please edit this: rip it apart. cut out the overly sappy parts - tell me if I should expand on something. is anything useless and should be cut? too awkwardly worded? I won't be
offended, just be blunt and forthright.
the question is just : tell us something about you that we might not get from the rest of your application - something you would like a chance to say more about (500 words)
I'm at 570 words. Here's an edited version:
It's a small room - not particularly tidy or well decorated, and the bed is hardly ever made. The yellow walls were painted just days after my family moved in, an impulsive move borne of my sheer enthusiasm for finally having my own room and thus color-picking rights. They aren't exactly smooth; you can still see the smudges on the ceiling where I loaded the brush up with too much paint and it dripped. But the walls are still bright yellow despite the various nicks and scratches accrued over the years and they still mean the same thing to me - sunshine. I like to think that my room's perpetual warmth, even in the midst of a blizzard crazy enough to warrant several consecutive snow days, is a consequence of my fateful color choice in Home Depot all those years ago. Standing in front of the spectrum of paint chips, I was instinctively drawn to the sliver of yellow between Cardinal Red and Sunburst Orange. Fashioning myself a future HGTV star, I picked almost every other facet of my room's interior with that single paint chip in mind, and so for some time my room was a blinding burst of yellow curtains, bed spreads and of course, walls, to the unaccustomed visitor.
Over the years, new colors have snuck in. There's a rose colored calendar hanging on one wall, reminders to return library books and visit my grandmother meticulously scrawled in. Over the calendar hang a series of colorful cards from ex-middle school students I once tutored. "My Algebra teacher is psycho," is written prominently across one flowery note from a girl now excelling in Honors Geometry, followed by several gracious thanks for the time I spent tutoring her. I tacked it up over my desk at the end of the last school year, hoping to remind myself of the fruits of perseverance on those nights of late night studying.
The desk and its surrounding wall seem to be where most of my recent endeavors are recorded. A thick pile of Harry Potter books lies across one adjoining shelf, reverently placed with a level of care that seemed to be absent when I cavalierly tossed my textbooks onto the nearest flat surface. The seventh part lies open at the top so that its world of magic is easily within grasp should I fall into my frequent reading moods. In close company to the Harry Potter shelf is a collection of Meg Cabot books, a guilty pleasure that seems out of place next to Faulkner's The Wild Palms and Vonnegut's Pearls before Swine, both books I initially resented but later came to appreciate through the coaxing of my AP Literature teacher.
On the other side of the room, the closet door is thrown wide open, clothes spilling out in a futile attempt to get the attention of someone who cares little for them. To their frustration, I seem to have an endless supply of school t-shirts proclaiming my pride in the Monroe Falcons, whom I have come to favor now that I'm a soon-to-depart senior. Hopefully the purple and gold that dominates my wardrobe will soon shift to Yale Blue; some already peeks out from the glowing laptop placed precariously at the edge of my bed. I've made my mark in this room. Hopefully, the Yale application on the screen insinuates, I can go out and imprint myself onto bigger and better places.
what is the prompt?
the last paragraph i really like. Mentioning the yale application leaves the reader impressed.
but the essay overall seems very dry, with excessive adjectives here and there about color.
you begin with the color of your room then move on to the books in your room, etc.
but i kinda get lost as to where you're going with this.
The essay reads pretty well, but I need a prompt to see if you really answer it and stuff. So If you could add that I'll come back to check it.
Alright lets first get this out of the way.
I absolutely love your essay!
Well except for the beginning that is =P
Not that its bad, but I don't think that it does the middle and ending paragraphs justice. And as you are above the word limit I also suggest you should cut a hefty bit out of the introduction as it seems very long to me. Other than that, you are an amazing writer and good luck in Harvard/Yale =P
Oh and btw, if this isn't a lot of trouble, would you mind reviewing my common app essay titled 'The little man.'? =)
In the final paragraph, you use the word 'hopefully' to begin two sentences near each other. I would change one of them to vary your sentences!
In the third paragraph you begin a sentence with 'The seventh part...'. I was not sure what you meant by that so you might want to specify or change the way you describe it.
The final sentence is a little dulll compared to the entirety of the essay - try to end with a little more bang!
Also, take out all contractions, such as "it's" (the first word in the essay) and "there's" (the beginning of the second sentence of the second paragraph).
Very good overall, though!
I agree, If this is the prompt, then it does tell me a lot more about you, that you typically wouldn't see on an application. Its really personalized and custom tailored to you. Like Naseef said, your intro is a bit long and I personally think you can get rid of some of the excess descriptive words here and there that seem overabundant. Again, overally its really good. Good Luck.
By reading your essay i definitely get a sense of who you are. It is not the typical college essay and applying to Yale/Harvard you will surely stand out. Although I feel that your introduction paragraph is a bit confusing so I suggest you have a look at the last couple of sentences.
