want some feed back for my uc personal statement:]

kinnikinik
Fri, 12 Oct 2012 20:44:59 +0000

Hey Cannyh,

I’ll take a shot at this since you were brave enough to post your essay. (Ive worked with about 20 kids on their essays applying to the Ivies, UCs and Elite LACs). As with all things, this advice is worth exactly what you are paying for it!

My thoughts:

1. Mentioning YumCha is interesting and potentially worthwhile. However, you don’t really develop it. It seems that what you really are trying to do is to connect good, comfortable Yumcha with your family and bad/uncomfortable Yumcha with the sacrifices people are making helping you come to the US. Whatever you are attempting, it isn’t clear and you really need to work on integrating and tightening your story of Yumcha.


Your grammar and diction are killing you. If you have the command of English to clean this up, then do it! It’s really really hard to analyze a piece of writing when it’s hard to even understand it. Find/hire yourself an editor that can clean it up and/or help you clean it up. I don’t mean to be harsh but, this is IMPERATIVE!!!
Be VERY careful with your negative messaging. Calling your Aunts “phony and nonchallant” comes off as just bad-mouthing. You COULD do it with humor, but, in general, you want to tread lightly with negative judgements of people. OWN your own situation. I don’t know the situation, but probably they are just people with their own problems and you calling them names is distasteful. There is an Stanford Essay on Youtube that deals with an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion without ANY negative name calling. Your situation doesn’t seem nearly as traumatic.
You try to cover too much ground… Yumcha, New immigrant services, in the garage, the aforementioned Aunts. Pick a subject or a theme and stick with it.


Hope I haven’t been to harsh. If you want to take another whack at this, I’m more than willing to read it.

Good luck.