Applying to UW.
The essay draft i have below is almost a final draft, i am applying to business school but i need help as to relating why i want to go into business. i was going to go off of how businesses run america and to impact communities you can go to the foundation of our societies which is business. i need help going off of that or if you have suggestions. i also wanted to somehow had my community service, i helped with disaster relief in new orleans and volunteered in israel. this is my essay so far
By day he would play the saxophone on the busy streets of Manhattan, as tourists and businessmen threw change into his hat, and by night he would work at a restaurant or filling in driving a cab. With pay of only $1 an hour, the Russian Brighton Beach restaurant in Brooklyn paid my father in cash and after a 16 hour work day, he was happy as if he had just won the lottery. It was 1989 and my family had just immigrated to the United States from the former U.S.S.R. With no abilities to speak the English language and $660 in their pockets, my family had barely enough to make first month's rent. My mother, pregnant with me at the time, could find very little work. The landlord of our building offered her a job which she took gladly: to sweep the streets twice a week, and throw out the trash, paying $40 a month. Seeing both my parents work hard for each penny made me respect the value of money from a very early age. I was not presented with any strains to support a family, but I did face a problem once I went to school.
I come from a family that has had to take major risks in order to bring me to the place I am today. Being treated as second rate citizens, they had decided that leaving their home in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine was the only way they could preserve their identity and raise a Jewish family. During the Soviet Union, discrimination was all too common and freedom of religion was not a luxury they had. Packing the entire contents of their lives into two suitcases to start a home in a foreign land, my parents were dedicated to giving my brother and me a promising future in the land of the free. They were risk takers because they sought a better, freer life.
As a child, I was embarrassed of my family's culture because I did not understand why I was so different from everyone around me. I was walked to school by grandmothers wearing Ukrainian headscarfs, instead of having Wonder bread sandwiches my packed lunch reeked of chicken livers, baked beets and jellied meat, and you could hear it in the accents when we spoke, we were different. Within my home, I practiced Russian Jewish values and customs, like kissing the mezuzah before entering the house, spiting three times over my left shoulder anytime I spoke of something good before it happened, and having to put on tapki while walking around the house so that the floors didn't get dirty. Outside of my house, however, I was in a totally different world and during my adolescence would do anything to fit into it.
When my parents divorced my sophomore year of high school, my mother and I began to struggle financially. In order to maintain the American image that fit in with my peers, I made many sacrifices during my high school years. Though my mother did not try to concern me with our financial burdens, I was old enough to recognize the problems and the possible risk of giving up my American standard of living. At the time when most others my age had priorities of being part of social circles and studying, I was doing just the opposite and focused on getting paychecks. At one point in time, I held three jobs (two retail stores and a retirement home) all at once while still attending high school classes and running start at Bellevue College. I didn't have to ask for money to go to the movies or buy brand name school clothes, I never had to ask for gas money, or help with repairing my car. Although my mother continually reminded me about how important education was I became blinded by materialistic ambitions.
At the time, I was too consumed by my own self-interests to fully understand the consequences of my evasion of school. It did not bother me because I wanted to have the possessions and life that the popular teenagers had in my high school. Soon, shifts at work consumed all of me. Friends no longer invited me to events, my low grades kept me from participating in the cheerleading team again, and I was still going through the emotional instability of my parents' divorce. I became so detached from school that turning my grades around didn't seem within reach. My dreams of attaining a college education were quickly fading away.
Wow, very good... the intro has great... very interesting. The end of the intro paragraph leaves me feeling intrigued.
I was walked to school by grandmothers wearing Ukrainian headscarfs, and instead of having Wonder bread sandwiches my packed lunch reeked of chicken livers, baked beets and jellied meat, and you could hear it in the accents...
When my parents divorced during my sophomore ...
It is a lot of story, but I think there should be less story. I think there should be more about the "compelling academic or personal need." That is the good stuff. Show them that is is SO important to you to achieve some meaningful, SPECIFIC goals, and let them feel some pressure because of how important it is that you attend this school.
