Prompt: Please tell us something about yourself, your experiences, or activities that you believe would reflect positively on your ability to succeed at Penn State. This is your opportunity to tell us something about yourself that is not already reflected in your application or academic records. We suggest a limit of 500 words or fewer.
Although born in India, I was raised in the United States all of my life. I grew up melting into the American culture. However, my parents never let me forget the roots where I originally came from. As I continued to live the American life, I kept my Indian culture with me. Our family does not speak English at home. Instead, we speak a popular Indian language called Telugu. Although just the language alone cannot help one understand a whole culture, it helped me understand my culture in many ways. In order to maintain cultural roots, I visit India once every two years. As I exit the airport and enter into the land with vibrant colors, loud auto car noises, road side food stands, and crowded streets, I feel as if I have stepped into another world. Even though India is a beautiful country with many natural colors and joyous people, it also has many components that could improve mainly orphans. As you stroll through the streets of southern India, specifically the town where my father is from (Narasaraopet), I see numerous children on the streets with tattered clothes and with no food. Four years ago, in 2013, my family and I were traveling to a nearby town (Ongole) to visit some of our relatives. After we arrived, I was talking to my cousins about how many orphans there are in India and they told me about an Orphanage Center nearby and asked me if I wanted to visit it. I definitely wanted to visit it so the next day my uncle took me and my cousins to the orphanage center. The orphanage center's name was Premananda which means love and happiness in Telugu. As we went inside there were numerous children studying and playing. The building looked really old, the rooms were small, and apparently all the classes took place outside. Apparently the orphanage was not getting enough funds in order to maintain the building and provide better supplies for the children. Later, we started interacting with the kids and they were all very excited to engage with us because they usually do not get any visitors. All of them were so kind and so grateful for what they had, making me feel slightly guilty for all the privileges I had. In particular, this one young girl named Priya approaches me and asks me if I want to play with her. She shows me all of the outdoor games her and her friends play. She tells me about how happy she is in this old building because before she was working at someone's house washing dishes and cleaning clothes. She said the only thing she misses here was her mom who died five years ago. Spending time with so many kind hearted people who felt content with almost nothing made me look at life differently. I appreciated the things I am able to have like my family and my education. For the next week, me and my cousins collected funds from many people living nearby and also contributed to the orphanage by donating some clothes and books. Although I volunteer a lot, this one week providing service to few of the many orphans made me feel accomplished as a human being.
Please give me any feedback! Thank you!
Although just the language alone cannot help one understand a whole culture, it helped me understand my culture in many ways.
it also has many components that could improve mainly orphans. （I feel the sentence is a little confusing)
For the next week, me and my cousinsand I
Overall, I think you may more connect yourself to the volunteer work and the love for your family. Because the prompt is about you, not how the orphanage center works in your country. So, when talking about your experience, you need to highlight yourself and show more details about your reflection and what you did next.
Juhu, the essay you wrote is really very insightful and shows us that you know how to appreciate the gifts that you have received in life. It is admirable that you have chosen to embrace your Indian roots while still keeping the best of the American traits within you. Your melting pot culture definitely did you well in terms of developing your personality and empathy for people. However, I am not sure if that is what the prompt expects of you.
As I progressed with reading your essay, there was one part of the prompt, a very important question that I am sure the reviewer will be constantly remembering and looking for an answer to as well. Where in this whole essay does the connection between your experience and your ability to succeed at Penn State? While you constantly spoke of what you learned during those visits to India, there no single time when you clearly made a connection between India and Penn State. So you will need to work on that.
I also noticed that you have a word count of 500 words or less in this essay as the maximum requirement. Your current essay has 542 words in it. So you need to cut out 142 words in order to meet the maximum word count. I do not doubt that you can meet that requirement since you have to revise the essay for content anyway.
It would be best for you if you can just choose one important event from your visit to India that can help you explain how this proves that you can succeed as a student at Penn State. You do not need to use too many incidents, just one that you know can do the job. I look forward to reading your revision :-)
- ...the United States all of my life.
- ...my parents never let me forget thefail to remind me of my roots.
- where I originally came from.( this is not necessary as it is obviously stated in the previous phrase )
- loud auto car noises,...
- it also has many components that could improve mainly orphans. ( I'm not sure what you mean by this phrase, please elaborate )
- AfterAs soon as we arrived,
- ...many orphans there are there in India...
- I appreciated the things I am able to have like my family and my education.
- For the next week, me and my cousins and I collected
- this one week of providing service to few of the many
- orphans and it made me feel accomplished as a human being.
There you have it, just a few remarks from my side. The only thing that I can say, which is a common mistake for us whose speaking English as a second language is that we seem to do direct translation when it comes to writing and even when we talk. This is fine and what we can do to overcome this is to practice, speaking the language more and write whenever we can.
