Hi. My essay is due in 2 days and I just wanted to get some final opinions on my Statement of Purpose Essay. Any criticism would be much appreciated. Please HELP!
I want the real college experience. By this I don't mean sleeping in until 4 PM on weekdays and shuffling to class in pajamas or getting drunk at frat parties on weekends. I want a backpack so heavy with textbooks I can barely hoist it onto my back. I want internships, libraries, lectures and notes. I want professors with years of experience I could only dream of attaining at my age. I want the immeasurable pride that comes with graduating from a school for which I have the utmost confidence. I want to be a UT graduate, but above all, I want to learn.
My family, friends, and even I are shocked at how drastically I have changed within the past year. Who would have thought that an obsessive painter would find herself desperately missing her graphing calculator? What kind of Gustav Klimt wannabe would willingly leave New York City, art center of the world, to attend a community college in North Texas? This just goes to show how little I understood myself before I entered the first semester of my freshmen year in college. My previous years were devoted entirely to visual arts. Though I faired quite well in my AP and honors courses, art class absorbed all my passion, time, and efforts. With a natural eye for design, I hastily applied and was accepted into Parsons the New School of Design in New York City. I had once imagined Parson's to be like Raphael's "School of Athens", an environment populated with modern day scholars and innovative artists and thinkers with style to boot. Instead, I found that, even with the heavy workload, I was not being challenged. It didn't take long for me to realize this was not right for me.
With the passing of the fall semester, I returned home with a sense of gratitude for my experiences in New York but humiliation to my friends and family for transferring to Collin County Community College. Initially, I thought I could die from the embarrassment. I felt so many notches below my friends, who are mostly engineering and business majors, and even my brother who is a math major at UT. Instead, I found comfort in my community college classrooms. As shame dissipated, it was replaced with confidence and curiosity for what was now attainable. For the first time, I saw the chance to start over and learn the things I had sacrificed in my pursuit of art. Never before have I been so thankful for assigned readings and weekly exams. With persistence, I am working my way up to calculus, a class I was too intimidated to take in high school. Despite my many growing academic interests, my love for art is not far behind me. My aesthetics permeate all aspects of my life, a quality that has spurred my fascination for advertising. Advertising is an opportunity for me to marry my past experience in design with expanding education in business and economics.
Though community college has opened my eyes to new opportunities, it falls short of everything that UT has. UT offers an endless expanse of educational and social opportunities unavailable to me at my current institution. I see the diverse student body as a chance to meet those both like and unlike myself, a challenge to my interpersonal abilities. In the density of the masses of UT, there is no lack of academic rigor. Instead scholastic aspirations and ambition are strengthened with qualities, which I failed to find at art school or community college: community, camaraderie, and pride.
When I am confronted with the slightest doubts of my decision, I am reminded of Rilke's advise from "Letters to a Young Poet", in which he explains that it take tremendous courage to continue steadfastly down a single road in life, but even greater strength and perseverance to redirect one's path. All in all, college is about exploring every single opportunity one can wrap his hands around. I want to continue on my path of self-discovery with the same unshakable confidence Rilke writes of. Admission to the University of Texas at Austin is just the next step.
I want the immeasurable pride that comes from graduating from a school in which I have the utmost confidence. I want to be a UT graduate, but above all, I want to learn.
My previous years were devoted entirely to visual arts. Though I fared quite well in my AP and honors courses,...
It didn't take long for me to realize this school was not right for me.
...I am working my way up to calculus, a class I was too intimidated by to take in high school.
Advertising is an opportunity for me to marry my past experience in design with expanding education in business and economics. ; This is great!!
Instead, scholastic aspirations and ambition are strengthened ...
I want professors with years of experience I could only dream of attaining at my age.
This sentence above is a little awkward on the attention, but aside from that, your essay is SO great and full of imagery. I love it!
Okay, this sentence, too... it is melodramatic and it is an example of "telling" instead of "showing." In order to follow the rule, "Show, don't tell" (a rule for good writing), you can replace this last sentence of the firts para with a thesis statement that conveys the most important message... whatever it is that you want them to remember from this essay, write it here at the end of the first para.
I think you should look at each body para and ask yourself what point it is making. Then, based on those points, come up with a good last sentence for your first para -- one that really captures the truth you want the reader to remember.
