同学们，最近写文书焦虑吗？
想要看名校成功录取的学生文书吗？
想要快速找灵感吗？
……
哈佛校报《The Crimson》公布了已经录取的10篇学生文书，并附带招生老师精彩点评。
由于篇幅较长，我们此次更新第一篇。
哈佛录取
学生文书
学生1：Sandra
✔State:Massachusetts, USA
✔High School:Public school, 306 students in graduating class
✔Ethnicity:Asian
✔Gender:Female
✔GPA:3.95 out of 4.0
✔SAT / ACT:n/a
✔SAT Subject TestsTaken: n/a
✔Extracurriculars:Model United Nations president, Working to Help the Homeless president, Belmontian (community service club) secretary, Speech and Debate founder and president
✔Awards:AP National Scholar, Belmont High School Book Award, Belmont Latin Book Award, high honor roll
✔Major:Psychology
“UT Italiamlaeti Latiumque petamus"
"Sandra, would you mind reading the next few lines and translating them for us?"
The professor glanced at me, a kind glimmer in his bespectacled eyes. I gulped. I was in a classroom of eighteen, five of whom were high school Latin teachers. And I was supposed to recite and translate Livy"s Ab Urbe condita — with elisions! After fumbling through a few words and mistaking a verb for a noun, I finished the first sentence. I skimmed the second line, looking for the main verb. Singular. I searched for a singular noun and pieced the two together. Then, I noticed an accusative and added it as a direct object. As I continued, a burst of exhilaration shot through my body. My eyes darted across the page, finding a verb, a noun, and objects. I reached the end of the passage and grinned, relief pulsing in my veins.
"Very good!" The professor beamed at me before selecting his next victim.
A few months ago, I never would have imagined myself sitting in Harvard"s Boylston Hall this summer for six hours a week, cherishing the ancient literature of Rome.Even though the professor decided I was eligible for the course despite not taking the prerequisite, I was still nervous. I worked hard in the class, and it reminded me just how much I love the language.
Translating has always given me great pleasure and great pain. It is much like completing a jigsaw puzzle. Next, I look for phrases that connect the entire clause — does this adjective match this noun? Does this puzzle piece have the right shape? The middle of the sentence is the trickiest, full of convoluted dependent clauses, pieces colored ambiguously and with curves and edges on all four sides.
I am sometimes tangled in the syntax, one of the worst feelings in the world. After analyzing every word, I try to rearrange the pieces so they fit together. When they finally do, I am filled with a satisfaction like no other. Translating forces me to rattle my brain, looking for grammatical rules hidden in my mind"s nooks and crannies. It pushes my intellectual boundaries.
No other language is as precise, using inflection to express gender, number, and case in just one word. When I pull apart a sentence, I am simultaneously divulging the secrets of an ancient civilization. Renowned scholars are telling the stories of their time through these words! No other language is as meticulous. Every line follows the same meter and the arrangement of every word is with a purpose.
The story of Pyramus and Thisbe includes a sentence where the word "wall" is places between the words "Pyramus" and "Thisbe" to visually show the lovers" separation. Translating is like life itself; the words are not in logical order. One cannot expect the subject of a sentence to appear at the beginning of a clause, just like one cannot plan the chronology of life. Like the delayed verb, we do not always know what is happening in our lives; we just know it is happening.
When translating we notice the nouns, the adjectives, and the conjunctions just like we see the people, senses, and connections of our lives. However, we often do not know what we are doing and ask ourselves the age-old question: Why are we here? Perhaps we are here to learn, to teach, to help, to serve, to lead, or just to live. We travel through life to decide what our purpose is, and it is that suspense and our unknown destinies that make the journey so irresistibly beautiful. I feel that same suspense and unknown when I translate, because I am beautifully struggling to unlock a past I know very little of. It is unbelievably exhilarating.
Thus, I question why others consider Latin a dead language. It is alive in all of the Western world. The Romance languages of French, Spanish, and Italian all have Latin origins. Without Latin, I would not be able to write this essay! It is alive in the stories it tells. You may see an apple and associate it with orchards, juice, pie, and fall. When I see an apple, I think of the apple of discord thrown by Eris that ultimately caused the Trojan War. This event, albeit destructive and terrifying, leads to the flight of Aeneas and eventually, his founding of Rome.
I study Latin for its rewarding return, incredible precision, intellectual challenge, rich history and culture, and deep influence on our world. I study Latin to show others how beautiful it is, to encourage the world that it should be valued. I study Latin to lead our society, like Aeneas did, toward a new city, a new dawn where everyone appreciates a mental trial of wits, everyone marvels at a vibrant past, and no one wonders whether Latin is dead or not.
点评
桑德拉的文章最引人注目的不是她和高中拉丁语老师一起上课，或者她在哈佛上夏校，而是桑德拉在翻译拉丁语时如何深入思考的过程。从她描述自己翻译过程中生动的细节中可以清楚地看出，她非常认真地对待这件事，读到这种将自己的热情展现的很清晰的文书是一件令人愉快的事情。
但是有时桑德拉的写作似乎也故意让一些东西吸引人，其实这是没有必要的。例如，“不能期望句子的主语出现在句首，就像不能计划人生的顺序一样”，这很明显是一个有意进行诗意化表达的句子。总的来说，这是一篇明朗的作品，但是我们在写作文书时不应该被迫在文章中追求戏剧性，如果你写的真的是你热爱的东西，你的写作方式应该是很自然很清晰的。
学生2：Juilia
✔State: Georgia, USA✔High School:Public School, 597 Students in graduating class✔Ethnicity:Asian✔Gender:Female✔GPA:4.0 out of 4.0✔SAT / ACT:Reading 800, Math 800, Writing 800✔SAT Subject TestsTaken: U.S History, Literature✔Extracurriculars:Varsity Academic Bowl co-captain; varsity lacrosse four year letterman, Chess Club president; Distinguished Young Women of Georgia ; Distinguished Young Women of Coweta County; Centre Strings Orchestra, first violin✔Awards:U.S. Presidential Scholars semifinalist, National Merit Scholar, National AP Scholar, Outstanding Georgia Citizen, Georgia Region 3B STAR Student✔Major:Philosophy and Government
I was in 9th grade the first time I stumbled upon a copy of Newsweek. What caught my eye was its trademark title: white type, red highlight, a connotation that stories of great consequence lay beneath. Such bold lettering gave me a moment"s pause, and I was prompted to leaf through its glossy pages.
To my surprise, I was instantly hooked.
A new world unfolded before me. Biting social commentary. World conflicts that weren"t dumbed down. Piquant reviews of best-selling books, controversial exposés of political figures, tantalizing tidbits on pop culture, full-page spreads of photographs.
And the prose was elegant, sharp, mesmerizing. It radiated sophistication and IQ. As I scanned the credentials of the authors, my only thought was, wow. The articles were written by worldly, ambitious people who were experts in their fields, people with PhDs and MBAS from world-class institutions, people who could write brilliantly, who got paid to give their opinions, who walked with a purpose and ran in the direction of their dreams. People I knew — then and there — I’d like to one day become.
This is what education looks like, I told myself. I was young, I was impressionable. Like a child standing on the outside of a candy store, nose pressed against the glass, I hungered to be a part of that cerebral adult world. So I read that magazine from cover to cover. Twice. And with each turn of the page I felt my small-town naïveté break into smaller and smaller pieces. I remember that day as an incredibly humbling experience. I had an awkward, self-conscious epiphany: that I actually knew next to nothing about the world. There I was, cream of the crop of my middle school, fourteen years of "smart" outwitted by a thin volume of paper. I was used to feeling gifted, to getting gold stickers and good grades, to acing every elementary examination placed in front of my cocky #2 pencil.
I wasn"t used to feeling like I"d been living in the Dark Ages.
At the same time, however, I struggled with another realization, one that was difficult for me to define. I felt. . . liberated. I felt as though I had taken a breath of fresh air and found it to be bracing and delicious, like it was the first breath I"d ever taken, and I"d never known that air was so sweet.
Talk about a paradigm shift: somehow, reading Newsweek had re-kindled my natural intellectual curiosity; it had, briefly, filled a hole in my soul that I didn"t know existed. It had also sparked something within me-a hint of defiance, a refusal to accept complacency. One taste of forbidden fruit, and I knew I could never go back.
Although reading a news magazine seemed like a nonevent at the time, in retrospect it was one of the defining moments of my adolescence. That seemingly unextraordinary day set a lot of subsequent days in motion-days when I would push my limitations, jump a little higher, venture out of my comfort zone and into unfamiliar territory, days when I would fail over and over again only to succeed when I least expected it, days when I would build my dreams from scratch, watch them fall down, then build them back up again, and before I knew it, the days bled into years, and this was my life.
At 14, I"d caught a glimpse of where the bar was set. It always seemed astronomically high, until it became just out of my grasp.Sadly, Newsweek magazine went out of print on January 1, . Odd as it may sound, I"ll always be indebted to an out-of-print magazine for helping me become the person I am today.
点评
茱莉亚在这里最擅长的是她强有力的语言和深意的诗意运用。这篇文章的一个亮点是，她描述了阅读《新闻周刊》是如何使她谦卑的，她说，她过去觉得自己“很有天赋”，但现在觉得自己一直生活在黑暗时代。她对这个问题的回答非常准确，准确地表达了这种经历标志着从童年到成年的转变。
当然茱莉亚本可以详细说明为什么对《新闻周刊》如此感兴趣对她来说是个惊喜，也可以选择一个更具反思性和深度的结论来结束一篇这篇很强的文章。在这本“绝版杂志”和她“天生的求知欲”之间存在的关系值得进一步梳理。
学生3：Marina
✔State:North Carolina, USA✔High School:Public school, 50 students in graduating class✔Ethnicity:Hispanic✔Gender:Female✔GPA:4.98 out of 5.0✔SAT / ACT:35✔SAT Subject TestsTaken: Mathematics Level 2, Physics✔Extracurriculars:Research, founding science fair mentoring director, founding Editor-in-Chief of student newspaper, beach volleyball, fundraising artist✔Awards:Intel International Science and Engineering Fair Finalist, US Public Health Surgeon General"s Special Science Award, National Hispanic Scholar, Jack Kent Cooke Semifinalist, Wayne Hanson Excellence in Science or Engineering Award✔Major:Math
My father said I didn’t cry when I was born. Instead, I popped out of the womb with a furrowed brow, looking up at him almost accusatorially, as if to say “Who are you? What am I doing here?” While I can’t speak to the biological accuracy of his story — How did I survive, then? How did I bring air into my lungs? — it’s certainly true that I feel like I came preprogrammed with the compulsion to ask questions.
I received my first journal in preschool, probably because my parents were sick of cleaning my crayon drawings off my bedroom wall. Growing up, my notebooks became the places where I explored ideas through actions in addition to words. If the face I was sketching looked broody, I began to wonder what in her life made her that way. Was she a spy? Did she just come in from the cold? Graduating from crayons to markers to colored pencils, I layered color upon color, testing out the effects of different combinations, wondering why the layering of notes in music filled me with the very same happiness as the sight of the explosion of paired colors beneath my hands.
I began to take notes, on anything and everything. Reading Steve Martin’sBorn Standing Up, I took away lessons on presentations, of maintaining a rhythm and allowing crescendos of energy to release every so often. While watching a documentary on people preparing for a sommelier exam, I made note of the importance of an enriching environment where most everything points you to your goals. Flipping through my old journal, I see that even an article about trouble in the South China Sea inspired notes on precedent and maintaining tradition lest you provoke the unknown. I was looking for the rules of the world.
More than just a place to catalogue my observations about the world, my notebooks are places to synthesize, to course-correct, to pinpoint areas for iterative improvement.When the words are down on paper, I see my patterns of thought and the holes in my logic stark against the white page. If I have a day of insecurity that leads to a sudden rush of journaling characteristic of that in a teen movie, looking down at the angsty scribbles, I"ll recognize my repeated thoughts and actions and look for pressure points in that system of behavior where I can improve.
I"ll recognize my repeated thoughts and actions and look for pressure points in that system of behavior where I can improve.
Now my notebook returns to exploring the world through actions and experiments. Dozens of doughnut-shaped sketches dot pages that ask “how would you play tic-tac-toe on a torus?” Another page containing bubble letters answers the simpler question of the result of sorting these figures into groups of topological equivalences. Not two pages later are the results of a research binge on Mersenne primes that took me through perfect numbers and somehow deposited me at a Wikipedia page detailing the mathematical properties of the number 127. Once again, I look for the rules of the world.
Whenever I feel discouraged, I look to my stack of notebooks, shelved neatly by my desk. In those pages I’ve learned that I have room to fail and grow, to literally turn over a new leaf if a problem is particularly tricky. Through years of scribbling away, I’ve learned that the most fundamental part of my development has been giving myself the space to try: to sketch mangled faces, to draw the wrong conclusions, to answer a question incorrectly, and to learn from my mistakes without shame. I look to that mass of notebooks filled with my ideas, my mistakes, and my questions, and I"m reminded that I’ve grown before, and that I’ll grow again, all the while asking questions.
点评
玛丽娜的开场白吸引了读者的注意力，尽管在玛丽娜对她最初的轶事(而不是讲述)进行反思之前，读者还不清楚这句话与主题有何关联。玛丽娜把她的兴趣寄托在记事本上，甚至是关于学龄前的轶事。虽然她的意象接近于华丽的散文，但文章的气势使写作不至于拖沓。
玛丽娜一边翻阅笔记本，一边记录着自己思维框架的变化——从最初收集信息，到最终综合，这些都建立在她的观察基础上。在第三段中，在增加细节和重复之间穿行，它们加深了读者对笔记本的理解。我们看到她表现出一种成长的心态，因为她注意到她用笔记本作为一个空间来处理思想并找到需要改进的地方。
倒数第二段也在加深玛丽娜的兴趣和增加冗余的细节之间徘徊。然而，它扩大了玛丽娜的兴趣，不仅涵盖流行文化和世界事件，还包括数学。这也说明了这段的目的，笔记本是通过实验探索世界的一种方式。
玛丽娜以一种积极的、有根据的方式结束了她的文章，这使文章的内容进一步显示了她迭代增长的心态。最后一句回到“提问”，她展示了全文的意象，强调了文章的主题。
学生4：Reginald
✔State:New York, USA✔High School:Public school, 350 per class✔Ethnicity:White/Asian✔Gender:Male✔GPA:4.3 out of 4.0✔SAT / ACT:36✔SAT Subject TestsTaken: Mathematics Level 2, Chemistry, Physics, US History, Biology✔Extracurriculars:Varsity Soccer, Competitive Sailing, Alto Saxophonist, Treasurer of Tutoring Club✔Awards:National Merit Scholarship, High School"s Academic Achievement Awards✔Major:Applied Mathematics
As the first texts came in — “Where are you? The game’s over.” — I grinned, my feet propped up against the trunk and my back relaxed along the incline of the thickest arm of the tree. I swung off the branch and clambered down. The satisfaction on my face a little too apparent, I walked back to my friends, who sat out of sight on a swing set. The competition of the night was manhunt, a combination of hide-and-seek and tag renamed to suit the “dignity” of kids our age.
As I approached the swings, Marc called out, “You won. Where’d you hide?” “That tree over there,” I replied. “You climbed a tree?” Jack laughed, the surprise clear on his face. As manhunt novices, we had previously confined our gameplay to the ground. They were intrigued, recognizing I had taken our sport to new heights, literally.
As absurd as perching on a tree may be, there’s an undeniable thrill to discovering a new hiding spot and changing the game.In that way, manhunt simultaneously fuels my desire to innovate and my love of competition — passions I transfer from my musical, academic, and athletic pursuits to the boundaries of Jack’s backyard.
I search for new perspectives, new trees to climb, in all my endeavors. When I improvise in jazz band, I enjoy sharing original musical riffs and runs. My bandmates and I persist in the hunt for a “perfect solo.” While we know there"s no such thing, we look for the next moment of musical insight that will change the complexion of our improvisation. And though we improve as a group, each of us takes pride in our own unique, musical style. The challenge of blending these varying shades of jazz into a cohesive performance is the reason I love being a part of the band.
The classroom brings new perspectives as well. Each day’s lesson engages my curiosity as I consider the world from a different physical, historical, or political point of view. It’s the excitement in my Physics teacher’s voice as he tells us that lightning strikes from the ground up and that Zeus is a lie, or the tightly bound silence in the room as a classmate reads aloud a letter home from an American soldier in Vietnam, that captures my interest.
My competitive drive, meanwhile, kicks in whenever I hear a countdown, whether it’s the measure before a jazz solo or the seconds before a sailing race. When I’m out on the water, the urgent beep of my watch preceding the start refocuses my attention to the wind and waves before me. I envision the race ahead, visualizing the changes in wind patterns and the movement of the fleet of boats. When the pounding of my heart drowns out my thoughts and I fall into the rhythm of maneuvering the boat, that’s when I know I’m at my competitive peak.
Similarly, my drive comes to life during soccer games, when a desire to win embodied in a slide tackle is all that defends our net. Though the steely looks in my opponents’ eyes and the chants from the stands threaten to distract me, my ambition and pride in representing my high school harden my nerves on the game field and fuel my resolve in practice.
As much as I love to compete and innovate, the thrill of achievement is matched by the camaraderie among the friends, bandmates, and teammates with whom I share the journey. The determination to push my limits and reach for the next branch is at the root of my athletic ambitions and musical interests, but the personal relationships and shared experiences along the way make the process all the more rewarding. Even in a casual game of hide-and-seek and tag, I compete, innovate, and develop lasting bonds and memories that make a good-natured competition more than a zero-sum game. That’s what delivers the real joy of manhunt.
点评
雷金纳德在小说的开头插入了一些文字和意象，“我的脚靠着树干，我的背沿着树干最粗的手臂的斜面放松下来”，这让读者立刻置身于他所处的环境中。这篇文章有一个清晰的声音，轻松而自信，通过它简单的节奏体现出来。
雷金纳德对舞台布置细节的选择——咧着嘴笑，爬下树，半开玩笑地解释追捕——是他性格的双重写照。雷金纳德通过讲述他是如何赢得一场追捕游戏的，而不是讲述他的创新本性。随着雷金纳德故事的开始，他已经完成了将雷金纳德人性化的目的，他将游戏固有的价值观与他对“音乐、学术和体育追求”的更广泛兴趣联系起来。
即兴创作爵士乐的故事不仅反映了雷金纳德对艺术的欣赏，也反映了他与他人合作和欣赏他人努力工作的能力。
他对于自己学术好奇心的段落的细节增添了一层真实性，使他的文章比简单地陈述自己的好奇心更有说服力。同样，因为雷金纳德在谈论帆船和足球时的形象吸引了读者的注意力，我们可以肯定，这是雷金纳德的兴趣所在，他追求的远不止是给自己的简历增添一个荣誉。
为了平衡他对竞争的强调，雷金纳德最后感谢了他所有的朋友和队友。我们看到，他对竞争的追求源于对不断自我完善的渴望。回到捉迷藏的意象，雷金纳德找到了他的全文的主题。
学生5：Valerie
✔Gender:Female
✔GPA:4.2 out of 4.0
✔SAT / ACT:Reading 750, Math 660, Writing 790
✔SAT Subject TestsTaken: U.S. History, French, Spanish
✔Extracurriculars:yearbook editor in chief, student government representative, varsity crew captain, Vegetarian Club leader
✔Awards:National Hispanic Scholar Award, high school high honors, language award
✔Major:Linguistics
Languageshave played a central role in my life. I have studied a variety of languages, to varying degrees — but always in the name of my greater goal, which is to understand people — to truly comprehend what lies beneath the surface: How does a culture conceive of itself? what can we learn about how the Japanese based on formality of address? What can be said about the Germans, whose language requires the verb appear at the end of a sentence? Maybe not much, but without the knowledge of the language, the possibility of real understanding is impaired.My interest in linguistics — psychology as well — derives from this belief: there is an underlying structure to all language, and through the study and comprehension of this structure, there can be a mutual understanding.
Beyond the underlying structure, words themselves have a deep and rich history, and their usage is a form of beauty in itself. It was my father who opened my eye to this truth — who taught me to love words for their stories and to appreciate etymology. It began as a friendly contest between us, but for me, appreciation soon became full-fledged adoration that was only encouraged by my study of Latin. I began drawing connections I had previously missed between words I use every day, and I found myself spending hours in front of the computer looking for sites to aid me in my discoveries. One of my favorite discoveries (and an apt one to share with you) is the word hedera.
I happened upon hedera when I noticed the similarity among the words apprehend, aprender, and apprendre, in Spanish and French, respectively. It was clear, judging by the orthography and definitions, that these words shared a Latin root, but in my studies, never had I come across such a word. Next thing I knew, I had the following on my hands: apprentice, comprehend, prehensile, apprehensive. What relationship exists between one who is learning a trade and a sense of foreboding? The answer lay within the etymologies, which led to hedera, the Latin word for ivy. Once suffixes had been stripped away, the remaining word was always -hendere. Alone, the word means virtually nothing; it was contrived from hedera as a verb form to convey a sense of grasping. What better to do so than ivy, a plant known for its tenacity? I could not help but admire the ivy which had embedded itself into the foundations of language.
Language is all about meaning and understanding, but to grasp the true meaning of language, one must look beyond the surface of the sentence to the structure, and even beyond that to the meaning and histories of the words themselves. Language, therefore, is my passion because it is the study of understanding.
点评
瓦莱丽文章的优势在于，她熟练地使用语言把句子串在一起，而且写得很好，因为它们具有交际性。瓦莱丽的写作在她的年龄来说是不同寻常的先进：她没有在个人陈述中经常出现诗情画意的尝试，而且设法展示了她丰富的词汇量，而没有使用10美元的词汇。正如瓦莱丽所言，文字和语言是她最擅长的工具，她的文章就是证明。
在内容上，本文通过分析作者热爱语言学的原因，再通过分析一个实际的单词，展示了作者的学习过程，成功地展示了作者的求知欲。然而，这个练习让作者偏离了她最初关于语言学如何帮助她更好地理解文化和人的讨论，这是一个非常有趣的概念，但最终没有在这里播放多少时间。
除此之外，这篇文章可以展示更多关于作者个人的信息。虽然瓦莱丽暗示她和父亲的关系很有趣，但这就是我们对她个性的一瞥。这篇文章有475字，远远低于650字的限制。一个更加丰富多彩的介绍，对瓦莱丽对语言学的热爱如何塑造她与他人的互动的一些洞察，或者一个更加个人化的结论，都可以活跃作者敏锐的智力，这已经是一个合理的论点。
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