Driven / Debate Club - UBC Personal Profile - who you are

Tell us about who you are.

How would your family, friends, and/or members of your community describe you? If possible, please include something about yourself that you are most proud of and why. (maximum 250 words)

Driven. My parents agree that I am committed, honest and strong-willed. My father says I am principled and argumentative, saying these attributes developed after I joined Debate Club. Whereas my mother insists I am the most handsome boy she has ever met. My friends often describe me as motivated and competitive. They say I use these traits to encourage myself and those around me as I can't leave a job unfinished until it is satisfactorily completed, be it a project, homework or a game of Monopoly. My teachers distinguish me for my maturity, my critical thinking and for representing the IB learner profile trait of Knowledgeable. I've been told I show these qualities through my tendency to help others, set goals for myself and throughout our TOK essay process where my dedication and research skills fueled my willingness to learn.

A trait I'm most proud of is my habit to set goals for myself and follow through with them, which has allowed me to dream big. This has given me the means to accomplish my goal of learning French. In turn, this gave me the opportunity to be an exchange student in France during the Summer. Not only did this experience help me emphasise my independence and risk-taking abilities but it allowed me to reinforce my open-mindedness. Overall, I am proud of the person I have become and anticipate the person I will become.

Please comment on any improvements I can make!

I would suggest switching out the part about your mother finding you good-looking for something more significant and related to the question, so it would be better to pick a more concrete personal trait that makes you stand out from others rather than a superficial quality. For example, you could write about how your mother thinks you are extremely considerate and empathetic, that you put the needs and well-being of those around you in front of your own.

Another minor change I suggest you take into consideration is removing the term "satisfactorily" from the phrase "satisfactorily completed", since this could undermine the message you intend to get across, as that term could mean that you only do things up to a minimum standard or an average level.

Hopefully my feedback would help you improve your work.

It would be great if you could comment on mine too!

Mathias, you already established that your parents collectively view you are a committed, honest, and strong-willed young man. There is absolutely no need to go into individual definitions for each parent in this instance because you already gave a combined observation coming from your parents. You are wasting word count with that redundancy. The individual explanations are not as strong as the collective description. You should be using the individual parent sentences to instead justify the collective description as you did with the other descriptions. Your parents point of view is the most important aspect of this description, so the collective stand creates a stronger impression than the individual presentations.

For the friends part, try to show what kind of friend you are instead of continuing the academic character description. Use the friends POV to show what kind of person you will be as a member of the student community. Specifically, as a roommate and dormmate. The reviewer requires the friend POV to understand what sort of social person you are.

As for the community, the description of your teachers, the description that you gave allows the reviewer to see how you work in an academic setting and how you treat authority. I do not see a need to change that part at all.

Your connected discussion of your ability that you are most proud of is notable and should leave a positive impression on the reviewer. Don't even think of changing the content or position of that presentation.