The opening line is
Repeat after me, "I am nobody without education."
When you start with an attention-grabbing line as an opener, you must come from a background where such lines mean something to you. Don't use shocking lines just to get attention. For the Uruguayan applicant, education was the single biggest determinant in getting out of poverty. This line is not a rhetorical line but a mantra his mother, who was working three jobs, forced the applicant to chant to escape the temptation to join a gang.
The opener is setting up the theme of the essay around education and mentorship. The essay later goes into the 2 tier education system - where vocational training is for low-income families and STEM education is for middle to high-income families. The problem is persistent across cultures. We don't even think about the impact of such wide variations in compensations in vocational and STEM jobs.
With the opening line, I captured the struggle of a single-parent household and a reflection that the applicant would have been on the wrong path without a mentor's orienting him into math and soccer that eventually gave him a scholarship and a new life in the US.
As an international applicant, whenever you are applying to M7 or any top US schools, capture in your essay - a thread of life experiences that has a strong connection with the US, either through education in the country, the entrepreneurial spirit of the country, or the freedom of speech and expression that is so rare in our modern world.
Read the Preview of the Essay Example: Education and Investment