Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and well-known expert on college admissions, medical school admissions, and graduate school admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into elite institutions.
essay on school problems
The massive effort to desegregate public schools across the United States was a major goal of the Civil Rights Movement. Since the 1930s, lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had strategized to bring local lawsuits to court, arguing that separate was not equal and that every child, regardless of race, deserved a first-class education. These lawsuits were combined into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that outlawed segregation in schools in 1954. But the vast majority of segregated schools were not integrated until many years later. Many interviewees of the Civil Rights History Project recount a long, painful struggle that scarred many students, teachers, and parents.
Julia Matilda Burns describes her experiences as a teacher, parent, and school board member in Holmes County, Mississippi. Her husband was an active civil rights worker and her job as a teacher was threatened when she associated with members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). When her son and other African American children attempted to integrate a school in Tchula in 1965, it was burned down twice. The local white community started their own private white academy, a common plan to evade integration across the South. She continued to teach in a public school and discusses the difficulties rural African American children and young adults face in getting an equal education today.
On the contrary, the goal of this essay is to show admissions officers that you have the intelligence and fortitude to handle any challenges that come your way. After all, college serves as an introduction to adult life, and schools want to know that the students they admit are up to the task.
Students often mistakenly assume they need to have experienced exceptional circumstances like poverty, an abusive parent, or cancer to write a good essay. The truth is that the best topics will allow you to highlight specific personal qualities and share more about who you are. The essay should be less about the challenge itself, and more about how you responded to it.
If you want your overcoming challenges essay to attract attention, aim to break away from more traditional structures. Most of these essays start by describing an unsuccessful attempt at a goal and then explain the steps the writer took to master the challenge.
When writing about past experiences, you may be tempted to spend too much time describing specific people and events. With an Overcoming Challenges essay though, the goal is to focus on your thoughts and feelings.
Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running. When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors.
Overall, this essay is well-done. It demonstrates growth despite failing to meet a goal, which is a unique essay structure. The running metaphor and full-circle intro/ending also elevate the writing in this essay.
If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!
It was surprising for me to find out that my friends, including my best friend, were no longer willing to meet regularly after school. This made me realize that perhaps I failed to recognize the true meaning of these final years. I should state that It became especially evident after talking to my best friend. He told me that he was really concerned because I lacked focus and had no plan for preparing college applications. To be completely honest, he was right; I thought I would be able to arrange everything at the last minute and did not want this to intervene with high school experience too much.
I am glad that I was able to learn from this situation and did not disregard the concerns of my friend. Thinking about it now, after some time has passed, I understand that I was able to change my behavior and attitude towards studying in high school just in time. Currently, I am working harder to gain more knowledge and try to understand which subjects I am most interested in to identify the field of studies I want to pursue in the future.
Now I know that if I have doubts or difficulties, I can talk to people close to me, such as my friends or family, and they will help me find the right solution. Considering this, I can say that since talking to my best friend, I am more focused on choosing the right college, which sometimes becomes frustrating. Although I think that all high school students experience this at some point, I want to be more confident in my choice.
When talking to my classmates, I understood that a lot of them have a clear vision of where they want to be in regards to their career and future job. Hens, most of them already have several options of colleges they want to study in after finishing high school. Moreover, some of them have a family tradition of going to a specific place of choosing a particular career path, which predetermined their choice.
My family, however, is being very supportive in this regard while not pressuring me to decide anything right away. However, since researches such as a study by Leonard et al. indicates high levels of stress among students and a lack of appropriate coping mechanisms that would help them overcome the difficulties, this issue is essential (1026). Most importantly, I think that we do not realize that this stress is affecting our academic results, which can lead to more frustration. The balance of being able to focus on grades and college application while remaining calm is the most crucial thing in high school. While I cannot say that I am successful at it, I try to be more patient and accepting.
Therefore, I think that, although my initial expectation of high school life changed dramatically, this has been a pleasant experience. I learned to take more responsibility for my life and actions. In addition, I started paying more attention to the advice of my friends, family, and teachers. In essence, I learned to behave like an adult, which undoubtedly will help me in the future. Thus, although I still have a lot of important decisions to make, I am more confident in what I do. Once I go to college, I will undoubtedly remember the experiences I have had, and I will make sure that the balance between education and good mental health is my priority.
To sum up, my experience in a high school so far has been both frustrating and joyful at the same time. I genuinely believe that these years will have a significant impact on my future, and I hope that my friends and I will be able to study in the colleges we choose. I think that this experience is valuable for any individual since, in high school, we learn more about adult life while still having a lot of support from family and educators.
Medical schools desire applicants that can effectively manage stress, overcome challenges, and navigate their way through life's curveballs. Successful applicants must prove they can endure the rigors of both medical school and a career as a physician. The secondary application adversity essay is a way for the admissions committee to evaluate your resilience as an applicant. Keep reading for everything you need to know about the adversity essay, including successful essay examples and strategies for how to answer this prompt type, even if you feel you haven't faced adversity.
In addition to writing a diversity essay for medical school, an adversity essay for medical school is one you'll likely have to write when filling out your medical school secondary applications. Although the AMCAS work and activities section includes up to 15 experiences, medical school secondary essays dive deeper into unique applicant characteristics that haven't already been covered. While most schools send out secondary applications to all applicants, some schools are choosier about who they send secondaries to, often screening using MCAT and GPA scores. While there are many medical school secondary essay examples, the adversity secondary essay is among the most common. Typically, in the essay prompt, you'll be asked to discuss a challenging time you experienced as well as how you overcame that challenge.
Adversity prompts often come in the form of an "overcoming challenges" question. These questions ask the applicant about a difficult situation they were faced with, an obstacle they encountered, or a hurdle they had to push past in order to succeed. Check out our blog for a comprehensive list of medical school secondary essays which are sorted by school so you can see which prompts you'll likely receive depending on your chosen school. The following prompt examples fit into the adversity category:
First, you need to make sure you read the prompt thoroughly and understand what the prompt is asking. In some cases, the challenge the admissions committee wants you to discuss is a professional challenge, in other cases, they are looking for a personal challenge. If the med school adversity question should be answered using a particular type of example, it will be specified in the prompt. Secondly, check the word or character count and keep this in mind when structuring your answer. Some prompts may allow for 1000 words while others are limited to only 200 words. These limits must be strictly adhered to, any violation of the limit will be seen as a red flag and will exclude you from progressing further through the admissions process. When answering these prompt types, begin by reflecting on your past experiences, which you likely already did when you wrote your medical school personal statement. Think about a time when you faced a difficult situation. What happened? What were the steps you took to overcome the challenge? What did you learn from the experience? Often, you won't have a lot of available words or characters to answer the question, so you need to make sure your answer is direct and to the point. 2ff7e9595c
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