哈佛招生官：这10个小故事虽然常见，却最打动我！附文书及招生官点评！
对于志在美国名校的同学们，我们都知道文书的重要性，也知道要把自己的故事讲好，一篇好的文书可以让你低分逆袭、一篇不好的文书也能让你高分脆拒，但你真的知道美国名校招生官到底喜欢什么样的文书吗？
每年申请季的到来，同学们都少不了熬夜赶文书、改文书，甚至几天过去了，连写作方向和思路都找不到，每天在电脑前想破脑袋，写了删、删了写，就是熬不出一段满意的文字。
相信经历过申请的同学，不少都遇到过这些问题：
什么样的内容适合写进申请文书？
怎么写文书开头，更能吸引读者注意？
什么样的文书内容，会让招生官频频点头？
如何收尾，会帮你一招制胜？
图源：知乎
名校喜欢什么样的文书，网上的各种攻略、模板靠谱吗，那么多的申请案例有适合我的吗？
与其网络上寻找各种信息，倒不如看看官方发布的标准答案！
哈佛大学校报《The Crimson》每年都会邀请哈佛新生分享自己的申请文书，并从中精选10篇最佳文书进行点评发布，这些文书代表了大学招生官眼中的最高水平，有非常高的参考价值。
如果我们去仔细分析这些文书，可以发现里面的规律真的太明显了，而这些文书写作的小技巧，我们都知道了吗？
真的需要根据不同学校打造不同的文书吗？一样的题目写一样的文书不行吗？专注于文书研究的Admitsee曾经根据收集到的15000篇大学文书发布过一份报告。
在汇总539份斯坦福大学录取文书和393份哈佛大学录取文书后，Admitsee发现：
happy（快乐）
passion（热情）
better（更好）
improve（进步）
这些积极改变的文字，经常会出现在斯坦福大学录取的文书中。
cancer（癌症）
difficult（困难）
hard（艰难）
tough（艰苦）
但是这些相对消极、苦难的的词汇却多次在哈佛大学录取文书中出现。
我们可以看出，斯坦福似乎对学生的个性更感兴趣，而哈佛似乎对学生的成就记录更感兴趣。
引人入胜的文书开头
好的文书一定是一个精彩的故事，而故事中引人入胜的开头，就是吸引招生官兴趣的关键所在，哈佛校报点评到，在文书中，以独特的句子开篇，一定会吸引招生官的目光。
I am a conservative. Point-blank.
The backbone of my life is my writing desk.
“Let’s face it, you’re slow,” my violin teacher said.
I sat under the table, burying my head tightly in my folded arms, while the other children sat on the carpet, listening to the teacher’s story.
首句简短、有力，减小阅读负担，同时引起兴趣。
可以写一个违背常识的内容，引发好奇，也可以直接描述故事，让读者瞬间进入情景，进而想继续读下去。
简洁有力的文书结尾
The whole team eventually follows us into the water to start the day’s warm up, and a small smile, fond and content, flits across my face before I join them.
My hope is that, one day, these children will also feel compelled to do the same, helping others adapt to an unfamiliar environment. With this, we can truly create a caring and cohesive network of support for the children of our society.
Math, for me, is a vast map of knowledge where theories intersect each other like pathways in a cornfield, and that explains the laws of nature and the universe itself. However, no matter what mathematical sphere shall I soar in, I will always have my family with me and the joy of that day when I was running freely in the cornfield.
结尾一般是全文的总结，总结自己的故事，展现出故事把你塑造成了什么样的人，达成了什么目标，与你现在的理想有什么联系。
以小见大、提出目标
Everyone needs a guiding light through the lonesome process of adaptation, a friendly bump to lift them from the dark shroud of isolation. That’s what Jack did for me—with a rather painful bump to the head—and it’s also what I do for these immigrant children.
My hope is that, one day, these children will also feel compelled to do the same, helping others adapt to an unfamiliar environment. With this, we can truly create a caring and cohesive network of support for the children of our society.
I wrap my scarf more firmly around my neck, feeling the chill of the brisk January air as I trudge my way to practice. The bus stop isn’t actually that far from the pool, but with a heavy backpack and the fancy shoes that my host sister insisted I wear, the three-minute trek seems to last forever. Turning the corner three blocks down, I finally make it to the parking lot and see one of my friends.
“Salut, Thomas.”
He knows that it’s me without even looking. “Salut, Danielle.” He finishes fiddling with his bicycle lock and stands to greet me. I lean in for my customary kiss, and he obliges, bisous-ing me once on each cheek, before we walk toward Piscine Bréquigny together.
Easy conversation flows between us as our well-trained feet follow the paths to our respective changing rooms. I punch in the code on the girls’ side and open the door. Familiar figures stand in various states of undress, and bisous go all around while we change and speculate on the various tortures Marc will put us through today. Then we head down to the pool deck, ready to meet our fates.
I get to our coach first, and mentally switch back into English. “Hey, Marc, what’s up?”
He shrugs. “Fine.”
I laugh and give him a high five, then move on to bisous and ça va? the rest of the boys. When I get to Islem, who is Algerian, the two of us proceed to execute our exceedingly complex non-French secret handshake, recently perfected at Tours during last week’s three-day meet. (We foreigners have to stick together, after all.) We end with a perfect fist bump, and I smirk.
Islem winks back at me. “Et ouais.” That’s how we roll.
Marc eventually yells at us to get to work, and we all start to put on our caps and goggles. I pull out my team cap from home, reflecting on how much I’ve changed since I left. Four months ago, I was mute, standing awkwardly to the side, hoping that English instructions for the new and frightening social interaction would suddenly appear out of thin air. Now, flawless French rolls off my lips as I greet my friends, laughing freely at inside jokes, not thinking twice about kissing swimsuit-clad swimmers on the cheek. I’m not just on the team anymore—I’m part of it, and every single bisous reminds of that fact.
Someone pushes me into the pool and my shriek is swallowed by the water. I surface and swear my revenge, glaring all the while at Pierre, the obvious culprit, who is grinning unabashedly. Then he yelps and falls as he himself is pushed in as well. The whole team eventually follows us into the water to start the day’s warm up, and a small smile, fond and content, flits across my face before I join them.
I look over at the digital clock at the front of the bus just as the time changes to 8:30. The engine begins to rumble, the seat begins to shake, and the bus slowly pulls onto Route 6 and heads toward JPA—the Jay Pritzker Academy—near Siem Reap, Cambodia. The bus is alive with chatter. Peace Corps volunteers trade stories about their experiences in their assigned villages; international schoolteachers discuss their plans for the day’s lessons. I overhear one of the Peace Corps volunteers, Deidre, say, “I have to say, the Peace Corps offers incredible health care. They medevaced me to Bangkok when I got dengue fever.”
Today, I find myself unable to join the conversation. I stare blankly at the blue cloth seat in front of me, trying to gently coax my knotted stomach out of my throat. All I can think about is the empty seat beside me and the uncomfortable feeling of entering uncertain territory alone.
My friend and co-teacher, Shahriyar, is in the Angkor Hospital recovering from a serious bout of amoebic dysentery. I visited him yesterday. He was lying in bed with his summer reading in his right hand and an IV in his left. Looking pale and exhausted, he weakly lifted his head and greeted me. “I don’t know if you know this yet,” he said, “but I’m flying home tomorrow. Are you coming with me?” Though the news didn’t surprise me, the question caught me off guard. As I left the hospital room, I couldn’t help but think how easily this could have been me in his situation.
The bus drives over a speed bump faster than it should have, and I’m jolted back to the present. I try to take my mind off Shahriyar and look out the window at the world around me. Everything is so much different than it is in Deerfield, yet it all somehow feels very natural to me. To my left I see an elderly woman wearing a mask sweeping dust off the street; I smile at her, but she doesn’t notice. As the bus gets closer and closer to JPA, the fact that I will have to teach today’s lessons by myself begins to set in. I wonder if I’m physically capable of teaching three hours of class by myself in the ninetydegree heat and 90 percent humidity. In the past,
Shahriyar and I had always taken turns leading the class, giving each other a few moments to rest and rehydrate while the other taught. A part of me is afraid to do it. I’ve never had to lead the class without the comfort and support of having Shahriyar by my side. As I think about the challenges I will face, I realize how easy it would be to turn back. I only have to call Sokun—a local tuk-tuk driver and he’d take me to the airport. Knowing my co-teacher has become seriously ill, nobody would think less of me if I went home today.
As I sit in my seat, planning my trip home, the bus slows nearly to a stop and then turns onto a narrow red dirt road. I’ve suddenly plunged into a new world. The mess of worn-down concrete buildings and mopeds gives way to miles of flooded rice paddies stretching as far as I can see. Every few hundred yards I see boys and young men working barefoot in the fields. The bamboo huts that dot the landscape make me think back to my visit to the house of one of my students, Dari. I remember looking into his room and seeing a wooden table on his dirt floor. Close by, a bamboo shelf was filled with books. The globe he had won for being on the Honor Roll was proudly displayed on the bookshelf among his prized possessions. Smiling ear to ear, he told us that JPA was the best thing in his life. I realize that it really is too late to go home. I’ve already fallen in love with my students.
As the bus pulls into JPA’s driveway, the rest of the teachers begin gathering their materials. I remain seated, deep in thought. “Are you coming?” I hear a familiar voice ask me. I look up and see Deidre looking at me.
“Of course I am.”
Soft Wooden Heart
The backbone of my life is my writing desk. I like to describe its surface as an organized mess (despite my parents’ overdramatized description of a bomb site), a state of positive entropy and minimum energy. Math exercises overlap an organizer, set next to almost-empty tubes of paint and overdue library books. A constantly filled bottle of water sits behind a glasses’ case full of guitar picks, and carved into a mountain of paper, right in the middle, is a space reserved for my laptop—on days when I am slouching, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare needs to be slid under it. An eclectic desk shows an eclectic personality; mine has had the honor of being the training grounds prior to the Great (final) Battle (exam) of Chemistry, the peaceful meadow of relaxed reading afternoons, and all in all the pristine-turned-colorful canvas of an inquisitive mind.
I remember buying it with my mother five years ago, when my bruised knees protested against the tiny white-paint-gone-yellow one I had used since childhood. My new desk was made of native Rimu heartwood—solid, resilient, dependable—a perfect role model for me to grow into. Over the years, its material became representative of my New Zealand identity, its surface slowly coated in quirky personality, and its compartments filled with treasured memories; the heartwood desk echoed my heart.
At first, it did not fit with the decor of the rest of my room, which even now appears boxy and stark next to my grandiosely elegant writing desk, but its quiet strength is unafraid of individuality, just as I have learned to become. It has watched as I grew stronger branches, a straighter trunk, firmer roots; whereas I had once been but a shy young seedling, I sprouted leaves and with them the ability and yearning to provide shade for others. I have certainly physically grown into it, but although I would like to think that I have become completely independent, I remain human; in inevitable times of need, it is still my steadfast, sturdy desk that offers its support.
I sit here and, well, I write: joyfully, desolately, irately, wistfully—at times paralyzed by excitement, at others crippled by fear. I scrawl notes in my organizer (which is, naturally, not in the least organized), words overflow my blog, overemotional oranges and blues plague my illustrations; shallow scratch marks indent the wood from where I have pressed too passionately into paper. It may be solid, but it is elastic enough to be shaped, resilient enough to adapt: This is my soft wooden heart.
It can take it. My desk remains constant despite scars of experience—unassuming, stoic, ever watchful. Even when I dismembered dying cell phones, their frail key tones pleading for mercy, the desk stood there, nonchalant. Regardless of what fervor goes on from time to time, it knows there will eventually be a constant calm; my lively nest of rebuilt mobiles still calls this place home. Sometimes, I rest my uncertain head on its reassuring solid surface and the wood presses back into my heartbeat, communicating in Morse: “Don’t worry. Some things will never change.”
And, like a mother, it always turns out to be right. Beneath my seemingly chaotic coat of papers and objects; beneath the superfluous, temporary things that define my present life, my desk and my heart remain still—solid, stable, and evergreen, ready to be written onto and scratched into by experience.
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