I want to attend the Summer Institute for Swarthmore College. I really want to go, so I thought I'd get a double check on some of my essays. Any critiques would be appreciated: structure, content, grammar, etc...
Here's the goal of the program:
1. To assist students in transition to college and enhance leadership skills.
2. Encourage personal and social awareness about issues of difference (race/ethnicity, gender, socio-economic class, power, and privilege) that can serve as a framework for understanding, society, campus culture, inter/intra group dynamics and individual, interpersonal interactions.
3. To provide support and information that helps students navigate the college system.
There are 4 essays but I will only bore you with one:
Why are you interested in participating in this program?
There are two specific reasons I want to attend the Tri-College Summer Institute.
Mild terror is a very effective motivator. At Swarthmore I will be a thousand miles from anyone I know and would like to have a support system and some friends established to help adjust to college. That being said, I will thrive on campus either way, but would truly benefit from the outside aid.
More importantly, I want to be more culturally and racially aware in order to facilitate more positive interactions with others. I have grown up in a white, lower income neighborhood in a small Nebraskan town for much of my life. This area is racially barren. Since my town has a small college, there is a refreshing influx of other cultures at times and a surprisingly large openly homosexual population for this area. However, very conservative attitudes reign dominant and I have been immersed in them for years. I come from quite a liberal family in the midst of this, but still retain a nagging fear that some of the closed-minded comments and racial undertones I hear on a daily basis have somehow caught my subconscious. I wish to allay this suspicion and learn more about issues that have not been at play in my social geography.
In addition to developing myself as a person, there is a logistic issue I would like to address. The Tri-Co program is a valiant effort to promote a diverse and supportive college experience, but not all students are included. This program apparently creates a small group of students on each respective campus who are significantly more aware of various social issues than their peers. Without confident ambassadors who are willing to communicate their knowledge to the rest of the school, the entire program's effects only extend to thirty students from each campus. I have the communication skills and passion to be such a representative.
I am the type of person who enjoys the odd and unusual characters of the world. My close friends include a flamboyantly gay man, a Native American dancer, and the most average American girl one could possibly imagine. My best friend has been raising himself since age twelve, when his mother became a meth addict. I love eclectic people and cultures. I love learning and struggling to comprehend new concepts.
Challenge me.
some already established friendships ...
I have grown up in a white, lower income neighborhood in a small Nebraskan town (the rest of the sentence is unnecessary because if you've grown up there, the assumption is that you have lived there for most of your life).
large, openly homosexual population in this area.
Hi kenziii,
This is an incredible essay. I love how you began it, it really captures the reader's attentions. I have very few suggestions, except to maybe connect mild terror more with each of the points in your essay, use it as the topic that binds the essay together.
I'll simplify this a little:
At Swarthmore I will be a thousand miles from anyone I know, so I would like to have a support system and some friends established to help me adjust to college. That being said, I will thrive on campus either way, but would truly benefit from the outside aid.
That is just my suggestion! It's not very important.
Okay, so the terror theme is brilliant, but I hope you'll develop it more by adding one more sentence to the end of that first paragraph. Add a sentence that tells about terror associated with transition to college and ALSO terror associated with transition into a multicultural world. Do you see the connection between these two? You can add a sentence about terror to the end of that first para, ad it will tell about both transitions. That will be the unifying theme for the essay.
:-)
