An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward. When life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means it’s going to launch you into something great and with time I’ve just been focusing and trying to aim. Every day I am grateful for being able to have the opportunities I have and to be able to make it through each day knowing I’m on my way in the right direction. A year ago I lost my mother. I thought this day would never happen and I just couldn’t believe it. Just thinking to myself how can she be gone and this isn’t real. My brother crying on my shoulder telling me everything is going to be okay and in my head I am still not believing its true. It finally hit me the day of her funeral and the tears just wouldn’t stop. No more Christmas together no more thanksgiving together no more birthdays together. Never having a father figure in my life she played both roles. Losing her made me want to give up on everything. Why continue playing the sport I love and continue with school if she isn’t here with me supporting me through it. I thought about this for awhile and then I realized she wouldn’t want me to give up on everything I worked so hard for. She would want me to continue to be great and don’t give up. Everything I done since then has been for her and myself. I’ve been through enough to assure me of where I’m going and where I will never be. Even with what I have experienced in my life I know that my journey is not over yet and that I still have more things to accomplish and even more things to work on to make me even stronger, wiser and brighter than what I am now. Even though sometimes I feel like I am going to break she motivates me to keep moving forward. I strive for greatness because that’s a part of who I am. I am headed in the right direction and with being more accepting and understanding I am ready for the downfalls that may come along with that. Being accepted would be the right step towards the greatness I am striving for.
sorry about your loss but
that essay is below average
jk it is good!
@rabbitfur123456 ,
I’m so sorry for your loss.
But I honestly do not think this essay is your best shot at giving a college a reason to say yes to your application.
For starters, it’s all one 382 word, stream-of-consciousness paragraph. There’s no separation of ideas, no moving from one idea to the next.
More on the mechanics: reread your essay with issues like this in mind:
Phrases like this one aren’t whole sentences; “Just thinking to myself how can she be gone and this isn’t real.”
This should end with a question mark: " Why continue playing the sport I love and continue with school if she isn’t here with me supporting me through it."
There are more examples, but I really want you to rewrite this whole thing anyway, so that’s kind of a moot point.
Here’s the larger issue, and I really don’t mean to be unkind: This reads as a pity party, a journal entry, and not an essay designed to show a college that you will be a good fit for their educational institution.
I can’t begin to understand how you could cope, losing a mom as a teenager. But that’s not the point of the essay. The point is to take one small slice of your life, and use it as an example of how you’ve grown, or of how you’ve become the kind of adult they want to admit.
To be honest, I would avoid this particular topic-- it would be too hard for me to pull the emotion and hurt out and leave a good application essay. Your last line is a plea for admission. They don’t want people who have to plead; they want kids who belong on their campus on their own merits, and not because of something horrible that happened to them.
Brainstorm today and see if you can come up with a topic about YOU, not about the loss of your mom. The best advice my son got on essays, and one that I repeat here over and over again, came from the adcom at a school we visited. (But, curiously enough, not a school that my son ended up replying to.) “Give us a reason to say yes.”
Every word you write, of the 650 in the Common App essay, and of all the essays, should have that ultimate goal in mind.