I think i have a cliche essay

College Essays
1

<p>I'm having a really rough time coming up with a good essay topic but the thing is that i'm not really a creative person when it comes to these things</p>

<p>But here is my essay....please be brutally honest...thanks for reading</p>

<p>I had just woken up, my body is aching from sleeping in an upright position. I gazed over to another row of seats beside me where my pregnant mother and my two young sisters were still silently sleeping. The sky is still dark and we are on a Greyhound bus headed towards Pittsburgh to stay with relatives. We had just left Florida where we lived in two different homeless shelters followed by a short stint in Georgia living in a crowded one bedroom apartment. In the midst of this chaos, I am soothed by the humming of the bus. I was contemplating about how life deals rough situations to some people and all you have to do is take it with a grain of salt and make the best of it.</p>

<p>Granted, I was only 13 years old to be thinking this way but I've been down this road before. We'd moved, settle down, moved again, settle down again. It seemed like an endless cycle. As any other typical teenager, I had my resentments and I'd think “Why do I have to go through this? Why can't I have just have a normal life like every else has? I just want a simple life of stability and security.</p>

<p>Shortly thereafter, my family moves to another shelter a couple hours from our relatives. The Toughest part about constant uprooting is having to make new I began to grow more and more reclusive and less sociable as I grown tired of the awkward stages of being the “new kid”. Thankfully, there were always a couple kind students that would try to bring me out of my shell. As I'm walking home with a new friend I’d just met at school, suddenly he exclaim, “Hey, you live at the Women’s shelter?” Startled, I quickly come up with a lie “No, I volunteer here with the basketball team for the little kids” We later went our separate ways but that moment stuck me. I became self conscious and ashamed of my circumstances.</p>

<p>Despite these challenges, I'm nearing the point in life that I feel I have control over it, that I can dictate whether I can achieve success. I'm headed in the right direction, I'm doing well in school and my home life is better.</p>

<p>I now live by a new motto that instead of seeing life as always presenting obstacle course that's always attempting to set you back, I begin to see it as a journey and no journey worth taking is easy. It as really encouraging to look back on my life and say, “Wow, I was able to go through that!” I don't regret a thing about my life and would go through it again. If anything I see it as an advantage because it fueled my drive and determination to have a better life than I have now. I look forward to life optimistically because I know what I can handle. As a wise man once said “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”</p>

2

<p>I don’t think the essay is a cliche. I don’t think it will be very helpful either. Few readers will come away very impressed with your character or thinking you are the type of person who’s going to be a big addition to the campus.</p>

<p>Find another topic. I’ll bet there is an essay waiting to be written that shows your voice and also leaves a much more positive impression on the reader.</p>

3

<p>CHD2013, Thank you so much for responding! My life is unimpressive but i don’t know how to draw inspiration from anywhere else.</p>

<p>Should I talk about an idea or my beliefs? The problem with this is that the CommonApp doesn’t have that option to talk speak on.</p>

4

<p>Hi, iHateMyClass</p>

<p>I disagree that this essay does not speak to your character. Finding the strength to persevere when you are homeless and so young speaks volumes about who you are. Your writing is descriptive, and I’m drawn in by your vivid first paragraph. What I do suggest is some more about your transformation. How did you take control of your life? How has home improved? What motivated you to do well in school? With a bit more about how you came to your epiphany that adversity cannot defeat you but only makes you more determined, I think this would be a stellar essay. You’re off to a great start!</p>

5

<p>^I agree with Meme14. I was pretty interested by your opening paragraph and intrigued to know more about how you’ve grown from your struggles. However, I was surprised you left me underwhelmed. Your ending isn’t as strong as your beginning and it sounds like you skipped to the very end instead of explaining more on you have changed.</p>

6

<p>There are a lot of cliches in your story. e.g. this huge block of stuff </p>

<p>"I don’t regret a thing about my life and would go through it again. If anything I see it as an advantage because it fueled my drive and determination to have a better life than I have now. I look forward to life optimistically because I know what I can handle. As a wise man once said “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”</p>

<p>Likewise opening with a flashback is cliche.
Descriptive novel like writing is also a big no-no. </p>

<p>The actual content is kinda interesting tho. Being homeless, moving around a lot. I think you need more focus. More events and specific things to say and more of an overall theme or point. What is the prompt?</p>

7

<p>Please do not listen to bomerr.</p>

<p>There is nothing wrong with a flashback. I have never read that people find an essay about your life unsatisfactory when you actually write about your life. Nor is it substantiated that “descriptive novel like writing is also a big no-no.” The personal statement is personal. You do not have to practice expository writing as you would for an English paper. Contrary to your first post in which you expressed doubt about your creativity, your essay demonstrates a knack for creative writing.</p>

<p>One thing that may be a bit much is ending with the quote. It’s just a re-hashing of the beginning of that paragraph. That said, I don’t find the rest cliche because these things are actually true for you. If you had written this last paragraph about coming to terms with getting your first B, rather than homelessness, it would be a bit much. In the context of your story, however, the paragraph is appropriate.</p>

8

<p>^ Completely false. Lots of people make the same mistakes writing personal essays. UCSB has a guide listing the common mistakes. You can read about them here.
<a href=“http://admissions.sa.ucsb.edu/Pdf/PersonalStatement.pdf[/url]”>http://admissions.sa.ucsb.edu/Pdf/PersonalStatement.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

9

<p>UCSB is one school. Perhaps avoid that in supplements for other schools. But for open-ended questions, there is no issue with this: [Sample</a> Admissions Essays accepted by Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth and Stanford](<a href=“http://www.erraticimpact.com/html/sample_essay_princeton.htm]Sample”>http://www.erraticimpact.com/html/sample_essay_princeton.htm)
[Advice</a> on Putting Together Your Application | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“Advice on Putting Together Your Application | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions”>Advice on Putting Together Your Application | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions)
<a href=“https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/application-requirements/application-tips#writing[/url]”>https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/application-requirements/application-tips#writing&lt;/a&gt;
[10</a> Tips for Writing the College Application Essay - Professors’ Guide (usnews.com)](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/professors-guide/2010/09/15/10-tips-for-writing-the-college-application-essay]10”>http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/professors-guide/2010/09/15/10-tips-for-writing-the-college-application-essay) NOTE NO. 6
[Johns</a> Hopkins University Office of Undergraduate Admissions: Apply, Essays That Worked, Class of 2017](<a href=“http://apply.jhu.edu/apply/essays/]Johns”>http://apply.jhu.edu/apply/essays/)</p>

<p>Rules for writing are more like guidelines. You should know them and break them when appropriate. That said, if UCSB says “no creative writing” to answer their specific questions, then no creative writing. More generally, no creative writing is bad–no, terrible–advice. The personal statement doesn’t have many hard/fast rules: 650 words or less, don’t make stuff up, and tell us about you. Every other source I’ve seen, both online and in books, says to be descriptive and personal. That is not bad writing. UCSB probably got tired of applicants trying to be gimmicky rather than providing creative responses that are also coherent.</p>

10

<p>I’m not an AO, but agree with MEME. Be careful, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What one school thinks is great, another may think abhorable. I think Conn College posts some sample essays of admitted students as models, but frankly, I thought they were overly descriptive and not good writing. I imagine even within the same college, there is a rang of inter-rater reliability. I think the best advice is to keep personal, writing something you care deeply about, make sure the grammar and punctuation are proper, and make sure your own voice comes through. It’s your opportunity to tell the AOs in your own words what you want them to know that your grades and SAT scores can’t. Then, hope for the best. Hope someone can see what you might bring and how you might contribute to their class.</p>

11

<p>^
[Johns</a> Hopkins University Office of Undergraduate Admissions: Apply, Essays That Worked, Class of 2016](<a href=“http://apply.jhu.edu/apply/essays/2016/]Johns”>http://apply.jhu.edu/apply/essays/2016/)</p>

<p>I read those essays. The writing quality is 3 standard deviations about the normal. With that said the content is questionable. e.g. One of the better essays I read was about a girl who experienced prejudice in Japan. Prejudice being the stereotype that Texans like guns. An experience like that is better than the average teenager but nothing compared to being homeless. Basically those essays would be very hit-n-miss. They are relying heavily on the Bias of the reader. </p>

<p>As a general rule. The more life experience a writer infuses into an essay, the less room for fluff.</p>

12

<p>Quality writing and fluff are not the same. iHate’s writing is not “fluffy;” it’s creative and its subject substantive. Good novels are fun to read. If an essay resembles a good novel (in terms of quality), chances are it’s a good essay.</p>

<p>Takeaway: If this is for a personal statement that says “Tell me about yourself” or something to that effect, iHate, you’re on the right track.</p>

<p>Takeaway 2.0: To anyone reading this thread who hasn’t experienced this type of hardship, write about something of personal significance. This is not “better” or “worse” than someone else’s story. The point is to tell a good and truthful story about yourself. To quote redblue, write “something you care deeply about, make sure the grammar and punctuation are proper, and make sure your own voice comes through. It’s your opportunity to tell the AOs in your own words what you want them to know that your grades and SAT scores can’t. Then, hope for the best. Hope someone can see what you might bring and how you might contribute to their class.”</p>

<p>hth</p>

13

<p>I disagree with the poster who said not to start the essay with a flashback. However, the style with which you do this is very important. Are you telling the story in the past or present tense? You jump back and forth from past to present tense starting with the very first sentence which makes it sound awkward. Pick a tense and stick with it. Also, be honest. I’m not saying you aren’t being honest, but you write about your struggles with being homeless, moving from shelter to shelter, and being embarrassed about it, and then a few sentences later you say that you wouldn’t change a thing and would do it all over again. It might sound more realistic to stick with how you learned and grew from the experience and leave the out the part about how you’d do it all over again.</p>