please critique my risky harvard essay II

Dizzymom
Sun, 14 Nov 2004 20:26:03 +0000

Okay. I’ve done a bit of editing in my time, so I’ll jump in.

By my lights, your first sentence should be “This summer my days were spent…” only not starting with the words “This summer my days were spent”, if you get my drift. I think that sentence, the contrast therein, is the most powerful one you have. THEN you can go on to say the obvious, which is how it changed your focus. It’s a coming-of-age essay and I’m going to guess they see tons of them, so it has to be good, right?

When my S wrote his essay, my advice to him (which amazingly, he took!) was that he not only needed to answer the question in a way that allowed the admissions staff to “get to know the real him” but he also had to turn in an excellent piece of literature if he was competing with all the other Ivy-bound ED’rs. To me, that means great composition, tightly-written, no slang. (I think you have ‘lots of it’ or ‘lots of them’ in there - strike it, too slangy)

Every word must count. Remove ‘overly’. Sarcastic does the job without the ‘overly’. That kind of thing. Work it till it is as finely-tuned as the string of a violin. Then work it again. Be relentless at removing what doesn’t belong and adding what does, and make sure what is, is really, really you, not just what you think they want to hear.

jmho

Dizzymom