Transfer Student Chances and Essay Advice

Colleges and Universities A-Z Johns Hopkins University
1

I’m applying to transfer fall 2019 from a community college. I am interested in the neuroscience program.
GPA: 3.76
I have a little over a year of credits. My road at community college hasn’t been perfect because of money problems that required me to work and take time away from my studies. The main issues that have resulted from this is a failed English (which I went to retake later and got an A), and a couple of withdrawn classes. However, I feel that I have shown that I’m determined by challenging myself more each semester. I am also enrolled in the honors program and taking honors class, which I don’t know if it really counts for anything. Considering everything I still feel that I have a poor chance of getting in. What do you guys think?
Also here is my rough draft of my essay (still needs a conclusion), any advice.

Hello Reader,

I want to start off by thanking you for taking the time to consider my application and I will do my best to use your time wisely.
My aspiration is to be a physician-scientist that conducts neurological research, more specifically research on neurodegenerative diseases and anesthetics. I currently live with and care for my elderly grandmother who is beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease which is the disease that fell my grandfather and I have watched friends brave through the agony of ALS. No one should ever have to suffer through the grief that these diseases bring, and it’s my goal to prevent others from having experience the same pain. John Hopkins offers the perfect opportunity for me to do just that. I am currently at a community college, and I have been struggling to conduct any research. Being enrolled in the honors program has somewhat given me an opportunity to do so given that there was none before. For instance, this semester I have been working to conduct salivary cortisol tests on the student body to look for various correlations related to school and financial stressors. However, I am on my own to fund and conduct the research, which is to say the least, challenging, since I don’t have the resources to provide funding for the ELISA kits. I am also very interested in researching possible mechanisms of action of anesthetics and testing the hypothesis that anesthetics bind to non-polar, de-polymerization regions in microtubules to cause anesthesia. This hypothesis would be one that I would hope to work toward researching at John Hopkins.

2

Hello: ALS (amytrophic lateral sclerosis) is a degenerative disease, but is completely different from Alzheimers. You mention your grandfather and then ALS is tacked onto the end of the sentence. Does your grandfather have ALS and AD? Sentence is unclear.

Also I would expand the bit about being at a community college and not having many research opportunities. This is a great reason to want to transfer. However the last part about the hypothesis sounds way too detailed to put into this type of essay. You mention the abbreviation for an ELISA without explaining what it is. Don’t assume that your reader will know (or bother to look up) what an ELISA is. For the purposes of your essay though, I don’t think it matters. The admissions readers would have any basis to know if you hypothesis was valid or not. I would suggest being a bit more general about what type of research you want to do. If there are any current professors working on the same topic, then the essay is a perfect place to mention it.

3

To misquote a famous Hollywood movie line: “You lost me at Hello.”

You need to take more time with your essay. The goal is to write in a clear & concise manner, not to try to impress others with medical terms.