Hi,
I am applying for CSULB in the Spring, and I have to write a short essay on why I decided on my major. I’ll need as much feedback as I can get. The prompt is:
Write a brief statement (500 words/3500 characters or less including punctuation, but not spaces) describing your reason(s) for pursuing graduate or postbaccalaureate study. Include any additional information concerning your preparation that is pertinent to the objective specified. You may also send a resume and/or letters of reference if required by department.
I suck at writing stuff like this. I really do. 
I applied for several universities back in high school years, and did a crappy job on this same thing. If anyone can spare time to read my essay, please post here and I will PM you the essay. By the way, CSULB has a help page for this.
http://web.csulb.edu/~psych/gradprgm/prostud/writeperst.pdf
I noticed that the last section tells me to avoid using the following words. I wrote the essay before I read this, so I used quite a few of them. Are they really that strict on word choices? But let’s see how my current essay is, then I’ll fix what I have to.
Thanks in advance! 
chan, it is not that smart to have high school kids read your graduate school SOP. And if you want someone to read, edit, critique or whatever, you really should put the effort into fixing the obvious problems, which you stated as using a lot of words they suggest avoiding The reason they don’t like those words and phrases, I am guessing, it that they make for very bland and generic statements, when they are elsewhere telling you to be very personal and specific and insightful. They are simply bored with reading insipid statements and they do not want to admit people who write them so they are being straight up in revealing this
Also do not think of it as an essay. It is a Statement of Purpose in which you are presenting yourself as a candidate for graduate studies. It is a bit more formal and it should speak to your qualifications and motivations.
High school kids? No, I was looking for senior members like you to read, since I assume that you must be a parent or a faculty member at an institution. I just checked, and it turns out that the only word I used from that list was “experience”. It’s definitely a problem, but I am not sure how to write the sentence better without using it.
I also did some research on how to write an effective statements, but I had conflicting advice. One site tells me to be straight up to the point, while another says that being straight up is generic and boring. If you can read my statement and enlighten me on what needs to be revised, that would be a great help.
OK. I just wrote a second statement of purpose as backup in case the first one isn’t good enough. Is anyone willing to read them and provide me with feedback, please? 
I’m confused. Aren’t you going for a bachelors? Why are you writing a grad school statement of purpose?