Growing up without a father; Applying EA to MIT: SIGNIFICANT CHALLENGE

Tell us about the most significant challenge you've faced or something important that didn't go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?(*) (200-250 words)

When I was young I had a severe case of eczema, a skin condition that caused me enough pain to keep me from walking at times. My mom had heard that saltwater helped to relieve eczema so she, my half-sister, and I packed and moved to Florida when I was three. Here my mom raised both me and my sister on her own.

Growing up without knowing my dad was tough; I managed by staying very close with my mother's extended family. I would spend all of my summer and Christmas breaks visiting them back in Tennessee. I had an older friend there also, who was somewhat of a mentor to me. His name is Doug and he took the role in my life as a father figure. Doug took me camping, fishing, and hiking - all of the things my mom couldn't do on her own. He taught me fun things, like how to clean fish and drive a boat. He also taught me how to chop firewood and use the lawnmower. Now that I think about it, I was a prime source of free labor for him; but I didn't mind the work. He had taught me to earn my keep. If I wanted to eat steak over the campfire, the firewood had better have been stacked high, and the grass cut neat.

narrow your essay down to a specific challenge -- just mentioning eczema without any significance or elaboration of how you overcame it doesn't teach the admissions office anything about you.

The topic isn't meant to be eczema. It's meant to be about growing up without knowing my father. The eczema is just an opening to explain why I don't live near my father or any other family.

Oops, I didn't read it closely enough! My apologies!
Yet, I think you can condense the eczema part into one sentence. The focus of the essay should be about you not growing up without a father. In addition, you need to write more and elaborate on how Doug changed your life in an introspective manner. You need to have a conclusive sentence saying what you gained from your experiences with Doug and what you learned. Just giving examples of what you did is not sufficient because it does not give colleges an insight of your personality or maturity etc.

.... I agree with jonathachou.


Well... that is a challenge (growing up without a father in the family), but in that case you should have more prominence to that in your response. It goes here and there with very little focus to the main point. For me, even the eczema story doesn't add much value to your response. It is more important to talk about the challenges you faced in absence of your father and not why he didn't stay with you.


Exactly.... I think you need to re-do this.