Bryn Mawr is my top choice college. However, reading this essay, I have absolutely no idea whether an admissions officer would even give it a second glance...Please give me constructive criticism on it please, and feel free to be as harsh as you want. I'd really appreciate it! Sorry for the length.
Please attach an essay of no more than one page telling us what you think you would gain from the educational experience at Bryn Mawr and what you would contribute to the community.
I don't want to go to college.
Of course, this doesn't mean I want to completely abandon the possibility of pursuing a higher education altogether. Despite attempting to view life through a lens of objectivity and practicality, I'm an idealist at heart. Rather than viewing college as a mechanism for achieving employment, I'm more prone to envisioning college as perhaps the ancients did - as an institution dedicated solely to the pursuit of knowledge, where discourse and debate are regarded as highly as touchdowns and tackles. At Bryn Mawr, I'll be surrounded by a community where expanding one's mind is paramount and women are able to achieve their fullest potential. It's here I'll be able to gain the perfect education. It's here I'll be able to thrive.
Because my interests arc across a spectrum of subjects, you're likely to find me in my room on a friday night, reading about the artists Chagall and Kandinsky or translating a Russian newspaper article about the great nation of Kazakhstan. I"m of a restless and curious mind with an insatiable appetite for knowledge. As such, I've found myself ecstatic that at Bryn Mawr, I'll have the opportunity to explore the world of ideas. Whether I'm exploring Minoan ruins through a colloquium sponsored by the Classics department, or integrating philosophy and chemistry in a 360 seminar, Bryn Mawr will push my mind to its farthest reaches. Yet, despite its reputation for being a challenging school, this doesn't intimidate me. I relish challenge, welcoming it with open arms. I picture myself working to attain my dream of fluency through the Russian flagship program, tutoring students in lower levels and taking such courses as Russian for Pre Professionals and the Social Dynamics of Russian, as well as using my knowledge throughout my capstone year in Saint Petersburg. Mastering the language and the other challenges Bryn Mawr hands me will be difficult. But yet, in an atmosphere of intellectual stimulation, my mind being pushed to its farthest reaches, it will be utterly worth it.
By attending Bryn Mawr, I expect to learn more about what it means to be a woman. The school attracts the minds of some of the brightest girls in the country, creating an intimate, intellectually curious environment conducive to the sharing and pursuit of knowledge. It's thie environment that will help me a create a club revolving around one of my biggest passions - endangered languages, such as Ket in SIberia or Mogol in Afghanistan. Working together with other scholars, I hope to rally together with other students and prevent these harbingers of culture from being lost to the world forever. I'll enter Bryn Mawr as a girl, eager to find a role model and mentor in the few thousand girls that surround me. Four years later, having shared in the magical traditions of lantern night and may day, having studied the days and nights away surrounded by a warm community of girls fiercely dedicated to their love of learning, I'll graduate as a woman, ready to take the world by a storm. I won't have graduated from a typical college. But then again, who goes to college to be typical?
No, I don't want to college. I want to go to Bryn Mawr.
I'm more prone to envisioning- I like to envision??
I"m of a restless and curious mind - I have a restless and curios mind??
Maybe you could try substituting a few "I'll" with "I would"? I dunno why, but I would just sounds a bit more humble. (you can totally ignore this!)
"Because my interests arc across a spectrum of subjects, you're likely to find me in my room on a friday night" - My interests arc across a spectrum of subjects, and most evenings you're likely to find me in my room....
"Mastering the language and the other challenges Bryn Mawr hands me will be difficult. But yet, in an atmosphere of intellectual stimulation, my mind being pushed to its farthest reaches, it will be utterly worth it. " - This won't be easy, but an atmosphere of intellectual stimulation that pushes me to my limits, and fellow students who are as passionate about their dreams as I am will make it all worth it!
By attending Bryn Mawr, I expect to learn more about what it means to be a woman. - This is an all women's college, they must get that thousands of time every year. Try to change it, or remove it altogether.
No, I don't want to college. I want to go to Bryn Mawr. - Now that I think about it, I do want to go to college. But not just any college - I want to go to Bryn Mawr.
I am not a native English speaker, so do take my suggestions with a grain of salt!
Thanks for replying to my essay! Your suggestions make a difference, and they help with the overall flow of the essay. Reading your essay, I wouldn't have known you weren't a native English speaker.
I second all of thenewdude's comments on flow/grammatical things and would like to comment on the style of the essay instead. Needless to say, the first line will probably catch the admissions office's attention and at first I was a little dubious but by the end of the first paragraph you had me convinced that you clearly knew what you were talking about. You come off the page as very knowledgeable and focused-- you seem to know what you want to do at this school and exactly how to do it.
One critique I would like to make would be to maybe reorder some parts of the essay. At the end of the first paragraph you touch on the importance of college to women but dive into your interests in the Classics with the second paragraph and later conclude the essay with growth and development as a woman. It may throw off a few readers (or maybe it was just me) but bringing a bit of the woman/development theme into the second paragraph might offer a little more consistency. Just an idea :)
