She risked coming across as trite, but she pulled it off by moving briskly from the metaphor into solid demonstrations of her motivation, her achievements, and her experience. She also brings the last line back to the original metaphor, which both justifies its use and makes for a satisfying read. There is absolutely no excuse for mechanical errors such as poor grammar or misspellings. One unforgivable error is the mistake of forgetting to replace the proper name of the school throughout the statement. It's stunning how many people have careless, even really obvious typos in their statements.
Many people just list off their accomplishments and never relate it to the theme of the question.
The surest way of all is simply to get feedback. Find an honest, objective person to read the entire essay set for one school. Ask them to recount to you the main points you were trying to make. Have them describe the impression they received of your strengths and weaknesses. Finally, if they are not familiar with what a successful admissions essay looks like, have them read some of the samples provided in our packages .