Topic:

In reply to the admission’s essay posted here: www.livejournal.com/community/college_help/450179.html?#cutid1. The topic is: “#1 - If you have participated in any academic enrichment programs, please tell us about your experience and how you have learned from it.”

Grammar:

For as long as I can remember, art has been a part of me.

To write, “X has been a part of me” is both passive, and worse, a cliche.

Drawing is a skill I have always been complimented on so pursuing art as a profession seemed logical.

A comma is needed between “on” and “so.” Again, the sentence is passive, and weak. Why not write, “Becoming a professional artist made sense; people always complimented me on my drawing skills.” It’s punchier, active, and to the point. No wasted words.

My experiences at the 2004 California Institution of the Art’s summer animation program gave me the opportunity to explore my untapped potential and innovative ideas.

Awkward because of wordiness. Choose your words carefully. Also, you may want to capitalize “Summer Animation Program.”

As a successful form of entertainment and as a powerful tool for spreading messages, animation initially seemed like a path to success.

Again, using verbs like “seem” weaken your point–unless that’s the point, which it isn’t. And, delaying the meat of the sentence until its end with such a long introductary clause seems … silly.

However, after having watched dozens of inspiring animation films and producing films of my own during the summer program, animation was something much more than what I initially perceived it as.

Extremely wordy. Replace the progressive preterite “having watched” with the simple progressive “watching.” You could rewrite this, “After watching and producing inspiring films during the summer program, I realized that animation was more than I thought.”

Several films we watched addressed the importance of uniting the community together and inspired me to create art that is meaningful and serves to bring awareness to social issues.

This is a run-on sentence.

Originally my art lacked a purpose other than to obtain a career- but now, I strive to create expressive, meaningful works that convey positive messages.

How many ways can I say, “Idea Bifurcation?” Expressive, meaningful, positive works? Which is it?!

Ultimately, pieces of art to express my concern for and yearn to create a peaceful and united community. In addition, I found my desire to create an art piece to express myself.

Does this make any sense? I can’t even read it. Fix.

General Comments:

Look at what your essay is saying. It reduces down to one short sentence, without loss of content:

A summer art program showed me how deep animation really is.

I don’t feel that you’re telling us anything unique. You’re not even telling us anything insightful. In a broad sense, your problem here is generality. You’ve chosen to approach the question by saying, “Yes, I had a program and it really did enrich me. Really.” I’ll invoke the famous, “Show, don’t tell” criticism here. Don’t tell us you had a good program, show us. Write about the specifics of, say, 7 frames of one animation that blew you away. That will convince us of your passion more than the dry words, “animation is much more than I thought it was.”

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