申请哈耶普斯的同学一般都是各个学校的顶级学霸，通常情况下，他们在标化成绩、gpa方面都无法拉开差距，影响招生官的最大变数来自文书和课外活动，因此，文书如果能写出亮点，吸引到招生官，那么被录取的概率就会提升很多。
近日，哈佛大学公布了2020年入学的9名优秀申请者的文书，杨茗棋老师做了整理，申请2022年秋季入学的同学可以看一下。认真体会下优秀文书的语言风格，写作逻辑，以及如何讲好自己的故事的。
今年的申请者，可以提前着手文书的创作，还是那句话，申请名校，语言成绩只是敲门砖，真正赢得招生官青睐的还是要看文书是否打动他，活动是否有足够的含金量。
哈佛大学公开的这9篇文书完全符合了好文书的四个标准：correctness（准确），content（有料），clarity ﹙清晰﹚，creativity（新颖）。
准确：用词准确，时态、拼写和标点没有错误。这一标准用来评判学生是否具备基本英文写作能力。
有料：检查文章是否围绕学生自身来写，是否真实，是否展现学生个性、才能以及思想深度，能否引起反思。
清晰：文章简洁，观点清晰明确；运用恰当的措辞、词汇、语法以及多样精致的句式结构，这是即将步入大学的高中生应该必备的。
新颖：能否吸引读者的注意力？主题表达是否新颖？
一起来体会下（篇幅有限，本篇文章有中3篇文书，后续1期包含3篇）：
第四篇essay（作者：josh）
i look over at the igital 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, an the bus slowly pulls onto route 6 an heas towar jpa—the jay pritzker acaemy—near siem reap, camboia. the bus is alive with chatter. peace corps volunteers trae stories about their experiences in their assigne villages; international schoolteachers iscuss their plans for the ay’s lessons. i overhear one of the peace corps volunteers, eire, say, “i have to say, the peace corps offers increible health care. they meevace me to bangkok when i got engue fever.”
toay, i fin myself unable to join the conversation. i stare blankly at the blue cloth seat in front of me, trying to gently coax my knotte stomach out of my throat. all i can think about is the empty seat besie me an the uncomfortable feeling of entering uncertain territory alone.
my frien an co-teacher, shahriyar, is in the angkor hospital recovering from a serious bout of amoebic ysentery. i visite him yesteray. he was lying in be with his summer reaing in his right han an an iv in his left. looking pale an exhauste, he weakly lifte his hea an greete me. “i on’t know if you know this yet,” he sai, “but i’m flying home tomorrow. are you coming with me?” though the news in’t surprise me, the question caught me off guar. as i left the hospital room, i couln’t help but think how easily this coul have been me in his situation.
the bus rives over a spee bump faster than it shoul have, an i’m jolte back to the present. i try to take my min off shahriyar an look out the winow at the worl aroun me. everything is so much ifferent than it is in eerfiel, yet it all somehow feels very natural to me. to my left i see an elerly woman wearing a mask sweeping ust off the street; i smile at her, but she oesn’t notice. as the bus gets closer an closer to jpa, the fact that i will have to teach toay’s lessons by myself begins to set in. i woner if i’m physically capable of teaching three hours of class by myself in the ninetyegree heat an 90 percent humiity. in the past, shahriyar an i ha always taken turns leaing the class, giving each other a few moments to rest an rehyrate while the other taught. a part of me is afrai to o it. i’ve never ha to lea the class without the comfort an support of having shahriyar by my sie. as i think about the challenges i will face, i realize how easy it woul be to turn back. i only have to call sokun—a local tuk-tuk river an he’ take me to the airport. knowing my co-teacher has become seriously ill, noboy woul think less of me if i went home toay.
as i sit in my seat, planning my trip home, the bus slows nearly to a stop an then turns onto a narrow re irt roa. i’ve suenly plunge into a new worl. the mess of worn-own concrete builings an mopes gives way to miles of flooe rice paies stretching as far as i can see. every few hunre yars i see boys an young men working barefoot in the fiels. the bamboo huts that ot the lanscape make me think back to my visit to the house of one of my stuents, ari. i remember looking into his room an seeing a wooen table on his irt floor. close by, a bamboo shelf was fille with books. the globe he ha won for being on the honor roll was prouly isplaye on the bookshelf among his prize possessions. smiling ear to ear, he tol us that jpa was the best thing in his life. i realize that it really is too late to go home. i’ve alreay fallen in love with my stuents.
as the bus pulls into jpa’s riveway, the rest of the teachers begin gathering their materials. i remain seate, eep in thought. “are you coming?” i hear a familiar voice ask me. i look up an see eire looking at me.
“of course i am.”
第五篇essay（作者：sarah）
i am staning behin my high school when a snowball pelts my sie with a thu an splatters across my jacket, covering me with a fine, icy ust. my bewilere eyes trace the snowball’s trajectory until they fall upon a pair of snickering hoolums crouche behin a small mountain of snowballs. they must have been waiting all afternoon for an unsuspecting stuent to walk by, an perhaps for emphasis, one of the boys looks me in the eye an raises a grimy mile finger. quickly, i mol a hanful of snow into a sphere with cuppe hans an cock my arm back.
i haven’t thrown anything in a while, but muscle memory guies me through the requisite motions. i playe softball for eight years, an my athletic strength was always my throwing arm; in fifth grae, when my coach aske me to throw the ball from thir to first, i hurle the ball with such force that the catch knocke him off-balance. upon entering high school, it seeme natural that i woul play on the school’s softball team.
however, my boy ha other ieas. throughout mile school i’ evelope increasingly painful boy aches, an in freshman year i awoke one morning with a brutal heaache penetrating the crown of my hea an the bones of my face as though a vice ha been clampe to my skull overnight. after consulting more octors than i can remember, i was iagnose with fibromyalgia.
fibromyalgia is characterize by chronic wiesprea pain an extreme sensitivity to touch. my neurologist escribes fibromyalgia as “heaache of the boy.” personally, i favor my father’s escription; after one particularly painful an exhausting ay he aptly proclaime, “fibromyalgia is your boy’s way of giving you the finger.”
agonizing muscle cramps mocke me constantly, preventing me from walking longer than five minutes without growing exhauste. the pressure above my eyes sneere at me whenever i attempte to rea or write. even after i foun meications to temper the heaaches just enough so i coul return to school with sporaic attenance, sharp pains gnawe at my boy with haughty erision if i even thought about returning to the softball fiels an the activities i love.
for months i trie to ignore the cruel obscenities fibromyalgia hurle my way, steafastly believing the pain woul soon subsie an i woul achieve everything i ha planne for myself if i simply isregare the taunting aches an worke oggely to catch up at school. but when softball season arrive, it became apparent that while etermination an intelligence coul preserve my gpa in the face of fibromyalgia, there was no personal attribute or skill that coul heal my boy an allow me to join my teammates on the fiel.
it was time to confront the beast.
in oing so, i kept in min the schoolyar aphorism that there is strength in numbers. i i not face fibromyalgia alone, but with mathematics by my sie. baseball is a game of statistics, an if fibromyalgia threatene to steal the sport i love through physical eterioration, i woul outsmart this insolent illness an reclaim ownership of baseball through intellectual pursuits. i began a mathematical research project, analyzing the effectiveness of current baseball statistics, as well as eriving my own.
fibromyalgia force me to reefine my goals an personal stanars for success. this baseball project was my first step towar reclaiming my life an laying the founation for victory over my illness. as calculations replace pitching rills, my passion for baseball was channele into a burgeoning love of science an math. hours i ha previously evote to softball became fille with scientific journals an books, an summers i use to spen at athletic camps were evote to research at local universities. baseball provie a link to my pre-fibromyalgia life at a time when i esperately neee one, an through baseball i realize that if i wante to beat fibromyalgia, i coul not simply hope it woul isappear overnight. whether i moifie my meications or aapte my scheule, i neee to evise my own way to face fibromyalgia’s antagonizing aches hea-on.
so when that taunting rascal waves his mile finger in my irection, my cheeks o not flush with angry humiliation an my legs o not run away, but my hans mol a snowball an my arm pulls back. as i follow through with my throw, pain raiating up my arm, i know instantly that i will pay for this exertion in the morning. but my icy comeback hits the sniggering boy squarely in the chest, knocking him backwar into the snow as his accomplice’s mouth lies agape in shock.
well. i guess i’ve still got it.
第六篇essay（作者：anielle）
i wrap my scarf more firmly aroun my neck, feeling the chill of the brisk january air as i truge my way to practice. the bus stop isn’t actually that far from the pool, but with a heavy backpack an the fancy shoes that my host sister insiste i wear, the three-minute trek seems to last forever. turning the corner three blocks own, i finally make it to the parking lot an see one of my friens.
“salut, thomas.”
he knows that it’s me without even looking. “salut, anielle.” he finishes filing with his bicycle lock an stans to greet me. i lean in for my customary kiss, an he obliges, bisous-ing me once on each cheek, before we walk towar piscine bréquigny together.
easy conversation flows between us as our well-traine feet follow the paths to our respective changing rooms. i punch in the coe on the girls’ sie an open the oor. familiar figures stan in various states of unress, an bisous go all aroun while we change an speculate on the various tortures marc will put us through toay. then we hea own to the pool eck, reay to meet our fates.
i get to our coach first, an mentally switch back into english. “hey, marc, what’s up?”
he shrugs. “fine.”
i laugh an give him a high five, then move on to bisous an ça va? the rest of the boys. when i get to islem, who is algerian, the two of us procee to execute our exceeingly complex non-french secret hanshake, recently perfecte at tours uring last week’s three-ay meet. ﹙we foreigners have to stick together, after all.﹚ we en with a perfect fist bump, an i smirk.
islem winks back at me. “et ouais.” that’s how we roll.
marc eventually yells at us to get to work, an we all start to put on our caps an goggles. i pull out my team cap from home, reflecting on how much i’ve change since i left. four months ago, i was mute, staning awkwarly to the sie, hoping that english instructions for the new an frightening social interaction woul suenly appear out of thin air. now, flawless french rolls off my lips as i greet my friens, laughing freely at insie jokes, not thinking twice about kissing swimsuit-cla swimmers on the cheek. i’m not just on the team anymore—i’m part of it, an every single bisous remins of that fact.
someone pushes me into the pool an my shriek is swallowe by the water. i surface an swear my revenge, glaring all the while at pierre, the obvious culprit, who is grinning unabashely. then he yelps an falls as he himself is pushe in as well. the whole team eventually follows us into the water to start the ay’s warm up, an a small smile, fon an content, flits across my face before i join them.
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