No one had taught me how to reach out to others when in need of help - MSU Application Essay

Michigan State University recognizes that an assortment of interests, viewpoints, and life experiences are important in student learning and enhance the university community. Describe an experience, passion, or characteristic that illustrates what you would contribute to the MSU community and how this will add to the overall richness of campus life. max 400 words

Throughout my years, no one had taught me how to reach out to others when in need of help. This is something I taught myself the hard way. With the lack of support from my family due to my brother's illness, I learned quickly that if I wanted to succeed, I would have to challenge myself to the fullest extent. Living home alone and at a friend's house from time to time, I saw the difference between learning new skills from reading books in class and applying those skills in the real world. I knew that failure was not an option.

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Hi. I think your theme in this essay is quite clear and effective.
However, you should strengthen your introduction because the prompt asks you to describe "An experience" something like that. You should provide more details about your experience, or otherwise, readers could not comprehend your essay well.

The theme is deep indeed and your reasons are properly detailed. However, it is true that the introduction needs a little more strength. Maybe apply a little more emphasis in the intro just to introduce the essay swiftly and stronger.

Muhammad, don't use any quotes from Batman, specially if you do not specifically refer to that quote in the essay. Yes, plagiarism also affects some essay applications so quotes should be properly referenced just the same. I believe that your essay is a little bit confused. It offers too many avenues of responses with little to no development of each idea. Find the idea that resonates best with you, for example, learning to reach out when you need help, and then develop that to its fullest potential. Speak of how you plan to have an open personality and interact with the campus community in such a way that you will be able to entice new students to feel welcome and free to approach you for help if they need be. You can even dangle the idea of perhaps starting a club that will be all about helping new, not just freshmen students, to acclimatize themselves to the campus and university life. Show the admissions officer that you are a mover, a game changer, and a person who knows exactly what he wants to do in college in terms of affecting the lives of his student peers.

Thank you for the feedback!

- How do you plan on doing this? Expand the discussion to include some activities you look forward to attending or perhaps starting your own activities that will help the student population further reach out to one another.

The new version works well. It just needs to be further developed. Take note of the advice I gave you above and work on improving it. We can continue to edit the essay until it best answers the prompt :-)

Thank you for helping me. English is not my first language and so I am not very good at writing it. I made some changes and tried to take your advice but it is kind of difficult to fit everything in 400 words. I made some changes but it is 224 words at the moment so I will need to delete some things but I don't know what to delete.

Throughout my years, no one had taught me how to reach out to others when in need of help. This is something I taught myself the hard way. With the lack of support from my family due to my brother's illness, I learned quickly that if I wanted to succeed, I would have to challenge myself to the fullest extent and reach out to others for help. Living home alone and at a friend's house from time to time, connecting with others was not an easy feeling but I quickly saw the benefits it came with. Learning skills from others is what helped me succeed so far in life. As a Spartan at Michigan State, I seek to reach new levels through the campus involvement as well as my home community. This is something that I have set my eyes on as it will not only help me prosper, but also those around me.

Through living in dorms I hope to meet new people of not only different backgrounds and ethnicity, but of also people with different opinions. Meeting and learning different values and skills from these people by socializing with them will be a big factor in my success. I believe that in an educational environment, transactions must be made both ways. For instance, in return for acquiring knowledge I will do my very best to give back to the community by getting involved as much as possible. Being part of the 3.5 billion soccer fans, I know the cultural impact the sport has. Implementing events such as soccer games called Mini World Cups where people represent their country is a great way to build bridges between different cultures and once there is a connection, it is much easier to reach out to someone when in need of help. This is something I look forward in doing. Whenever I used to ask someone for help, I would always feel uneasy but with my open personality, I want to entice new students to feel welcome and free to approach me for help and others as well.

Residing at a close proximity from MSU, I am constantly exposed to the universities diverse community. Just by eating at one of the dining halls, I was surrounded by people from all over the world. Although MSU is full of diverse interactions, some people are hesitant to interact with others because of their difference in culture, language, or experience. I look forward to using my experience to help these students adjust to the dynamic community the university offers.

This is a definitely a better version of the previous essay. The fact that you have actual ideas in mind for helping invigorate the campus community shows that you have definite ideas about how the campus community can work not only for your benefit but four others as well. Your sense of openness and approachability is clear and enhances the message of the essay. As for the word count, you don't have to always present the maximum count. Just present yourself and your case in the quickest and clearest way possible. The less words you use, the more precisely written the essay comes across. Now review the essay and make sure you have delivered the message you want. If this is the version you want to use, we can start cleaning up the grammar and sentence structure problems :-)