College application essay

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Hey, ladies and gentlemen. I'm a few months into senior year of high school, figure I'd better get working on them college applications. I'm going to post my essay and see what everyone thinks of it. Constructive criticism would be much appreciated. After all, if there's another applicant who has the same GPA, SATs, extracurriculars, etc. then the quality of the essays will most likely be the deciding factor. I would be remiss to ignore criticism because of my pride.

Anyway, here it is. Names have been censored (but just for this website, not for the actual essay).

"The person who has had the most significant impact on me has been my friend ****. It is no understatement to say that without her I would be an entirely different person. Throughout recent years I’ve become something of a misanthropist and a cynic. I’ve always seen a half empty glass, always looked at the human race with haughty derision. It had been my experience that most people were stupid, callous and collectively irredeemable. From a young age I was taught by my parents that all life is valuable and should be treated with respect. I was raised a vegetarian, and later in life I adopted pacifism. When I started to think critically (around age 13) I realized that everyone around me was constantly doing things that I felt were ethically abhorrent. It made me sick how people could support the meat industry, how people could support war and other forms of violence, and still sleep well at night. I started to develop an intense hatred for humanity. I isolated myself from all forms of human contact beyond what was necessary. My days were spent in school, where I had few friends, and those friendships I had formed were shallow and didn’t extend outside of school. My nights and weekends were spent reading books, playing chess and sleeping. I didn’t care about school, having adopted the nihilist philosophy that nothing mattered in the grand scheme of things. In junior year I met ****. She was everything I wasn’t: socially outgoing, academically successful and, most of all, innocent. She never did anything with malicious intent. I intentionally acted rudely to her for a long time after we first met. Despite my efforts to drive her away, she gradually wormed her way into my heart of stone, singlehandedly softening it. She showed me that people tend to be good, and that those who aren’t generally don’t know any better. **** encouraged me- and, in some cases, practically forced me- to socialize with people. I met her friends, and they soon became my friends, as well. My love of life renewed, I adopted a different approach. I started socializing outside of school with my friends from inside of school. My education suddenly meant a lot more to me than it used to. My career path was uncertain before I met ****, and now it is clear. I’m going to be a physicist, and I’m going to study the universe in all of its beautiful intricacies. I’m going to meet a lot of fantastic people along the way, and I’m always going to be grateful to **** for showing me that. I would like to dedicate this essay to her for pulling me out of the darkness."

Thoughts?

Content wise, I thought it was great; certainly an interesting read and success story that I can personally relate to! I'm not sure how peculiar (or nit-picky) college admissions personnel are but I spied a few omitted commas (first line: "without her, I would") and other little errors (second and third lines "half empty glass ['and' or semi colon] always looked"). Anyway, I bet this is an early draft and the punctuation/etc. corrections are totally unnecessary, in which case, I'd say I highly approve of your admissions essay.

I second that, the content is superb but of course, we all seem to have problems with punctuation, that's just normal and a good reason why you did well in asking for a critique right? I'd just like to point out that if you do fix the little punctuation errors, that'll probably impress admissions a little more, people our age barely use correct grammar and usually bomb on the punctuation. :3

Let's make sure to both get to that next level called college, you on time and me fresh after a gap.

Nitpick seeing the glass half empty is optimistic when you are washing dishes.

Thanks for the replies, guys! I'll make sure to review it for grammatical errors before I submit it. Also, ianorlin, xD I've never thought of it that way before.

Content wise, great.

As for writing style:

You need a better intro. While being direct is nice, I think you need to find a balance between flowery and direct. Just a catchier first sentence would be nice. They know that this is an essay about a person who has had the most significant impact on your life, so you don't need to say that directly, anywhere. That makes your writing sound immature and wastes space.

The fact that you want to be a physicist jumps out of nowhere. You need more on you after her impact, and how you saw more wonder in the world, and from this, I think, you could transition to physics. In general, you need to focus less on "bad you" and more on "good you", since it is "good you" they will want to admit.

In general, longer, less choppy sentences would be nice.