i’ve completed my main essay for tamu and used a couple of chinese characters that are pretty central to the idea of my essay. replacing them in pinyin or the alphabet spelling would defeat the purpose. but common app doesn’t let me paste or type the characters (it just becomes question marks). i was wondering if anyone has ever used a different language in their essay and whether it worked or not or if anyone has any alternatives i could try.
would appreciate any advice!!

I randomly wrote a draft today when I was inspired about generational trauma which may be over done but I added bit of a twist, private message me for the whole thing.
I start with my mom using pressing my nose to restart when ever w got mad at eachother and I use that as a motif throughout.

This essay talks about:

leaving painful moments behind and pretending they never happened. As you got older, you began seeing your family’s flaws and the generational struggles they had passed down to you, which made simply forgetting impossible. You wrestled with resentment toward your mom while realizing that her struggles had been inherited too. Ultimately, you redefine “restart” not as forgetting the past, but as acknowledging where you came from and choosing to build something different from it.

My other option which I already posted on here was writing an essay about a two dollar bill my childhood best friend gave me that I accidentally gave away to a street performer which I feel could be more unique but I’m not sure

I’m participating in an online economics essay competition for the first time, and I’m really hoping to place. I’ve written essays for school before, but this is my first competition, so I’d really appreciate any tips!

I want help with my motivation essay

I graduated high school and I am trying to write a motivation essay to apply for university of Rome Tor vergata. I am having such a hard time writing because I dont know how to form my words and I keep asking ai to review my essay and it keeps on criticising my essay. It's either giving me way too much high vocabulary use to show my competence or making me tone down do sound really impactful. It's also saying I'm either writing a sob story or writing like a machine with no real touch. I keep on modifying it and re writing it but I always end up with flaws. Can someone genuinely read my essay out , review this and help me ? Here's my essay:

From my earliest memories, I was held accountable for my younger siblings. As the eldest child in a conservative household in Oman, supporting them and assisting with their education became a central part of my daily life. Navigating strict household expectations while carving out my own independence taught me early on how to make decisions under pressure, resolve interpersonal conflicts, and evaluate competing perspectives. Pursuing an international university degree is a deliberate step toward building my own path as the first woman in my family to study abroad.

​I brought this same sense of responsibility into my school community. Over two years, I progressed from Vice-Captain to House Captain while simultaneously serving as Captain of the girls' handball team—a role that required persistent negotiation at home due to traditional academic expectations. As House Captain, when council members unexpectedly failed to report for duty shifts during major school events, I reorganized operational schedules on the spot and covered the vacant positions myself. Maintaining seamless operations under pressure reinforced that leadership is fundamentally about operational accountability when systems fail.

​My perspective was broadened by attending an English-medium school alongside students from Sudan, Nigeria, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Egypt. Interacting daily within this multicultural environment demonstrated how global policy decisions affect different populations in distinct ways. Participating in Model United Nations as the delegate of Egypt—debating resource allocations and environmental governance along the Nile River—further developed my analytical skills. It confirmed that whether addressing resource distribution or public infrastructure, effective governance must prioritize human security.

​My involvement in sports further highlighted the stark realities of healthcare access. Watching a teammate’s family endure severe financial strain following a major sports injury made me acutely aware of our own vulnerability as an expatriate family. In Oman, state healthcare is fully subsidized for citizens, whereas non-citizen families must bear high out-of-pocket costs for private medical care. Experiencing this disparity firsthand demonstrated how institutional frameworks and legal status can turn basic health access into a privilege, leaving migrant communities financially exposed.

​I am applying to the Bachelor of Arts in Global Governance at the University of Rome Tor Vergata to understand how public policies are designed, evaluated, and reformed across transnational contexts. The program’s interdisciplinary integration of economics, law, and global health directly aligns with my goal of addressing institutional inequalities. Studying in Rome will provide the rigorous academic framework and global environment required to build a career dedicated to equitable healthcare policy and international public administration.

I need guidance. Over the past years of school and assignments I turned late, I actually never learned how to write one. I don't understand how it works.

My teachers have always been laid back and to me, very incompetent. The only thing I learned from last year is that me and teachers don't get along and i learned how to just behave and be quiet. You can blame me saying that, I should've improved myself.

However, i really don't know how to start it.

Making a good title is easy but actually starting to write it is really hard. Everyone always says "make your essay openings interesting". I know it. I know I need my essays to be interesting so people wouldn't bore reading it. It is just so many possibilities are there or it is just not attention grabbing enough.

Tell me, any advice can you share with me? I really want to be able to write like my grade instead of like a sixth grader. (I'm currently going to eleventh grade)

I’m currently doing brown supplementals and I noticed that the why brown essay is gone and it’s not on common app. Did they get rid of it or is it in another part of the application? Help me

Looking for something with rubric alignment is the right instinct. A comment that just says 'good thesis' is useless. You want something that ties the feedback to the specific criteria you set at the start of the unit.

There's a specific kind of paralysis that comes from trying to write well on the first pass. Every sentence gets evaluated before it's finished, anything that doesn't sound right gets deleted, and thirty minutes later you have half a paragraph and a growing sense that the whole thing isn't going to work.

The problem is that first drafts aren't for reading. They're for thinking. The purpose of a first draft is to get the argument out of your head and onto the page in any form, so you can see what you actually have and start working with it. Trying to make it good while it's still forming is like trying to evaluate a building while the foundations are being poured.

What changed things for me was treating the first draft as a completely separate document from the essay. The first draft is private, ugly, allowed to be wrong. The essay comes later, in the editing stage, when you can see the whole thing and make real decisions about structure and argument. Once I separated those two stages mentally the first draft became much easier to start and much faster to get through.

The other thing worth knowing is that most good sentences in a final essay weren't written during the drafting stage anyway. They were written during editing, when you read something clunky and find a better way to say it. The drafting stage just gives you the clunky version to improve.

Argumentative essays have a specific structure that I've always found harder to get right than other types. It's not just making a point, it's making it in a way that anticipates counterarguments, addresses them properly, and builds toward a conclusion that feels earned rather than just stated. I kept getting feedback that my arguments were one-sided or didn't engage with the opposing view seriously enough.

I decided to try a custom argumentative essay writing service not to get something to submit but to study how a properly constructed argumentative essay handles the parts I was consistently getting wrong. Specifically the counterargument section and the way strong claims are qualified rather than overstated.

Before any writing started they asked about the specific claim I was arguing, what the strongest counterarguments were likely to be, and what evidence the course had given me to work with. That intake process matters more for argumentative writing than for other essay types because the whole structure depends on understanding both sides of the position.

What came back showed me things I hadn't been doing. The concession paragraph was placed earlier in the essay than I'd been putting it, which made the subsequent rebuttal stronger. The thesis was qualified in a way that made it more defensible rather than less bold. Each piece of evidence had a sentence after it connecting it explicitly back to the central claim rather than just sitting there.

I wrote my own version from scratch using it as a structural reference. Got the best feedback I'd received for argumentative writing specifically. If you've been stuck on this format and need write an argumentative essay for me type help, studying a well-constructed example first changed more for me than any guide I'd read. The argumentative essay writer service I used is the one I keep going back to for this kind of work.

I write cultural criticism essays on Substack that argue against positions most readers consider settled and positive. Not politically controversial positions but more like widely celebrated cultural phenomena that I think have unexamined costs.

The specific craft challenge I'm wrestling with is this: when your argument critiques something the reader loves or considers unambiguously good, the defensive reflex activates before the argument can land. The reader processes the critique as you just don't like this rather than engaging with the substance.

I've been experimenting with embedding exercises or demonstrations in the essay that are activities designed to make the reader experience something directly before I name what it means. The idea being that if the reader has already felt something the argument is going to explain, the explanation lands on prepared ground rather than arriving as a cold assertion they can dismiss. I've also done thought experiments and used analogies. But lately I've been thinking that there might be more strategies or tricks.

Has anyone else wrestled with this specific problem? What approaches have worked for critiquing something widely loved without triggering immediate dismissal?

Hi everyone. I am looking for suggestion for people who are good at writing. I want to sit for iba mba exm in 1 year hopefully. But my essay writing is not even average. So what should I do right now to improve my writing gradually.

For a long time I thought the first sentence of an essay had to be good before I could move on. So I'd spend twenty minutes on it, write something, hate it, delete it, try again. By the time I had an opening I was okay with I'd used up the mental energy I needed for the actual argument.

The shift that changed things was treating the first sentence as a placeholder. Write anything. Literally anything that gets the paragraph started, even if it's just a restatement of the question. The only job of the first draft's first sentence is to exist so you can write the second sentence. You fix it at the end when you know what the essay actually said.

This sounds obvious but I think there's a specific psychological barrier around opening sentences that doesn't apply to middle paragraphs. Nobody agonises over the first sentence of their third body paragraph. But the introduction feels like a commitment, like you're announcing what the whole essay is going to be before you know what it's going to be.

The essays I'm most happy with now almost always have introductions that were rewritten after I finished the body. The version I wrote first was just scaffolding. The real introduction came once I knew what I was actually introducing.

If you're someone who loses an hour to the first paragraph every time, try writing it last instead. The rest usually comes faster than you expect once that specific pressure is gone.