Essay for NYU... please help me

pebbles
Fri, 15 Oct 2004 20:12:38 +0000

I definitely do not mean this in an offensive way but is english your first language? There are certain phrasing and grammatical errors that appear in your essays that are usually made by non-native speakers. If this is not true, disregard this part of my comment. If this IS true, however, I would highly recommend having an english teacher or a friend who is good at writing to help edit out awkward structure and grammatical errors. You want the reader to focus on the message of your essay, and this is very hard for the reader to do when the essay is riddled with simple grammar problems. I quote for example:

“An event that matured me to confidence to confront strangers was on a
plane.”

I understand this is a first draft, however there are glaring mistakes in this OPENING sentence. A better way of phrasing would be something like, “An event occurred during a plane ride and gave me the confidence to confront strangers.” That’s just from a grammatical perspective… from a writing perspective, this is a very poor way to start an essay. No offense, but this kind of introduction is more appropriate for a 9th grade essay you’re trying to b.s. than something that will represent you in your college application. Start off in an interesting way. Quotes are overused (like in your first essay draft), and a bland intro sentence like this is even worse.

This is just a random thought but maybe you could start off like a narrative. Random example off the top of my head: “It was a cloudy day 30,000 feet below us but our jet plane basked in sunlight. I had wanted a window seat but as my suitcase and I clattered down the aisle, I spotted the chair marked 25C and realized that was not going to happen…” And then you could go on to talk about how you didn’t ask the people next to you to switch seats because you were too timid or something (i mean otherwise you probably would have switched seats with somenoe, right?), and that could allow people to see the change in you. That’s definitely just an idea, I just scribbled that out so no need to criticize my writing or anything ;)

annnyways I hope I helped.