了解文书冷知识，为申请增添“必杀技”
不知不觉踩了文书大雷，一掌被招生官“PASS”？
近日，哈佛大学在校刊The Crimson 发布了7篇优秀录取文书，并给出了对每一篇文章的专业点评。对于正纠结在文书构思和选题中的同学们来说，可以作为很好的借鉴和学习素材。
本期【怦然心动的文书】，一起来看看让院校哈佛都称之为优秀的文书，有何过人之处。
When Life Doesn't Gives You Lemons
With the blazing morning sun beaming through the window, I had an inclination to make a stand to sell Lebanese laymounada - a light lemonade flavored with a splash of rosewater. Throughout my childhood, anytime the temperature spiked over seventy degrees, there would be laymounada waiting for me at my Teta’s (grandmother in Lebanese Arabic) house.
At that moment, I scoured the cabinets and secured the glass pitcher only to realize we did not have lemons. To my disappointment, I realized my days of being an entrepreneur and generating revenue from my laymounada stand were over before they could even begin. I sat at the kitchen table, wallowing in disappointment. I wanted everyone to be able to taste my Teta’s laymounada. Suddenly, I had an idea that would either prove to be inventive or a total failure. I would sell lemonade without the lemons. Revolutionary, right?
I ripped off a rectangular sheet of paper towel and jotted down my business plan. I listed the key elements of the business plan: a drawing of a cup, a rose, and the price- “fifty scents”- to correlate with the rose-themed business. I sat outside of my childhood home located in a cul-de-sac of five houses and sold my neighbors a rose drink- a combination of filtered water, packets of sugar, and a dash of rosewater. Granted, I only made about $10 from a combination of my parents and generous neighbors who did not drink the “lemonade”, but the experience allowed me to realize regardless of the obstacle, if you are passionate, you can persevere. Teta’s laymounada was my introduction to entrepreneurship.
The entrepreneurial skills gained from my laymounada stand allowed me to establish A&G Jewelry, co-founded with my sister when I was twelve. This business focused on representing our Lebanese heritage. Using supplies we found around our house and from our local craft store, we created a variety of pieces that featured traditional Middle Eastern coins, beads, and clay baked into the shape of Lebanon. My sister and I collaborated to create marketing tools to promote our new business. Before we knew it, A&G Jewelry had earned a spot at my church’s annual Lebanese festival. After tirelessly marketing and selling our jewelry for three days straight, we had made over $900 in revenue, which we decided to donate to the church.
Entrepreneurship took a new form in high school when my sister and I founded our second partnership, The Model Brockton City Council. We saw a need to engage our peers in local government by designing a simulation of our city council. We had to collect signatures, present to many administrators, and market our new club. The initial goal to have more people try my lemonade resonated with me as I strived to have more people engage in their civic duties. Today, over twenty-five of my classmates frequently attend my meetings.
With my first business venture selling laymounada, I made $10; with A&G Jewelry, $900; with the Model Brockton City Council, the revenue amounted to $0. Although there was not a financial gain, I attained experience as a negotiator, problem solver, creative thinker, and most importantly, I became persistent.
Twelve years have passed since that summer day with my “laymounada,” and I have yet to maintain a long-lasting business. My six-year-old self would have seen this lack of continuity as a colossal failure, but instead, it instilled an intense curiosity in me. Little did I know the experience would remain so vivid after all these years. It has continued to push me, compelling me to challenge myself both academically and entrepreneurially. As I grow older, my intrinsic drive to have a lemonade stand, regardless of whatever obstacles come my way, persists as a deep-seated love of business.
When life doesn’t give you lemons, still make lemonade (or laymounada, as my Teta would say).
哈佛点评
优秀的大学文书都遵循一个简单的公式：钩子（ Hook ）+锚点（Anchor）+故事（Story）+成长（Growth）。
虽然具体细节可能有所不同，但如果你能包含这四个要素，你就会写出一篇引人入胜的文章。
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钩子:“钩子”的作用就是吸引读者。招生官每天都会阅读数百篇论文，因此用有趣或不同的东西尽快吸引他们的注意力非常重要。
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锚点:“锚点”是连接整篇文章并赋予其意义的想法或主题。好的主题是发人深省的，让读者读后感到满足。
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故事：讲故事的黄金法则是“展示，而不是讲述”。不要只是告诉招生人员你是一个多么出色的人，而是要尝试通过你的故事向他们展示你的个性、性格和成就。
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成长：所有优秀的大学文书都会清楚地展示你如何从你的经历中成长。一定要强调你从经验中学到或获得的东西。这篇文书成功的原因就是抓住了四个关键要素--吸引力、锚点、故事和成长
Abby's Essay
Barreling through the hallowed, mahogany double doors, I was on a mission. I made a beeline for the back. Behold, a panoply of new prospects, each beckoning me to read them.
Every weekend, my father, my sister, and I make the pilgrimage to Book Mecca. The sensations one meets upon entering Barnes and Noble are unmatched. The aroma of coffee mingles with the crisp perfume of unopened books, and the tinny music drifts from the ceiling speakers, coalescing with the clanking of the Cafe equipment, which is intermittently overcome by the barista's peppy voice on the PA system announcing the latest limited-edition dessert. Where else can one enjoy a triple-layer cheesecake among bookstacks? As Virginia Woolf says, "one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."
My family, however, dines on knowledge. To us, Barnes and Noble is an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mind. After we snag our favorite corner table, I sit, like metal to a magnet, immovable for hours.
I may delve into an Agatha Christie novel and attempt to outwit Detective Poirot; though I never win, I find the sleuthing remarkably similar to analyzing confounders the culprits of unexpected results-in my clinical research. Alternatively, I may crack open an atlas to test my memory from the summer when I memorized the entire world map. Or, I might read Animal Farm to better understand the system that ravaged Ethiopia in the late 20th century and forced my grandfather to flee his own village.
Complimenting this mission to satisfy our voracious minds comes an equally important fulfillment: engaging with the coterie of miscellaneous characters we have befriended. After visiting the same Barnes and Noble for eleven years, we have forged friendships with several regulars, including a retired teacher couple, an octogenarian with a seven-year-old brother, and an eternally sunburned man named George who shelters feral cats at his pool company's office. After a dear Barnes and Noble-goer passed away, my heart was comforted when I read in her obituary that she, indeed, would be missed by "the old [bookstore] gang." United by their good humor and love for Barnes and Noble, this unlikely group teaches me that a community can form around anything, no matter how disparate the members are. They show me that, in Aristotle's words, "educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."
While I have the luxury of Barnes and Noble, my father's reality growing up in rural Ethiopia bears a stark contrast and defines my legacy of education. He received a meager education in a laughable schoolhouse, using sunlight to study by day, and the moonlight by night. When he was nine, my grandfather opened a school so my father could continue beyond 4th grade, unlike many of his peers. My grandfather had no formal education, yet he knew the country's constitution by heart and exhorted nearby villages to educate their children.
My father's dedication to chauffeuring me to the bookstore and the library is an artifact of his father's same dedication. And I am the accumulation of this legacy. Behind me are all of the sacrifices and payoffs of my family's dedication to education, and before me is a lifetime of opportunity and fulfillment. Though I have never met my grandfather, I feel an incredibly palpable connection to him through our shared fervor to learn and teach. My father's and grandfather's stories remind me that education is not a commodity for many, but a privilege that I treat as such. I cherish all of my education's wonderful consequences: the obscure curiosities I have indulged in, the strong sense of identity I have developed, the discernment and morals I have bolstered, the respect I have gained for different viewpoints, and the ambition for excellence that I have inherited and extended. They are what fuel me, my college education, and my drive to pay it forward.
哈佛点评
招生官点评：Abby使用了一种我称之为“过道文章”的方法。
想象一下，推着购物车穿过杂货店，选择你最喜欢的食物，把它们放在购物车里。“过道文章”是指作者推着购物车穿过她的过去、现在和未来，沿途收集她的轶事、兴趣和价值观。把购物车想象成这篇文章的背景。Abby的购物车是巴诺书店的。坚实的背景使文章在一些容易描绘的世界中扎根，使Abby能够深入到她生活的不同方面，而不会使文章看起来分散。
Abby以明显的核心价值观结束了这篇文章：感恩。她并没有戏剧性地声称她将改变或拯救世界。相反，她只是让人们看到了自己的真实身份：一个充满好奇心、经常光顾书店的女孩一一一个受到过去启发并冲进未来的桃花心木大门的女孩。
由于篇幅原因，剩下2篇文书和点评内容，我们已为大家打包好，欢迎后台回复您的【联系方式】即可获取！
Samantha C.
I’ve always been a storyteller, but I’ve only been an alleged fish killer since age five. As a child, my head was so filled up with stories that I might have forgotten to feed Bubbles the class pet just one time too often. Once I pulverized an entire pencil, because I was daydreaming instead of taking it out of the sharpener.
More than anything else, I became an obsessive list-maker. I memorized and wrote down long lists of my stuffed animals, cities around the world, and my favorite historical time periods. I created itineraries and packing lists for my Build-A-Bears, then arranged them in rows on a pretend airplane. I drew family trees for a made-up family during the Industrial Revolution. I wrote lists until the spine of my notebook cracked under the weight of graphite.
For a long time, I thought this was something that I alone did, and that I did alone. Lying on the floor of my bedroom, I spun fantastical stories of mundane events. Each story opened and closed in my head, untold and unsung.
Years later, though—to my amazement—I discovered other people who were interested in the same things I was. Wandering into fanfiction websites and online forums, I was welcomed into a vibrant community of writers—serious, silly, passionate people who wrote hundreds of thousands of words analyzing character dynamics and exploring endless plot threads. When I finally started posting my own thoughts, I didn’t feel like I was taking a risk or venturing into new territory. I had been speaking these words to myself since I was five, preparing myself to finally shout them into the real world. And people responded.
Spurred on by this excitement, I started writing stories for other people to read. I had fallen in love with the community writing had given me, and with writing itself. I wanted to contribute my own small piece to a world much bigger than me. I shouted my stories up to the WiFi signals that caught and carried them, waiting to be found by someone else writing lists in her bedroom alone.
In high school, I also found joy in editing. I loved analyzing, polishing, and curating my classmates’ short stories, poems, and artwork to make them shine for my school’s literary magazine. I spent hours with other editors, passionately arguing the merits and weaknesses of dozens of writing pieces. Editing the school newspaper, meanwhile, became a way to spotlight members of the school community, from profiling new staff and faculty to polling the student body about the stigma surrounding menstruation.
I’ve now had my poems published in a national literary journal and have joined the editorial staff of an international literary magazine for teens. I feel like I’m discovering my power, and with it my ability to create change. Last year, I founded SPEAK, a creative writing program for elementary school students. I wanted to assist younger writers so they could create their own communities. During SPEAK sessions, I taught a group of students how to draw a map of a fantasy wolf kingdom they had designed, helped a girl edit her classmate’s poem about hula hoops, and listened to a third-grader talk faster and faster as we discussed the meaning of soup in The Tale of Despereaux.
I’ve now turned SPEAK into a self-sustaining club at my school, and I’m expanding the program onto an online platform. Writing changed my life, but it only happened when I started sharing my work, putting it out there, and starting conversations—not just responding. Alone, stories used to abstract me from the outside world. Now, stories connect me to the world, creating communities instead of pulling me away from them. For too many of us, our stories are born in our heads, and they die there. I’m going to change that, for myself and for as many people as I can bring with me.
哈佛点评
读完第一句话后，我想读更多。到了第三句话的时候，我已经迫不及待地想要见到这个学生了！
这篇文章的成功是因为我们不仅深入了解了他们与生俱来的好奇心和想象力，而且我们了解了他们的个人成长。我们看到学生变得更加自信，并在更大的社区中找到了自己的位置。流行文化和历史典故是一种很好的接触，使写作变得人性化，同时使其具有很强的可读性。但最重要的是，有一条成长的叙事线索。
学生们偶尔会取得一些成就，这些成就是成长的里程碑，但这并不像是一份简历或一份人为的清单……当我们了解他们的创作过程以及故事在他们生活中的重要性时，这一切最终都会汇集在一起。好奇、有创造力、关心他人······以及个人成长感。许多伟大的主题和个人特质让读者不仅喜欢这个学生，而且想认识他们。
Simar B.
June 2nd, 2019. The birth of the new me, or "Simar 2.0" as mom called me. However, I still felt like "Simar 1.0," perceiving nothing more than the odd new sensation of a liberating breeze fluttering through my hair.
At age seventeen, I got a haircut for the first time in my life.
As a Sikh, I inherited a tradition of unshorn, cloth-bound hair, and, for most of my life, I followed my community in wholeheartedly embracing our religion. Over time, however, I felt my hair weighing me down, both materially and metaphorically.
Sikhism teaches that God is one. I asked mom why then was God cleaved into different religions? If all paths were equal, I asked dad, then why not follow some other religion instead? My unease consistently dismissed by our Sikh community, I decided to follow the religion of God: no religion. My hair, though, remained; if I knew my heart, then cutting my hair served no purpose.
Nevertheless, that unshorn hair represented an unequivocal beacon for a now defunct identity. I visited my calculus teacher's office hours, only to be peppered by incessant questions about Sikhism. He pigeonholed me into being a spokesperson for something I no longer associated with. Flustered, I excused myself to the bathroom, examining this other me in the mirror.
Why this hair? This question kept coming back.I ransacked my conscience, and it became painfully obvious. Fear. Fear of what my conservative grandparents might think. Fear of what my Sikh family friends might say. Fear of what my peers might ask. This hair had usurped my sense of self.So off it came.
A few days after crossing my personal Rubicon, I flew to India to meet my grandparents.Breezing through the airport, I perceived something remarkably different about my experience: the absence of the penetrating surveillance that had consistently accompanied me for seventeen years. It was uncanny; I felt as an anodyne presence.
Apprehensively entering my grandparents' New Delhi home some eighteen hours later, I found myself enveloped in hugs. Savoring the moment, I failed to probe why. I recognize now that, in spite of their intransigent religious views, they appreciated that I had made a decision about my identity based on belief, based on being true to my evolving sense of self. I think my grandparents found that admirable.
A few weeks later, dad confessed, "I regret that you did not cut your hair earlier."
I have no regrets.
My hair made me work harder than everyone else simply because I looked different. Sanctimonious people lecture us on having pride in our differences, rarely considering the difficulties which being different entails. For example, a fake Facebook page created by an unknown schoolmate with my birthday listed as September 11th, 2001. Dealing with attacks fueled by ignorance never becomes easier, but such aggressions bolster my courage to face what other people think. In standing up for myself, I become myself.
On some level, I know appearances should not matter. Yet, in many uncomfortable ways, they still do, and they give birth to many disparities. Through the simple act of cutting my hair, I left the confines of intolerance, but my experience opened my eyes to those whose struggles cannot be resolved so easily. This motivates me to never be a bystander, to always energetically take the side of the persecuted in the fight against the powerful.
Over my years of shadowing, I have seen a healthcare system where patients receive inferior care solely on the basis of perceived race. Exposure to this institutionalized injustice motivates me to volunteer with a free health clinic to provide glucose screenings to the underprivileged. We must lead with personal initiative first, starting on the individual level and building from there. Only then can we bring about systemic change to reform the institutions and practices that perpetuate prejudice within medicine and without.
哈佛点评
从文章开头，Simar就把我们带入了一个有意义的成长叙事，尽管如此独特，但却普遍可以理解。所选的题目是理想的，因为它不仅发人深省，而且具有启发性；虽然不是所有的读者都必须面对属于锡克教的社会和文化责任和影响，但Simar以强烈而感人的清晰度将这种斗争揭示出来。
通过他们的故事，他们巧妙地将自己文化和宗教的独特挑战融入到重新找回自己身份和成为真正的自己的强大体验中。在这样做的过程中，学生巧妙地展示了他们有自我理解、内在力量和成长的能力，这些都是打破和重塑自出生以来定义我们的限制所必需的。Simar用一种坚定的、清晰的声音完成了这一切，积极抵制用极端的词汇选择或夸张的语气夸大他们的斗争的常见诱惑，这些诱惑可能会给招生读者留下不好的印象。相反，这本书的语气仍然非常真实，在面对挫折和逆境时总是表现得诚实和实事求是，并提供了几个现实生活中的例子。
文章是很好的例子，说明个人陈述不需要普遍以“幸福的结局”为特色，也不需要以轻松愉快和感激的中心语气来展示成长。Simar出色地以沉思、体贴和赋权的方式处理了我们通常认为的“沉重”话题。
The Color of Everything
There’s a theory that even though each color has a specific wavelength that never changes, how people perceive a specific color may have subtle differences based on small differences in photoreceptors, and the color that one person might consider red might still be red in another’s mind but could look different— a little duller, softer, cooler. Furthermore, how a person’s brain processes the color may also be linked to that person’s environment. Some studies have suggested that color sensitivity could be linked to one’s native languages: for example, people who speak languages that have specific names for eleven colors are able to easily distinguish those eleven colors, but people who speak languages with fewer color specific words may have a harder time distinguishing them.
So it appears that even at the most elementary level of sight, the world is not an objective thing. Instead, what we know and what we remember can influence what and how we see. The color blue may just be the color blue to a three year old, perhaps her favorite color even, but an adult might connect it to so much more—the lake by his childhood home or the eye color of a loved one.I first consciously became aware of the power that our experiences have to change perception when I went to turn on a light in my house after learning about photons in class. What had previously been a mundane light suddenly became a fascinating application of atomic structure, and I thought that I could almost perceive the electrons jumping up and down from energy level to energy level to produce the photons that I saw. I then realized that my world had steadily been changing throughout my years in school as I learned more and more. I now see oligopolies in the soda aisles of the supermarkets. I see the charges warring with each other in every strike of lightning, and the patterns of old American politics still swaying things today. Knowledge and making connections with that knowledge is the difference between seeing the seven oceans glittering in the sun and merely seeing the color blue. It’s the difference between just seeing red and seeing the scarlet of roses blooming, the burgundy of blood pumping through veins, and crimson of anger so fierce that you could burst. Knowledge is color; it is depth, and it is seeing a whole new world without having to move an inch.It is knowledge, too, that can bring people together. I love listening to people’s stories and hearing about what they know and love, because if I learn about what they know, I can learn how they see the world; consequently, since behavior is often based upon perception, I can understand why a person behaves the way they do. On a road trip during the summer, my mom kept looking up at the streetlights lining the highways. When I asked why, she told me that whenever she saw lights by a highway she would wonder if her company had made them. She would guess how tall they were, how wide, and what style they were. She told me that ever since she started working for her company, lights no longer were just lights to her. They were a story of people who first had to measure the wind speed to figure out what dimension the lights had to be, and then of engineers, of money passing hands—possibly even under her own supervision as an accountant—and then of transportation, and of the people who had to install them. I might never perceive lights the exact way my mother does or see her “red” but by hearing her describe what she knows, I can understand her world and realize her role in ours.Beauty and color are in the world, but it is seeking the unknown and making new connections that unlocks them from their greyscale cage.
哈佛点评
Amy撰写了一篇出色的、发人深省的文书，以“求知欲”为中心，使用生动的描述性语言将有趣的科学理论、颜色和视觉研究联系起来，展示我们有限或广泛的知识如何塑造我们的现实和经验。
整篇文章中显而易见的是Amy不断学习的热情和成长，并将她的知识与周围的环境联系起来，以发现隐藏的真相。
一个人可以通过学习他人的知识或故事来理解他人的行为或感知，这是一个简单但又深刻的宏观主题--对知识、真理的好奇心、分享想法和经验无疑可以将许多人聚集在一起。
我想起了狭义相对论和广义相对论的发现者阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的著名自语:“我没有特殊的才能。我只是充满好奇。”
这篇文章的结构非常好，每一段都进一步说明了Amy对新信息和联系的渴望。总的来说，Amy得出了一个有力的结论:教育、同理心、倾听、理解和联系，所有这些都激发了她对生活的智力热情。
Amy渴望了解所有事物，尤其是人，她将自己描绘成一个充满好奇心且讨人喜欢的学生，是充满活力的学术界的理想补充。
