亲爱的同学们，又是一年申请季的关键节点，大家的文书都准备好了吗，是否依然觉得欠缺了些什么？是否还在怀疑偏题与否？

最权威的指导来了！

哈佛校报《The Crimson》公布了2019年已经录取的10篇学生文书，并附带精彩点评。

哈佛录取文书分享

文书一：作者Sandra

State: Massachusetts, USA

High School: Public school, 306 students in graduating class

Ethnicity: Asian

Gender: Female

GPA: 3.95 out of 4.0

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 Italiam laeti 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.

哈佛校报点评

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。

文书二：作者Kevin

State: New Jersey, USA

High School: Private day school, 130 students in graduating class

Ethnicity: Asian

Gender: Male

GPA: 4.0 out of 4.0

Extracurriculars: Varsity Soccer, Orchestra,

Finance organizationAwards:

CumLaude Major: Applied Math

I stood frozen in the produce aisle at ShopRite, wondering which of the five varieties of oranges to buy. Valencia, blood orange, organic, Florida navel – what were the differences? When I asked my mom which variety she was looking for, she responded curtly, “It’s your choice. Pick what you want.” The thing was, I didn’t know what I wanted.

For my parents, this level of freedom – even in the orange section of the grocery store — is somewhat unique to the United States. The lingering policies of the Cultural Revolution in 1970s China dictated life choices for my parents; growing up in poverty, their families’ sole concern was putting food on the table. As a result of economic disadvantage, higher education became my parents’ life goal. “If I didn’t make it to college,” my dad told me, “I would have been trapped in that godforsaken village for the rest of my life” (only one-tenth of his high school ever made it). My parents didn’t have a choice: my mom’s entire life revolved around studying, and my dad was spanked into shape at home. Sports, music, or entertainment were out of the question – my parents’ only option was to work hard and dream of a choice in America.

The miraculous thing is that my parents, having no freedom of choice for the better part of twenty years, still had the vision to grant me choice in the United States. Unfortunately, this is not common, even in our beloved land of opportunity. All I have to do is talk to my closest childhood friends - children of other Asian-American immigrants – to see the glass walls that cultural and familial expectation have erected around their lives. For some of them, playing the piano is an obligation, not a hobby, and medical school is the only career option.

Oddly enough, I had always felt a bit left out when I was younger – why weren’t my parents signing me up for American Math Competitions and middle school summer research programs, when all my friends were doing them? I’ve come to realize, though, that having the choice to do the things I’m interested in brings out an enthusiasm I can explore passionately and fully. My many hobbies – playing soccer with our neighbor in my backyard, fiddling around with Mendelssohn on my violin, or even talking to my friend about our latest stock picks – all have come from me, and I’m forever grateful to my parents for that.

The contrast between my parents’ lives and mine is shocking. In the United States, I have so many paths available to me that I sometimes can’t even choose. I don’t even know what kind of oranges to buy, yet oranges – or any other fruit - were precious delicacies to my dad as a child. I can dream of attending a school like Harvard and studying whatever I want, whether it be math, economics, or even philosophy or biochemistry – a non-existent choice for my parents, who were assigned majors by their universities. I can even dream of becoming an entrepreneur, which I see as exploration and self-destiny in its purest form. I can be sure that wherever my true passions take me, my parents will support the choices that I make, as they have for seventeen years.

Most importantly, though, I value that Harvard, with its centuries-long devotion to educating the full person, fosters the same sense of choice for its students that I have come to so deeply appreciate in my parents. I am exhilarated to have the freedom to define my own academic journey and, looking forward, for this upcoming four-year odyssey to lay the groundwork for a lifetime of exploration. For me, thankfully, it’s all possible - but only because of the sacrifice and vision of my parents.

哈佛校报点评

凯文以一则轶事作为文章的开头，这是一种吸引读者注意力的行之有效的方法。通过在店里挑选橙子的丰富多彩的图像，凯文开始构建一个自我导向的主题。

我们看到凯文反省自己的童年，他最初对自己不像其他孩子一样生活而感到精神困扰，但最终他对自己所拥有的独特机会感到理解，并为之感激。这让凯文进一步表明了他自由追求内心真正兴趣的自我意识的觉醒——这让凯文一下子脱颖而出，因为许多大学都希望理智而又好奇的学生。

凯文在文章的结尾，回到了他在商店里挑选橙子的轶事，这是一种全景式的写作方法，有助于强调他的文章主题。在文书中他明确表示，他将充分享受大学教育，同样重要的是，他欣赏他所申请学校的价值观。凯文以一个令人振奋的、成熟的音符结束了他的论文，反映出他在校园里会是什么样的学生。

文书三：作者Valerie

Gender: Female

GPA: 4.2 out of 4.0

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

Languages have 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.

哈佛校报点评

瓦莱丽的文章的力量在于，她熟练地运用语言把句子串在一起，而且这些句子都是相互交际的。瓦莱丽的写作在她这个年龄段有着不寻常的进步：它没有任何装作诗意的表达，这些尝试经常出现在其他学生的个人陈述中。并且这篇文章成功地展示了她丰富的词汇，证实了瓦莱丽说的，单词和语言是她最擅长使用的工具，她的文章就是证明。

在内容上，本文通过对作者热爱语言学的原因进行解析，并通过对一个实际单词的解析，展示了作者的求知欲。

当然，这篇文章也有可改进之处，它本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，但这对于我们了解她的个性是远远不够的。这篇文章只有475字，远远低于650字的限制。一个更加丰富多彩的介绍，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，都可以使此文更丰富。

文书四：作者Julia

State: Georgia, USA

High School: Public School, 597 Students in graduating class

Ethnicity: Asian

Gender: Female

GPA: 4.0 out of 4.0

Extracurriculars: Varsity Academic Bowl co-captain; varsity lacrosse four year letterman, Chess Club president; 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, 2013. 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.

哈佛校报点评

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。

文书五：作者Aiden

State: Illinois, USA

High School: Public school, 650 students in graduating class

Ethnicity: Biracial

Gender: Male

SAT / ACT: 33

Extracurriculars: Spanish National Honor Society president, concert band first chair alto and District IMEA, jazz band lead alto, marching band drum major, math club (State freshman, sophomore, and senior year), intern for State Representative

Awards: National AP Scholar

Major: History and Literature

I am African-American, Caucasian, Jewish, and gay, and narrowly escaping the degradation of my ancestors: my great-great-great grandfather's slavery, my grandmother's persecution in the Holocaust, and the denial of gay identity. I am the personification of the culture and struggles of each of these groups. As I walk through life with this mix, I must be able to respect and love all different walks of life. Furthermore, during those times that I stereotype people, I assume roles onto their identity. I am able to stop myself and realize that they hold the wisdom from experiences that I do not, and that I am actually hurting myself. Judging a book by its cover really does make you miss out. Some people I know acknowledge me as the gay guy, a member of that small minority that is stricken with bullying and identity crisis, seldom as a Jew or black. It has always been important to me for people to recognize me by my radiant personality and not by my superficial sexuality or race. My ethnicity and orientation do not define me: they are the tools my ancestors have granted so that I can pursue my destiny, and I have my individual spirit to color my path. I am an independent, positive person.

I carry the mark of maturity with the essence of vitality. I can only hope that people remember me via my relationships with them and my effects on their lives. And so I apply the same mindset to others. The snappy, aggravated cashier at the grocery store checking me out may be working through her retirement to pay for her granddaughter's tuition. Or the black youth with his jeans hanging low and "speaking Ebonics" is actually executing a facet of his culture from which he takes pride and grows. Moreover my template also allows me to be open-minded; how could I not be cultural? My ancestors would not have succeeded without those that have listened and empathized with their plights. And how could I shut my ears? I cannot; I will not. I will not allow myself to shut out another's opinion simply because I was not introduced to their beliefs in my upbringing. How ignorant and arrogant to speak my gospel and thrive on the grace of others but not even consider others' words? Every breath I take is due to the grace of those magnanimous humans before me who not only listened to those Jews, or those slaves, or that gay person, but also took it upon themselves to advance humanity beyond close-mindedness into a world where every individual's contribution based on their experience is respected. There is never a time to neglect the social fragility of our existence, not in the courtroom or the living room. To assume the serenity of social culture is a blind eye to the macrocosm of daily life. It is my expectation to persevere for the fight for human rights and to respect the nature of all cultures and all peoples through my actions as well as my words. It is insufficient to tell someone they are wrong for persecuting. We have to help them find no solace in their prejudice. Not only do I have a duty to argue for the progress of our humanity, I will do so by example.

哈佛校报点评

在这篇文章中，艾登在深入探究他的身份如何塑造了他的人生观之前，就直截了当地承认了他复杂的身份，立刻抓住了读者的注意力。

本文强调了斗争的重要性，并对身份的狭隘性提出了挑战。也许艾登这篇文章最令人痛心的力量在于它所传达的信息：肤浅的各方面身份并不能定义一个人；相反，一个人的身份会影响他或她的命运。一个可以改进这篇文章的方面是将想要表达的思想分成多个段落，给读者一个呼吸和节奏的机会。尽管如此，艾登的思想在他的写作中流畅表达而且合乎逻辑，内容吸引了读者。

艾登既承认祖先所经历的纷争，又展示了他们的高度尊重，并将其对祖先的思考认知应用到自己的生活中，从而显示出他的洞察力和成熟度。他的写作是明智的，有力的，非常感人的，他的智慧和成熟的深度给那些阅读此文的人留下了深刻的印象。

最后祝愿大家都能够写出让招生官满意的文书，都能够进入梦校！