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Not op, But how do I write a compelling essay?

Realize it's not about you. It's about the reader and what they can gain from you. Any essay. It's about conveying a point and doing it succinctly and with purpose. Don't deviate from the point. Otherwise you end up like op, who doesn't know what he's saying and it shows.

Care to share any good examples?

I was going to talk about the kind of relevant work experience and projects that I did, "aha!" moments that made it click for me and how the degree would fit into my career goals (PhD, academia etc..)

What do you think ?

OP without being needlessly harsh your essay comes across as something written by a hopelessly naive child or a disingenuous person much less clever than he believes himself to be. The rhetoric, if it can be called such, is nothing but sappy platitudes written with grammar that would only pass in a high school remedial English course.

You apparently have taken the prompt to mean you should suck up to the school and its alumni as much as possible, yet you did not mention a single specific thing you actually liked or admired about the school. Not a single program, or institution, or faculty member, or tradition, or statistic. They lob a slow one right over the plate, giving you a chance to tell them exactly how motivated and excited you are to participate in their institution and community and you don't even take a swing.

As if the phony praise is not bad enough you also make yourself out to be an aimless, goalless academic drifter with no personality and no interests. You did not even take the chance to brag about yourself or your accomplishments. The entire point of an essay like this is for you to show that you've done research and know what the school is about, have a plan for what you're going to do once you're there so you're not wasting yours and everyone else's time, and can actually add something of value to their institution by participating. Schools like this want students to graduate into successful alumni, who while not always donating add to the school's reputation.

TL;DR you did everything wrong. Either start over and this time don't write like an absolute utter imbecile or give up going to any serious school.

Be true to your ideas and your perspective. Don't create a facade that has everything you think people want to hear, that's what the OP did and you can see how shitty it turned out. If you're not sure what your perspective is then it's time to dig deep and figure that out, because you've got no business trying to compel anyone to your point of view if you can't even articulate what that is.

Be accurate, be factual, but put effort into the presentation. Any academic worth his salt can churn out ASSERTION + QUOTE FROM SOURCE + EXPLANATION OF QUOTE TO BACK UP ASSERTION + SEGUE TO NEXT ASSERTION for infinite pages. Yeah this gets the job done and as long as you stick to the facts nobody can call it bullshit, but it's boring and trite and shows little imagination. Plus it's very easy to write a "spaghetti essay" that just goes on and on, heaping more and more sources and quotes and arguments on top of each other. You can make it more digestible with some editing, to make it flow more naturally, but the end result is still a rather drab, predictable format that is a chore to read.

So put some thought into organization, think about framing devices, about voice. It's possible to convey a strong distinct voice as an academic writer without losing objectivity or inserting yourself into the paper. Word choice and tone are important. Think about how you want people to feel reading your paper, not just what you want to convince them of. How people feel about something is almost as important as whether they believe or agree with it.

I am a STEM pseud who just got done reading crime and punishment and don Quixote. The one thing I've figured while thinking about this is that I should write for the effect I am trying to achieve i.e. focus on how people should feel while they read what I wrote.

Apart from that, I got very little out of what you said. I've heard people mention 'voice' before. So I am going to look that up and some of the other terms that you mentioned.

Could you break down what you just wrote so a layperson like me could understand and incorporate some of your advice?

This, OP what the fuck are you thinking?

You've gotta have a focal point, this is incredibly convoluted. Use one pivoting accomplishment you'd like to discuss and branch out from there- like research you'd like to do, or how you would plan to take advantage of their study abroad programs carrying what you've gained there to the US, etc. This isn't about selling yourself, you need to show admissions why you would be an asset to their school. Why should I, an NYU official, care that you would be able to land a good job upon graduation?

Voice is the personal qualities of a writing, as distinguished from the higher level organizational parts of it or the information contained in it. In terms of bare bones grammatical pieces, I'm talking about things like sentence structure, word choice, and literary devices (metaphors, similes, etc), the nitty-gritty of style. All writers have patterns in these things that distinguish them, but in academic writing most people try to mute these natural patterns and adopt what they believe is a neutral, professional tone. The result though is a very dry, dull paper lacking in impact, even if its argument is sound and its information is accurate.

Finding a clear, consistent voice is something young writers all strive to do, because having a strong, identifiable voice is the mark of a good writer. It's not easy to do, and for academic papers it's a tall order to just be able to suddenly have this brilliant original voice in your writing, but it's something to keep in mind and to strive toward. Be aware of how the words you choose, the sentences you construct, convey your personality and how you think to the people reading your paper. Humans are very good at spotting patterns in things, and one of the first things people will spot in an essay is repetitive usage of certain words or phrases. Make sure that when people do that to your essay they are only finding things you WANT them to find.

This is some solid advice. Thank you.

What about using literary devices? Should I even attempt those? Framing , for instance, I was going to start my essay with an altruistic take on a project that I did. Would something like this work in my favor?

I would be wary of framing devices, they can come off as preachy or overly precious. I've found the best framing devices are intrinsically linked to the paper's thesis in some way, and are used to reinforce the arguments. Just as an example, when I was doing a grant writing project for a native org my group decided to use the story of one of the elders as a framing device for showing the importance of the communal garden to serving the community and preserving culture. I thought the first draft we had for it was amazing but unfortunately we couldn't get him to give us the interviews we needed for everything so we had to scrap it since it had too many holes.

For literary devices, experiment a bit. Maybe not in an admissions essay/dissertation, but if you find yourself writing a term paper or something try to sprinkle in some creative language. It'll probably feel awkward at first, but making it feel natural is part of finding your voice. Adapt your language. If it feels really out of place then that's probably a sign that your normal tone is much different than what you're attempting. Reading through your stuff outloud and see how that sounds. Do you find yourself going monotone a lot? Is there a cadence to what you're saying, or just a jumble of complicated sentences? I highly recommend reading aloud or asking somebody else to read it aloud, it illuminates a lot about your style as a writer.