 We're on the internet. Let's go live streaming after a while. It's been a minute, my people. Welcome to the show. We're going to do a personal statement, live stream writing thing today. I'm going to show you how I write a common app personal statement using one of my personal favorite stories from the past. I'm going to focus on the time that my house burnt down. And I chose that because I think it makes for a great topic for personal statements on common app. If you did not see the video that I published last week, check it out. I talked about eight different ways that you can brainstorm ideas for your common app essays. And this one kind of goes along with maybe my second or my last tip, which my second tip was to use memories to think about important memories that you have in life. And then also I kind of had one where I talked about your rock bottom moments, your worst moments in life. I think those also make really good essays. And so basically I'm going to write one using one of those topics. And I want to show you my whole process today. And I'm going to probably knock this out in like an hour. I'm a fast typer. I know my story. But I wanted to show you first a little bit of how I plan my writing because I think planning is super important. And if you have any questions or you just want to say hi, hop in the chat, say what's up. It's always good to hear from you guys. I love having you here. So what I want to take a look at here. And let me go, let's go down here. We're going to go in here and scribble a little bit because I like scribbling. I want to plan out my work before I write. And I think it's really important to do this because it will help you write more fluently. And it will avoid some of the mistakes that a lot of people make with these essays. So what I'm going to do down here, that looks pretty good. I think we'll use that. What I want to do is plan out the things that I'm going to talk about. The main story here is kind of the central topic or the thing that we're going to talk about the most, which is my house fire, right? So the thing that I'm not going to do, and I've checked a lot of essays from a lot of people who have sent me their work and I appreciate everybody reaching out, I'm not going to tell the whole story start to finish. I'm not going to spend a ton of time telling you how the fire happened or what we did immediately after. The goal here is not to tell the whole story, but instead to show the people that read these essays how this event affected me and how it changed me. So what we want to focus on really are the takeaways. Takeaways, the things we take away from a situation, the things we learn. What we learn, right? And this is where I'm going to get more into myself and who I am today. And so I wanted to focus on a few different things. I was giving this some thought before I sat down today, which is unusual. I normally don't do that when I do live streams. I just sort of sit down and do it. But this time I thought about it. So one of the things I want to talk about a little bit is my view of materialism slash the value of things. I think that's something that I learned a lot about in this experience when you lose everything that you have. You sort of change your perspective on how important things are. And I think that that's something I want to share with the committee here. I think the other thing I want to talk about a little bit is resilience and how this experience made me tougher, made me stronger, made me more able to survive in difficult situations. Like the things that happened after this fire definitely built a lot of resilience in me, I think. And I think that's where I would probably like to focus a little bit more of that. And then I also want to talk a little bit about my family and sort of how this evolved because of this situation. It didn't evolve for the better, but it is a situation that I want to talk about a little bit. So these are just three little aspects that I'm going to talk about throughout this essay, this idea of materialism, resilience, and family. And we'll see how much of each of these things gets in here. I'm not 100% sure yet how much I'm going to do on each of these topics, but I want them to understand that, OK, this event happened and this event created these things in me, changed my perspectives, changed the way I think about the world to this day. And the reason I've chosen this event specifically to write about is because this event, if I had to pick one event from my life history, this event is probably the event that caused the most changes in my life. If I had to pick one thing from my life, I think it's this event. If we had a timeline, you could see a branch. There's an alternate universe where my house doesn't burn down and things are totally different, which reminds me. I also want to think about maybe study abroad here because that idea was born in this situation, actually. I may also tack on something about that in here, too. So these are things that I want to write about, things that I want to talk about related to this event. And so knowing this stuff, I'm going to be able to write this essay kind of from start to finish without having to stop and think, OK, what do I want to say next? Because I have ideas that I want to talk about. And if it's OK, if you draft more than 650 words, I often encourage people, when you draft, do more than the limit. Because then you can cut stuff and get down to the limit, and you can remove the stuff that isn't that useful and instead replace it with really good content. So if you only write 650 words, you're probably going to have some stuff in there that you should get rid of. And then you're going to be short. I would rather you write 800 words and then cut out 150 to get down to what we're looking for. So that right there is more or less what we're going to write about. So I'm going to get started on this, and I'm going to keep my writing open so you can kind of see how I approach it and what I do. So yeah, I got my coffee. Not much left, but I got some. I got my awesome mechanical keyboard, and I got motivations. Now the start of this essay, the first thing we got to do is kind of get people hooked. There's different ways to go about this. I like to think about describing a scene that could be powerful. Maybe give them a quick snapshot of the situation so they can picture it. And that could be a good way to get them engaged and get them started. So I really, for me, I think the one image that I always think about, for me, that's kind of iconic in this moment, I might just start out by telling them to imagine this. So yeah, this could be a decent starting line, just something like this, just a quick image to get people started and thinking about what I'm going to talk about. I'm going to make this a little bit bigger for you guys. I think that'll help. Yeah, that should be a little easier for you to read. So yeah, just imagine standing barefoot in six inches of snow while dialing 911 because your house is engulfed in flames. That happened to me, and it forever changed my life. And I like to do this nice, quick introduction, really just keep it straight to the point. I want to have a quick image and just jump right into it. We don't have a ton of space, so we don't want to waste a ton of time. I want to just get right to the point and jump into the story. And so I've given you this quick image, and this is literally how it happened. I got my sister and my pets out of the house, and I had the phone in my hand, and I was dialing 911 while standing outside with no shoes on because my shoes were in the place where the house was on fire. I don't have to explain all that. I don't have to give all those details. There's other funny things here, too. My neighbor ran by the street, he was jogging, and he was like, hey, your house is on fire. And that's funny, I might include that, but I want to save time and save space and focus on myself. So once I get through that quick introduction paragraph, I want to set up kind of what we're going to talk about for the rest of this. And this is how we keep it focused on ourselves. Instead of falling into the trap of spending two or three paragraphs talking about this fire, how it happened, what happened, I'm just going to go straight to the sort of consequences of this and what I've learned from this. Yeah, we'll leave that like this, we can edit this later. So I'm going to drop some lines down, too, so I can make sure that this isn't blocked by my face. So yeah, this is just where I want to kind of go next. And again, I'm jumping straight to the lessons that I've learned, and we'll get back to it and we'll see if we want to add more details or add other things later, but I really just want to focus on myself. I want to focus on me and how I changed with this whole experience. So I want to start with this materialism aspect because I think that it's probably one of the most significant things out of all of this, and that's where I think I want to go with first. You know, the first thing we say is usually going to be more important, so I'm going to try to hit them with that. Base cam's too big, you want me to shrink it down a little bit? Yeah, you're right. I have the text up pretty big here. Let me maybe shrink this down a little bit more, and then I'll try to keep it up here so you can keep reading what I'm writing. So yeah, I'll shrink my face down just a little bit here for you, there you go. Thanks for the feedback. All right, yeah. So this is kind of where I want to go with this first idea of my feelings about materialism and possessions, like I want to establish this fact. And again, I'm going to leak little details about this fire story throughout the paragraphs. Instead of again, I don't want to just tell it all from start to finish. I want to slip little details in here. Like this is stuff that actually happened. Like I had no idea that in a fire, things that didn't burn would also be destroyed. Like the soot, the black stuff, the ash, like it destroys everything. It's crazy. I mean, it was like, like stuff that was on the other side of the house where there was no fire had like black stuff all over it and it was just useless. Like you couldn't clean the clothes. You couldn't, your TV was broken just because it destroys the electronics. Like it, and that was something that hit me. Like it was this feeling of like, wow, okay, these things that I have valued for so long, these objects that I thought were like super important to me really don't mean anything anymore. You know, it's really more about the things I can share with other people and the people that I'm experiencing things with. And that's where I got into this sort of philosophy of like having less things, you know? So I want to establish that idea here. And I think this is pretty good for this idea, you know? I want to make it clear. So I've kind of explained what I've learned out of this, right? You can either like, you can sit there and be sad about the things that you've lost or you can just accept the fact that like those things can always be replaced and they don't actually matter that much. And I stopped caring about these things. Again, notice how I'm keeping a lot of this focus on myself, right? All of this stuff, I like to set up little things like this, like little kind of images of me on campus, me at the university sort of like, help them envision me there. You know, I think that's a good way to play this. And you know, this is the only stuff that's really not exactly me. I mean, it's what I learned, but it's the details that I'm adding here. And then again, I share my philosophy, I share what I think about this stuff. So this would be like, I think a good start to this kind of topic about materialism and how much I value things. Now, talking a little bit more about the, maybe the resilience thing, because again, that was sort of one of my ideas here, this idea of talking about resilience. I think that's also something I would like to kind of focus on, right? And that's, let's get into that a little bit. I don't like how I'm phrasing that. Yeah. All right, so here I'm kind of trying to show off a little bit of how I feel about, you know, just overcoming adversity, going through problems. Like obviously this whole situation was difficult. And again, I want to share a couple of examples of some of the ways that it was difficult, right? I want to give some details as we go through the story. So I describe a little bit of this rental home life. We lived there for over a year and it was a very odd experience because like, I mean, this is the best way I can think to describe it. It felt like living in a fake house, you know? It was like living on a TV set or something like where it didn't feel real because things were missing. Like a lot of essential items weren't there. Your items weren't there. You know, you just assume that something is there and then it's not. And then like also the space was much smaller. It was still a decent little house. And I was, and that also makes me think about talking about gratitude as well. And maybe making a segue into that because I feel like that's another aspect of this is like, it could have been much worse. You know, it could have been a terrible situation where I was miserable all the time or hell, we could have had a situation where we had no house, where we were forced to live with family or something. Like there's a lot of other ways that this could have gone wrong. And you know, in a lot of ways we were fortunate. But it was frustrating. It was difficult. You know, there were a lot of things that just were harder because of this. And I want them to understand that like my mental state was instead of becoming an additional problem, become part of the solution. Like try to contribute as opposed to complaining. And that is very much the way I approach life today. I still have that same mindset. You know, I would rather try to solve a problem than let it crush me or be more of a difficulty for the family or the people around me. You know, I think that's something I want to establish really well here. I kind of like the idea of segueing to that gratitude thing. I'm at 320 words, so I have some space. I think I might just do that because that kind of inspired me right now to think about is it, how do you spell lazy boy? I think it's like this. All right, I think I like this. This is a little bit about that gratitude stuff. I think this is good, you know, and this is true. I really did, oh, should I say diarist? Oh, I guess I should say diarist. I thought most dire. I never realized diarist could be convertible. Now you know. So again, I'm just trying to develop these different ideas. We've got our idea here about my views on physical possessions, my views about adversity and resilience, my views about gratitude. And I'm trying to connect these ideas a little bit, right? The adversity going to the gratitude, for example. And again, telling a little bit of the story every time, right? You hear about, okay, the first scene here where I'm standing in the snow. We've got this time in the rental home, you know, and even little details like this, right? Watching the firefighters shove hoses into our walls to stop the fire from spreading, right? Like I wanna give vivid detail, right? Like shove hoses into our walls, like something you can really picture. Like they literally would take an axe and cut the wall and then they would shove a hose into it because the fire was going through the walls. It was literally like spreading that way. So that's how they fought it. And I just, you know, I could even like maybe add another little detail here because I like this a little bit. It's hard to kind of slip this. I wanna point out that I was sitting in an ambulance watching through it. Yeah, and I should keep the ass because I have this next clause. Yeah, so like I'm literally sitting in an ambulance. I was perfectly fine, but I was sitting in an ambulance and I don't need to necessarily say that I was perfectly fine. We'll let them wonder about that. And then like, yeah, it's this little round window in an ambulance. It was shaped like a pill, you know, I remember. And like just looking through there, right? And just sort of seeing this happen. And so again, I wanna sprinkle in details as I go and use those details to set up what I'm thinking about. So, you know, and then I give that detail. I don't go into the backstory here. Notice I say, I wondered where I'd spend the night and then I jump cut to this lazy boy recliner, like a reclining chair, which leaves you to wonder, like, okay, well, where was that? And I was in a hotel for two weeks. But instead of saying, okay, the insurance company told us to go get a hotel and they would reimburse us. And so we went to the nearest hotel we could find and we got a room and it was a really small room. Like I could sit there and spend a whole paragraph about that hotel room. I really could. But at the same time, like that's not the goal. That's not the point. I'm trying to focus on, you know, what I learned from this. So this is true. I slept in a chair for two weeks. It was a reclining chair, but I slept in it for two weeks. But at the same time there was, it sucked, but it was also like at a certain point you say, hey, I'm okay. I'm in a hotel. There's food here. There's everything I need. I have a roof. I'm not freezing cold. I'm not stuck with 10 other people. It could be worse, right? It could be worse. And that appreciation for the situation helped me to overcome this situation because it was like, you know, again, you could sit there and be miserable or you could try to find the positives in these situations and really try to stay optimistic. Patil, I see your question here about Texas Tech Computer Science in a visa interview. Well, generally speaking, visa interviews are really straightforward. Just don't, just be honest. Answer the question and only the question. Don't give a bunch of extra information. Just tell them what they wanna hear. You know, just say, if they ask you about your study plans, tell them your study plans. You know, if they ask you why Texas Tech, tell them why Texas Tech. But don't offer a bunch of extra information. You'll be fine. All right, so going back to my list of ideas, I wanna talk a little bit more about how this, now this is where I wanna start segueing a little bit into the future. And this is what I think is something else that I see a lot of people do wrong with their essays. They only focus on the past. They don't tell us about the present or the future. I'm trying to tell you a past experience with the goal of explaining who I am today, right? So in each of these paragraphs, I tell you a little bit about the past experience, but then I tell you about how that affects me today. And then I need to also at some point segue a little bit into the future and how this stuff has changed me and maybe has changed the trajectory of my life and where I think it's gonna go next, you know? So that's something I wanna start getting into. And this is where I wanna turn a little bit, I think, and talk about the family stuff a little bit because this event did trigger a lot of changes in my family and I think Mark's sort of the beginning of the end of a lot of things in my family. So it was like, you know, it was an important moment. And I wanna touch on that stuff a little bit, you know? So I wanna think about how to set that up. And I'm gonna write this a little bit within the context of the time. Like this did legitimately happen around the time I was finishing high school. So I'm kind of trying to imagine myself writing this in that perspective, you know? Obviously, like I'm in my 30s, it would be, I don't know, maybe a little less useful of an example if I wrote this from like today's perspective. And this fire thing happened when I was 14 and then like the, you know, this stuff here happened when I was about 18 and I had just had my graduation party before like the house was gonna go. So I, this is legitimately true. This is how the situation was at the time. And so I'm just kind of writing it within that context for you. But yeah, so this feeling of coming back to the new house, you know, was supposed to be a happy time but it just wasn't, it wasn't better. It was like, okay, a bunch of other problems were solved, a bunch of these problems were solved but then like these problems just didn't get better. And that's, this is where I wanna think about like how I can build this towards the future a little bit and think about kind of where I wanna go next from this, right? So as I graduate, I'm staring down the barrel of homelessness yet again. I find myself back in this situation and this is where I need to start kind of making my own way forward, you know? And that's where I wanna segue a little bit into my university stuff, just, you know, to kind of wrap it up. So I like to throw in a little bit of parentheses once in a while. I think it's good to do it once or twice in an essay. Like it makes you much more human. These are like little, asides, little thoughts that you would have. And like, remember you don't need to be super formal in these essays, like you're just writing to somebody and you should keep it kind of chill and personal. Like notice I'm not using a ton of complex vocabulary or like really fancy language. I'm not, you know, like I'm using contractions everywhere, right? Like just trying to be very much how I speak, how I normally am. It's important for your own voice to come through and so you should write the way you naturally feel like you are. I mean, obviously there's certain things you should not do. You'll notice I keep a lot of my sentences kind of short. I mean, I mix it up but I try not to make super long sentences. I don't use too many commas. That's something important to keep in mind when you write your essays. Like it's good to have a variety of sentence lengths. Don't use too many commas. My good rule of thumb is like, one comma for every period is a good place to start. And then maybe you do more if you know what you're doing. You'll notice a lot of these sentences are just like that. There's like one comma and one period at most in most of these sentences. So I try to write with a very direct style. And just, you know, throwing in this little, little aside here is like kind of a joke. Like, hey, don't worry. I'm not just applying to college because I want to live somewhere because I'm going to be homeless. Like that's not the only point. But, you know, I want to have a little bit of fun with this too. I think it's important to do that, you know? All right. Now I'm at 649 because I'm just going to write into the word count like that. You know, I know I told you you could write more and then trim down. But what I want to do at this point now that I've kind of gotten something that I like. So let's just quickly go back over what I said here, please don't delete it. Yeah. Hey, James, what's up? Thanks for saying, yeah, I recognize the picture. What's good? Thanks for stopping by. Yeah. Like, so let's just go back to the start for a second and kind of recap a little bit. So the first thing I'm doing here again, I am trying to start out with a vivid image, something that you can picture. And I like to just straight up tell people, imagine, picture this, like this is a good way to start. Don't be afraid to talk to your reader, okay? Don't be shy about that. Remember that you are writing this for a specific kind of person. You're writing this for an admissions officer and like, they're real people, they're nice people. I just, I spent a bunch of time with a bunch of them and they're really, really nice. And most of them really want to get to know you. So they genuinely appreciate it when like they're recognized in a way, like when you're talking to them and it feels like they're in the room with you, they like that. And I think it's good to give them an image, something they can picture that gets their attention, you know? There's other ways I could have started this for sure, but I like this. And I think it's good to give you this image that is a pretty shocking image, right? Like if I started a story with this, you'd be like, all right, tell me more. And that's the goal. I want them to know more. That happened to me and it forever changed my life. You know, I might even tweak this a little bit. I'm not, now I don't love this after editing this, but I wanted to call back to this. I don't know. It's always what I remember when I think about this story. Yeah, you'll be able to watch recordings of this, but it's gonna be up on YouTube. I'm not gonna delete it for you. So, yeah, like, and then, you know, kind of jumping to the end of this, right? This is like the aftermath. So again, I'm not telling the whole story. I'm not gonna waste a bunch of words focusing on the fire. I could easily write a thousand words about what happened in the fire and how it happened and why it was my mom's fault. And like, I'm just not gonna do that. That's not what they really wanna hear. They don't, even if, I know that like the whole story might be exciting for you and you as an individual. Like you remember every little moment, but remember that they didn't experience that. So you're never going to be able to transmit the totality of your experience to someone else, okay? Only you can fully experience something. You'll never, and this applies to everything in life, you can never fully transmit an experience to someone else. So don't try. Just try to transmit the things that you got from that experience because that is what really matters. And so I think that that's the thing to look at here. Subin, gamers, yeah, if you do, sure, send it on WhatsApp. Go to preposcore.com, hit us up on WhatsApp. And if you want me to take a look at your essay, I'll be happy to give it a read for you and tell you what I think. And again, I really wanna establish that this is what we're gonna focus on. I'm gonna talk about how my perspective's changed and how I'm gonna share that with this person. And saying I'd like to share that with you, like really just setting the tone for this essay, a quick direct message to the reader, you know? And so I'm not worried about a complex transition here. I'm just keeping a couple of short paragraphs to get us started and then we're gonna transition to those things that I learned. And basically I tried to come up with a theme for each paragraph, right? And this is really important for you to do. I see a lot of paragraphs that are too big or like don't focus on just one topic. These paragraphs, what am I doing? About 150, 120 words, that's a good number. You could even do shorter paragraphs if you wanted to, but these are all about 120 and I think that's a good number, that's a good max. I would say these are like this is a long one, but that's about as long as they should be. And I don't wanna make these paragraphs too big. I need to use paragraphs. If you are writing a giant block of text, you need to fix that. Make sure you leave a blank line between your paragraphs too because it makes it easier to read. So again, I sort of established this idea of I don't value possessions anymore. This is sort of the theme for this. I introduced it with a kind of funny college thing here and give my feelings about it. This part here, this idea of adversity, right? Becoming kind of like the main theme here and that making me more resilient is sort of the theme of this second paragraph. Again, by giving some details about the situation, I'm setting it up. We're talking about some of the problems that we had at the house and how those things created adversity and that therefore created this resilience and my lessons that I was able to learn from it. Diversity built a strong sense of gratitude. That's another theme here that I wanted to hit on and then this stuff about the family and how it changed. And this I think was important to set up kind of where I'm coming from as I apply to college. In this hypothetical scenario, if I am about to graduate off of this experience, this is genuinely where I was at and I want them to understand where I'm at as I come into this situation, this new situation of going to university. Like this is where we're at. So like this is me looking at homelessness again and but letting them know that I'm okay with this. Like I also want to make it clear that I can handle these problems. I'm not afraid of these problems. I'm not going to be like, oh no, I can't handle it. I'm gonna be like super depressed because we need to show confidence. We need to show that we can handle situations. Like colleges want to know that you are gonna be able to handle the workload that you're gonna be able to handle life. And so I want them to see this piece of my life where I've had to handle some difficult things. Like if I can handle this, college should be easy, man. I should be fine. And that's where my kind of last paragraph wraps up. I also slip in that first generation detail. That is also true. And then I'm excited about the prospect. And then I sort of summarized everything here for these two lines, right? This is just like a summary of the last few paragraphs. I've come to appreciate the experiences meaning so much more than possessions, friends and family being more than the building they live in, right? Versity breeds resilience and gratitude overcomes all obstacles. These are just like this is the summary of everything I've experienced here and what I've learned from it. And letting them know that I think that this is gonna help me out. And I also finished with a little joke because I think it's funny. So yeah, Abdullah, this video will be up. All my live streams stay up forever. I don't delete them or anything unless like something weird happens with YouTube. But yeah, it'll be there. Nothing bad will happen. So yeah, do you want, Subin, do you want me to review your essay live? Do you want me to like show it to the world? Cause I could do that. We could have some fun and do a little bit of live review if you don't mind, if that's okay with you. I don't wanna show your work without your permission. But you are saying, and I could do that. Let me, I'm gonna move it into a word doc then if you wanna do this. Let's take a look. Yeah, I think this is fun. I like looking at people's work. I might be harsh, okay? I might be tough on you. But it's only cause I care. Only cause I wanna do good by you. I don't wanna like, you know, make you feel bad. All right, so I'll give you five more seconds to stop me. I'm gonna control pace this right in here. Let's take a look. All right, so the transformative journey of embracing resolute determination, the power of hard work. All right, so eighth grade work, front of failure head on. That's a key success. All right, okay. Something let me feel like a failure. But, all right, so we have a key moment of failure that maybe turned things around. This is kinda, this is good. Let's see, I wanna get into this event. I wanna know what happened here. All right, so, okay. All right. Give it a moment, my determining point is I have been notified. All right, so we keep talking about this moment, but we need to get to it. We need to get to it. And, all right, so we've got this disinterest peaking here in eighth, low marks. Okay. Is that the failure? All right, family came down on you for this. Got it, all right. Okay, all right, I'm gonna stop right here and give you some feedback, Subin. I got some ideas for you. All right, so, you talk about this idea of confronting failure head on. And, I think that's a really good topic. I think that's a great thing to work with. This is eighth grade, right? So, this is a while ago, I assume. And, what I wanna know here is like, I want you to get into this failure right away, okay. Like, I'll be honest, we don't really need this paragraph, all right? Because, this here, like, first of all, sixth grade changing schools, they're gonna have your transcripts. They have that information, right? Even this, beginning with grades like, you know, this stuff here. This is so far long ago, that this isn't relevant to them today, all right? Like, anything that's gonna be before high school, I would honestly tell you that you probably don't need to touch on it much. I would get rid of this, okay? And, here, okay, this notable decline, I think is starting to get into what the issue was, what your problem was, right? Unsupported friends and also, like, okay, so we have some issues, right? We have some issues. But, I still wanna get to this problem. I wanna get to the issue that you presented at the beginning. We need to jump into it a little faster, okay? So, this idea here that your disinterest had peaked, right, for eighth grade, right? And, then you get this low score, which is what I believe is the failure that you're talking about, right? I think I would start with this. Like, this is the wake-up moment for you. This is the moment where you realized you needed to make a change because you got this low score on your grade exams that you say here, the eighth grade exams, right? Obviously, that upset your family, that created a lot of issues, right? Now, what I think is interesting, though, here, is that you said your mother graced your room with words of motivation and inspiration. I would love to know what those words were. I would love to hear that right now. You skipped over that. That was important. I think you should share that with us. Like, what is your, what was the wisdom? What was the thing that she told you, right? So, what I wanna see here is like, all right, if we're gonna start out by talking about facing failure head-on, let's go straight to the failure. Let's go right to the scene where you get your grades and you get that 2.92 and you know that when you come home and show that to your parents, your ass is grass, you're in trouble, right? Like, that is, I think, the story right there. That scene where you're holding that grade and going, damn it, I'm gonna be in trouble. This is gonna suck. I don't wanna come home with this, right? Like, let's think about that moment. I imagine you felt that, right? Like, you must have felt like, like I've been there. I remember when I got my first D in school, which is barely passing and my parents always expected me to get A's and B's. They would actually pay me. I would get $10 for an A and $5 for a B, but I would lose $20 for a C and like, we didn't even have a policy for a D because it was assumed that I would just never get one. And I got one in Spanish of all things. Now I'm fluent. Screw you, teacher, I don't remember your name. But like, that for me was a moment. I remember getting that report card and seeing that D and knowing that I had to take that home and sign that report card with my parents and being like, oh man, I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna go home with this. I don't. That is where I think your story starts. Like, jump into that emotional moment. You know, really hit me with the story. And then, let's go to what your mom said here. What was this wisdom, right? And then we can get into this stuff and how you've changed, how you've directed your focus towards the future. Okay, you're talking about your clubs and leadership roles. Be careful here. Try not to like repeat everything that's on your CV. Remember that they already have a list of activities. They already have a CV, like they already have a lot of information. Try not to tell them things they already know. Like this stuff here, I would say, like try to think about how this stuff affected you, right? Not just about your grades improving, right? And I feel like you're doing the same thing here. You're listing other activities and other achievements, which is, it's okay to talk about those things, but try to think about how they changed you, right? What did you, why was joining the computer club such a big deal for you? Why was the cricket club a big deal for you or the math club a big deal for you? Like maybe pick one of those and explain how that was a way for you to become more focused or become more engaged with your work in school, right? So I feel like you, you're charting the trajectory a lot. Here you're showing kind of like year by year, how you evolved and how your grades were affected. But I think that you should also see, like here you say, that's actually exactly what I was gonna say. My future shouldn't be solely determined by my high school grades, right? So let's stop focusing on them. Let's stop talking about them in your essay so much. You know, in fact, I would bring less attention to those. If that's not what you, if you want them to focus on other aspects of you, then let's do that. Let's focus on those other aspects, right? I think that a lot of this essay has some interesting ideas, but I think that right now you focus too much on, like kind of giving us a linear progression, list of activities, a list of how your grades improved. And it's good that you show that improvement, but remember they'll see that also on your transcripts. They're gonna see that in your activities. So like what we need to do, I think is go back to this confrontation of failure. How do you still feel about failure? How do you feel about those difficult moments? How, what was your mom's advice? How have you learned to overcome setbacks? That is where I think the money is on this essay. So I would encourage you to focus it more on that. I think the second half here feels like a lot of just listing things that you've done and how your grades improved. And it's good that you had that improvement, but again, they can see a lot of these things through your transcripts through other means, right? Maharshi, if you want to go, if you want me to take a look at it, you can go to prepwithscore.com and there's a WhatsApp link. And if you go to that WhatsApp link, you'll get my WhatsApp here. And you could send it to me just like Subin did and I'll give you a review because I like doing these. I like doing these reviews. Yeah, I think a common mistake that I see is people trying to like recite their CVs or trying to like bring up all their achievements. And it's okay. Like it's good to, I understand you want them to understand those things about yourself, but also remember this is the one space where you can talk about anything you want. This is the only space in the entire application where you can say whatever you want. So my advice is say something that you really, personally want to say, get your word out there and really like remember if they can see it somewhere else, it's probably not necessary to include it here. Try to think about things that they won't see anywhere else. Going back to my story here, like they're never going to know about my house fire unless I tell them about this. They're never going to know why I don't care about possessions unless I tell them this. They're never going to know why I'm uncomfortable with adversity, why I feel I can take on any challenge without this. They won't understand why I try to appreciate even difficult situations or why I've had a difficult situation coming into college. Like everything I've given in this essay is something they could not get somewhere else. And so that is something that I think you want to do. Ask yourself, can they find this information somewhere else in my application? Am I adding things here in this essay that they will not be able to see anywhere else? Am I giving them something new? That's important. Pratap, your question. Does changing for schools in four years affect your chances? Yes and no. It depends a little bit. Like first of all, I think it does have a negative impact for recommendation letters because recommendation letters are best when a teacher knows you really well. So if you've made really good relationships with your teachers in your last school, that's great. If not, that could be a bit of a negative. However, they generally are gonna get your full transcript because when you transfer schools, they send your grades to the next school. So the final school will submit everything. So it's not gonna really be a big problem. It's just gonna be maybe difficult to get some good letters of recommendation unless you have a good relationship with those teachers from this year. I know for a fact that my best letters as a teacher, the best letters I've written are for people who I knew for a while, for a couple of years. So that's something to think about. So yeah, that's what I think, Subin. I wouldn't write about your GPA and how that evolved. I would just be focusing on, okay, how did your mindset change in eighth grade? And what was the catalyst for that change? Write your mom's advice, and then you can summarize very quickly that you got into a bunch of clubs and you saw your GPA improve. But then think to the future. How are you gonna apply the same principles to college? How are you going to apply your mentality of like, okay, failure, I can overcome it, I can deal with it. I know that I'll probably have some failures later in life too, but I know I can get through it. That's what you wanna do. Learn towards the future. Don't just tell us everything you've done, right? Try to think forward. Albert Einstein, recommendations. I am gonna do a bit on letters of recommendations soon. I don't know about tomorrow, but soon. I was gonna share some letters that I've written with you so you could see them and just some things that I encourage teachers to do as well. I kinda wanted to make it as a sort of a tutorial for teachers as well. So yeah, I am gonna make some stuff about letters of recommendations soon. Can you make fictional stories while you're applying Black Panthero? Good question. Yes, you can, to an extent. Keep in mind that like, if your story is fake, you run the risk of sounding fake. You sound like you're making it up. It may sound unrealistic. Can you write it in a way that sounds legitimately real? My personal opinion is that the truth is stranger than fiction and real life stories are going to be better. But you could also exaggerate some details. You can have a little bit of fun. Mark Twain always said, don't let facts get in the way of a good story. So I would encourage you to think about maybe how you could make your story a little more interesting or maybe move the order of events around but try to keep it faithful to real life. If somebody asks you about that situation in an interview or something or it comes up later in your application process, like you don't wanna feel weird about that in that situation. I generally don't encourage people to just make something up. I think you should try to find some real experience in life that really matters. But you can still have some fun with the details. My harsh, all right. You said you sent it over. Let me take a look. I think this is you, the tangled narratives of solitary identity. You guys have some interesting titles. I've never been much of a title guy. All right, hang on. Let me open this over here. Let's go ahead and put this over here. Yeah. All right, let's see. You sent me a nice PDF. Okay, all right, all right. Let's take a look at my harshest work. Well, I check other persons, you know what, man? Yeah, I'm not in a hurry. I got time. I'm just having fun with you guys. I enjoy doing this stuff. I like checking essays. All right, let's take a look at this. Ooh, we start out with a very nice description. Weathered wooden door to my cell. My cell, like you're in prison. That's pretty bold, okay? I'll just put a single tube light. Disco ball to go straight. That's kind of good. I like that. Iron rods in case the window. Even prisoners deserve a calming aesthetic. Okay. Yeah. This is interesting. Quick initial impressions. I would just say, don't be afraid to shorten some of these. Like, I like this comparison worse than a rodeo bull ride, but that is pretty good. But I'm noticing a pattern of like, you know, throwing the comparisons after, right? Erie Creek, they could give any haunted house to run for its money. Disco ball to ghost rave. Or send a rodeo bull ride. Don't be like, careful not to fall into a super repetitive sentence pattern because that can get predictable and can feel a little bit boring sometimes. I felt like this one was like one too much. I probably would have just said, you know, old stiff bed in the corner. Like just leave it there. All right, so I'm kind of curious. Isaac, yeah, prepwithscore.com. Go to the WhatsApp link, send it over. I'll take a look at it with you. But yeah, this is interesting. Okay, so box of smuggled goodies. A box with pen drives and hard drives. Scratch games. Huh, okay. Yeah, beefy hard drive. All right, key chains for flameless cigar lighters. It's good that I'm not talking as much. I'm still reading. I'm still curious. The ultimate pen stand. So, down-cycle morphology. All right, so this is pretty interesting. Maharsha, I'll give you credit. Like this is a different approach. I definitely like appreciate what you're doing here. I think that this does leave me asking some questions, right? And that's not a bad thing. I like that you describe this room as a cell and as yourself as a prisoner, which leaves me wondering a little bit of why you feel that way. Like I kind of do wish that was developed a little more because I'm like, all right, you've only described this room to me. I'm assuming the cell is your bedroom. I could be wrong, but that's what I'm taking from it, right? And I think it's interesting that like you've described this space really well and you've added some details about you through the things that you're describing, which is kind of similar to what I was doing. I think that's cool. Like this idea of mentoring kids in computer science, right? Having pen drives from them so that you could review their games. Like that seems really neat. And I think it's cool that you've included that. Like that's a really good way. See, this is like, this is a good learning opportunity for everybody. The last thing that we looked at, right? And I'm not trying to pick on you, Subin, but just since we're in the process of comparison, you recited some activities. Here's a good example of how an activity is incorporated into the story, right? Like, so I know that you mentor kids in computer science, Maharshi. I don't know more about that, but that's okay. I know that you do it because you've decided to include this detail that fits with the setting. And I think that's a good way to do that, right? Now, I guess the issue that I have with this at this point is that like, the cell prisoner vibe feels like it needs a conclusion. It feels like it needs like a, do you get out of the cell? Are you trapped in the cell? Do you choose to stay in the cell? Like, I kind of want some closure on that idea because I'm confused a little bit. And that confusion is good because it makes me want to keep reading. But then at the end, I want to feel satisfied. I want to feel like, okay, I get it now. I know exactly where this is going. And like, I'm curious if the cell idea is something that you could evolve a little more, right? Like, this idea of you being trapped in a cell is interesting to me, right? I want to know though, like, why do you feel that way? Or how do you see that affecting you in the future maybe? Like, are you gonna leave your cell and go to college? Are you gonna like leave this environment? What happens when you leave, right? Have you not had many experiences outside of your personal space, you know? So I guess I have some unanswered questions about that which is something I would like to maybe know more about. I think it's cool that you tied in like your initial interest in pathology, how you got into this stuff and even doing research. Like, I think it's cool that you've managed to incorporate your personal experiences through this story. That's very cool. And I like the idea that these objects and the way that this room is laid out describe who you are as a person. Like, I do get a good idea, but I get a bit of a mysterious idea of you. And I think that the cell prisoner thing is adding to that depressing vibe that you're talking about. And I don't know, it's weird. It's interesting, it's interesting, but it is kind of weird, that aspect of it. I feel like maybe, you know, there could be like some, since you've built this whole thing about your room, I think it would be cool to have a paragraph of like personal reflections at the end where it's like maybe thinking about what it means to leave this room behind, to leave this space and go into a new space. And like, how are you gonna feel about that? Because I think that's something important here. But I find this really interesting, actually, I do. Like, I think there's a lot of cool ideas here. And I think it's really well written. You could shorten some words here and there to make some extra space for that, you know? I think there's certain phrases, like especially in some of these paragraphs, like you have some phrases that are maybe a little bit lengthy, like for example, it's my lifeline. You could just say my lifeline to the outside world, right? And I would even maybe take out the open window metaphor because you kind of already described the fact that there's a window there. Like you gave me some details about that before. So there's little things there where you could cut some extra stuff. I like this little exclamation of yours. I would actually end the paragraph on that. Like I think I would take out this line because it kind of undermines it when you say you can't remember which thumb. Like if you can't remember, then it might not have been that significant. So that's something I would probably kill. What else? Yeah. Like it's also a teeny bit, sorry, a teeny bit suss that you have everything on hard drives. Like you're a hack or something. Yeah. So I would maybe try to shorten up a little bit of that first paragraph. Maybe trim down a couple of descriptions or a couple of these little metaphors or similes that you do. I would try to maybe look for ways to just shorten up some of these sentences and that would give you some extra space to really like finish off that idea of what this cell is and where you're gonna go after that because I guess one of the things that I would read from this is like, okay, this person feels trapped in this space because they're describing it this way. So how are they gonna feel when they get out of that space? How are they gonna be able to adapt to a new space? Like that's something that I would be concerned about. I think it's solid. I think I'm gonna put it in about an eight out of 10 right now. I like this a lot. Like I think there's a lot of good work in here. It's interesting. It's creative, it's different. It's got a nice structure. I think that maybe just needs to be a little bit less description of the room and a little bit more of your own personal reflection so that it's really clear what you wanna say at the end of this because it still feels like there's some unanswered questions that leave me feeling a little bit like undecided by the end of it. I'm not 100% sure what to make of this, okay? Isaac hitting me up. I also got, all right, assets is here. Let's crack yours open. All right, there's about 900 words. Okay, my man's got more than we were asking for. Let's take a look, see here and then I'll get to yours, Isaac. Well, we'll get to yours in a second. All right, let's take a look at this here. So this is fun, I like this. All right, I like him, no one's in comfort. Always been an inspiration. Doing the family member, okay. All right, all right. So we get a nice strong opening paragraph describing your brother's difficulties and how you relate to him. I think that sets it up pretty well here. Now, okay, wasn't feeling good but he was kind of shy. Yeah, switching to the computer science stuff. Okay, so I think that there's some stuff here that we can cut out. Like I can give you some tips on what to cut out here, asset like. So the couple of things that I want you to think about. One of the good rules is like, remember to try to kill anything that might be obvious. So for example, he began to recover. He was discharged from the hospital. I was glad because it became possible to vote more time. This is one of those things that's like, obvious to the reader. Obviously you would be happy about this situation. Obviously it would mean that you get to spend more time together. Like I would say that these details here are not as necessary because I can infer those things, right? And this here is kind of a general summary paragraph. So I don't know that we necessarily need to mention this idea of him being discharged from the hospital and then a few months later. Like I think it's understood that he would be out of the hospital at some point based on what you have told me up here, right? Like if he's able to move around on crutches then he's probably out of the hospital. So I would jump into maybe this situation, right? This idea of inviting friends over for my birthday, seeing your brother, looking uncomfortable and then trying to help him overcome that discomfort, right? And what I think is the one thing here though is it kind of gets away from like, there's a mix where between you and your brother, you and your brother, right? So you see yourself having the same issues, right? And then you transition to yourself but it doesn't actually tell us like here where what happens with your brother. Now you talk about it here, right? So it kind of goes back and forth between like you and your brother and you and your brother. And I think that you should try to adjust your structure a little bit. Like think about which direction do you want to take this? Do you want to go from your perspective of how you evolved as a person and how you maybe taught those things to your brother and supported your brother and in the way, along the way, learned more about yourself? Or do you want to do it more like, let's look at your brother's story and see what you learned from his actions, from his ability to overcome things, you know? I feel like there's a mix of things here. We're halfway between you and your brother and I think you need to keep the focus on yourself. So like here's starting a paragraph where you're talking about Alec and becoming friends with somebody and describing all these things. I understand that you have gained something from your brother and that you are amazed by his efforts to make relationships and connections. And I understand that. I think that's good to share, right? But then I want to think about how you have applied that, right? And I think that you should try to focus a little bit more on yourself in this essay. So I feel like this last part is really good because I like that you're talking about yourself more. You're admiring his path that he's following you and this idea about you even appreciating your brother more. Like this is great. This is a really good, I think this is a really good way to wrap it up. But I think that this line right here kind of summarizes your essay. Our roles as teacher and student intertwined seamlessly. Your story and your brother's story are difficult to separate in this essay and I want to hear more of yours, right? I want to see a little bit less focus on all the things that happened with your brother and I want to see a little more focus on how you grew as a result of helping your brother, you grew as a result of observing your brother, right? How can we keep the focus a little bit more on you? Because it kind of goes back and forth and it's a little difficult to like follow necessarily, which parts are focused on you and which ones aren't, I would say. So that's something to keep in mind. A good strategy sometimes is to highlight things based on whether they're about you or not, okay? So like, if I were to start doing that with your first paragraph, right? So like, this stuff is very much about you, right? This stuff is the most like about you in this first paragraph, right? We have some descriptions of him, but then he's an inspiration to you, right? You have information about him and his challenges and then some information about you. So I want you to think about doing that over and over, like highlighting the stuff that is directly related to you kind of helps you to see just how much is actually about you. Like if I look at this paragraph, this is the only line that's really about you. And yet, as I said, this is also a line that we don't need that much because it's kind of obvious. So this is something to think about, you know? Right? Like this stuff is about you, right? But in order to get to this much text about you, we have to set up a lot more about your brother. So I'm seeing more, we need more focus on you. That would be my suggestion here, okay? Because as I'm highlighting this, I'm seeing a lot of text that isn't focused on you so much. It's focused more on your brother and your brother's reactions to situations. And while it's good to, again, use a family member as an inspiration, sure. But like, I want to synthesize the stuff about the family member as much as possible. I want to stay focused on myself. It's a personal essay. Regarding that question about the August DSET series, I'm not planning on making a bunch more live stream videos for digital SAT. Honestly, and I'll be real with you guys, two things. One, your SAT is not that important. I think you still are giving it way too much importance. Second thing is that, I don't have really anything new to say. If I were to do a whole other series, it would be basically the same thing as I already uploaded. So you have a really good program that you can follow. You have my materials, like, use that stuff. I don't really have anything new to add. I dissected the test, broke it down into all the question types, made videos about each one, did those seven live streams so that you can get some more ideas. I did a couple Q and A. I do want to do that. I do want to do a Q and A session before the next test because I like doing those with you so I can help you resolve any last-minute questions. But as far as SAT content, it's something I don't understand why other channels, I understand why they do it, because it gets views. But it's like, there's nothing more you can say after a certain point. Three or four months of content is more than enough for the SAT. The test doesn't change that much. It doesn't evolve that much. It's the same test pretty much every time. So I don't really see it being necessary to make a whole bunch more SAT content, especially when we have things like this that we need to focus on, okay? All right, let me see. Isaac, I'm gonna pull up yours. Let's check out what you got. All right, enable that. Okay, we're starting out with pottery. Okay, a god-like hobby. That's actually, that's a pretty interesting start. About rebellion, okay. I watched TV, but... This is interesting. All right, you have my attention, Isaac. I like that pottery is like an act of rebellion that pottery was a way to get away from the TV and computer screen. This is kind of a good approach. Let's consider, yeah, kind of is. But that's okay. You know, I always find this funny, this argument, because if you like girls, then that's a really good strategy. Like if I was a parent of a kid and the kid liked girls, I'd be like, yeah, dude, go do pottery. Like you're gonna definitely make a girlfriend. Okay. I like your paragraph length, by the way. These short paragraphs are easy to read. I like them. God, just introverted. Okay, huh. That's kind of cool. I made a friend through pottery, started selling stuff, yeah, making things for your family. Careful with your spacing. I know this is a draft, but you know, just one thing you guys should all do, by the way, a good strategy, control F and type two spaces. If you do a control F and you type two spaces, it will highlight any situations where you have a double space, okay? And that's like a really good strategy for finding those very quickly before you're done reviewing your essay. Something I recommend, you know? So that's something you can do to kind of spot those quickly. I like this. I think you should give an example of one of these funny things. What's something that you programmed it to say? I think that would be kind of funny. Okay, this is interesting. I think this is like a big takeaway. This is a big lesson. This idea of perfection not being necessary. And I thought about this when you talked about this part about taking the faults. I think you could also even maybe, I don't know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but like, it's funny, I happen to have two essay experts on my team at SCORE who are taking pottery classes and we were talking about this, so that's why I'm thinking about it. Like, could you talk about how those mistakes became part of the finished piece and how you maybe learned to accept those mistakes and how you like, you still found beauty in those works that you made despite the mistakes. This could be a good place for you to touch on that idea of perfection. Like where you sort of do it when you talk about this pressure to outdo yourself, but then this idea of permitting mistakes and maybe getting a new understanding of mistakes. And that would be maybe a good place to go into this idea, you know? And I think that that could be a good strategy. This section here about asking for help is not that well connected to this whole idea of pottery. I think that you could tie it back to the pottery idea, maybe like having to learn from someone who was more experienced, making those mistakes, realizing that you needed help, also helped you to ask for help in other areas, you know? Yeah, but I think this is interesting. This is a cool, like, this is a cool essay that focuses on how this one seemingly unusual activity turned into a lot of lessons for you. And I like that a lot. I think that gives a really good understanding as to how you've changed and what you've learned. And I like that a lot. I think it's cool that you've strengthened relationships and learned to enjoy learning and learned that you can be creative and started applying your lessons from pottery to other things. Like, I think this is really good. I would stick with that. I think the one thing I would tell you is that you should just try to diversify the openings of your paragraphs a little bit more because there's a lot of them that start out with like this hobby, pottery, you know, my choice of pottery, started pottery. Like, try to maybe diversify those paragraph openings a little bit more so that it doesn't just feel like we're hitting the same sort of rhythm. But I like this. I think this is interesting. I think that you have, this could also, I would encourage you to maybe try another essay for your personal statement just to have an alternative because this could be a great set of ideas for an extracurricular activity essay. Like almost, you know, at some point they're gonna ask you to, you know, write about some extracurricular activities or things that you've done and a lot of times those supplemental essays focus on those activities and this could be great content for one of those essays. And it might be better to use it there and maybe look at some other ideas for your personal statement. Having said that, I really like this and I don't think that there's anything wrong with this in terms of like using it for a personal statement. I think it does a good job of transmitting information about you and your lessons of pottery and like, I find it interesting that pottery would have had this impact on you, you know? I think that's cool. This is pretty solid. Appreciate it. Let me see here, all right. Abhinav says he sent his thing over and let me, it's Monday so I'm getting like, every Monday our team sends messages to like all their counseling cases and so there's a million messages that I gotta go through. I kinda hate doing it. Like I have 113 unread messages right now so give me a second. Cause that's what we do on Mondays. We send messages to all the people in counseling and we say, hey, don't forget to do this stuff. And so that's the thing. All right, hang on, remember the good old cherished, all right, I think this is you. The good old cherished memories of childhood. Let's go ahead and drop this into a word doc here. Oof, all right, I already have some thoughts. Much love from Kenya, right back at you, man. Thanks for checking out the show and being here, I appreciate it. All right, so we're at 803 on this one. All right, Abhinav, we got, so we got some things we can cut down. We can break out the chainsaw but let's take a look at it here. Good old cherished memories of childhood. Constructing a staircase to the moon. Okay, flat earth, I like to dig at the flat earthers. Okay, cool, kind of a nice little intro to where your passion is. Your passion for astronomy, all right. Be an astronaut and go to the moon. An idol, a role model, all right. I'm curious what that's gonna be. Let's see here. Going to go to pressure and family trials. Oh, very insist, that's unfortunate. All right, he's lost a little, jeez, okay. Things got bad, all right. Bhagavad Gita, okay. Interesting, okay, see. Okay, got a nice telescope. That's cool. I like the mosquito bites detail. I like the little side details in here. There's good little side details in here. Like, this is a nice little, you know, a nice little funny little thing. Like, you clearly spent up all night playing with this thing and now you wake up with mosquito bites. Like, yeah, that's a pretty good detail. I like it. Wow, thinking forward. I was gonna say, I'm like, I don't think Mars has rings, then you explained it. I was like, okay, this is interesting. All right, permanent tattoo of satellite. Whoa, this is actually, dang, dude. This is on your skin? This is, that's actually a ballsy move. Like, tattooing that. That's commitment. That's, I have respect for this. I would almost open my essay with this. I think this would be a really, really good like, opening actually. Like, tell me about this tattoo and start with this. And like, because that's an interesting take. Honestly, I think this, this is like, whenever I stop and find a moment in an essay that I think is like the big moment for me, like this is it. I don't know if you felt that, but for me, like, anybody willing to tattoo something on their body has a good reason to do so most of the time and I've never had a tattoo. There are things that I value enough that I would get them tattooed, but I just haven't been able to like, bring myself to do it. But I think that the idea of you having a tattoo of this scene is extremely cool. And you could start with this and explain that this is something that's supposed to happen this far down the road and that, you know, you would love to be there for it. And this is like why you're interested in astronomy and how you want to be very like dedicated to this. I think that would be an interesting, yeah, dude, that's commitment, like 100%. I think that this is interesting this way. You might want to try that. So now, okay, we jumped to the end here of like, college where you can learn, all right, you want to learn more about this stuff? Sure, I should kind of limit myself. Okay, you get some good little, where was that, what was that reference to? I missed that, that last little reference threw me off. This here, did I miss something in here that I should have seen? I don't remember you saying that before. Yeah, I'm not sure what that was. That threw me off. I don't know if that was supposed to be there or not, but that threw me off. So I think what you've got here is, you've got a really, really cool personal thing here that you could start with. I would actually try starting with this. I would just go open with this, tell me about your tattoo, tell me about why you got it, and like, then let's think about those future things that you want to do. And this paragraph I think is the only part where I'm not so sure about whether this belongs. I realize that you've, you touch on a lot of difficult situations, and at the same time, they're not that developed throughout the rest of this essay. So I would consider maybe removing some of this stuff because if you did, it would bring your word count down a lot. And, you know, I also think there's some back story to this that you don't actually need. Like, you could skip out on this stuff about the origin of the name KC, you could just go straight to this biography, right? And I guess I would rather know what you saw in the biography that inspired you than have all of this back story leading up to the inspiration, okay? So that might be good. Now, okay, you said this guy's an Indian astronomer. Careful with like deep references like that because I didn't get it to be honest, and I would imagine there's probably gonna be some people that read that wouldn't get it either. And at the end of an essay, I wanna finish strong. I don't wanna like maybe introduce something that could be confusing or that could throw me off at the end, you know? I appreciate what you're trying to do with that then. Like if you're trying to reference somebody else who's in that field that you, you know, aim to work in. But I think that also it's probably gonna go over the heads of most admissions officers. So I would consider just if you can contextualize it a teeny bit or maybe leave it out because I feel like it's also not adding much here. Like you could just say I refuse to live it myself and blame the circumstances and be important. Like, you know, I don't care about the circumstances. I don't care that I've had disadvantages. Like I can just go through it. I'm gonna embrace that knowledge. But I like this a lot. I think it's interesting. I definitely think that your tattoo is probably where you should start this story. And I think you could flash back to this. You could open with the tattoo and cut back to this idea of like wanting to build a staircase to the moon. And even though it was like impossible to do physically, you've had this interest ever since in space and getting to space and being involved in it. And that tattoo is a symbol of that interest and your dedication to the topic. And I think that'd be very cool. But yeah, if you wanna go to prepwiscore.com hit the WhatsApp link. I can check it out for you. You can send it to me on WhatsApp and I'll give it a look here. I got a few more minutes I can do. And then I gotta go back to watching my stock portfolio drop. So, and people, my people need me. My people are asking me for work things. I gotta get back to doing my job pretty soon. But yeah, I could check one more here for you guys. I like doing this. I wanna do more of these actually. I wanna do more where I write some other topics. I have other ideas that I would like to write about. So, I could totally do that another day. And I wanna do some, I'm gonna make a video about the diversity essays. We need to talk about those, cause those are new. And also just a little bit about how international students have been affected by the Supreme Court decision to eliminate affirmative action. That's something that I've, well, talked about before on the channel, but something that I think we need to talk about again, because I called it, I knew that it would, I knew that Harvard was gonna lose. So that was not a surprise to me, but there were also some things that I didn't expect out of that ruling and some things that universities are doing that I think are gonna impact you guys this year and a lot more for next year. If anybody is applying in 2024, they're gonna see some big changes to applications, I think. So we need to start looking at that. But for those people applying this year to go into 2024, you're not gonna see huge changes. You're gonna notice two main things on supplemental essays. One is an increased focus on diversity as a topic and also you're gonna see shorter word counts, which is kind of a good thing, I think. We're gonna see shorter word counts, so that's nice. A module two of English, man, look, like the hard, if you're getting the hard module, that's a good sign. Just understand that you need to do the same strategies for the same types of questions. Like your strategy for punctuation should be the same. Your strategies for the supporting claims questions should be the same. Like the vocabulary gets harder, the text gets longer, the questions get longer, the answers get longer. But the underlying strategy doesn't change. So what you have to do is just get better at executing that strategy of reading only what you need. Even on the hard questions, you can just read what you need and you'll be okay. All right, that's how I got your essay here. Let's go, the rebirth of strength. It's funny, I've never made titles. You guys like titles. Nothing wrong with titles, by the way. I've never been one for titles on my essays. It's kind of a personal preference, I guess. All right, let's take a look, see you at this thing. All right. Okay, go to this figure, transcend to. All right, real quick, pro tip for everybody. This right here, these are examples of what we sometimes call filter words and you can often delete these. These words actually only detract from your writing because instead of saying its presence transcended the confines of the glass, like instead of just saying it happened, I'm saying it seemed to. So it feels less impactful. You can often cut these words out and get more impact out of your sentences. Bulging leaves and fleshing agent, spirited struggle with the stretching fabric. I feel like I'm playing against God's skin noble and like Elden Ring, arms and thighs. Ooh, okay, big boy, I got you. I was there, I was a fat kid in school. So, okay, I had a lot of issues because of it. One particular day, remarkable shift. Destroying keyboards with a mere touch. I mean, that was me, man. That was me throughout all high school, dude. I would go, I still did that as a teacher. I would, like when it was chicken strips day at the schools that I worked at, kids didn't eat all their chicken strips. I would go around and steal their unused chicken strips. I was like, that's mine now. I hate wasting food. You can shape your life the way you want it to be or the master of your destiny. Don't forget to capitalize people's speech. Helps me read it. Okay, so you got some good advice from the doctor. All right, so something I'm seeing here, and I think I saw this similarly with another one we looked at, like a little too much in the way of metaphor and like the comparisons. Those dramatic comparisons can be good, but you don't wanna overdo it, okay? Cause it slows down the pacing and there's times where you wanna speed up, right? So like here, for example, you talk about the Chris Ling Dove's swimming pool. This is good. You've already added a little descriptive phrase to the swimming pool. That's fine, right? But then you're adding this sort of metaphorical thing of what the water did to you, right? I would probably just, let's speed this up. Let's think about this as like a training montage in a movie where the character is gonna go through their training and come out better. And so I would try to write shorter, faster sentences cause I wanna increase the tempo. I wanna increase the pace. So like shorter sentences give that feeling of boom, boom, boom, we're moving fast, right? Like instead of saying that, you know, dumbbells weight symbolize the burdens, like we don't need the symbolism right now. Let's go to the gym. Let's sweat. Let's talk about you, you know, let's focus on those scenes. Drops of sweat hitting the map below you, dropping the weight and going, ah, like, you know, that's how we show that rebirth. That's how we show that fresh start, okay? By showing you work in your ass off. So literally. So try to get away from the metaphors and away from the dramatic descriptions when you're trying to get into that stuff. Like when you're trying to show that progress because it slows things down, right? And I think even like the beginning here, this is really well written, right? Like this is really well written, but you keep that drama, right? And so, and you continue to do it throughout this, like the seat, you know, describing the seat, sinking into it. We don't necessarily have to, you know, include that there. We don't need to give the chair that much attention because we're trying to focus on you having this turning point. So keep in mind like those metaphors are great for descriptions when we want settings, when we want to establish a feeling. But as we go through an essay, we're probably gonna want to use less of those so that we can really focus on the action. And this is a great section where you could have action, right? Also, did you say who Anthony was? I don't know that you did. I don't think you did. You said Anthony's mentorship. I don't, oh, okay. The trainer in the gym. Yeah, you say it right here. Yeah, duh. I would phrase this differently. I would just go like my trainer Anthony's mentorship. Like phrase it like that. It's gonna be more direct, right? And then, yeah. So like, again, same thing here. You're making metaphors out of every single item in here. So I would like, as I'm gonna stand it down, I would do, like you could do something different here. For example, like, I'm just gonna have some fun with this. Let's imagine September, right? 120 kilos. And then like October, 110 kilos. You could do something like this. You could do like something like this to really show me that progress really, really fast in as few words as possible until we get to this major victory folded at this much, right? Like, you could do something like this. You don't have to necessarily make everything a flowery, pretty sentence, okay? And then this idea of fusing your computer science skills is interesting. I'm kind of curious how that worked and maybe how many other people you've helped. I don't know if you're gonna describe this in other places of your application, but it's interesting to me. And, okay, switch to this. You wanna help other people come out of their cycle of poverty, that's good. All right. Okay, and I think this is good. This idea of this final takeaway of like, true fulfillment lies not completing pleasures, but in the enduring rewards of perseverance and self-development, self-improvement. I agree. I think that's a good thing. Yeah. I like this. I think this is a good journey story. I think that you could, again, try to think about your pacing, right? Try to jump forward a little bit more and really let's imagine this like a training montage. Let's get to those results. And then I think here, like this part here where you talk about encouraging others and helping other people, right? It does feel a little disconnected here when you talk about somebody who is just having economic issues. Like it kind of disconnects from your main idea here of like being an inspiration, especially with the health aspect. And fitness aspect, like this part gets a little distinct. It feels a little disconnected. So that might be something that you could do differently. But I think that you have a cool idea for an essay. And I think that you have good experiences in here to build on. Like you've got, you go from this person to somebody else. And I think that starting out with this this negative depiction, right? You may wanna consider starting out with a positive one from today. And then going and saying it wasn't always like this or it took a lot of work to get here. Because I like to open on more positive notes sometimes if possible, like, you know, if you can, cause this is a really strong negative image. And it's, I understand like what you're setting up here, right? But you could also maybe change the order of things cause right now it's very linear. It's very start to finish. And I think it's always good to change up your timeline. So can you add something that is like, you know, maybe from the future, maybe a positive image. And then we cut back to how you felt how many months before. Help me also establish that timeline. How long did this whole process take? That was a little unclear as I went through. So maybe it's like, there's ways for you to sort of start from the future, jump back to the past, build us up through to see how we get there. And then thinking about the future again in this aspect as you, you know, want to help inspire other people. Incorporate them on BASA trip. Yeah, okay. So you want to think about like econ and CS and how you, I mean, I think your CS thing is touched on here, which is interesting. I guess with the econ stuff, I don't know that I would include it here. Maybe it's not necessary here. Like if it, cause you know, there is such a thing as too much and sometimes you want to stay focused on things. And sometimes you leave out details that you like, but don't fit very well. Cause I feel like this story is like, I think it's interesting how you connected it to computer science. I wasn't expecting that. I liked that. I just think that you don't have a lot of space here to put another connection to another area. And it might be good to just leave that out here. Like you can focus on your passion for helping other people to overcome their issues. And you could develop a little bit more of this idea. Like how did you combine these skills? Because you don't really tell me that. And that's interesting to me. I might want to know a little bit more about that. So think about that. Like if you've got a fitness channel and you've made a little health website and that's how you've combined these things. Like that's really cool. And you could touch on that a little bit here. You could go into a little bit more detail here. I assume you probably have it as like an extracurricular on the application also. So again, try to think about what you can add to the conversation. What, you know, maybe how you came up with the idea or how many people you've seen impacted by that idea or what you hope to do with it in the future. Do you have more goals to combine these two areas that you're passionate about, you know? But yeah, ultimately with 650 words we can't always connect every single thing that we're passionate about, you know? Fidam about your question. Honestly, look, the best thing you can do is practice. And also the other thing is just remember that like, hey, if you're getting 700 and that's about where it is, like that's still really, really good. That's okay. I would also tell you, like again, just focus on what kinds of questions are you having problems with. That's usually the best way to improve your scores is to focus specifically on the things that you need to focus on, right? Like I don't know, like what helps you get over 700 is gonna be different from somebody else and different from me. So it's hard for me to give one piece of advice but that's just some things I think about that. All right, people. So anyway, I think that's gonna be it for today because I got work to do and I got a P. And it's been a lot of fun hanging out with you all and checking out your essays. That was not expecting to do that today but that was fun. And I would love to do more of that in the future by all means, please keep coming back to the channel. I've got more videos coming up about different aspects of the application process. I'm gonna try to get as many of them out between August, September, October as I can because I really want you to be ready to apply by the early deadlines in the United States. I think that's super, super important. So we need to go over some of these other things in your applications. I know that the SAT is important for a lot of you guys but again, remember, it's not that big a deal and I wanna share a quick story before I go on that topic. I was at a conference in Miami which is the International Association for College of Mission Counseling Conference. I went there last year in Albuquerque, made a video about it. Funny enough, ran into a guy who saw that video and that's why he came to the conference this year. I felt special. But there was a moment in that conference where I went to a seminar where they talked about the impacts of the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action and about how that would affect diversity on campus. And one of the people presenting was from UCLA. Now for those of you who don't know, UCLA, all the UCs have a test blind policy. You cannot send SAT or ACT scores. And she was talking about other ways that colleges can build diversity because now that they can't just consider race, they have to look at other ways to get diversity. And there were probably about 200 representatives from different universities in the room when I was there. She said at the end of her speech, she said, if there's one thing you want to do that can make your school more diverse and make it a better place, stop taking the SAT or ACT. She said, go test blind. If there's one thing you do, go test blind and I guarantee it will help you become more diverse. And when she said that, there was a standing ovation in the room. Everyone burst into applause. Everyone was screaming, woo, I mean, I have never seen a stronger display of distaste for the SAT in my life. Like it was hundreds of university reps openly cheering the idea of not taking the SAT. Believe me when I tell you that most of your university reps do not care that much about your SAT score. They would love more people to apply optional. They genuinely, and I was skeptical. I was skeptical all the way up until I looked at the data this year and I've seen the trend, okay? We had about 61% test optional in 2021, about 72% in 2022. This year it's 80% of four year institutions are test optional. Like the trend continues to go in favor of test optional policies and universities really want you to feel comfortable applying test optional. So trust me when I say that like your SAT, should you do it? Yes, you can apply to more schools. You can maybe get more scholarships. There's good reasons to do it. It is not the sole determining factor. It is not the thing that is gonna make or break your application in most cases. I can tell you right now that spending another 15, 20 hours working on your SAT is not going to help you as much as just spending a few more hours on your essays and making those a little better and demonstrating some interest which we're gonna talk about in another video and getting good rec letters from your teachers like all those things will give you more points on your application than a better SAT score. And I can tell you that now and I'm very confident when I say that. So I know that it's one of those things that sometimes we feel a lot of pressure to do but in today, in 2023, it is not as important as it used to be. And we have to focus on other aspects of our application that we can, because it's a holistic process. If it were just as simple as getting a great SAT score, you would see more people getting in with higher SAT scores but that's not the case. We see people getting in optional. We see people getting in with lower scores. We see people getting in on the merits of other things in their application so that's where we need to focus on. So that's just what I wanna share with you. I know that a lot of people have found this channel because of SAT content and I want you to know that I still support you in your SAT journey but it's just one aspect of your application and for me to focus on that so much would be to send the wrong message. I wanna send the right message to you which is that you need to look at other aspects of your application like your essays. So that's the thing that's all like, I mean to tell you what to jump up, get two or three more questions right. Like I don't know what to tell you. It's really just a question of you figuring out what you need to do to improve your SAT. So look at what kind of questions you're getting wrong and practice those but what works, maybe you're having trouble with paired passages, maybe you're having trouble with supporting claims, maybe you're having trouble with data questions. I don't know. So you gotta analyze your own results and figure out what you need to do to improve. That's really the only way. Math Olympia at 130 out of how many people I would ask. If it's out of like thousands of people then yeah. If it's out of like 200 and maybe wouldn't include it, you know, no, you can include group awards Isaac. That's cool. You can have group awards, nothing wrong with that. If you were part of a group and you participated with that group, then that's okay. Yeah, if it's 2000 plus then yeah, 130 sounds pretty good. Go ahead and put that. Nothing wrong with that. Like yeah, that's interesting actually. Yeah, it's all relative, right? Like if it was 250, I'd be like eh, you're below average or not at the top half. If you're 130 out of 2000 plus then that looks pretty good. Make sure you contextualize those things. Yeah, RS, you can, listen, I do have SA review services that involve putting you with SA experts and having them guide you and edit your work, you know, to help you improve it and leaving comments and stuff. I'm always happy to give people a free read, okay? I'll give you a free read anytime you want. If you want me to just read something, give you my opinion. I can do that in five minutes, tell you what I think about it. That's no problem. I got enough time to do that for you. More comprehensive service, we do offer that. It does cost money, but we have a really cool team of people here who can help with that if that's something that you're interested in. And when we do that, we usually work on all the essays, not just one. We usually do it like a package where we help everybody with all the essays they have from all their schools so that we do a good job. But, you know, if you just want someone to take a look at it and tell you what they think, I'm always happy to do that. You can always go to prepwithscore.com and go to the WhatsApp link there and hit us up. And I will usually be right here for that. So feel free to say hi. If I don't get back to you immediately, it's usually just because I'm busy, but I really appreciate your patience. I do try to answer every single person that reaches out and I also have a business to run, which is hard. So forgive me if I don't get back to you immediately, but I promise I do try to get through everybody. If you don't hear back from me in like a few days, send me another message, because maybe somebody else, multiple people use the WhatsApp for scores. So somebody else might have seen it and accidentally clicked it and I could have missed it. Just, you know, I promise I'll try to get to your stuff as soon as I can. So anyway, yeah, Andrew's Bladders is kinda, that is the appropriate place. I drink a lot of coffee and caffeine goes straight through me in the morning. So yeah, I'm gonna log off. Thank you guys so much and yeah, have a great day.