In my common app essay, I talk about how I learned differently growing up and how I initially struggled in school until I found my own way of learning, which inspired me to do research on how people learn. I then discuss a company I interned at’s solution to this problem and how I contributed.
Throughout this essay, I make sure to keep a tone which is not caustic towards my teachers or anything like that. However, I do talk about how I feel the current education system is outdated and should be improved.
Would the readers not like this, despite my efforts to keep a positive tone? I don’t want to seem bitter or accusatory by accident, and my intentions are to explain why I am passionate about coming up with a solution. Also, since admissions officers might be former professors, would talking about how the education system is not good enough offend them?
Your views on the educational system are not the issue with your essay: your issue is that it sounds as if you are spending too much time in on it in the essay. Your critiques of the system should be like the olives in a puttanesca sauce- relevant, but not the focus. The AOs are using this essay to try and get some sense of who you are in terms of what you might bring to the campus community. Your first paragraph sounds fine: you had a challenge, you found a way to overcome it, and it has informed choices you have made since then: good narrative arc. Stick to that.
And, trust me: anybody who works anywhere in education is aware that the current education system (no matter what system / country, no matter what level) is flawed. Also, anybody who has worked with students (no matter where in the world) knows that they come with criticisms of the educational system they came up in. It’s the nature of the beast.