JHU Supplemental Essay - an impact by collaboration with others

to make an impact at Johns Hopkins

Hi everybody! This is my answer to the JHU Prompt (Successful students at Johns Hopkins make the biggest impact by collaborating with others, including peers, mentors, and professors. Talk about a time, in or outside the classroom, when you worked with others and what you learned from the experience.) The word limit is 400 words; here I have 381 words. Could you please provide me with your opinions and whether or not I should change it? Thank you in advance!

I will be honest, I wasn't always the biggest fan of group projects. I was always the kid who, at every MUN conference, would have a stack of finished resolutions with no room for collaboration or a change in perspective. I was blinded by my own ego; enough to fail to see the intricate allure that comes with working with other people.

In 9th grade, it was my class' time to continue the legacy of the Thalassaemia Project. I really wanted to be a part of the project, since the disease is very prevalent in my country. The bad news - it was a group project. I decided to swallow my pride and join in the name of knowledge. Let me tell you this, I was not in my usual comfort zone. We were a rather small group for such a colossal project, though it didn't feel like it. To my despair, my "colleagues" were all hard-working, talented, and kind people, with vibrant opinions and creativity going through the roof, which made it much harder to hate the process. At times, we would spend a ridiculous amount of time deciding something as trivial as the spacing between the lines. Arguments and minor discussions did take up a substantial amount of our time, but that wasn't all.

As we moved forward with the project, I started noticing how we became a small community - a family. Disputes and quarrels turned into discussions commanded by sheer respect and understanding and we all learned to work as a team. The end result was beautiful: our project gained recognition in many schools around the city, which means we succeeded at raising awareness about the disease. We were even given the chance to visit the Thalassaemia Center and dig deeper into the issue by communicating with the patients and doctors. The project was not only in our small flash drive - we carried it in our hearts.

Apart from successfully achieving my goals, I also befriended a nice bunch of intelligent people. What else did I gain from this experience? Don't be afraid to listen to the opinions of others. Be respectful. Don't be a control freak. Encourage not only physical diversity but also mental. And most importantly, I understood the value of a good teamwork.

Hi Leyla. I have to say, this essay really hit the mark when considering the prompt requirements. It is highly engaging and interesting to read. More importantly, you showed the reviewer how you developed a unique mindset based on your collaborative experience. The reviewer will definitely enjoy reading this essay and will most likely be impressed why the information you shared. You may want to explain what the disease is all about though, just in case the reviewer is not familiar with it. It will help to explain your desire to function well with the group even though you don't really look forward to group projects.

You may want to clean up a few sentence structure errors though. Just small stuff such as:

And most importantly - Most importantly (Don't use a connecting word to start a sentence in an academic essay)

Everything else about the presentation is impressive and should help move your application forward for better consideration.