GRE AWA Scoring suggestion

[pc_gprep]

Hi all, this is my first blogpost in the forum! 

 

I have started preparing for GRE recently and need help regarding scoring the following "Analysing an Issue" task I havejust completed. Any suggestion or opinion regarding improvement are welcome. Thanks! 

 

Issue : If Students Are Smart, They’ll Major in What They Love. 

 

Essay :

 

The comment is based on a very common, universally familiar notion that student community as a whole is being more and more inclined to make a choice of specialization of study based on the profitability of it from career oriented perspective. This is a viable issue prevalent in more or less every part of the world where college education is considered as an investment and which in turn will give returns in form of wealth from the career path you choose after completion of education and earned wealth will give a secured, established and a comfortable life style.

 

One foremost thing to consider here is that, the decision of choosing a particular area for higher education gets influenced by the thought process of one's family, friends, in short, some key people of one's life. Perhaps, these people are already prejudiced with the fundamental essence of our capitalist society that wealth is the most important key to success and happiness. Unfortunately, things like passion, interest do get overlooked in this highly competitive present world, which in turns affect the big picture of one's life.

 

Majors should be chosen wisely, where "wisely" implies with individual wisdom knowing one's affinity and love towards a particular concentration which will contribute in mastering a skill, enhancing intellect and useful for career in long run. Nevertheless the freedom of choice should be present even though one can simply have a belief system which may support other definitions of "success" driven by materialistic or capitalistic views. Undoubtedly freedom encourages learning and growth, which should be the primary goal of academia.

 

At the end of the day, it depends on a particular individual to decide what should be the take away from his or her career or professional life. So, if chuckling , after noticing somebody using the mobile application one developed in an air-conditioned cubicle, in a high rise building, gives one more satisfaction or having goosebumps, while thinking about the after effects of a just completed novel about a contentious current issue at three in the morning in one's study, gives one more happiness that depends on one's own self and truthfully none of these cannot be forced of all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[knp]

I like the conclusion, although it has some punctuation issues. The body paragraphs are fine—I'd say they're probably at about a 4/4.5 level already? So that's good. The introduction is not great, though. In the service of big words and fancy sentence structure, I find it difficult to understand what you're saying. You also don't provide a thesis statement. It's a decent summary of the view held by the prompt, but you don't say what your position about it is. If you do provide a thesis statement, that will be a big help right away.

 

I always write too much like I talk, so this might be a bit of "blind leading the blind toward's one's own problem," but I'd also recommend making your writing more conversational, especially in the first paragraph. Right now it's too wordy and the verbs are too weak (too much "is/was" and passive voice: "is being...inclined" is much weaker than "prefer").

 

So:

 

The comment is based on a very common, universally familiar notion that student community as a whole is being more and more inclined to make a choice of specialization of study based on the profitability of it from career oriented perspective. This is a viable issue prevalent in more or less every part of the world where college education is considered as an investment and which in turn will give returns in form of wealth from the career path you choose after completion of education and earned wealth will give a secured, established and a comfortable life style.

 

 

could be written as:

 

Many people agree that the current generation of students is more likely to prefer areas of study that lead to profitable careers than previous generations were. This issue can be found throughout many parts of the world, because a college education is often considered an investment that will lead to a career that will provide a secure, established, and comfortable lifestyle. [And so MY POSITION on this issue is XYZ.]

[pc_gprep]

Hey thanks for replying  ! I believe I understand what you suggested, it  could be more easy to read by using direct verbs rather than passive ones. It will be helpful if you can explain regarding adding thesis statement which is not very clear to me. 

[knp]

Thesis statement means the sentence where you state your position. So you could say:

"This is a negative trend because then students don't fully actualize their passions."

or

"But the people who make this critique are taking a narrow view of a life's worth--for some people, the best life comes outside work, so choosing a secure, decently remunerative career might in fact be the best way for them to follow their dreams."

or

"This is bad for the economy because the economy does best when people choose careers they care about because that makes them more likely to innovate, while secure careers lead to stagnancy."

 

Topic sentences and thesis statements are a hard skill, but they are the sine qua non of essays like these, and of most academic writing. I had a lot of trouble with them back in the day, but it's been long enough that I don't have any good links for you. There's a lot of material on the internet, though, if you want to look up "gre" + "thesis statement"! I just can't recommend which results are best.

[Jay's Brain]

Hi nice writing! One suggestion I would make is to clarify what your opinion is about the prompt right from the get go. I couldn't really tell what you thought about it until perhaps the penultimate and last paragraphs. 

 

Besides some minor grammatical hiccups, you're off to a good start  

Good luck!