: Re: Does this essay demonstrate flow, clarity, and passion? I am applying to school and, after 3-4 weeks of thinking and writing essay iterations, I ended up with the essay below. What are

@Cofer669

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Evidently you have clear ideas about what you want the essay to accomplish, and a reasonably good understanding of what you are writing about. Your revised essay probably reaches most of the goals you set. However, it seems rather wordy to me. If you trim away empty phrases, you will improve the essay's readability and at the same time make room for more examples or deeper thoughts.

I have one professional objective: Push forward the personal robotics market.

Your objective should be prefaced by "To", I think. Also, "push forward" is awkward. Consider alternatives like: "To advance the frontiers of the personal robotics market", "To help mold the future of the personal robotics market", "To bring the promises of personal robotics to useful fruition". (Of course some of these also are
awkward, hackneyed, or perhaps not what you want to say.)

Over the last few decades, robotics research has made considerable
strides towards solving hard robotics problems such as navigating
unknown environments, recognizing and manipulating objects, and
using natural language to interact. These advances have resulted in
some interesting robotic applications, ranging from autonomous
vacuum cleaners and self-parking cars to personal software
assistants. Yet, I believe these applications are the leading edge
in a whole new wave of personal robotics applications to hit the
marketplace.

Strike out "Over the last few decades" as it's wordy and does nothing
for your essay. Change "towards" to "toward" and "manipulating" to
"handling". (Reduced syllable count seems less verbose.) Also, you
could change "using natural language to interact" to "natural language
interaction" if you change "navigating" etc. to "navigation" etc..
Strike out "some interesting robotic applications, ranging from" and
the coordinating "to". Strike out "Yet, I believe" and/or rewrite
that last sentence; e.g., "These inventions are just a hint of the
wave of personal robotics applications that will arrive in the decade
ahead."

My belief is that this new wave of applications promises to
transform society in extreme new ways. Among this new wave,
self-driving cars promise to permit a much faster, cheaper and safer
transportation infrastructure, robotic nursing assistants promise to
bring quality of life to a raising number of elder people, and
user-friendly flexible robots promise to liberate us from the chores
in the house. In principle, personal robotics promise to automize
slavish and repetitive tasks and usher in a new age in our society,
an age with less dependency on manual tasks and more on creative and
stimulating ones.

Drop "My belief is that", and perhaps change "promises to" to "will".
How can something be "among" a wave? "Promise to permit" is clumsy or
ungrammatical. "Automize" isn't a word. Change "raising" to
"rising", "manual" to "menial", and "the chores in the house" to
"household chores".

I assume you have all those "promise" phrases in there on purpose, and
that each of them means "showing
promise, and likely to
develop in a desirable fashion" rather than oath, affirmation, or
vow. The latter meaning would
demonstrate "passion", the former much less so. Anyway, I'd change
each "promise to" to "will", change "Among this new wave" to "In my
vision", and use semicolons in place of several commas.

Update 1: Except for its last clause, your concluding paragraph

This vision is what really excites me about personal robotics. It is the opportunity to combine my fascination for robotics with real impact in people’s lives, it is the opportunity to advance such a transformative change.

can be made stronger by replacing several phrases by more-precise or more-pithy terms. Let me first mention what I see as problems: really and real are weak and overworked adjectives; excites and fascination are too-informal in tone; impact in probably is wrong; and the construction "It is the opportunity" (where "It" is "This vision") falls down.

Having pointed out some problems, I now should offer some useful suggestions for improvement. But as an an opinionated non-expert dabbler in writing, I find it much easier to point out problems than to fix them, and will merely say that perhaps you should write something to the effect that this vision has drawn you deeper into personal robotics work, and that in turn has shown you how personal robotics can have a real and positive effect on people’s lives, and you want to be involved in and help shape the field, and want an opportunity to advance such a transformative change.

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