Attitude Change: when opportunities arise, don't wait until it's too late - ED Princeton Pers. Essay

Hi everyone,

Can someone please help me with grammatical errors I might have made? Because I'm really bad with that... Deadline is tomorrow so I'm a bit in a hurry... Thanks!

Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

I felt the bead of sweat drip down the side of my neck. My view was blurry, which made it even harder for my brain to process what was happening. Doctors were debating about my treatment while simultaneously injecting me with all sorts of drugs. "Her blood pressure is still only 70 over 37, we need to infuse more intravenous fluid!" was one of the phrases I heard distantly while trying to stay conscious.

What started as one of our traditionally fun family weekends ended as a near-death experience. I hadn't been feeling well the whole weekend, but everyone, including myself, thought it was just an extreme case of the flu. When I couldn't walk straight anymore because of the dizziness, my mom got worried and took me to the hospital. I was diagnosed with sepsis almost immediately. Doctors later told me that I might not have made it had my mom taken me as little as an hour later.

In the week that followed, I had to stay at the hospital for my full recuperation. One can imagine that my stay there became extremely tedious after a while. However, it did give me a lot of time to philosophize about my life. Realizing that I could have easily died that day, I started to question my overall attitude that I had in life. I thought about accomplishments I had already made and, for the first time, I started to think critically about things I'd still like to pursue or accomplish.

High school had always been easy for me. I did next to nothing to obtain my reasonably high grades in rigorous classes at school. My mom was always telling me I could distinguish myself more if I used my privilege of having a good pair of brains more, but I liked the feeling of fitting in somewhere and being "normal". This had everything to do with my years at middle school. During the eight years there, I was always labeled as the geek of the class. Kids bullied me with this, which resulted to my hatred for being smart. So when I went to VWO at high school, I finally felt I fitted in somewhere and I was happy to not be the kid that always had the best marks. I was finally freed from the geek label.

During my recuperation of sepsis, I realized that life is short and that I should use all the opportunities and privileges I have. Trying specifically to not be the best at something is basically foolish and childish, and showed that I was not independent. I realized that the kids who picked on me were simply jealous, and they should be. Children who live in third world countries dream of the privileges that I have living in a country as wealthy as Holland, so why shouldn't I use all those privileges?

As the fourth year of high school began, my grades went up, and I went from a good student up to an excellent student. I started to really delve into my schoolbooks, and found a love for STEM subjects as well as a love for social sciences. To my surprise, fellow students didn't start to bully me, but actually started to admire me. That was the first time I realized I should be proud of being "the best".

Today I say yes to every opportunity and I can only see doors that are open. I strive to be the best at everything: from playing volleyball to playing the piano, from helping other people with school to studying for my own tests. I have become an independent thinker and therefore believe I have grown more into adulthood after my sepsis incident, but also believe I will never be done learning and growing. I now live by the famous Dutch saying, "Je moet het ijzer smeden als het heet is", which means: When opportunities arise, don't wait until it's too late.

Hello Ria, you've written a whole essay on how well accomplished you are and how everything has come easy for you. But, you don't really talk about how you've used this to maybe help people around you of how you've used your privileges. Furthermore, maybe you could elaborate on an example on how you used your skills to better the world around you. By doing this, I believe your essay would be stronger!

Ria, I do not think that you will be able to submit this essay for early decision. The situation that you wrote about does not respond to the prompt. While I can understand how suffering from sepsis and recovering from the bout would be an eye opener for you that would make you strive to become a better person and achieve more things in life, it does not reflect the kind of maturity and responsibility that the prompt is actually looking for.

As you can tell from the prompt itself, you cannot use an illness for this essay because it is not a rite of passage or an informal or formal event (that means traditional) that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family. Since suffering from Sepsis is a medically related event, it does not qualify under the prompt requirements. Submitting this essay in its current form will only result in the reviewer disregarding this narrative of yours. Again, a medical event does not equal to a rite of passage. There is nothing in the event that shows how you were entrusted with more responsibility or acknowledged as an equal or adult by your family members of your community.

Events that cover this essay normally include your parents giving you your first car, moving to the US alone and taking responsibility for your life, assuming a leadership role in the family due to the death or loss of a loved one to divorce or whatever, anything that places a normally adult responsibility on your 17 year old shoulders are the normally acceptable responses to the prompt. The idea behind this prompt is to prove that you have the maturity required to become a college student and that you will not just slack off as a student at Princeton or any other college for that matter.

This forum is filled with examples that you can read to help you define such a moment in your life. I suggest that you take advantage of the samples you can read and learn from them. My advice to you is this, rather than trying to get in via early decision at Princeton, fix this essay first, make sure it answers the prompt, and then try to apply for Early Action in January instead. That will give you more time to perfect your common app essays and increase your chances for admission to Princeton. It doesn't have to be early decision.

Yes, you are both right and I see that now.
I have changed the essay to match the question:
Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

What do you guys think of it now? I still want to apply ED, I know that my personal essay is the weakest part of my application, but I really really want to apply now. And could you please check if I made any grammatical mistakes?

​I felt the bead of sweat drip down the side of my neck. My view was ...

Ria, we don't have much time to edit and revise the essay since you have to submit this within the day. I'll make the necessary corrections to your essay below. By the way, your hook is not really effective at the very start. It is disconnected from the succeeding paragraph. An effective hook always creates an effective transition into the main paragraph. That did not work in this case, but it could work if you insert it between the the sentences that say:

... my mom got worried and took me to the hospital. (insert ​I felt the bead of sweat drip down the side of my neck...) I was diagnosed with sepsis almost immediately.

That is the most major revision to your essay that you have to work on. As for the rest of the essay, here are my corrections:

I felt the A bead of sweat drip down the side of my neck. My view was blurry, which made it even harder for my brain to process what was happening. Doctors were debating about my treatment while simultaneously injecting me with all sorts of drugs. "Her blood pressure is still only 70 over 37, we need to infuse more intravenous fluid!" was one of the phrases I heard distantly while trying to stay conscious.

During the MY eight years there, I was always labeled as the geek of the class.
Kids bullied me, which resulted to IN my hatred for being smart.
So when I went to VWO at FOR high school,

an extreme case of the flu. When I couldn't walk straight anymore because of the dizziness,
AFTER A BATTERY OF TESTS I was diagnosed with sepsis almost immediately .

I had to stay at the hospital for my full recuperation FOR TREATMENT AND RECUPERATION.
However, it did give me a lot of time to philosophize REFLECT about my life.
I started to question my overall attitude that I had in ABOUT MY life.

During my recuperation of sepsis ,

I went from a good student up to an excellent student.
To my surprise, MY fellow students didn't startto bully me,

Today I say yes to every opportunity and I can only BECAUSE I see doors that are open.

What I have for you above are the necessary revisions to your essay that can best prepare it for submission in ED. Good luck with your application. Your decision to change the prompt to better suit what you wrote was the best decision you made about your application.

Hello van giespen, again, thank you so much for your help! I have incorporated all of your changes, but I still have one more question about the hook.

I really do want to still use it as my hook, so I have simply switched between paragraphs. Do you think it is better now? It is the only thing I have changed besides your revisions on grammatical stuff.

Thank you again so much!

...

Ria, the change that you did works well for the essay. It does not make it a standout essay but it does help improve the narrative content-wise. The only suggestion I can make at this point is that you improve the ending of the following paragraph in order to transition better into you paragraph about high school. Right now, it reads as:

I thought about accomplishments I had already made and, for the first time, I started to think critically about things I'd still like to pursue or accomplish.

I believe that if you add a line similar to this:

I could not help but think back to all the time that I wasted in high school. How I pretended not to be as smart as I really was, or how I tried to convince people that I did not care about my grades because the truth was, I was a smart student and I cared deeply about my grades. Yet I allowed peer pressure to dictate my academic moves just so I could fit in with the crowd. Why did I choose to stop being an academic achiever?

Those transition sentences should help to make the essay stronger and offer a more interesting look into your personality. Overall, the revisions have already strengthened your application. We are just polishing it now. As far as I can tell, we can't polish it any more than we already have :-) Good luck again with your ED application.

Again I have incorporated your incredibly helpful commentary.
It did make my essay more than 650 words, so I have deleted some other things.
I will upload my essay today. Thank you again for your incredibly wise comments!
If you're interested, here is the final draft of my essay:

I felt a bead of sweat drip down the side of my neck. My view was blurry, which made it even harder for my brain to process what was happening. Doctors were debating about my treatment while simultaneously injecting me with all sorts of drugs. "Her blood pressure is still only 70 over 37, we need to infuse more intravenous fluid!" was one of the phrases I heard distantly while trying to stay conscious.

In the summer of 2013 I was in France with my family. One day I started to feel very ill, and when I couldn't walk straight anymore because of dizziness, my mom got worried and took me to the hospital. After a battery of tests I was diagnosed with sepsis. Doctors later told me that I might not have made it had my mom taken me as little as an hour later.

In the week that followed, I had to stay at the hospital for treatment and recuperation. One can imagine that my stay there became extremely tedious after a while. However, it did give me a lot of time to reflect about my life. Realizing that I could have easily died that day, I could not help but think back to all the time that I wasted in high school. How I pretended not to be as smart as I really was, or how I tried to convince people that I did not care about my grades because the truth was, I was a smart student and I cared deeply about my grades. Yet I allowed peer pressure to dictate my academic moves just so I could fit in with the crowd. Why did I choose to stop being an academic achiever?

High school had always been easy for me. I did next to nothing to obtain above average grades in rigorous classes at school. My mom was always telling me I could distinguish myself more if I did more work, but at the time I was desperate to fit in somewhere and to be "normal". This had everything to do with my eight years at elementary school, where I was always labeled as the geek of the class. Kids bullied me, which resulted in my hatred for being smart. So when I went to VWO for high school, I finally felt I fitted in somewhere and I was happy to not be the kid that always had the best marks. I was finally freed from the geek label.

During my recuperation, I realized that I should try to use all the opportunities I have. Trying specifically to not be the best at something is simply foolish, and showed that I was not independent. I discussed this with my mom, and it was the first time I told her that I used to be bullied. It felt like a weight lifted off of my shoulders.

As the fourth year of high school began, my grades went up, and I went from a good student to an excellent student. I started to really delve into my schoolbooks, studied until late at night and found a love for STEM subjects as well as a love for social sciences. To my surprise, my fellow students didn't bully me, but actually started to admire me. That was the first time I realized I should be proud of being smart.

Today I say yes to every opportunity because I only see doors that are open, and take pride in being intellectual. I am much more confident now than I was before, and can always be found surrounded by loving friends. Although my hospitalization was traumatizing, it has shaped me into a more intellectual and seize the day kind of person. I now live by the famous Dutch saying, "Je moet het ijzer smeden als het heet is", which means: When opportunities arise, don't wait until it's too late.