This document showcases a real Comprehensive Editing Order as it was returned to the
client. [Bracketed phrases] have been used substituted for the client’s name and other
identifying information.
Hi [client],
First, let me thank you again for trusting me with your essays! Most of the business I get
comes from word of mouth recommendations—I only advertise a little bit—so I was
excited to see an order from a person who came to the site from Google! As with all
customers, I will do my best to make sure you can submit your statement with full
confidence and that you will never need to go anywhere else for admissions help.
The format of my edits is very simple. In addition to these introductory comments, you
will find general comments in the same blue italics before each of your statements, local
comments in the margins using the track changes function, and then finally the revised
version of your statements. The revised versions will be very different from the originals
in some ways, but don’t let this bother you. Don’t skip the comments either, as they will
highlight areas of possible confusion or suggest possible additions in addition to
explaining my changes. To date, all of my customers have been very pleased by this
format, but I welcome your thoughts on its strengths and weaknesses.
For a first general comment, I will say that these essays seem a bit short given the
expressed word limit of the scholarship competition. Brevity is almost always considered
a virtue in admissions writing, but the idea is often that you should say as much as
possible and then figure out a way to tuck your ideas into the word limit. Perhaps that is
not necessary here, but in my experience that has been the usual approach. I think it
would be especially important for the first essay since it deals with your Hispanic
heritage and the prize is geared toward Hispanic students. To this end, I will take some
opportunities to highlight additional material you may want to add to fill the essays out a
bit.
Describe how your Hispanic heritage has influenced your academic and long-term
personal goals.
This essay has the potential to make a very strong impression on your reader, but I think
some more information will ultimately be needed to achieve its full potential. I have
made a lot of margin comments that you should read, but the basic idea is that I would
like to hear more about the problems Hispanics are facing and how you can help them
address those problems. You seem to have had a moment in your youth, perhaps
supplemented by other more recent moments, in which you took special note of the good
aspects of Hispanic culture as well as the difficulties associated with being Hispanic.
This is a potentially very powerful angle to take, but its not enough to just remember that
moment. Your reader will want to see a more direct relationship between it and your
goals. This means explaining what you thought about your experiences then and now
and how this informs your future.
This is a very difficult exercise—no doubt about it—but my guess is that you have a lot of
this information ready to go. The challenge is linking it to a future that is very uncertain.
Don’t worry so much about this—it’s ok if you don’t pursue the exact goals or issues you
present here. You reader won’t even really expect that. What’s important is that you
show you are capable of thinking about these issues maturely and making connections
between your past and future.
I will edit this essay as normal, but I do hope you seriously consider the suggestion for
more material.
Original Version
Tiere la bola! Chulo screamed. It was hot and muggy, no breeze in sight. I was
surrounded by smiles and laughter. I had just turned ten years old and I was in the
mountains of Puerto Rico a town called [Puerto Rican town]. All the children in the
neighborhood played in the park all day long. They were scanty clothed and all their
families were very poor. All the families always asked me to join them for dinner and
offered to share anything that they owned. They did not have much and I realized they
were offering me dinner! Why weren’t these people sad they were poor? I realized these
people had no material possessions but were so giving with the little that they had. Most
of the families had around eight to ten people living under one roof with maybe one car.
This culture shock made me realize that I should be happy with what I have because
many people do not have nearly as much as I do. I still take the lesson I learned from
years ago in the mountains of Puerto Rico and incorporate into my life today. I am
currently enrolled in Spanish III for my senior year to further my skills in my culture. I
am also hoping to get a business administration degree then on to lawn school to help in
representing the Hispanic people that do not have representation. Sometimes our culture
and education level causes problems here. I know of a woman who arrested for spanking
a child with a belt at a store. She was arrested for child abuse. This seems like our
country many years ago. The trip to Puerto Rico has changed my life for good and I will
never forget my experience there.
Revised Version
I first recognized the dynamism of Hispanic culture when I visited the Puerto Rican
mountain town of [Puerto Rican town] as a ten-year-old boy. On a hot and breezeless
day, I was first accepted by the town’s barely-clothed children as they played soccer in
the park and then invited to several homes for dinner. [Puerto Rican town] is a poor
town—families often live ten to a house and money is always tight—but their invitations
were unmistakably earnest. I was moved, even as a young boy, to appreciate my own
good fortune and to join a community capable of such personal warmth.
My memory of [Puerto Rican town] is vivid, but I have learned in the intervening years
that many Hispanics in the United States, despite the heritage of strong community, face
seemingly insurmountable problems. The national issues of gangs and drugs are wellknown, but there are also more subtle cultural issues at play. I know a woman, for
example, who was arrested for child abuse after spanking her son in the supermarket.
Such basic cultural challenges have inspired me to make a difference, and my dedication
to Hispanic society is strong. I study Spanish in an effort to develop necessary
communication abilities, and I have plans to pursue an undergraduate degree in business
administration before going on to study and practice law. As a lawyer with a close
understanding of Hispanic culture, I will be able to represent individuals in times of need
while offering them some avenues to overcome the gaps in their education. I know that
one person cannot change everything, but my experience of Hispanic culture and
generosity in Puerto Rico inspires me to do my part.
Describe how you contribute to your community and what you have learned from you
experiences.
This is another essay that I think has potential to be very powerful if we can add a few
more critical elements. You do a good job of introducing the problem in this essay
(although after my edits this section will likely get a bit smaller) and you seem ready to
take a starring role in the creation of the neighborhood watch program, but then you
don’t discuss your personal contribution that much. Since the question asks for a
description of your contribution to the community, I think it’s important that you go
beyond just the original idea. Did you meet with neighbors, help design a phone tree
system, hang posters about the neighborhood watch, or explain the new system to elderly
residents? It’s not that you have to do any one of these things in particular, but just that I
want to hear more about your individual actions. The idea that “a neighborhood watch
was enacted” just seems too impersonal. I don’t think you have to take this essay to the
600 word mark to make it work, but some additions in this vein would be helpful.
Original Version
I have had several community and volunteer activities but this project means the most I
live in an older neighborhood on the golf course. Many of the residents and neighbors of
mine are of older age, most likely around the age of 70. The neighborhood was having a
problem with break-ins occurring regularly. People were going out of town and getting
many things stolen from them. There were incidences of a man knocking on their door at
10 pm and 1 am asking for the telephone. He was barefoot and disheveled. I believe he
was trying to see if they were at home before he broke in the house. Cars were getting
broken into and valuables were being taken from them also. I came up with the idea to
set up with a neighborhood watch program to help this problem from reoccurring
regularly. All the residents of the neighborhood were contacted for a meeting to occur at
the local clubhouse to discuss actions that needs to be taken. My mom spoke with the
sheriff since I was only 16. The sheriff had a meeting with all of the neighbors and we
had about 50 attend. These break-ins were occurring and we found out all kinds of things
were occurring on different streets and none of these were tied together. He gave ideas
on how the neighborhood needs to help watch out for one another. The obvious is to not
answer your door if you do not know the person at 1AM! A neighborhood watch program
was enacted and ever since, a year now, there is a united front against people just walking
through. To my knowledge there has been no more break-ins. I feel that this program
forever on will help keep my neighborhood safe. I have learned that together the people
in the neighborhood had a lot of power. These were mostly elderly residents who were
scared. When they met with the sheriff and united they discovered that working together
we could accomplish a lot. People coming together for a common purpose can
accomplish more than they think.
Revised Version
Two years ago, my town developed a serious problem of break-in robberies. The
majority of the residents in my neighborhood are elderly, so even though most incidents
occurred when people were out of town, many felt unsafe in their own homes. When a
strange man knocked on our front door and asked to use the telephone, we refused for
fear that his real goal was to see the house before later robbing it.
This was not the community I wanted, so I thought of ways that I could make an
improvement and ultimately concluded that a neighborhood watch might be helpful. I
worked with (?) to contact the neighborhood residents and we arranged a meeting with
the sheriff at the local clubhouse to discuss the issue. Our neighbors must have shared
my discontent, because no fewer than 50 attended. We began by reporting all of the
incidents that we were aware of in search of any possible patterns, but it seemed that
there was none. The sheriff responded with some basic safety tips and then we
cooperated to establish the neighborhood watch I had imagined. I…
It has been over a year since we put the watch program in place, and it seems that the
project fixed the problem before it got out of control, because to my knowledge there has
not been another break-in. This experience has been an important reminder of the
strength of a united community. My elderly neighbors went from scared residents to
confident citizens thanks to a good idea and solid leadership. I am proud of my
contribution and I will remember the value of such cooperative action as I approach
similarly difficult problems in the future.
Describe a recent academic challenge you have faced, and how you have overcome it.
This is a good essay. I like the tone you create and the message that you are working
hard to learn and improve as a student. It is an admirable challenge you have laid out
for yourself and readers will respond well to it. My only concern is that you may have
focused a bit too much on what colleges want to see and not enough on the inherent value
of an education challenge. The truth is that the value comes from two places, what you
learn and the fact that others recognize it, but the first is usually the preferred focus for
an essay such as this. Other than that, I don’t think it needs too much more alteration or
additions, although you could add a discussion of what makes literature a challenge for
you and how you have tried to improve if you want.
Original Version
This senior year has been my most challenging year throughout my high school years. It
was necessary for me to take two more AP classes; more colleges of my interest notice
AP Literature and AP Calculus, to help me. Literature seems to be my hardest class since
my verbal scores were not as high as I would like them to be by looking at that score I
should have signed up for a regular literature class. This class has been very challenging
but I have held my own. These classes have helped boost my resume so schools will not
think I just breezed my way through my senior year. It was not only hard to just take the
classes but also to make excellent grades in them to keep my GPA up to or above
acceptance standards. I learned through these challenges that I need to increase the
amount of studying and concentration put into my education. The combining of these
skills that needed to be improved in my life helped me realize that to get to where one
wants to be, one needs to put all they have got into it.
Revised Version
While it has recently become common for high school seniors to select easy classes in
pursuit of a relaxing year before college, I have gone out of my way to seek challenges
during my senior year. Two demanding AP classes in calculus and literature anchor my
school day and force me to stay focused. For me, literature is the more difficult of the
two; English has never been my strongest subject. My standardized test scores would
have placed me in a regular literature class, but I was determined to hold my own. It has
been a challenge to earn good grades amidst the best students, but the workload
demonstrates my serious approach to top colleges. I have realized that I will need to
continually employ more concentration and self-discipline as I pursue higher levels of
education, but my initial success has also given me confidence in my ability to succeed in
any academic environment.