Here is my essay of personal statement, any criticism is appreciated. I am applying in December for the Undergraduate school =)
The story of my academic standing is a long and arduous one. When I think back to my High School years I can hardly recognize myself now. Today I am well organized, punctual, and have a true thirst for knowledge. When I was in High School I was definitely not the same. I started to feel like education would always be boring. I felt that I could not fulfill my life through education and I did not respect knowledge as I should have. I gave the minimal effort and missed out on numerous activities that could have resulted in a more intelligent boy. I lacked a motivation to do things that would take time to accomplish and I only thought about the short term. That was the greatest mistake that I have ever made. I cannot however, go back in time.
One day I finally realized that knowledge and the ability to learn is all that we have in this life, it is our legacy, and it is our pride as human beings. I ended up going to a community college because that was the only kind of secondary education I could get into. I saw a bunch of kids just like me, some even worse, and I realized that I never wanted it to be that way. I never wanted to be the boy who does not pay attention, or the boy who texts on his cell phone, or, worst of all, the person who does not value education. College hit me like a ton of bricks, I had no study skills to speak of, a brain that had shriveled due to low usage, and the guilt inside of me that I tried to ignore.
My first semester I took four classes and earned a 3.3gpa, but that of course was not good enough. So I tried harder. Something inside of me suddenly said "I want to live". I can remember the exact moment this happened, I was in my back yard at night, talking to my father about life. His face was wary from years of hard work, and I knew he had always worried about me, and what the future held for his only son. He finally asked me "What do you want to do with your life?" I felt congestion in my neck, the feeling you get when you are about to burst with emotion. I started to ask myself what can I do to "live"? I really only knew two things. First, I wanted to be surrounded by people who are smarter than me, that way I can always learn. Second, I wanted to have goals, the thing that was missing in my life until this point. That is the one way I can insure that I can keep learning and someday maybe be the best at something. I wanted progression.
I realized that the meaning of my life is to express myself through intelligence, to realize that I will never know everything but, that does not mean that I can not try to learn most of what is out there. Finally after my first year and a summer at Lone Star College I had almost achieved my goal, 3.53gpa from 32 hours of coursework, but there was something I still needed to do. That is where the University of Texas at Austin came into my life. I saw that on the website they said "The University of Texas at Austin is the flagship for all UT". That to me was a powerful statement, and I wanted so badly to make up for the years I had wasted, I wanted to be a part of UT Austin.
Good essay! But there still are some minor problems, try to avoid using spoken vocabs like "kids" in formal essays and you should capitalize "GPA".
You may also want to add a topic sentence for each paragraph so the readers will be clearer about your thoughts.
