Please rate my essay
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16 Jan 2016, 17:10
Hi,
today I wrote my first AWA essay. I would appreciate your help with checking it.
Huge thanks!
Topic:
The following appeared as part of a recommendation from the financial planning office to the administration of Fern Valley University:
“In the past few years, Fern Valley University has suffered from a decline in both enrollments and admissions applications. The reason can be discovered from our students, who most often cite poor teaching and inadequate library resources as their chief sources of dissatisfaction with Fern Valley. Therefore, in order to increase the number of students attending our university, and hence to regain our position as the most prestigious university in the greater Fern Valley metropolitan area, it is necessary to initiate a fund-raising campaign among the alumni that will enable us to expand the range of subjects we teach and to increase the size of our library facilities.”
Essay:
The argument sent to the administration of Fern Valley University is flawed for several reasons. Firstly, it is not obvious what kind of decrease in enrollments and admissions is the school facing. Secondly, there is no evidence that the students’ opinions are reliable. The idea of fundraising among alumni and the goal of it are also not clear.
First of all, the recommendation doesn’t mention what kind of decrease in enrollments and admissions it is. We don’t know if it concerns most of the students or it is only a slight decrease and therefore no significant action is needed. It would be beneficial to mention some hard statistics, otherwise the argument doesn’t have much value. The similar flaw can be found in the way of citing students’ opinions about reasons of the decline. There is no basic information such as sample size. As a result of that, we can’t be sure if the cited reasons are the relevant ones. Additionally, it would be insightful to prepare similar research among the potential new applicants, for example in selected high schools, as we would get to know the real reasons behind not submitting applications.
Another significant flaw in the argument concerns the way the school could acquire new funds. The idea mentioned consists of only fundraising and additionally limits it to only alumni of the school. The other options could be easily worked out. One of them could be extending the fundraising to the whole city, as from the presence of the university benefits whole community.
The last flaw I want to mention is the goal of the fundraising. Financial planning office mentions that there is the need to expand the range of subjects and to increase the size of library facilities. However, the students mentioned that they are dissatisfied with the poor teaching and inadequate library resources. Clearly, the students’ needs are different from those mentioned by financial planning office.
To sum up, the argument is full of flaws and based on wrong assumptions. Couple of them was analyzed above. Also, several ideas were mentioned that would be helpful to strengthen the argument.