The 312-Word Scholarship Essay
Rana is applying for a merit scholarship that requires a 250-word personal statement. Her draft runs 312 words. Three sentences begin with 'Also,' and the phrase 'I utilized the opportunity' appears twice. Sentence 6 reads: 'Having volunteered at the clinic for two years, the experience taught me how to listen.' The scholarship committee has stated that it values 'clear, specific evidence of impact' and will stop reading after 250 words. The essay's strongest evidence appears in paragraph 2, but it is buried in a 45-word sentence. Rana's teacher says the essay is 'grammatically fine' and advises her only to delete the final sentence, which is 40 words long, to reach the limit. Rana is unsure whether deletion alone will improve the essay or merely make it shorter. She has one day before the deadline and cannot gather new evidence or additional recommendations.
1. Rana can make only two substantive revisions before submitting. Which two should she choose, and how should she justify them using the committee's stated criterion?
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Prioritize the dangling modifier in sentence 6 and the repeated, empty phrasing ('Also,' 'utilized the opportunity'), not the final-sentence deletion. Reasoning: the committee says it will stop reading at 250 words and values 'clear, specific evidence of impact.' A dangling modifier is a meaning error: 'Having volunteered... the experience taught me' says the experience volunteered. That undermines clarity at the exact point where Rana describes her strongest qualification. The repetitions are cohesion and specificity problems: 'utilize' is an inflated substitute for 'use,' and 'Also' signals listed items rather than argued development. Fixing these frees words and sharpens claims. Deleting the 40-word conclusion may reach the limit, but it removes the impact statement the committee asked for. Revision should serve the criterion, not just the count.
2. Rewrite sentence 6 and explain the grammatical principle that governs your rewrite.
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Rewrite: 'Volunteering at the clinic for two years taught me how to listen.' Principle: a participial phrase at the start of a sentence modifies the subject of the main clause. In the original, the main-clause subject is 'the experience,' so the sentence literally credits the experience with volunteering. Making 'volunteering' the subject, or making 'I' the subject ('Having volunteered... I learned'), aligns the implied agent with the actual agent. The rewrite also saves words and puts the action first, which suits a 250-word limit. The point is not that shorter is always better; it is that the original sentence assigns an action to the wrong entity.
3. Rana's teacher says the essay is 'grammatically fine' and advises deletion only. Evaluate that advice.
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The advice is half-right. 'Grammatically fine' is a low bar: a sentence can be grammatical and still illogical (the dangling modifier) or vague (repeated 'utilized the opportunity'). Deletion is a legitimate compression tool, but deleting the final sentence removes the conclusion and any summary of impact, precisely what the committee says it rewards. A better sequence is: repair meaning errors first, then cut redundancy, then, if still over, compress rather than delete. This ordering matters because word limits punish verbosity but do not excuse unclear reference. The teacher's advice saves words at the cost of the essay's argument, so it should be treated as a fallback, not a plan.