NTU Scholarship Essay - Parents as my motivation to work hard

Hello everyone! I am Wee Keat, who is new to this forum. Please kindly give some feedback and advice on the essay I have written for the NTU scholarship application. Thank you very much! :)

Scholarship essay for NTU:

subject of personal importance to you

Describe, in less than 300 words, a short essay on a subject of personal importance to you. You may choose any topic. Examples include: an event which has influenced you or a family member/friend/person who had a significant influence on you.

Father and mother - parents. The one who have sacrificed most of their time and efforts, just to foster the little kid to an adult today, who is going to further his study in NTU.

It has never been easy for my parents to raise the four children - I have two sisters and one brother. I saw my father worked at least ten hours, maximum up to sixteen hours per day, typically with clean clothes going out, but with stained clothes and exhausted face coming back. I saw my mother worked in a hardware store for eight hours and took care of the house chores.

Why were they working so hard, and putting so much efforts? They could have a more relaxed lifestyle, but why they didn't? Little did I know the reason when I was young, but I realised it was all for us. They wanted to provide a better environment for us.

Since then, my parents become my motor engine to work diligently as I do not want to be a financial burden to them. Since they worked so hard for us, why should I be chilled? I want to be financially independent and be able to share a more happy and prosperous life with them. Although I do not have that ability now, what I can do now is to get into the university without being an increased burden to them.

Upon completing my undergraduate study, I would like to bring my parents to explore the world as they did not travel overseas frequently in the past. I want them to slow down and enjoy their life. I would also like to give back to the community to give a hand to those in need of helps.

Thank you, daddy and mummy, for bringing me up.

Hi Wee Keat! i really love your essay but there is grammatical error :) The part where you said they could have a more relaxed lifestyle, but why they didn't, should be "why didnt they". And after reading tons of essay application, one thing i learn is that you can show off a little bit. You could say that everything that your parents had sacrificed for you taught you a lesson, which is to never give in to make progress. You could say, for example, how they gave you purpose and a clear direction of your future, including your decision to enter NTU. Showing your value could convey your maturity in your essay :)

Tan, you need to be consistent in your time reference. Either you are discussing in the past tense of the situation or in the present tense. Never mix the two as you will confuse the reader. You must also indicate from the very start that you are talking about your parents and not someone else. The implication at the start is that you are discussing the definition and role of parents in general. You must be specific to your own parents because they are the people most important to you. The first person pronouns need to be used in this essay. Most of your sentences are run on sentences. That is because you are going for dramatics instead of information. The purpose of this paper is to inform the reviewer, not to make him read a creative narrative. Just speak direct to the point in complete sentences and paragraphs. Don't close the essay with a thank you to your parents, you are not being asked to write a letter to them. That is not necessary in the essay. I suggest that you run this essay through a free online grammar checker in order to clean up your problematic sentence structures. I cannot do that for you because that would mean revising the whole essay and I am only limited to giving you one free advice per thread. You will have to fix that on your own using other sources.