So this essay is at 609 words right now, but there is a 500 word limit. I'm writing this for Stanford Early Action, so I need this to be good. Be brutal! Another, along with recommending how to best condense it, general critique is also appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
A lone light bulb lit the main room of our hostel, with twenty-two of us gathered around a battered white board with ideas and dreams scrawled all over it, staring at the board deep in thought. The item dominating all of our minds: which community service project would be the most beneficial to the people of Leon? This past summer, I was fortunate enough to spend three weeks in Leon, Nicaragua, through a program called Global Glimpse. A distinguishing feature of the Global Glimpse program is that the student group itself is responsible for choosing its culminating community service project, a decision that my delegation put much consideration into.
During my time there, something struck me. Many people in Nicaragua trapped in abject poverty clearly had will power and work ethic, the two things that, according to the American Dream, are all that are needed to claim success. After visiting and working in a poor farming town for one day, I realized what the people were lacking: education, more specifically the resources to claim that education. Of the the many people in that specific community, only seven had made it to high school, children were often forced to drop out so that they could help support their family by working on the farm. Without a higher education, the youth were essentially resigned to working on their parent's farms for the rest of their lives, forever in debt and at the mercy of the seasons. [..]
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
A lone light bulb lit the main room of our hostel, with twenty-two of us gathered around a battered white board with ideas and dreams scrawled all over it, staring at the board deep in thought. The item dominating all of our minds: which community service project would be the most beneficial to the people of Leon? This past summer, I was fortunate enough to spend three weeks in Leon, Nicaragua, through a program called Global Glimpse. A distinguishing feature of the Global Glimpse program is that the student group itself is responsible for choosing its culminating community service project, a decision that my delegation put much consideration into.
During my time there, something struck me. Many people in Nicaragua trapped in abject poverty clearly had will power and work ethic, the two things that, according to the American Dream, are all that are needed to claim success. After visiting and working in a poor farming town for one day, I realized what the people were lacking: education, more specifically the resources to claim that education. Of the the many people in that specific community, only seven had made it to high school, children were often forced to drop out so that they could help support their family by working on the farm. Without a higher education, the youth were essentially resigned to working on their parent's farms for the rest of their lives, forever in debt and at the mercy of the seasons. [..]
