good luck

Thank you so much for being truthful with me. I was having the same feelings towards it but people kept telling me it was a good essay.

The truth is I've never had a truly challenging academic experience. This essay is tough for me because so far I haven't had any major problems to overcome. Classes have always been relatively easy and the transition was mostly stressful because I had to balance so many things: schoolwork, college applications, and a job. I don't think I could write an essay about not having enough time though, and I'm not sure it qualifies as an academic challenge either way. Should I scrap the History class and SAT stories? If so, could I present the time management struggle caused by the transition?

I just lack passion about the topic. The blog claimed the "world" prompt as one of his favorite but none of the 3 essays I am writing for this scholarship interest me. I know what they want to hear but I can't figure out how to approach it in a more creative way. I feel like I'm just patting my own back, talking about how hard I worked. The tips on how to write for this scholarship indicate that they look most at length and punctuation. I think they want a resume in prose form but I'm not sure.

Thanks again for your help.

I had exactly the same problem. Classwork was easy for me too, even during the most stressful time I can have more than 10 hours of sleep. But the problem is that if I present the classwork as too easy I may come across as a snob. So I decided to write the essays in another way, about my shortcomings. I wrote about how, because I only wanted to win first place, I loose sight of the most important thing, passion. This is my essay, check it out (its not perfect so if you can please give me some feedback too)

https://essayforum.com/undergraduate/college-archery-hard-works-nothing-43615/

So, I believe, that if time management is really the problem you should definitely write about it, even if you were the cause of the bad management of time. If I were you I would present it in the following ways. (Just an idea).

1. Start by recounting the most stressful time of your life. Emphasizing the amount of things you have to do.
2. Then show the admission officers how you manage to overcome this stress or even manage the time better.
3. Then have a really powerful conclusion that tells a lesson

Good Luck hope you make a brilliant essay. BTW if you want I can look at the newly made essay just sent it to my e-mail address (linting2012@abc-net.edu.sv)

I think you are a great writer and that your essay effectively describes your passion for academic success. I'm finding it difficult to find constructive criticism to offer... Perhaps you could elaborate on your daycare job and explain how it made the pursuit of your education more difficult. I would just be careful not to make it sound like your getting off topic, you know? I'm not sure if this advice is helpful... Let me know if it is. If you have any specific questions, I would be happy to try to answer them.