.. Forum

[thomasyin2]

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[TripTrip]

Is this for Berkeley? Because it's too long for almost every other school.

[thomasyin2]

Thank you, I will try to cut down a little bit.

I'm attempting to achieve a lot of goals in this essay, could anyone tell me by impression if these goals have been achieved?
* I'm implying diversity. Bilingual, lived half my life in China, the other half in New Zealand etc
* I'm implying that the family lawsuit was a major factor to my performance last year at univeristy
* I'm implying experience in different fields and having experience dealing with a reasonable sized lawsuit
* I'm implying having overcome adversity, from not speaking any English to high GPA major in political science.

The facts all those are not explicitly said out loud concerns me abit. I do like to be subtle, and I realize it may backfire. Could people help give me some first impressions please

I'm particularly interested in deleting the last paragraph and emphasize the adversity and large cultural difference between the east and west at the begining of the essay. Aiming to overall shrink the length about 10%

[NontradFL]

I think you're getting your point accross loud and clear about overcoming adversity, etc.. without stating it.

But, I really think you could improve by explicitly stating one thing even louder than you did. I think you could make an admition that your "wanting to help people" statement was ill informed at the time you said it. Otherwise you're using the boring words that thousands of other applicnts will use without explanation Then strengthen your last sentence. When you read your uncle's words you had a dang epiphany. It's the whole point of your PS isn't it? Hit the reader over the head with it! Make them live that moment with you. Did you feel flush? Was your heart beating out of your chest? Did you have a vision? It was your mentor speaking from the grave for God's sake. You were meant to find that diary, at that moment. You are meant to do this and you have to do this. You have no choice. Not "I've never been more certain"

Get your emotions on the paper.