Qualified for English major class. Admission essay to the Tran Hung Dao High School

Long-term goal, steps/process and obstacles

Please help me with my essay. Thank you.

Obtaining a college degree requires persistence and the ability to stay focused on the end result. Share with us a long-term goal that you had, the steps/process you took to obtain that goal, and how you overcame any obstacles that you encountered. This goal could be academic, personal, or extracurricular in nature (approximately 250 words).

In my hometown, getting admission to Tran Hung Dao High School is the dream of every student as it is the school which has the best studying environment and only accepts exceptionally excellent students. As for myself, I set Tran Hung Dao High School as my goal when I was in grade 7th.

To apply for this school, everyone has to choose up to three subjects for major subject tests, followed by three compulsory tests which are Math, English and Literature. As for myself, I chose Math as my major since I have always had a passion for this subject. Due to high requirements and an immense number of applications of other students from different cities, being accepted to Tran Hung Dao has never been easy, which is why I had to put forth my best efforts or else I would be kicked out of the line.

What concerned me the most was not the major subject test, which mostly determines the final result, but the compulsory English test. When I was in grade 7th, my English was terribly awful. I realized that I needed to improve my English skills in order to get a place at this school. Since I did not have a firm English foundation, self-studying was almost impossible. Therefore, I had to attend extra English class. I began with basic English exercises which were provided by my tutor. I started to watch foreign channels such as National Geographic Channel and Disney Channel so that I could improve my listening skills and get used to the use of English of native speakers. Apart from English, I also tried to develop my Math skills to meet the school's requirement.

My English was significantly improved over the time. In grade 8th, I was capable of practicing with advanced English tests and reading English news. In grade 9th, I started to have interest in this subject and decided English would be my second major. And eventually, I got accepted in both Math and English majors, but I chose to be an English major student as I had acknowledged the importance of English for my future.

Being qualified for English major class was a real surprise to me. I consider this as my biggest achievement as I put all my time and effort and finally attained a result which exceeded my expectation.

(word count: 391)
(I think my ending has problems. it would be great if you guys help me)

Try to rephrase your last parapgraph. When you say "a real surprise to me", it sounds a little informal.

@khang1310, in the third paragraph, you say that self-studying was almost impossible and yet, the paragraph focuses on how you self-studied using television programs to overcome your English deficiency. That is a contradiction in the presentation. Since you say you could not self-study and you had a tutor at the time, your paragraph should focus on the improvements to your English language use via the help of the tutor (first), then explaining the self-help television part (second) only if space in a separate paragraph permits. There is no need to quantify your improvement in English through the 8th and 9th grade. Rather, the paragraph should immediately focus on the fact that you decided to become a double major, with English as your first choice. The last 2 sentences about your surprise at becoming an English major and why you consider this your biggest achievement is not really helping the essay so you can delete those parts as well. It is the process of attaining your long term goal of being admitted to this school that should be the focal point of the essay. So the last sentence should refer to something along the lines of "while I was not the best English student and this could have hindered me from attending (name of school), I learned how to turn the negative into a positive in order to help me achieve my long term goal in life at the time." That could be combined with the reference to the double major in order to close the paragraph.

@Holt @ChannelBlonde thanks for your help.

@Holt is it okay if my essay has 400 words? The prompt says approximately 250 words so should I cut it down a little?

@khang1310 always provide the proper number of words per essay. If the requirement says "approximately", you should not write more than 250 words. You can write less than 250 but not more than that. It appears that you will be submitting the essay via an online application or an electronic format, to the university. So you need to cut it down to exactly 250 words if you can. That is because the system has been programmed to reject all submissions over the maximum word count. If you try to submit it with more than 250 words, your application may not go through. In which case, you will either have to edit on the fly in order to submit the essay or, risk missing your deadline because you will have to go offline in order to edit the paper for submission. Do yourself a favor and edit it down to 250 before you submit it. You should focus on paragraphs 3 and 4. These are the longest parts that you can shorten by combining the information into one short but informative paragraph.