I was like every child in my community

Vangiespen, thanks for all your feedback on my essays. Please I will like to know your view about this essays, as I have filled them in but about to submit them. These are not the first draft, I have review several times. Did they serve the purpose or answer the prompt?

1. Brief statement outling my personal and academic goals (100 words maximum). I used 99 words in total.

Becoming an engineer has been a lifelong dream of mine, as I have wanted to stand as the pinnacle of hope for my underprivileged community and upholder of liberty to liberate my people from poverty but my financial burdens are waning on my dreams. As an aspiring engineer, I hope to put theory into practice by developing novel structures that will improve the standards of living, collaborate with other indigenous engineer to create poverty alleviation schemes, that will create employment opportunities to people and NGOs that will pave the way for my people to have access to quality education.

2. A time I overcome an obstacle/challenge, so that I was able to improve lives in my community. How you react to the challenge and what did you learn? (100 words maximum). I used 108 words, what do you suggest I delete?

I was like every child in my community, enrolling into a senior high school, but after my first term examination, my view about education changed. Then, the only question that ran through my mind was "What am I doing in science class?". As I couldn't resist the thought of failing Mathematics. I never truly understood the meaning of practice makes perfection, until I started a self-study, where I barely slept for 6-hours. Fortunately, my practice paid-off, I passed subsequent terms and I was promoted. Above all, I acquired mathematical skill that make me contribute to my school students and community through tutoring in MATHSA (Mathematics Students Association).

3. The goal, my involvement and outcome of one significant community leadership examples; raising funds to fund projects, organising a group of senior student to provide academic tutoring etc (100 words maximum). I used 100 words in total.

Playing a role in leadership, I was an executive and co- founder of the Mathematics Students Association of Ijaiye Ojokoro (MATHSA). The group was created as a result of mass failure in mathematics among the students in my community, our aspiration was to give hope to students and support them toward achieving stable feat in mathematics. As one of the officials that has vast knowledge of mathematics and has represented the school in various competitions, I was always appointed to tutor the students. The outcome has been great, as we have tutor and support students who have excell in academics.

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- Adeyemi, your answer does not suit the prompt. You should have responded to this with an event that happened in your life that helped your community. Perhaps you have some volunteer activities that could depict such an event? Or you had a friend or neighbor whom you were able to help in their time of need? Those are some topics that normally find its way as answers in such prompt questions :-)

Aside from the problem with your answer in question 2, the rest of your answers suit the prompts very well. There are some grammar problems that need to be addressed but I would rather save that for later, after you have fixed your answer to question 2 :-)

Vangiespen, thanks for your feedback, I have written another one for the prompt two. I hope it answers all the questions in the prompt. -Challenges? - Improve lives? -My Reaction to the challenge? - what I learnt from the experience? (I'm having problem to figure out what I leant from this volunteer. Can you help with a clue?) . I used 100 words, what do you suggest I delete so that I can add what I learnt?

I have always believe if everyone can play his or her role, human community will be a better place to live. I remember when the road that serves as the usual routine for my community get flood with lots of pot holes. Realising the difficulties my family goes through to make end meet, organising a fund raising team was impossible but I had to organise a small group of my age mates to volunteer in parking sand and stone from a dump so that we can fill the loops. The filling goes a long way before the local-government chairman intervention.

We just need to clean up the essay and the grammar that you used to make it work better. Try this version:

I come from a low income community where the local government lacks funding for their basic community projects. Since the main problem of our community was the lack of funding to repair the road potholes, you can imagine how inconvenienced all of the residents were. Despite being a poor community, my friends and I were able to rally the residents to donate towards the purchase of sand for the filling of the potholes. We filled the holes and in the process helped our community improve its transportation. I learned that we have the ability to solve our problems ourselves, without relying on other people for everything or anything in our lives.

Adeyemi, I needed to fix some parts of the essay in order to correct the grammar. It comes in at exactly 100 words:

Being from a low income community, our local government lacked the funding for basic community projects, one of the main problemswe had to address was the existence of pot holes in our roads. The lack of government funding prevented the pot holes from being repaired Despite our financial struggles, my friends and I were able to raise funds to buy sand. We filled the holes and in the process helped our community improve its transportation. I learned that we have the special ability to solve our problems ourselves, without relying on other people for everything or anything in our lives.

Vangiespen, thanks for the good feedback. ;)

Vangiespen, what is your take on the other two essays above in term of grammar errors or awkward sentences? Thanks

Adeyemi, I have alrady mentioned that your responses to prompts 1 and 3 are acceptable and adhere to the required answers criteria. Your main problem was the answer you developed for prompt number 2. Now that we have fixed that, we can edit the other prompts for the simple problems that exist in the grammar content.


- There was a redundancy in the way you stated your personal goals so I just removed the first mention because it had a better impact and statement in the second part of the statement.


- ... towards achieving better Math grades and passing their related exams ... officials with a vast knowledge and having represented.. ...

Vangiespen, thanks again, what about this version? Okay? 100words in total.

Becoming an engineer has been a lifelong dream of mine, but my family's financial burdens are waning on my dreams. As an aspiring engineer, I hope to put theory into practice by developing novel structures that will improve the standards of living, collaborate with other indigenous engineer to create poverty alleviation schemes, that will create employment opportunities to people and NGOs that will pave the way for my people to have access to quality education. All these will make me stands as the pinnacle of hope for my underprivileged community and upholder of liberty to liberate my people from poverty.

The other one falls at 100words after the correction. Thanks ;)

You should really cut out the statement about your family's financial problems putting a damper on your achieving your dreams. It doesn't really answer anything in the prompt. Neither is the prompt asking for such information. So omitting that piece of information will help strengthen the essay. The way it is now, with that statement right up front, it affects the overall impact of the message you are trying to convey. Just stick to answering the questions that the essay requires answers to and do not provide any information that is not being asked for. You are not applying for a scholarship so such information and sentiment is irrelevant when included in your answer.

Vangiespen, I added it to make it 100words as a filler, thanks for your view. But I used something similar in one scholarship ''personal statement/goals'' that I submitted, that one was 200words. Do stating one financial value in ''scholarship personal statement/goals essays'' gives impression of begging?

If it is a scholarship personal statement that you are writing then yes, go ahead and beg. That is what a scholarship is all about, getting financial help to go further with your studies. In this case, there is no call for such information because you are writing a statement and not a scholarship essay. Let me also point out that just because the maximum word count is 100, that does not mean that you have to present 100 words. You can say what you need to in less words. What is important is that the information required is represented well in the statement that you have written. Just the facts that they want to know about, not the facts you think they should consider.

Hi Vangiespen, according to your earlier suggestion on ''rallying'' I decided to use it for this new developed essay I hope this essay goes along with the prompt. Thanks ;)

New prompt: Most recent, meaning involvement in the community and my role.

Vangiespen, check this modification, my addition is in blue font. Good?

Being from a low income community where the local government lacks necessary funding for basic community projects. One of the main problems in our community was the existence of pot holes on our roads which make the transportation within the community very uncomfortable to people and it also restricts movement of goods in and outside the community. Basically our community people believed that the lack of government funding prevented the pot holes from repairs.

Despite being a low income community, my friends and I tried to find ways to solve our community roads problems . After several suggestions, we decided that rallying the community and appealing to people to raise funds will help us fix the problem . We held fund raisers which generated enough funds to buy sand. We bought sand and we filled the pot holes . In the process help our community in terms of better roads for transportation of people, goods and commodities. By involving in this cause, I came to realisedor realise? that everyone has the special ability to solve his or her problems, without relying on other people for everything or anything in live.

Word count (176/200). Count okay? Or you feel I should explain some part? Thanks again ;)

- In the process, we helped our community...
- Adeyemi, are you writing this essay in British or American English? The mode of English will dictate how you spell the word. In American English the word is spelled as REALIZED, in British English, it is spelled as REALISED. You have to speak in past tense because this is already a previous event.

The essay is already perfect in my opinion and the word count is not too long. It is quite an informative and excellently worded essay even though it is considered short by most standards. It will be appreciated by the reader for sure.

Vangiespen, you're amazing. Thanks for your help, more data to your devices, in surfing EF. Yes, British English. Please I will like your input on "reward of my continued efforts" modification.