[TRANSFER ESSAY] I need you guys' help!

[Ivan]

Mình đã hoàn thành xong bản draft cho essay của mình và dù biết là khá muộn với cả semester đang rất điên đầu, nhưng mình mong là có thể hoàn thành vào giữa tháng này (khoảng 15). Như vậy mình sẽ có khoảng 1 tuần. Hạn chót sẽ là April 1st. Vì hồ sơ của mình có nhiều chỗ yếu thế nên mình mong essay này có thể tăng khả năng được nhận của mình. Mình rất cần sự giúp đỡ của mọi người. Nếu ai có khả năng hoặc quan tâm, xin hãy để comment lại đây hoặc PM trực tiếp cho mình, mình sẽ gửi cho mọi người bài draft của mình. Những góp ý nếu có thể xin mọi người trực tiếp post tại thread để những commentors khác cùng nhìn nhận bài viết của mình. Nếu thấy góp ý có phần cá nhân mọi người có thể PM cho mình cũng được.

[Ivan]

Sorry VA is being retarded (cannot separate passages) so I'll have to do it this way. You guys can save my life =( My biggest fear is that my essay would seem abstract to readers or worse, not even make sense. It's also very long for an admission essay, ~ 3000 words (trying to cut it down although I only feel like I have more to say @@), so that's why I won't include it as my CommonApp essay but instead sending an email to college adcoms, asking them to read this essay. It speaks more of me as a person, and I hope whichever college accepts me will read it. There's also a history behind (freshman year: terrible GPA), but I don't want it to be the main point of this piece. This is more about how I changed through the course of 1/2 year. It may come across as being a little dull but I hope I hadn't spent my time writing a dull piece. I seriously cannot tell how good/ bad my essay is, and it's freaking me out. Only one thing I can be sure of is that it's quite personal. I'd have finished the paper earlier if I hadn't been having my anxiety attacks @@

[Ivan]

Essay: The Jack of Hearts in Four Chapters (just a fun title) \\// I need help with (checklist): 1- Grammar, sentence comprehension, structure, word choice, spelling. 2- Tone of each passage. Overall paper's tone. 3- Atmosphere. 4- Overall comprehension. 5- [Elimination of] wacky metaphor (I hate myself when I do this lol) 6- Undeveloped ideas, excessive/ irrelevant parts. 7- Suggestion to improve or to cut down the paper. 8- Ideas, anything... P.S. I'm sorry but I cannot give my essay to people who're also transferring this year. But everyone else is welcomed! Thank you!! I would love you guys forever. My email: MC2051991@gmail.com , just in case you want to contact me directly.

[Ivan]

Bump!! I need more help, only 2 so far. I think I'm having an anxiety attack again >< I woke up this morning, reread my piece and felt like it was a piece of junk >< I feel so insecure right now. @To people who have offered me help: Thank you very much. I promise I'll send you the piece today. Things have been crazy for me lately

[Ivan]

Bump, bump!! Sorry I feel like spamming but there're only 2 helps so far (I hope). And it's crunch time. My essay needs a lot of improvement and I cannot do it without you guys. Just drop a comment or PM/ email me (with some info about you if possible). I'll be glad to send you my piece.

[Ivan]

I've received some constructive criticism. I'll quote our conversation so we can speed up the helping process. Keep helping guys!!

Chưa có nhiều người giúp lắm (hiện tại có khoảng 2). Hay tại mọi người đang có midterms nhỉ Dạo này mình anxious quá


Cảm ơn đến N đã thật nhiệt tình giúp mình.

Hi,

I found your PS an interesting piece of writing and I kept coming back to read it again. Let's talk a little bit. I won't comment on your word choice or style of writing because it is a personal statement after all. I will tell you how I imagine your image after reading this piece.

It is a very vague feeling but I felt something uncomfortable in you that you avoid talking about your family: the way you think your parent don't understand and support your career choice, the way you feel socially lonely, the way you think about your uncle but completely ignore the fact that your parents are aging. It pops up at the very beginning and it keeps bothering me throughout your piece.

In general, I feel that you are a very sensitive person with a beautiful soul. Every feeling is meticulously elaborated and the flow of the piece is based off reasoning. Photography should be a very suitable career for you as you notice every tiny little details around. However, you should be careful though, I feel that your emotion is very unstable. You have problem controlling your emotion and I don't believe you can use critical reasoning in making decision.

At the end, I notice a sense of pride and ego-centrism when you talk about your friends. You really value how the society look at you and you want to be the best. Be careful, because this is a double-edge sword. It makes you grow up very fast, but without a strong and sufficient base.

That is all about my feeling, if you don't want admission officers to look at you in that way, you should change your piece somehow.

The last thing that I wants to say is that your writing is extremely discursive and redundant. I believe that American wants everything to be clear and precise. Even though your style of writing is very different, you might want to create an outline for this PS.

I will help you take a look at your mode of expression later when I am sure that my image about you is correct.

It's amazing of you to take time and write me such genuine criticism. It really helps. I'll try to elaborate myself more clearly. I completely understand where your criticism comes from, and that's what makes me worry the most. I'm also aware that talking negatively at the beginning of my essay was not the smartest decision, but it helps lay out my situation at the time. I've got a very bad GPA in my first semester, mostly from my photography classes (but good in 2nd, 3rd and hopefully 4th). My essay is not a blame-game however, and I want to make that clear. In my school, we take our major classes plus liberal arts (usually 7 to 9).


Here is what happened at the time in 3 sentences: I wasn't very happy with my life but didn't think of changing. I didn't try as hard as I could. In fact, I wasn't feeling very much and that's what drove me angry and crazy later.


I am not oversensitive at all . That's the worst part of my writing (even more than its redundancy), to make me come off as a really sensitive person. I just like to think a lot and most of all, be a lot. My feeling can easily be hurt and not so, if you understand what I mean (something causes me more distress than other). It's true that I avoid talking to my family at the time. It's that I'd talked my parents into agreeing with my decision and then I fell out of love with it later. I stop liking doing photography for lots of reasons but I don't want my piece to be a criticism on photography; I will support my interest in my other essays.


I am not really unstable in the sense of depression and stuff (I am a super happy person most of the time) but it's true that I have trouble when it comes to making critical decisions >< I am like a child stuck with the brain of a grown-up. And nope, don't care much what people think of me, I just want to be the best I can.
That said, I want to talk more about this notion of yours: "It makes you grow up very fast, but without a strong and sufficient base". I think you've made a very interesting and possibly crucial point. I myself never thought of it. Can you say more on this?

About the length of my essay: I will make an outline and try my best to cut it down. You're right about my style (I never had the best concentration and generally wrote down everything I had in mind even if it didn't make senses together. Later, I tried to group the stuff together).

Thank you again. I've never expected such amazing input. Your email made my day

To answer your question about "It makes you grow up very fast, but without a strong and sufficient base", I am sorry but I cannot fully clarify this. This general image popped up in my mind right after I finish reading your paper the first time. A lot of things blended into each other. I feel that you are the type of person who always want to take risk, by the way you experience your life with new career orientation, the way you think about life and death. This fact should somehow shape your actions.
However, I think that you have not reached the level of maturity that you wanted and needed and this made you feel uncertain. Judging by how you are totally crushed by the death of a person, I feel like your process of growing up happened too fast that changed your personality completely in a few years, either in high school or in America. Here and there in the writing, you wondered who you were and how the future turned out to be and I felt like you were afraid to imagine how your future self would be like.

I am sorry for trying to be a blind fortune teller lol. My interpretation might not be correct as it is just a vague feeling from one piece of writing. But chances are admission officers will see you in that way as well.

If you have more questions or if you want me to comment on your outline, just shoot me an email

The first impression is always the most important. I will try to get rid of this unfavorable image. I entitled my piece "the Jack of Hearts in Four Chapters", a pretty irrelevant name, just because I felt like "The Spiritual Journey of an Atheist" would sound so obnoxious Also, I divided my essay into 4.
I don't think my personality has changed so much, but it's true that I've grown up whether I like it or not. But I'm always that kind of person, who likes to think a lot about life.
I also have to differ with your saying "Judging by how you are totally crushed by the death of a person..". I think any person can be crushed by the death of his loved one, no matter what his background is. I was crushed not really by my uncle's death but more by how I could not felt 'anything good' in a long time. In a way, I want to keep the stranger image as a slight 'reference' to Albert Camus's The Stranger. It's a quick and great read. Although I don't have anything to do with book's protagonist, how he feels is pretty much how I felt in a long time. But I am not tied to any of those philosophy (existentialism, absurdism, nihilism). I guess my reasons are pretty much my actions in this essay.

I wanted to transfer because I fell in love with the liberal arts. But I think I have to support that view in my other essays

Definitely making an outline thanks to your advice.