This is my common app essay and i am having a tough time organizing the information and making the essay look good. I am evaluating a significant expirience and reflecting upon it. I am focusing on my past in china and around the country.
Most people place emphasis on their pasts that mold them into the person they are today. They credit their family, their environment, and the experiences that they endure as profoundly developing the person they are and the person they are to become. As for me - my family, my environment, and my experiences have most significantly shaped me into the person I am today and the person I will be tomorrow.
My father was an executive at Procter and Gamble, which brought my family to Southeast Asia, where my life began in Hong Kong. After settling in Hong Kong for a few months, my family moved to Guangzhou, China. I spent six years living in a hotel, where my father's international coworkers also lived with their families. My first steps and my first words - like many of the children my age that I played with - were inside the Garden Hotel. I fondly remember learning how to ride my bike on the hotel tennis courts and trick-or-treating in the corridors.
My parents were incredibly involved in a church organization in Southeast China that funded orphanages, and due to their involvement, my family decided to adopt a little girl from one of the local orphanages. In 1998, my parents brought Erica home with us, where she immediately became a part of our family of six. Having another sibling in my life was new and exciting, and my life continued to pleasantly adjust after moving to a new residence in Guangzhou. I began to adapt to my surroundings in Guangzhou, where I had fun with my new friends, my new school, and my new neighborhood. I knew nothing other than the life that I lived in China. I was so assimilated to Chinese culture that I was shocked and surprised at how strange the United States was when I visited family from there.
However, it wasn't long before another change took place. It was early in the year 2000 that our family was informed that we were to move to the United States; my fourth consecutive move in eight years. At first, it was shocking to me, as I did not know what to expect from an international move. Overall, I was nervous, but in time, I became excited. By the time the summer of 2000 came along, we were packed and ready to move to Arkansas.
I was not prepared for the cultural shock that I was about to endure. I had been accustomed to the Chinese culture and the Chinese masses viewing me as the odd one out. However, once settled in Fayetteville, Arkansas, I was viewed as an average third grader and I was finally able to understand what strangers were conversing about, to read the newspaper, and to order at a restaurant. The only problem I had was assimilating with my peers at school. In Guangzhou, I was raised with international children that were all in the same circumstance that I found myself in; therefore, we got along well. My peers in Fayetteville, however, did not understand where I came from and because I was new, I found it hard to fit in.
After moving to Arkansas, I moved twice more, before concluding my high school career in Akron, Ohio. My family also adopted two additional Chinese girls, completing my family of eight. In between moving throughout my life, I have traveled the world and have seen things that other people have not been fortunate enough to see. Visiting these places has shed light on the people and cultures of these places. This, being a large portion of my life, has molded me into (what I can say is) a culturally aware individual, experiencing the diversity of the world first hand.
The whole assimilation/cultural shock/immigrant essay is a very common one. You need to make yours stand out, which you don't. I like your voice, but your wording can be off sometimes. Most importantly though, this essay really doesn't say anything about you.
I see what you did at the end there, about you being a culturally aware individual, which is fine but if that's what you want your college admissions officers to know that about you, that's something you need to mention at the beginning of you essay as well. Further, make sure everything you write relates back to that central theme. The details about your childhood seem very irrelevant to that topic. As I was reading your essay, it just felt like I was reading a history of your life and family. There's no meaning or message behind it.
My father was an executive at Procter and Gamble, which brought my family to Southeast Asia, where my life began in Hong Kong.
- Run-on sentence: Try "My father, an executive at Procter and Gamble, brought my family to Southeast Asia. It was here that my life began in Hong Kong"
