TOEFL® essay: Luck has nothing to do with success

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I'm a rookie of TOEFL. I hope someone can help me with my essay, and show me how to improve it. I would really appreciate that.

TOPIC: “When people succeed, it is because of hard work. Luck has nothing to do with success.” Do you agree or disagree with the quotation above? Use specific reasons and examples to explain your position.

It is highly likely that hard work leads to success. A statistic conducted on alumni of my university show that most of successful people work hard. According to this, we can conclude that hard working is a requirement of success. However, to be successful, it requests more that hard working. Luck is another key factor to success, and many people can’t achieve their success without luck. Here the luck including many aspects, for example, getting a sudden chance, inheriting a rich heritage, and meeting some important people.

The Google Empire is a significant example. L. Page and S. Brin are both excellent students with key factors to success: hard working, talent, and PhD positions in Standford. However, they might not set up such an empire if they had not met each other. It is undeniable that there are lucky to encounter and then succeed. Another famous example is Newton’s apple. Newton obtained his inspiration from a falling apple and then established his theory of universal gravitation. More examples could be found to prove that luck is usually a requirement of success; therefore, it is unreasonable to say that “Luck has nothing to do with success.”

Whereas, we can find that among those lucky and successful people, most of them work hard. Page and Brin spent most of their time on laboratory when they were in university, and Newton is also famous for his diligence. There are also examples which exhibit that lucks could be wasted if people don’t work hard, such as Adriano, who is a gifted soccer player in Brazil, but finally waste his lucky talent and become an unwelcomed player. Therefore, the luck is not a sufficient condition of success.

Generally speaking, without the luck, hard working does not always lead to success, on the other hand, only the luck is not enough without hard working. Actually they are both key factors to succeed.