Short 250 word Scholarship essay on challenging circumstance

The full prompt is below,
Describe a challenging family or personal circumstance that affected your achievement or participation in school, work, or community activities. How did you overcome this challenge?

My family came to America when I was just nine years old and it was a rough transition for me because my parents couldn't speak English and I had to serve as the family translator. This meant that I gained immense responsibility in the functioning of the household, as I had to understand and convey everything from tough legal documents to everyday interactions for my parents. Suddenly, I felt like my parents and I had flipped roles since I was the one they looked to for guidance.

Having to translate everything also meant that I was fully aware of our family's money troubles and this put a lot of stress on me as a young kid. Knowing our troubles I felt bad and stressed about money more than I should have. At the time, I loved soccer and wanted to join an after school soccer league. But I never asked to join because even if we could afford to buy the uniform and the cleats I knew my parents would never have the time to drive me to practice or watch my games.

I spent many years being self conscious and shy because of these experiences. I let my misguided anxieties hold me back but as I matured I realized just how valuable my help was to the family and now I feel proud to have overcome this experience.

in my opinion, if you still "love" soccer until right now, it is not necessary to change "love" become a past form and separate "wanted" to the next sentence.


Avoid to start a sentence by using "BUT", instead you can use "However"


better change it to "financial problem"

Overall, that was a touching story that you have there. I also see a nice flow about your ideas.
For an additional note, please consider to make your last paragraph at least three sentences to make your paragraph become a strong one.

Hi there, AJ! I think you've got a good rough draft here. I do see a fair amount of grammar and wording errors. You have some run on sentences. It's more important, however, to talk about how this essay portrays you to the admissions committee. I don't think this essay is positive enough. You thoroughly explain your situation and the challenges it brought, but nowhere did I read about how you persevered and overcame this in a positive way. You say you realize how valuable this help was. Explain more about that. What did you learn? How does what you learn help you today? Does what you learned help you to be more successful in some way? Did you learn good traits or strengths?


These could be shortened into multiple sentences which make more of an impact on the reader over two really long sentences.
My family came to America when I was just nine years old. This was a rough transition for me because my parents couldn't speak English, which meant I had to serve as the translator for me family. I suddenly became responsible for managing the household for my parents, including translating their everyday interactions and understanding legal documents.