College Essay, deadline dangerously close... - Page 3

On October 30 2010 08:07 ramen247 wrote:
do you guys think i should change "young female" to young woman?
and change opposite sex to attractive woman?

a teacher commented that it sounded like I was referring to lab specimens.

On October 30 2010 10:55 bbq ftw wrote:
Hi,

I read the essay before it was taken down but was a bit busy to write up a response.

I'm going to disagree with the rest and say that there's nothing more you can do than be resigned to generic Asian-ness. Specifically, the risk of writing some contrived meaningful piece (and the contrived-ness of it being noticed) far outweighs potential benefits.

If you choose to skip the rest of my post (which I apologize for being rambling), just remember this: the chance of writing a failure of an essay scales proportionally to the grandiosity of the subject. Therefore, forget about linking yourself to some greater arc of Chinese culture or whatever. Focus on a small part of yourself.

Thus, I think that your writing flows well (no rough transitions, which is a tricky thing to do, but it worked for me). That said, regarding the whole "ignorant American" sentence: maybe the left-leaning academic establishment types would like it, but I find invoking "common stereotype" as a lazy way to describe your development as a person (see Michelle Obama's senior thesis as an example of this, its just bad). This may partly because your assumption that the other person is stereotyping you is just that, an assumption, unless you're an FBI profiler.

Story as a whole is decent. Thesis is a bit general--unfortunately you can't namedrop faculty to remedy this. Thus

Good luck on your application.

PS Knowing the quality of reports/essays at my school, its hard (for me, a semi-jaded grad student) to see how writing ability impacts admission in any way. Relax, or not: more likely than not your admission chances are already set, and by writing an essay that is technically good (no rdiculous spelling grammar errors,) you should be fine.