Types of essays to avoid?

College Essays
1

<p>Okay so I have completed my UC essays and two admissions people from UC Berkeley have read them and said they were "good". One was written about my grandfather and how he influenced my academic experiences. The other was about my summer internship. Both are related, as my grandfather's condition allowed me to "awaken" and to see that I needed to become a research scientist. </p>

<p>My question is this -- for Ivies and schools of the same caliber -- is "directness" and being very career-oriented a BAD thing? Honestly, I have read many OUTSTANDING essays that seem very clever, creative, and just plain RANDOM. </p>

<p>If you think reading my essays will help you answer my questions, pm me your email. Thank you!</p>

2

<p>Err, bump?</p>

3

<p>How did you get a response from berkeley admission’s about your essay?</p>

4

<p>It’s not the topic, it’s what you do with the topic.</p>

<p>Therefore, virtually any topic can make for a good essay, just as any topic can make for a poor essay.</p>

<p>Don’t let reading other people’s essays steer you away from the topic(s) that allow you to be personal, detailed, honest and revealing.</p>

5

<p>I’m not really talking about the topic.</p>

<p>I’m asking if being DIRECT about what you want to study in your essays is a BAD thing. Like most people just look back on an experience and say, “i learned…” but in my essays, I’m making the leap directly like “because of this, i want to do this in the future”.</p>

<p>Did that make sense?</p>

<p>One adcom gave us her email. She’s one of the “Assistant Directors” and the other lady worked for the Incentive Awards Scholarship program and she was there, so i asked her for help and she helped me even though i didn’t qualify for the scholarship.</p>

6

<p>I’m skeptical about “I learned” statements, they tell, they don’t show.</p>

<p>I have nothing against an essay that shows how you came to want to do X.</p>

7

<p>Usually, I doubt most episodes of experience induced character transformations can be described by “I learned,” summarized maybe. “I learned” is too simplistic… not credible… it should be a long series of subtle realizations, which would be more effective if you describe them.</p>

8

<p>Not specifically with “I learned” but the message of the essay, if condensed into 1 sentence, would be “Through this, I learned this and this is what i did afterwards”</p>

<p>The reason why I asked is because some of the essays that I read that were “good” were often about pretty random things. The “lesson” from these essays varied – one was about this girl jumping off a bridge for fun, saying how she doesn’t normally do irrational things like this and through this, she was doing something unconventional, fun, rebellious, and how that was important to her. I mean, mine is a lot more, serious i guess, in comparison to a topic like that. Basically, mine was about realizing my grandfather’s problem was not really just “his”, it had become a part of me. How I wanted to change things, etc and the classes i took, things i did to prepare myself for it.</p>

9

<p>Sure, don’t worry about that too much. </p>

<p>Maybe (I could be wrong), many good essays seemed random is because the creative mind is essentially a random, spontaneous organism. You want to be able to convey images and feelings with the words. A solid structure is also important, but the structure should seem transparent, not overly obvious.</p>

<p>I think your topic is fine. The Filipino polymath, Jose Rizal, became some sort of eye doctor just so he could cure his mother’s eye disease.</p>