<p>Anyone willing to critique my "Why Georgetown" essay, and help me decide where to cut down so I can get it down to around 500 words?</p>
<p>of course!</p>
<p>Pm me!!!</p>
<p>just in case my pm did’nt go through</p>
<p>Ok Let’s start with the beginning of the essay:</p>
<p>“Living in the historic town of Gettysburg”<-------- -6 words
I think the paper would have more of a hook effect if you started with the word Gettysburg by itself. It draws the reader (or audience) into a state of curiosity. “What about Gettysburg?” That’s where the civil war history of the town begins to come up (so bring up the civil war and etc.</p>
<p>"I daily pass century-old cannons, statues of men such as Abraham Lincoln and General Meade, and even hear the sights and sounds reminiscent of those 3 crucial days every summer as the Gettysburg reenactment commences. "</p>
<p>Not really needed. I just want you to get to the point, and it looks as if you are just giving us (readers) extraneous information about something that isn’t really have a need to be specified on. You could say that the history of Gettysburg piques your interest because <em>text</em>. THAT is you. We want to know more about YOUR INTERESTS not Gettysburg. I don’t care about any reenactments. My suggestion to this is to take the sentence out and just say the history intrigues you. No need to mention Abe</p>
<p>. “Therefore, I am instantly attracted to all things Civil War, and when my editor at the Hanover Evening Sun newspaper put out a story assignment for U.S. Strategic Leadership Center at Georgetown University – incorporating the Battle of Gettysburg into leadership training, I jumped at the chance to work on the assignment.”</p>
<p>Introducing how the essay will relate to you, by using a past experience. You could shorten this and say " Eager to spread my knowledge about Gettysburg,and to top it all of, it was for Georgetown university (or something along those lines)"</p>
<p>Believe it or not that’s where I find the majority of occasions where the essay seems to be prolonged.</p>
<p>As I read through the essay, I had to re-read the prompt again. Paragraphs 4 and 5 are just places where you put yet another past experience in your essay. I think the sixth paragraph would’ve done well if you didn’t include those 2, because the flashbacks do help you in your paper, but they are also hurting you. I was trying to understand why you put all this effort into showing how in love you are with politics. THAT’S GREAT! However the experience wasn’t needed, because you already have the idea given to us in the intro. I feel as if you just wanted to elaborate on the newspaper assignment itself, but I did feel like it was somewhat redundant.</p>
<p>I also feel as if you fully understood and answered the question. You love politics, therefore you chose it as a major. No surprise. I wasn’t able to i’ve you a detailed criticism because I don’t want you to worry too much. This essay shows that you fully understood the prompt which is great since I can see a lot of students going off topic with this</p>
<p>Things to improve on:
-Wording. You used a bunch of words that don’t need to be there. Because people have different opinions on how a sentence sounds, I’m not going to specify on any more sentences, but just make sure your interests stick out, not the experiences that occurred because of your love of politics</p>
<p>~good luck!</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone who read the first version. I made some changes to it. I had my parents read it and they said it was “great,” but I want another set of eyes on it. Can anyone critique the second version before I decide to go ahead and send it in?</p>