<p>Hi. I'm applying internationally, and I get the impression that the american idea of an essay is very different from the british idea of one. Despite my online essay scores being high, I'm slightly worried that the way I'm writing the essay could affect my score. How accurate is it?
If it's possible, could someone mark or grade one of my essays (I've posted the two most recent below, please use whichever is easiest :) ), so that I have some idea whether I need to do more essay practice?</p>
<p>Thanks for your help!</p>
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<p>Does the success of a communitywhether it is a class, a team, a family, a nation, or any other groupdepend upon peoples willingness to limit their personal interests?</p>
<p>The success of a community can certainly be said to depend on its willingness to limit individual freedom. In the following examples it will be illustrated that community requires co-operation from all individuals involved, in a way that might not nessecarily be in their best interests, but that eventually results in a beneficial effect for themselves.
The debate over grammar schools in the UK highlights this. They are argued against on the basis that they promote elitism; that they draw resources away from struggling pupils in other schools. However, those pupils who suffer for reduced teaching time and equipment benefit as a result of having better trained skilled workers in the economy. By educating the best pupils to a higher standard, we are able to have more skilled workers. This happens because we can push students who would have been on the borderline of being able to perform skilled work, over it. Everyone benefits from the arrangement because it is good for the country as a whole, despite being detrimental to individual groups to begin with.
Ant colonies in nature are prime examples of the enhanced capabilities of a group of indiviuals working together. The distinct lack of an ability to work towards an individual interest demonstrates the evolutionary advantage of their group behaviour. By working together, the ants are able to create structures of many times the size of themselves, and many times what they could accomplish themselves. These benefits are accrued over generations; their communal nature means that the ants are able to benefit from the past work of others, far surpassing anything that they would be able to accomplish in their lifetime.
Machiavelli's 'The Prince' extorts the responsibility of rulers to limit the individual freedom of their subjects. Allowing people to work towards their own best interests, he implies, can be detrimental to the interests of the nation. He derides weak 'princes', those that put the welfare of of individuals and the happiness of the population above the eventual goals for the nation's improvement. He notes the romans as being perfect examples of these values. In an oligarchy, the powerful need only look after the interests of the few who support him. Those who disagree are irrelevant, and can have power and the freedom to oppose the government stripped. However it also shows the flip side of the issue. It describes to a ruler how to maintain power, often at the expense of the success of the nation or the treatment of idivuals in the nation. Because the ruler is working towards a selfish indivual interest, the nation suffers for it. When the ruler executes all nobles who oppose him, the provinces that they rules fall into disarray. When a ruler punishes those who oppose him, all of his subjects live in fear of reprisals.
From the debate over grammar schools, we can take that the willingness to make indivual sacrifices can be not only good for the community but for the individual who makes that sacrifice. The example of an ant colony illustrates the increased level of achievement that is possible when communities work together, and the benefit that is accrues by future generations. Finally, 'The Prince' depicts the negative cosequences that can result when one, powerful, indvidual works against the interests of the nation. These examples demonstrate the value of limiting individual interests, and of the benefit that not just the community, but also the individuals who make those sacrifices, gain from it.</p>
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<p>Is it always best to determine one's own views of right and wrong, or can we benefit from following the crowd?</p>
<p>There are clear benefits to acceding to other's views of right and wrong, but they may not always concur with our own. Often the most simple solution to this dilemma is simply not to consider the consequences of our actions; to act, unthinkingly, as others would expect.
This issue is one of the most prevelant arguments cited by atheists. How can a document, written two millenia past about the actions of a jewish carpenter, be relevant to the modern world? The bible acts as a moral guideline to billions, as does the koran, the torah, and to lesser extents, the sacred documents of all religions. These works define right and wrong for most of the world's population, yet many of these people never stop to consider why they believe certain actions are right and others are wrong. They clearly provide cohesion in communities, allowing society to function effectively. However they have also been the focal point of countless wars and evil works. The crusades were fought by men who, swayed by the views of their communities, never truely stopped to consider why their actions were right. They never had to justify to themselves the murders of innocent people because the reasoning was done for them, by the society in which they lived.
"Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" also confronts this problem in its advocacy of socialism. Those majority work generally recieve far greater luxuries from society than the minority who do not, yet the system remain unchallenged. Conditioned to believe that the system is fair, that they are less than those around them, people accept their conditions of life - however unfair they may be. Those who speak dissent against the system do not have to be put down by the idlers who benefit most from the system. Instead, any attempt to revolt is met by incredulity and apathy, accepting the wisdom of the crowd prevents furtherment of the class. If each one of those labourers stopped to consider their own value to society, and the way that their work is lavished on those who do so little to further society, such a system would not, could not, sustain itself. Yet capitalism is still able to exist, in a much softened form, because the lower classes are systematically dis-illusioned by their parents, by their teachers, and by each other. In each generation the system is more entrained, and more impossible to fix.
Booker T. Washington demonstrates the benefits of makings ones own mind up about an issue, of going against the accepted wisdom. When he established his school, freed slaves were desperate to avoid manual labour, to become like the idlers previously described. Yet Washington was able to see that there would always be a need for labourers, and that the most that most people, black or white, could hope for was to be involved in skilled manual work. By educating his students to be able to perform useful tasks, they would be of more value to the communities that they entered, would be more respected, and would live better lives.
From the arguments of athiests we can take that following the crowd often absolves men from the consequences of their actions. A lack of consideration for right and wrong makes wrong more justifiable. "Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" takes this further. The book details how a lack of consideration for the rights and wrongs of the political situation leads to poor working conditions for both the individual and the class. Finally Booker T. Washington's life and ideas show the benefit that is to be gained by dis-agreement with society. It shows both the individual and their community are benefited by determining one's own views on any issue, rather than agreeing with those of the crowd.</p>
Got 730R, 800M, 850W. In the II’s I got 740M2, 740Ch, 70Ph. Pleased with that, bu I’m going to need quite a bit of luck to get into a college; International acceptances seem to hover sub-5% at the places I’m applying to…</p>