This is my Biographical Essay (800 WORDS LIMIT) for Questbridge.
Prompt: We are interested in learning more about you and the context in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors caused you to grow?
I would appreciate any suggestions and editing before submitting. I am really trying to land this scholarship. Thank You :).
Throughout my life, I had been raised by a single mother deriving from a very low income. She does not know English and I am the oldest son in the family without a father figure to help me out. I was being raised talking Spanish but I always seemed to be more interested in English educational cartoons such as 'Dora the Explorer'. My mother had enrolled me originally in bilingual class for the reason that if I needed help with homework she would be able to understand it and help. Eventually the teachers noticed I did not understand the bilingual class recommending start normal English classes when I was in first grade. Second grade came along and I was disadvantage in the sense that everybody understood the class while I was struggling to understand English. I seek to reading books, developing a passion for reading. I learned English extremely fast, developing quick reading skills. I managed to overcome my struggle in learning by making a commitment to studying every night with my mom supporting me making sure I would never waste time.
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I cannot overlook the large amount of grammatical and sentence structure errors in your essay. However, that is not the biggest problem of your paper. The biggest problem has to do with the confusing content and themes you discuss within it. I have listed it down below and given suggestions regarding why it has to be fixed and how you can fix it. We can deal with the grammar and sentence problems after fixing the content of the paper.
Throughout my life, I had been raised by a single [...] supporting me making sure I would never waste time.
- I have a problem with your first statement. First you say that you are more comfortable with English but you mention "Dora the Explorer" who is a cartoon character who teaches kids how to speak in English and Spanish. Then you mentioned that you enrolled in bilingual classes but your teachers had you transfer to English classes because you did not understand the bilingual classes. Then you say that you came into the 2nd grade and struggled because you had a problem with English. Do you see the problem I am pointing out? You cannot say you are comfortable in English and yet have all of these previous problems with the language. I think you should revise this paragraph. Your thought process, what you want to actually say is not clear here.but my mother always at the end gave me a reason to pursue education. Having a chance to accomplish what many refer to as the American Dream, my mother stayed within the United States holding off seeing my potential.- Again, a problem with your thought transference to paper. When you say your mother stayed in the United States "holding off seeing my potential", this means that your mother refused to acknowledge that you had the ability to achieve the American Dream. I am sure this is not what you mean so I am pointing it out to you so that you can fix that very important part of this paragraph. I think you want to say "hoping to see me reach my full potential instead.When I returned, it was summer. I did not get to finish eighth grade as I failed every class due to my conditions. The middle school principal decided to let me pass anyways since she knew my conditions from the start but felt I have potential. I took the summer to return back to New York bettering my health before high school started and promised myself that I would try my best to showboat my potential and never let anybody put me back down.- What was wrong with your health? You should describe it and explain how it affected your grades. That is a requirement of this essay.Throughout junior year, I faced tons of struggles mainly low income and still having a responsibility to provide for my grandparents who are very ill. At the end, all of these struggles is that have made me obtain experience along with motivating me to do way better. My decision of career has derived from when I used to get bullied about my weight. I later found a fascination with the human body mechanism, physiology, and interest in biology. My career choice of becoming a physical therapist formulated through these interest and fascination with helping people so they can finally fix a smile on their face after struggling not being able to do physical activities. Along with physical therapy, I developed an interest in bio-medical engineer due to wanting to go down the research path and contributing to the world happiness.-
You have too many topics going on all at once in this paragraph. Since each topic is important, you should separate the discussion into paragraphs. Develop the part about your choice of career the most because that is relevant to the scholarship application.I hope I was able to help :-)
Yes you was right, it had tons of mistakes and confusions. I try to redo the essay and hopefully is way better but I need your opinion on it. Thank You!
"When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful", is a quote once said by an inspiring Eric Thomas. This is the quote that I always go back to when I need the extra push in life to not give up. I grew up in Bronx, New York; where I never felt safe once I stepped out my house, never knew if I would make it back home without wounds. I could recall nights where I would be sleeping till I get woken up by a common sound that terrifies human ears- click clack BANG, BANG, BANG. There is a police precinct one street down but the violence was too strong with most of it happening in the corner of the block I am currently living. Numerous of peers in my community died by stray bullets during shootouts. I can recall how I dodged a shootout by literally a couple of minutes in winter of 2013. After working out, I headed home walking at a rapid pace past a notorious park in order to get to my home. Once I entered home and dropped my bags to get ready to eat, a shootout went on between rival gangs. It terrified me and my family as I was lucky to have missed it by a couple minutes. My mom does not stop crying wishing to move to a better area but cannot due to financial hardships. It destroys my soul to see her devastated through the windows of my eyes.
A challenge that has impacted my life that I would never forget besides street violence and economic hardship happened in eighth grade. I was bullied verbally and physically because of my financial status and being overweight. I never reported it to authority due to being afraid of threats. Mom asked me, "what's wrong Andy?" and I would reply saying nothing just sick to avoid more conflict in her life. I did not attend school for a month resulting in depression, anxiety, and not being able to think with clarity. Depression caught up to me so much that I never sat to think the reason to bully me was ignorant. I attended two other schools the same school year. Moving out of state to live in Massachusetts with my aunt just made things worse as I was exposed to violence within the house. My grades dropped significantly but I graduated middle school and came back to New York.
Despite my challenges I am determined to complete my goals. I entered the school year serious and made sure nothing was going to stop my ambition to be successful. I will serve as an example to my family that is not impossible to attend a great college with the proper dedication. Once I entered high school I was determined to change my thinking and who I am to prevent the past experiences occurring again. My major will be Biology then grad school for physical therapy or bachelors in Bio-medical Engineering. These goals were developed when I started studying human physiology online and became fascinated with the human body. I want to challenge myself by going down the biological field path in college. I am open minded about college, hoping to take as much advantage as I can of any opportunity I can access in a diverse community.
"Our duty is to encourage everyone in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible", was said by Swami Vivekananda. The art of altruism is something I highly honor. I am not being raised in America to reap just the opportunities; I am here to create opportunities for America. My goal is to try helping out the community I was raised by to provide educational experiences that would be motivating to try keeping more students out the street. A single student not in the street is one less tragic, one less statistic. I would like to contribute to a better education foundation to my local library which helped significantly in my childhood even developing relationships with staffs that would help me from homework to getting my family tickets for a baseball game. I am hoping to also create a fitness organization within my college campus where the participants would be able to get fit in an enjoyable way while giving an educational experience teaching about human body physiology. I want to create a more diverse and successful community. From my experiences, setbacks, and challenges, I learned three important facts which is the code I live by Motivation, Ambition, and Dedication. In Conclusion, I do not regret any challenge in my life because they made me today to be the future of tomorrow.
Okay, first up, I noticed you used two quotes for the paper this time. You need to pick one, all encompassing quote to use to describe your life, situation, and personality. This won't be as hard as you think. Just Google relevant passages and choose one. After you have chosen one, just one quote, I want you to sit down and think of all the important life events that you have had which are relevant to the passage you chose. You will come up with a lot of ideas and situations that you will want to use. Pick the top 3. After you pick the top 3, brainstorm and outline the content that you want to discuss regarding those 3 topics. Just list it down. Then, examine the outline for any possible changes or additions. Now, you are ready to write the draft version of your autobiographical essay. Expand upon the top 3 topics, developing each idea using the outline that you created for the content. By the end of this process, you should have a well thought out and developed autobiographical essay.
Your current essay is alright but the use of 2 different quotes makes 2 different autobiographical essays appear before the reader. What you need to do is present a concise and well developed essay that talks about you. Don't rely so much on quotes to set the stage for your essay. You can do this without those. If you prefer to use it though, then go ahead. I must just repeat that you use only quote to do the job.
I hope my advice continues to help you :-)
I like the essence of what you are saying, but I will say your essay is a little bit all over the place. You need to have each paragraph and topic relate to the next, and have all of them connecting to an overarching theme. Transitions would also help the flow.
