University of Illinois, Psychology undergrad: Academic Interests and Prof. Goals

ESSAY #1: In an essay of 300 words or less, please discuss your academic interests and/or professional goals.

Word count: 367 (Can we trim some fat?)

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When I was 4 years old, my parents gave me the best gift they could possibly give a child: the gift of literacy. It opened new corridors of knowledge and provided new avenues of enlightenment. I began to develop an appetite for learning that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

By the time I reached 7 years of age, I started to dip into her library of second-hand books. It was fascinating to trawl through concepts presented in anatomy textbooks, or studying topics like psychology and Greek philosophy. I feel privileged to have access to so much relevant reading material at that age, even if most of it went over my head.

The community of displaced Indians I lived with presented numerous examples for the different neuroses and psychoses I read about. Even though I could hardly decipher the abstract ideas of lifetimes of depression, guilt, complexes, and other rudimentary psychological disorders, they (the community) played out ideal case studies that I could correlate with symptoms presented in the books from my mother's library.

My teenage years and their inevitable hormonal effects presented more material to look up. At this point, I was able to structure the knowledge coming in, even if I did not understand it fully. Adolescence has good times and hard times, but times were always interesting. Around that time, I made up my mind: psychology would be a viable profession for my future.

As I simmered out of adolescence, I started putting more thought into thinking. I started playing ruminative games with a strong psychological side, like chess and pool. This got me interested in cognitive psychology, and I decided that would form the basis of my professional education. I started looking to transfer to a college with a good cognitive psychology program, and found the University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne.

The syllabus is well designed, with multiple courses available dealing with cognition on different levels. I was especially glad to see the lab courses available, with a strong cognitive foundation. I feel confident that gaining admission to UI would take me considerably further toward realizing my goal to make a profession out of my interest.

My mother, who was a nurse's instructor at the time, took time out of her busy schedule to sit down with me and teach me, letter by letter, how to rea d. ------ too much focus on the details of what she did. the mention that she was a nurse's instructor confuses the sentence. I think you should replace this sentence with TWO sentences that support the idea that it was a gift with lifelong value... instead of talking about "taking her time out of her schedule" because a parent is suppose to have teaching you as part of the schedule.

The rest of the essay is very impressive, but I think you should challenge yourself to try to use 4 sentences in each paragraph...no 3 sentence paragraphs. it goes:

topic sentence
explanation/elaboration
example
evaluative/thoughtful conclusion sentence

I am mostly concerned with what you do about the end of that first paragraph. Instead of just saying she taught you letter by letter, give the thoughtful observation that will become the theme of the essay, the main idea that the reader takes away from it.

In retrospect, I agree... that first line is a bit of a drag. Will revise accordingly. Good tip on the bigger paragraph challenge. I just noticed it's been a trend (aka bad habit) in my writing style for a while now.

Thanks for the tips, Kevin!

More feedback, anyone?

EF_Kevin

Do you think I need more, but shorter, sentences in each paragraph? Or just more sentences but longer paragraphs, preserving my general sentence structure?

Well, for good structure, you should be able to point to each pragraph and name its subject. When you can do that, you'll say, okay, is it good that I wrote paragraphs 1 through 6 about 1. what my mother taught me, 2. what i studied, 3. the community of Indians and how that affected studies, 4. Adolescence has good times and hard times 5. interest in psych developing and 6. this school is good.

Does that cover everything? Is your essay best used to tell the story of how your mom taught you, then you taught yourself, then adolescence was weird, then you were drawn to psych, then you chose this school? It is a reasonable way to proceed, but you should decide if anything is left out or if, for example, paragraphs 1, 2, and 3 could be combined, and expressed in a single paragraph without using so many words... and maybe the para about adolescence is not even necessary.

If you find things that you can cut, you can write more about your surprisingly vivid vision for the future.

Most importantly, don't start that conclusion para with a random sentence about the syllabus. Add a topic sentence to the beginning of that last paragraph.

The way to give all paragraphs good form is with a good topic sentence that tells the main idea right at the start of the para.

:-)

Wicked good.

I hope its a great time for you!