Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
Dear reader,
First, I wanted to sincerely thank you for taking the time to read my personal statements.
So, after you read it, I ask if you can answer some of the following questions, to keep in mind, (if you can) and leave some feedback (good or bad, all is welcome). I appreciate it!
1. How do you feel about my essay?
2. My essay is currently around 749 words, do you think there are a few unnecessary points that should be taken out? (need to bring it to 600 lol)
3. What's your overall opinion on the essay, strengths, and weaknesses?
4. Did you fully understand and did you get a picture of who I am as an individual?
5. Do you think my career vision, and goals are necessary at the end?
I was born seventeen years ago in Giza, a city in Cairo, Egypt to an English teacher mother and a working class father. I had two siblings, an older brother and a younger sister, making me the middle child. Our mother had to quit her career in order to take care of the family when it became evident that we, her children, needed her more at home. This put pressure on my father to find a stable job. His search took him all over the Middle East so he only came home once in a while. I still remember the day that he left for Sudan. I was ten years old and felt like I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders with my father's words; "I want you to take care of mom and your little siblings," he said to me, with a breaking voice. "Even your older brother, because you know how irresponsible he is." Staying true to my father's expectations, I did what I was told, caring for my family during the year that he was away. Upon my father's return, our lives took a different turn. He told us to pack our bags, we were moving to America. At the time, we had no idea where America was or what to expect when we got there but we were all just glad and excited for a change.
Coming to America was the positive turnaround that my parents hoped would help us thrive and succeed. However, the dream we were promised so turned into a nightmare. My family grew to a total of eleven people, including nine kids, with our father as the only breadwinner. Although he worked twice as hard and sacrificed his personal well being for our family, all his hard work was not enough. Our family was being torn apart by our financial difficulties, and home became less and less peaceful. At the age of twelve I was the family mediator. I worked by selling snacks, candy, soda, and other things to my classmates in order to help augment the family income. Once again, the family needed me to act in a capacity far beyond my actual age and abilities. Yet- somehow, I managed to deliver what was expected.
While I was being the responsible adult-child at home, my school difficulties grew. Where I was a normal student in the Middle East, I was now enrolled in enrichment programs, tutoring, and reading and math clubs. By the time I got to high school, I had transformed myself from a struggling immigrant student to a dependable and strong student who was ready to take on the most demanding classes high school offered. However, my situation at home did not change.
We were still financially strapped and I knew that I had to start working. So, I took a part time job at a nearby pizzeria. The demands of my family and the rigorous courses required me to mature quickly and envision a more stable future for myself. I took on the roll of President of my class for 2 years, and was lucky enough to be able to enroll in two college level classes during my junior high school year and Virtual Enterprise during my senior year. In VE, the student-ran business, I began to grow as the Chief of Design, in charge of the company website. From there I interned with my school to design their website and graduation program. Every step of the way, every year of my life I was being rushed into maturity, responsibility, and adulthood. Sometimes I wondered if I was truly prepared for what lay ahead of me. Ready or not, it was a chance I had to take.
Each step that I took in my life, either for personal, family, or academic reasons; I found myself applying three important traits: determination, perseverance, and hard work. Those three character traits of mine allowed me to overcome my academic challenges, family responsibilities, and gave me a reason to look towards a brighter future. Admitting and accepting my family troubles helped me learn the most about life and its demands. I know other families experience the same situation I did. These families need help. My career vision, after earning my bachelors, then my masters degree in Business Administration, is to pursue a career specializing in marketing, advertising, and finance to establish a non-profit organization that assists low-income families with free education assistance and financial consulting services.
Mahnmoud, the main consideration that I have for reviewing your essay, which is far above the questions you want to learn answers to is this, "What is the prompt you are trying to answer?" Given the proper prompt in reference to your questions, I can better analyze the content of the essay and establish the weak and strong points of your work. I can also offer suggestions for further improvement and strengthening of your essay. Your concerns are notable and must be addressed but only after we have established that the essay is actually in line with the prompt requirements. I definitely suggest that you upload the prompt for this essay because at this point I am not sure if we are discussing a personal or central identity essay. Those two essay, though similar in content, have highly different thrusts in terms of their central theme. It often confuses the students so I want to make sure that you are not confused about it :-) Deal with the content first, word count last.
Louisa,
I was following this prompt :)
Some students have a background or story that is so central to their
identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this
sounds like you, then please share your story.
Thank you for your help! Sorry for my late reply, i just noticed this.
Wow Mamoud! You certainly presented a well rounded central identity essay. It truly depicts the difficulties of immigrant life in the United States and the trials and tribulations that come with it. While I did enjoy reading and finding out about how your family coped with the situation, I felt that too much attention was paid to the family story rather than your own personal struggles during this trying time. Try to redirect the essay to deal more with how the situation of your family affected you emotionally, mentally, and socially. That way you paint a better picture of how this situation helped to develop your central identity. Do you still have time to do that? I'm willing to help you if you want to try and do it.
Louisa,
I definitely have time to do so!
Thank you for you help.
I see what you mean, and I totally agree. Since it's a personal statement I should try to focus it more on myself, while slightly highlighting my family's endeavors. I'm not sure where to start though, but I'll give it a try.
Do you see any particular parts that should be taken away or replaced?
I appreciate your help so much!
After you mention that your parents left you with your aunt, do a time jump and go directly to the moment when you finally went to join them in the United States. Mention what the state of your family was like when you first arrived and how you felt about it. Discuss how you found it difficult to adjust to the living situation, academic standards, social setting. Narrate your story to show how you had to struggle with all of these things before you became adjusted and learned to become a new person in order to survive in this new world. Explain how you needed to get to know your family again because of all the time you spent away from them and how you had to adjust to your family members because of the time you spent away from them. Perhaps you saw them as strangers at first? Explain how it all happened for you. If you want to be able to properly write this essay prompt, do not reuse any information from your previous response. Write a totally new response centering upon the suggestions I made instead.
Though it is a well written essay, I feel that with some imagery descriptive elements would help making it more interesting for the readers to read. Maybe consider including some scenes or flashbacks in your memory which you can still remember clearly.
Louisa,
I'm not sure if you are confused about a certain part of the essay.
My mother was always there. It was my father that had to travel to work. So, do you think I should focus a little more on that? Someone told me I should focus on me more, but I still don't know here exactly.
Do you think you can e-mail me by any chance? Or is that not possible?
If so, please reply to me at moodykhedr@gmail , notifications for this post don't reach it.
Many thanks,
Mahmoud
Mahmoud, the presence of your mother has nothing to do with the adjustments that you had to make when you arrived in the United States. The point of the story is to present an idea of how you had to struggle to rediscover who you were once you arrived in the United States. You had to learn to adapt and change in order to fit into the new community and new country, most specially, the new educational system that is far different from your old school system. These are the factors that make up your central identity and as such, must be represented in your essay. Your mother may have always been with you but I am sure that you had to make some adjustment to your family life when you arrived in the U.S. because over that period of time, your siblings surely had changed from what you had originally known since they had already adapted to the American lifestyle. I am not saying you have to discuss that if you don't want to. Just discuss topics that are central to the development of your identity that you are comfortable letting people know about :-)
