The Application Process

This is for the Rice Professional Program in Houston, TX. Does anyone mind reviewing my general approach? Not the best writer, so please be easy! Thanks!

What is the best mistake you have ever made? Include its impact on you and how it altered your view of the world.

When the dust cleared at the end of my second semester of my undergraduate career at the University of Houston in December of 2007, I was surprised with the receipt of an e-mail from my academic advisor of the Mechanical Engineering department. I had taken a mere 3 courses in the engineering program and I was informed that I was required to take a semester off due to my lack of academic performance. I was devastated and I immediately met with my advisor to discuss the circumstances. My advisor confirmed that I would have to take a semester off with the possibility of returning. I was required to fill out a petition for readmission, and to agree to an aggressive GPA recovery plan to get me back on track.

Before this experience, I had always been the more intelligent student that never had to study. I breezed through calculus, among other courses in high school. I graduated with a 4.55GPA from high school and I gained admissions to Georgia Tech, one of the top engineering programs in the nation. At Georgia Tech, I was a dean's list student for the majority of semesters in attendance. I was on top of the world. In my view, school was easy.

This experience reinvented my view on life and my goals, and shaped my work ethic forever. At that moment, I realized that I had the capability to achieve anything, but my lack of academic performance was all that was holding me back. While working fulltime, I took the challenge offered to me by my advisor and I embraced his course of action by putting all of my energy into school. One of the first classes, taught my Dr. Lewis Wheeler, I was required to take happened to be engineering dynamics, which was the reason that many students drop out of the University of Houston engineering program. I conquered this course in 2009 and achieved high marks with an overall B+ in the course. For me, the tremendous effort I dedicated to this course set the tone for the remainder of my college degree. After a full day of work, my evenings and weekends of the next few years were used to study in order to achieve high grades and bring up my GPA. I made as many friends as possible and coordinated study groups with different students to gain as many different technical perspectives as possible. I increased my overall GPA every semester until I graduated. In fact, I achieved an average of a 3.33GPA in the remainder of my course work at the University of Houston. I even graduated with Honors, Cum Laude.

During this time, I was employed fulltime. I applied these same principles to work. I quickly became a key employee in assisting my company in all aspects of the business. After a year of employment, I was successfully training new application engineers on what rotating equipment technologies to offer to clients for a wide variety of oil and gas applications. After 4 years of employment I was concurrently managing over $25 Million in rotating equipment projects with a specialty in engine driven equipment and controls systems in which I bid the projects, gave presentations with the sales team, engineered the skids per the project requirements, and managed the projects and customer contracts from start to finish. By showing my company that I had the organization, reliability, superior problem solving skills, I had an opportunity the manage projects such as an entire pipeline of 3000hp and 3500hp pump packages.

My best mistake was my failure to maintain better grades near the beginning of my academic career. My first two semesters at the University of Houston damaged my GPA, and it has been difficult to recover. Looking back on the situation, I do not know that I would change what I had to work through to obtain my goals. I have developed a strong study habit for academic success in a masters degree, and built a foundation in my industry to which I can build on for the future.

You are not able to articulate the situations properly in your essay. At places it is not clear what the situation is. Also you are being very verbose and redundant when you are describing your mistake. The whole first two paragraphs can be very well summarized within two sentences.

Also if this is a Business Program you are applying to, then you should bring out a professional mistake rather than an academic one.