Essay advice

Parents Forum
1

<p>Please advise me on this essay for the Ivies</p>

<p>“You should write a quiz book; you’re a walking encyclopaedia!” That was India’s celebrated quizmaster, Sidharth Basu, complimenting me after I won the All-India CBSE Heritage Quiz for the third year. And so I did, right in the middle of 11th grade, despite my parents’ advice. Five hectic months later, as the book rolls off the press for a nation-wide release, I reflect upon the risks and struggles that my co-author, Abhinav Prasoon, and I undertook. It’s been an exhilarating and eye-opening roller-coaster ride. Yes, I’d choose the risky road less traveled again to follow my dreams.
What did I lose in the process of writing the book? A lot of sleep, leisure, relaxation with friends, two months of summer vacation, and some hair! But I’ve gained a hundred-fold; confidence in my ability to accomplish tough extra-curricular goals without jeopardizing academics, grudging admiration from my friends and family who predicted I’d flunk high school, and, ironically, superior grades in school! Life, I learnt, is a series of not-so-easy choices. We must take calculated risks sometimes to pursue what we love most, and our passion will carry us through seemingly unbeatable odds.
I could have heeded my family’s advice ‘Don’t waste time now on a book, get ahead with your school work and prepare for entrance exams,’ was the constant refrain. Perhaps that was the logical and safe course, but I was on fire to compile a quiz book about India’s history and culture! My book couldn’t wait because I’d lose my quizzing momentum gathered so far. My head was brimming with interesting and long-forgotten facts about India’s rich cultural heritage. I’d spent a lot of time these past eight years reading hundreds of history books and visiting historical museums around India. It needed to be put on paper right away. I was also confident in my abilities in math and science coursework. I knew I could still go on to successfully studying engineering later.
And what a rocky journey it was! I squeezed work out of every spare hour after school, read during the ninety-minute bus- ride to school and back. I studied my course material late into the night. Family members helped collect interesting but lesser known trivia about Indian mythology. We suffered through a major virus infection on our PC, braved power-outages, canceled vacation travels, pored through travel catalogs and history books, reframed questions endlessly to keep them interesting and varied, rechecked sources to verify answers, and yet maintained high academic grades. Our teachers agreed to postpone our year-end exams to the summer, provided we kept up the daily tests and coursework.
Our principal recommended the resulting manuscript to Har–Anand Publications, who immediately agreed to publish it. After countless revisions, proof-readings, editing marathons, and unforeseen delays, ‘“Kaleidoscope India” will be unveiled on November 4.
‘Follow your passion,’ is my future battle cry!</p>

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<p>Akashbansal, you are a very talented person and congratulations on your winning first place in a national trivia quiz! You sound like a very interesting person.</p>

<p>I think, though, your essay is more show than tell…I know, I know, a lot of people say it doesn’t matter and all that. But you are stating that you are a wonderful person and managed all these challenging things while keeping up with school work. The better approach would have been to illustrate through a story how you went about doing this. For example, focusing on compiling the book itself while telling how your teachers and parents complained that you did not have enough time during the day to do it all, etc. The better place to state outright what you stated in this essay is a letter of recommendation where your teachers say what you went through and how unique you are. This essay sounds like a letter of recommendation for yourself.</p>

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<p>Thanks Achat
I know this is more show than tell,I just cudnt figure out how to tell.thanks again for your suggestions</p>