This is my college essay, please give me feedback on it I need someones opinion. The essay prompt is: Rutgers University is a vibrant community of people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. How would you benefit from and contribute to such an environment? Consider variables such as your talents, travels, leadership actives, volunteer services, and culture experiences.
You are stronger than you think. Being strong does not have anything to do with how much you lift, but with how hard your soul works. Being strong comes in many forms. Being strong is fighting past your breaking point, being strong is sticking up for someone you don't know, being strong is doing something you don't want to do but you get it done anyway. We get tested in many ways throughout life if we are strong enough in what we are doing. School tests us to see how strong we are academically, sports tests us to see how strong we are physically, but what you are constantly getting tested for is the strength of our persona, the strength we hold as a person, and the strength we hold to make a difference in the world.
I am not an ordinary 17 year old girl; I am a superhero in disguise. Now this superhero might look 4 foot 9 but the impact I have on people can be felt all around. Everyday when I wake up, I ask myself one question, how am I going to help someone today? I am determined to make a difference in people, to change their lives, make a better community not only for myself, but for others too. I look up to Rachel Joyce Scott as my role model in issues like these, and she is the one I think about all the time. Rachel Joyce Scott was the first shot and killed at the Columbine High School shooting. She had a theory that "if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same." She emphasized how a little kindness can go a long way. After her death her friends and family carried on her dream of making a chain reaction of kindness by going to schools and talking about "Rachel's Challenge" which talked about looking for beauty in people, not to judge people based on three encounters, and about how you can make the world a better place. This challenge had made its way to East Brunswick High School in 2011 where I was starting my Sophomore year. I sat through an assembly where they were explaining what happened at the Columbine shooting and were talking about her challenge and her ways of life. While hearing about the tragedy and how good of a person she was, I had started crying for her. I was crying for her message and what she was talking about. I also started crying for myself because of the pain I have gone through with years of bullying, I was also crying for my friends who were tortured just like me, and I was crying for the ignorant people out there that don't know the negative impact they have on people. It was in this point in time that my life was changed forever. It was as if I had found light at the end of the tunnel, I had felt I found the meaning of my life. When I was crying I realized that in order to help myself and help others, I should follow her challenge and make the world a better place so my friends, myself, and anybody else feeling pain would not have to suffer. After the assembly I met with the guidance councler's, the administrator's, and some of my peers to create a Friend's of Rachel group in the high school to help other people. After a couple months of planning we were able to start this group in order to carry out our new dreams of changing our community for the better. We decided to start with helping new students feel welcome and give them someone to talk to, and somewhere to sit at lunch. We then made an organizing committee to plan different ways to get our message across, and a couple of other committees to help with the school community as well. I was in charge of assemblies at the elementary schools. My goal was to target the younger generation in our town to have a mindset of kindness and helping people. If we were able to impact the younger kids, they would be inspired to help out in school or with their parents and just overall be a good person. They would then carry on this chain reaction at a young age so they will grow up inspiring this message and having everybody think that being kind is a normal thing since they have been doing it since they were young.
The reason helping others is so important to me is because I know what it is like to hurt. I don't want anybody to feel pain the way I have felt or could possibly imagine feeling. I want people to be happy, and if I can change someones life, if I could impact them, if I could make their lives worth living, then I am happy too. I have experienced a lot in the short amount of time I have spent on earth and because I have experienced, I can help. I can help people with bullying since I have experienced the pain of it. I can help them because I am not afraid to stand up for other people even though I might get attacked. I can help them because I am not afraid. I can help people with illness' because I suffer from Crohn's Disease. I started showing symptoms my Freshman year of high school and gradually into my Sophomore year without a diagnosis. I ended up becoming terribly ill losing over 30 pounds, and not even being able to get up; because of this I missed a great portion of school. It has caused me loss of time that I can't get back. I struggled to catch up with school because of the times I was in the hospital struggling to stay healthy, but just because I was struggling does not mean I was going to give up. Fighting this disease inside me and finally being diagnosed and put on medication I was able to finish my year with a 3.4 GPA. These are the types of things I instill in other people. I make them see that I am stronger than I look, I make them see that it is possible to get better, and I make them see that if I have the courage to pull through, then they do too.
When I want to accomplish something, I make sure I get it done. I have the determination and the will power to help myself and to help others. I step up and take control of my own life and what I want to do with it. I want to help people, and because I have that mindset of helping, I will go out of my way to get that done. Since embracing Rachel's Challenge I made it a point to make a difference. In the three years since then, I have joined four groups to help girls improve their self esteem, I have started the Friend's of Rachel group in my school which now helps new students, the Ronald Mcdonald House, the environment, our community, and little kids. I go around my neighbourhood picking up trash, bottles, and cans so that the environment stays clean. I don't do things 50 percent, I make sure that I put my heart and soul into whatever I set my mind to.
It doesn't matter where I am, my home town, vacation, college, or where ever else life decides to take me, I will make it a point to make a difference in those around me. I have the will power and the conviction to get things done. I am a superhero in a sense that I save others from a life of cruelty and stress. I do my best at whatever I do. Even though I might struggle, and I am not sure what I want to do in my life, I know for a fact that whatever I do end up doing, I will be helping people and I will always be making a difference. I get joy out of helping people, it is what keeps me sane when everything in my life might be hectic. Helping others teaches me that I am stronger then I will ever know. When things get tough I don't sit down and quit; and when I see I can make a difference in someone's life, then I know that I have the power to help myself and that I could keep moving forward. And if could help at least one person, and if I could spread that meaning of kindness, then maybe I too could start a chain reaction.
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Right, first thing I notice with this, is that your paragraphs are rather lengthy. Now that's not a problem except for the one that starts: 'I am not an ordinary 17 year old girl;' because it is HUGE.
A reader will find this off putting and it looks bad in terms of structure. It shows that you haven't organised your ideas very well. And you HAVE within the writing, you just need to present that visually to the reader.
As for the content, you make some interesting points here about the difference between being average and 'super.' Um, I would be very careful about using numbers within a written work and especially one for an institution, they can be funny about seeing written English for number forms. For example: '17' should really be 'seventeen' and '4 foot 9' should be 'four foot nine.'
Just little nit picks. I like the length and the pace of this piece and you have structured your ideas mainly separately within each paragraph.
I assume if there are word counts and stuff they have been met. Overall, I see no real problems with this piece.
Well done.
Alright, overall, just skimming through this, I get the feeling that it's going to be pretty decent. One major thing that I have seen in the majority of the essays that I reviewed is that some of the paragraphs are really long (7-10 sentences) and then some are really short (3-4 sentences). My opinion is that on average you should try to have at least five sentences per paragraph, but the bottom line is that you really should try to keep your paragraphs even. This of course, is just my opinion. If you disagree, that's fine with me. (I'm a poet and I didn't even know it!)
While the sentences here are good, I think that you should find a synonym for the words, "Being" and "Strong" so you don't use them so many times, so close together. I get that you are trying to make a point, but one thing that I have learned is that repetition is not all that great in essays. When you are writing fiction, it serves to emphasize your point. Using it in nonfiction creates that same effect, but it quickly becomes boring.
There is one thing that I would like to address here, and that is your use of numbers. The "17" really should be in the word and not the number. I'm not exactly sure what rules there are for numbers in grammar (and I am sure there are some) but the rule that I go by is that I never use the numerical form of the number unless:
1)It is a big number. (ex: 9,736,482) This, in itself, would basically create a whole other sentence within a sentence. (Nine million, seven-hundred thirty-six thousand, four-hundred two.) I don't have the time or page space for that.
or
2) It's a date. (July 4th, 1776)
Another thing is the area that I have bolded. The politically correct written term for this is, (4'9"). Four feet, nine inches. Also, you might want to consider adding a comma after the '9'.
The sentence itself is good. But how you wrote it could use some work. First of all, you don't need the first comma. It's just not necessary. Secondly, the actual question is not really written well.
There are a few different ways that you could write it, and have it look better.
1) Every day when I wake up I ask myself one question. How am I going to help someone today?
2) Everyday when I wake up I ask myself one question, "How am I going to help someone today?"
3) How am I going to help someone today? This is the question that I ask myself every morning/day when I wake up.
Spoiler
*correction
Don't use the same word (even in a different context) in the same sentence.
This needs to be emphasized a little more, in my opinion. Use of quotation marks, italics, bold, whatever, just so long as it stands out from the crowd.
Now, overall I thought this was a very good essay. You made your points, made them well, and supported them. You are a little repetitious, but that's okay. We all are at some point.
Now, anything that I say in my reviews, as I have said, is meant to be helpful and not hurtful. You do not have to take any of my suggestions if you do not want to. If I have in any way offended you, I apologize. If I have helped you, I am happy, because that means that you must have learned something, and therefore have become a better writer then you already are.
KT
Thank you for reviewing it. I ended up having to cut down half the paper anyway because of the character requirement. So it ended up being a lot different
Hi, gottahaveFaith.
I want to start off by saying that this is a really inspiring essay. The prompt isn't an easy one and it's never easy to say what you could do without having a chance to try it out. You have a really incredible message. The content of your essay is great; I wouldn't change that a bit. There's only a few errors in grammar and sentence structure.
"I look up to Rachel Joyce Scott as my role model in issues like these, and she is the one I think about all the time." I would reword this as "Rachel Joyce Scott is my role model. She is the one I keep in mind when facing these issues."
"I met with the guidance councler's, the administrator's, and some of my peers to create a Friend's of Rachel group" should be "I met with the guidance counselors, the administrators, and some of my peers to create a Friends of Rachel group", and there's another "Friends of Rachel" mistake in your fourth paragraph.
"After a couple months of planning we were able to start this group in order to carry out our new dreams of changing our community for the better." to "After a couple months of planning we were able to start this group that would allow us to carry out our new dreams of changing our community for the better."
"They would then carry on this chain reaction at a young age so they will grow up inspiring this message and having everybody think that being kind is a normal thing since they have been doing it since they were young." to "They would then carry on this inspiring message, starting a chain reaction from a young age and making people believe that kindness is normal; it is something we are born with."
"I can help people with illness'" to "I can help people with illnesses"
"It has caused me loss of time that I can't get back." to "It has cost me a lot of time that I can never get back."
"Fighting this disease inside me and finally being diagnosed and put on medication I was able to finish my year with a 3.4 GPA" to "Fighting this disease inside of me and finally being diagnosed and put on medication, I was able to finish my year with a 3.4 GPA"
"I get joy out of helping people, it is what keeps me sane when everything in my life might be hectic." to "Helping people has always brought me joy. It is what keeps me sane when everything in my life seems to be out of control."
"I am stronger then I will ever know" then needs to be than
"When things get tough I don't sit down and quit; and when I see I can make a difference in someone's life," drop the semicolon
And if could help at least one person, and if I could spread that meaning of kindness, then maybe I too could start a chain reaction." to "If I could help at least one person and if I could spread the meaning of kindness in my own community, then I believe that I could do the same thing for Rutger's University."
Remember not to use contractions because this is a formal essay and you might want to look into breaking up that first paragraph since it's pretty long. This is great work and good luck!
Chantatertot
Thank you so so SOOO much! I am glad you liked the essay and your advice was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!