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"striving to reach my goal is more important" - Pre-College program for Sophomores



ARR 1 / 2  
Mar 6, 2011   #1
Hi Everyone,

First of all, I'd like to thank you all for this wonderful service. I live in India and I plan to attend a pre-college program in the US for Fall 2011. I'm thinking of taking a course in Business Management and Finance. I'm not very happy with the way I ended my essay. In fact, I'm not able to judge if is an essay worth submitting. Any honest review will be of great help. It looks like I'm bragging about my childhood a bit but that was the truth. I wanted to bring out how life for me was in my village (peaceful, serene, closer to nature) to living in the city(with corruption, pollution) and how my thinking changed as I grew older.

Please find the essay below.

The question asked is ----
Please upload your personal statement. The personal statement (250-500 words) should describe your academic preparation, personal interests, and motivation for participating in an intensive academic program.

----------------------------------

I had a wonderful childhood, what any child would dream to have. I had leopard cubs, otters, peacocks in our yard and acres of lush and greenery around me. My father is an environmentalist and a preservationist of wildlife and plants. We have a house in a village called XXX, India where my father resides preserving natural resources. He brought the cubs to our farm when the villagers had killed its mother for preying on their cattle. He lives 400 kms away from where we live - my mother, my little brother and I live in the city. My mother is a down to earth person with strong values and determination. She is a big source of inspiration to me who taught the importance of education, perseverance and honesty. It was a tough decision for her when she decided 10 years back to move to the city to provide my brother and myself, a better education. Living in the city, I missed my father a lot; especially on Saturday evenings when we spent time solving puzzles in math and logical analysis.

Life in the city is beautiful. I have few great friends, enjoy reading about freedom fighters and ancient history and love playing Cricket (a ball game) and track and field athletics. I was a scoring decent enough until 8th grade. Then I was introduced to Algebra and Geometry at school. I started developing a fear for math cause of my anxiety and hard time focusing. When I was in my 9th grade my father gifted me Shakuntala Devi puzzles book for my birthday. My father and I were competing to solve it that night; of course my father was giving away clues to help me win. But that was when I rediscovered my long lost love for puzzles. I also realized that these puzzles were stimulating my thinking and helped me perform better in class as well. I saw a drastic improvement in my grades at school which was a big boost to my confidence. I developed a new found interest in solving problems with percentages, Commercial Math (value added tax) and Graphs. I was determined in taking math and business management as a major in high school.

Thanks to globalization, I have people from the US and China in my school today from whom I learnt about US schools. This aroused a curiosity to learn more about it. I decided to take a summer program in the US which will give me a good idea about Business management. I was delirious with joy when I came across the courses offered at XXX: exactly the kind of programs I was looking for. I get all thrilled thinking about getting a world class education in a school attended by Nobel laureates and discourses given by renowned professors; and also the fact that its miles away from the best museums and the Financial district and the multi-cultural experience which will open up many avenues to learn new things.

Parag 1 / 2  
Mar 7, 2011   #2
ARR
Hi,
Sorry but i think you should mention some of ur qualities in business management. Explain why did you choose this as a career, what incident influenced you to choose?

I dont want to demoralise you but dont mention abt politics and system yet its true. it gives -ve impact
EF_Kevin 8 / 13053  
Mar 12, 2011   #3
I had a wonderful childhood, what any child would dream to have. ---I don't like the word wonderful here...

I had what every child dreams to have: leopard cubs, otters, peacocks in our yard (although the leopards were in a confinement) and acres of lush and greenery around me. My father is..------I like it this way. It catches the reader's interest.

Life in the city is beautiful. ----Here is another sentence that seems too simple. I don't like wonderful or beautiful. They are too vague and cliched.

(Add a clever sentence about life in the city). I have few great friends, I enjoy working...

For me, having a goal is good but striving to reach my goal is more important. I dream of an India which is transparent and corruption free, and I know we will get there. In order to contribute to that process, I will ________________________. Also, I hope to ______________________. By entering the field of ________________, I believe I can ______________________. -----You are right. The ending was weak. So, get specific and tell the reader a few of your short term goals for trying to make a change in India. :-)
OP ARR 1 / 2  
Mar 12, 2011   #4
Thanks for getting back to me. I modified my essay completely. I want to focus on positive things and not talk about corruption. Although, thats something what I dont like; I couldnt make that a strong reason to why I want to take up Management to help remove corruption.

Please find the modified essay below.
Here's what I think are not so good about essay below -
.. math and logical analysis - i dont think 'analysis' fit well in the sentence.
...i get all thrilled... - want to write a better word. I didnt want to say ' I get all enthusiased...'
; and also the fact that.... - Didnt like the word 'fact' here and the way I framed the sentence.

I'll keep in mind about wonderful/beautiful. I'll try to change that. But in the mean time, if you find anything from the below essay, can you please let me know.
EF_Kevin 8 / 13053  
Mar 15, 2011   #5
I had a wonderful childhood, what any child would dream to have. I had leopard cubs, otters, peacocks in our yard and acres of lush and greenery around me. ---I still want to try to make this more efficient or something... "wonderful" is just too vague. Some words are better than others. But if you use wonderful, you can at least empower the whole sentence:

I had a [give an awesome adjective here] childhood, with wonders any child would dream of having -- leopard cubs, otters, peacocks in our yard and acres of lush and greenery around me.

Life in the city is beautiful.---beautiful is like wonderful... not very filled with meaning. Compare it to the same sentence with a good word:

Life in the city is dynamic.-----even this is not such a great word...
Life in the city is efficient.------this word makes the sentence meaningful. But if you use beautiful, the reader does not get much meaning, because they don't know how you think about the word beautiful You might be a person who thinks life is beautiful everywhere. Anyway, beautiful and wonderful are not good words. I am prejudiced!! :-)
EF_Kevin 8 / 13053  
Mar 16, 2011   #6
Your hard work will pay off! Thanks for being an example of diligence and creativity.

It's not about choosing a different, equally vague adjective. It's about messing with the reader's mind:
I had a magnificent childhood, what any child would dream to have. I had leopard cubs, otters, peacocks in our the yard and acres...

See? Let the reader figure it out. That is what the mind responds to. If you give all the info the mind recoils, but if you let the reader figure some of it our on her own... that is cool.

:-)

I had leopard cubs, otters, peacocks in the yard and acres...----This is an intriguing intro! The reader will not need to be told that it was magnificent.
OP ARR 1 / 2  
Mar 16, 2011   #7
what do you think about the last 2 lines in the last para. It just doesn't sound right to me.
....and the school located in the proximity of the best museums and the financial district excites me and the multi-cultural experience ....
Something about the above sentence doesn't sound correct.

Also, "...i was scoring decent marks until 8th grade..." in para 2

and '...I was determined in taking math and business management in high school' - last sentence in para 2.
is it -- 'determined in taking math' or 'determined to take math'?


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