<p>This was my commonapp essay on the 1st topic
here's how it goes:</p>
<p>"You are such a loner", my friend said as she walked away after our failure at conversation.It wasn't the first time this kind of an incident had happened.I knew this was true and wished if I could do anything to change myself. I wasn't really good at speaking and socialising with others from an early age as no one prompted and guided me. I realised I should do something to change myself when I went into a mild depression after a ridicule in class as being socially awkward, by my favourite teacher.It affected me a lot and when bringing this matter to my friend's attention ,they supported me and said that it wasn't true , I felt my mood elevate at once as I realised something at that moment that would forever change me.I don't know how to describe it,I'm sure this is close: "You get what you give whether it is bad or good"And thus, I started giving out more and started getting more. It was a slow process but I enjoyed it thoroughly.Signing up for our school's peer tutoring program was a good thing to do as I met my best friend that way !. Once,there was a quiz competition at our school when I was in 9th grade .After winning that competition my counsellor made me join the Quiz Club at our school,sensing my flair for Quiz. Soon, I was going places and winning many competitions. Sitting in a seat on the stage and answering questions like, " Can I buy a soda at a Japanese take-out restaurant?", didn't bother me but the speech that we had to give if we won really bothered me. One time I had no choice but to take the dreaded mike, I started slow but ended up laughing at the end with the audience and suddenly I had that fleeting moment of happiness when you fee like you are at the top of the world. I knew I had changed for the better.</p>
<p>Hi! Is the the formatting you intend to use when you submit your essay? I think it may have been messed up when you pasted in into your post. If you PM me, I would be happy to take a look!</p>
<p>I can’t PM you since I still haven’t reached the fifteen post count, would it be okay for you reply in this forum itself
P.S Commonapp always does this to the essays I submit !, so no point in formatting</p>
<p>You bring up a lot of negative points and few positive. It wouldn’t lead me to think you would be an asset to the college community. I suggest rethinking the content or the entire topic. Also, you will definitely need to focus more on grammar - the most egregious example being the terribly long run-on sentence.</p>
<p>^I agree. I was planning on writing a similar statement but ended up scrapping the whole theme. The best advice I found was don’t give them a reason to put your application in the no pile.</p>
<p>As a fellow “quiz club” member (I call it quiz bowl), I can’t help but wonder where you’re from, as I’m not familiar with hearing questions such as “Can I buy a soda at a Japanese take-out restaurant?” in competition (of course, if you’re not comfortable answering, that’s fine). </p>
<p>At only 330ish words, you can definitely afford to expand your response. Add more specificity; maybe you can focus on a single event? (such as the moment you discuss at the end when you had to take the mike).</p>
<p>There are a few issues with the writing itself (e.g. placement of punctuation outside quotes when it should be inside; using the word “elevate” when another one of those synonyms for “rise” would probably be better; and some small spacing/capitalization/menial grammar mistakes), but I won’t go too much into that; in general, I’ve found that a lot of the feedback I tend to offer people on their writing boils down to differences in style, which really don’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things.</p>
<p>As for the topic, what stood out the most to me was your tendency to avoid specifics. In my mind, I made Wikipedia-like notations when reading it: “It affected me a lot [how did it affect you?]”; “I was going places [where?] and winning many competitions. [which ones?]”. Besides that, you ought to emphasize the positive side of things more than the negative moments; now that you’ve changed for the better, you can forget about those times when you weren’t so great and instead focus on how awesome you are now!</p>