25FALL申请季即将到来！有意冲击境外名校的同学可以开始准备申请咯！！而令人头大的第一个问题大概就是文书撰写了叭！
一封精彩的文书能够让招生官透过文字对你产生直接兴趣，其重要性可见一斑！但是，究竟要写什么、怎么写才能打动招生官呢？
哈佛校报《The Crimson》最近公布了10篇2024年杰出申请文书10篇，并进行了深入评述，请随小编一起来看看叭！
《哈佛深红报》（The Harvard Crimson）是哈佛大学的学生日报，自1873年起不间断发行，历史悠久。每年申请季，该报会从投递的文书中选出10篇向大众公布并进行深入评述，供申请者参考和学习。
根据相关统计：2024年共有54,008名学生申请哈佛，最终共有1,937名学生获得哈佛录取，录取率低于5%。
由此可见，这10篇杰出申请文书更是万里挑一的佳作。
PART 1
文书金贵，胜万言
全美顶级文理学院之一的纽约汉密尔顿学院(Hamilton College)负责招生管理的副校长Monica Inzer曾说：“一篇好的Essay对我而言，能让我在看到学生在申请表格中看不到的那一面。”
Essay是一个让目标院校看到你的思维方式和成长经历的好机会，能够让招生官更深入、更全面地了解你的情况。它的作用有以下几个：
但是呢，根据以往申请经验，我们发现，很多同学在写文书时都犯了以下几个雷区：
为了帮助同学们解决以上的问题，我们整理了哈佛大学的8篇“满分申请文书”并分别从关键词、主题内容和写作亮点三个角度进行了分析。
希望能帮你避开雷区，写出同样优秀的申请文书！
哈佛优秀文书大揭秘
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1. Daniella's Essay
Each time I bake cookies, they come out differently. Butter, sugar, eggs, flour — I measure with precision, stir with vigor, then set the oven to 375°F. The recipe is routine, yet hardly redundant.
After a blizzard left me stranded indoors with nothing but a whisk and a pantry full of the fundamentals, I made my first batch: a tray of piping hot chocolate chunkers whose melt-in-the-mouth morsels comforted my snowed-in soul. Such a flawless description, however, belies my messy process. In reality, my method was haphazard and carefree, the cookies a delicious fortuity that has since been impossible to replicate.
Each subsequent batch I make is a gamble. Will the cookies flatten and come out crispy? Stay bulbous and gooey? Am I a bad baker, or are they inherently capricious? Even with a recipe book full of suggestions, I can never place a finger on my mistake. The cookies are fickle and short-tempered. Baking them is like walking on eggshells — and I have an empty egg carton to prove it. Perhaps beginner's luck had been the secret ingredient all along.
Yet, curiosity keeps me flipping to the same page in my recipe book. I became engrossed in perfecting the cookies not by the mechanical satisfaction of watching ingredients combine into batter, but by the chance to wonder at simplicity. The inconsistency is captivating. It is, after all, a strict recipe, identical ingredients combined in the same permutation. How can such orthodox steps yield such radical, unpredictable results? Even with the most formulaic tasks, I am questioning the universe.
Chemistry explains some of the anomaly. For instance, just a half-pinch extra of baking soda can have astounding ramifications on how the dough bubbles. The kitchen became my laboratory: I diaried each trial like a scientist; I bought a scale for more accurate measurements; I borrowed "On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen" from the library. But all to no avail — the variables refused to come together in any sort of equilibrium.
I then approached the problem like a pianist, taking the advice my teacher wrote in the margins of my sheet music and pouring it into the mixing bowl. There are 88 pitches on a keyboard, and there are a dozen ingredients in the recipe. To create a rhapsodic dessert, I needed to understand all of the melodic and harmonic lines and how they complemented one another. I imagined the recipe in Italian script, the chocolate chips as quick staccatos suspended in a thick adagio medium. But my fingers always stumbled at the coda of each performance, the details of the cookies turning to a hodgepodge of sound.
I whisk, I sift, I stir, I pre-heat the oven again, but each batch has its flaws, either too sweet, burnt edges, grainy, or underdone. Though the cookies were born of boredom, their erratic nature continues to fascinate me. Each time my efforts yield an imperfect result, I develop resilience to return the following week with a fresh apron, ready to try again. I am mesmerized by the quirks of each trial. It isn't enough to just mix and eat — I must understand.
My creative outlook has kept the task engaging. Despite the repetition in my process, I find new angles that liven the recipe. In college and beyond, there will be things like baking cookies, endeavors that seem so unvaried they risk spoiling themselves to a housewife's drudgery. But from my time in the kitchen, I have learned how to probe deeper into the mechanics of my tasks, to bring music into monotony, and to turn work into play. However the cookie crumbles in my future, I will approach my work with curiosity, creativity, and earnestness.
关键词：坚韧、创造力、求知欲
主题内容：文本以烤饼干为灵感源泉，Daniella巧妙地将在烘焙饼干的过程中所经历的种种变化和挑战转化为对人生深邃的哲思。她不仅展示了烤制饼干时遇到问题的应对之道，更进一步升华至现实生活中面对挑战的态度和解决问题的能力，展现了独特的洞察力和人生智慧。
亮点：整篇文章采取分总结构，语言有趣幽默，富有感染力，关于做饼干的感官细节描写地栩栩如生。
2. Michael's Essay
I've been alone for three years now.
My freshman year, my mother had to take a job as a live-in caregiver to make enough money to pay rent and other bills after my uncle got married and moved out. I was ecstatic. I could finally have the entire house to myself. I had imagined the countless hours on the PS4, nobody telling me to go to sleep or to go do my homework. I felt free. Unexpectedly, though, this freedom came at the expense of my childhood.
To compensate for never being home, my mother called me three times a day. The first call would always be at 6:00 a.m, like clockwork. That was the call to wake me up so that I wouldn't miss the bus and be late for school. Then there was the 4:00 p.m call where we went over anything and everything that happened in school that day. Lastly, there was the 7:00 p.m call which always seemed to last over an hour. This was the call that made me miss my mother the most. We labeled this call the "multi-purpose" call. Sometimes we would just talk about how we were both doing. Other times she would teach me things I needed to know, like how to do laundry, how to go grocery shopping, or how to cook. But one thing that she always seemed to bring up was how she wished things were different and how much she ached with the desire to be home with her son.
That last call always weighed heavily on my heart. When around friends and their families, I would often put my head down and smile because their interactions would remind me so much of when my mother was with me every day. It made me miss her insurmountably, to the point where I began to despise every aspect of this "independence" To me, it was loneliness, isolation, and nights laying in bed wishing I had a loved one in the house that I could talk to or hug. I was forced to become a man instead of living out my days as a kid. What hurt me the most, though, was knowing that my mother hated our situation even more than I did. She hated knowing her only child was growing up without her and it hurt her more than words could explain. She would always say how I was her pride and joy, but I've always thought of myself to be her hope, her hope for a better life.
That is why I have worked so hard in school. My mother has dedicated and sacrificed years of her life to make sure that her son could live a great one, and all she has ever asked from me in return was to do well in school. There were numerous times when I felt discouraged and unmotivated, but the thought of letting down the woman that has broken her back for me was far stronger than any fatigue I may have felt.
For three long years now, I have entered my house after school expecting nothing but silence and darkness. I lay in bed at night yearning to hear any sound at all that would signal that there was life in the house beside me. Then I wake up the next morning, get ready for school, and start the cycle all over again. I have almost gotten used to being alone. But I won't let my story end here. The reason why I have worked myself so hard is so that things can be different for me and my mother. She always says that everything she's doing now is for me and that when she gets old it'll be my turn. Except when my turn comes, she will never have to be alone.
关键词：坚韧、成熟、独立自主、求学
主题内容：以作者和母亲的通话为线索，讲述了作者从小与母亲分离，独立一个人生活，到最后决心好好念书、好好工作的心路历程。
亮点：文章采用总分总结构，感情细腻，运用了丰富的心理描写，展示了主人公的成熟、坚韧，表明他将在严苛的学术环境下茁壮成长。
3. Clara's Essay
My nightstand is home to a small menagerie of critters, each glass-eyed specimen lovingly stuffed with cotton. Don't get the wrong idea, now – I'm not a taxidermist or anything. I crochet.
Crochet is a family tradition. My grandmother used to wield her menacing steel hook like a mage's staff and tout it as such: an instrument that bestowed patience, decorum, and poise on its owner. During her youth in Vietnam, she spent her evenings designing patterns for ornate doilies and handkerchiefs. Then the Vietnam War turned our family into refugees. The Viet Cong imprisoned my grandfather, a colonel in the South Vietnam Air Force, in a grueling labor camp for thirteen years. Many wives would have lost hope, but my grandmother was no average woman. A literature professor in a time when women's access to education was limited, she assumed the role of matriarch with wisdom and confidence, providing financial and emotional security. As luxuries like yarn grew scarce, she conjured up all sorts of useful household items – durable pillowcases, blankets, and winter coats – and taught my mother to do the same. Because of these bitter wartime memories, she wanted my handiwork to be of a decidedly less practical bent; among the first objects she taught me to crochet were chrysanthemums and roses. However, making flowers bloom from yarn was no easy task.
Even with its soft plastic grip and friendly rounded edges, my first crochet hook had a mind of its own, like the enchanted broom in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." It stubbornly disobeyed my orders as I impatiently wrenched it through the yarn. My grandmother's stern appraisal of my efforts often interrupted this perpetual tug-of-war: My stitches were uneven. The edges curled inward. I would unravel my work and start anew.
I convinced myself that cobbling together a lopsided rectangle would be the pinnacle of my crochet prowess but refused to give up. Just as a diligent wizard casts more advanced spells over time, I learned to channel the magic of the crochet hook. The animal kingdom is my main source of inspiration; the diversity and vivid pigmentation of life on Earth lend themselves perfectly to the vibrant and versatile art of crochet. Many of the animals I make embark on migratory journeys, like their real-life counterparts. Take Agnes, for example, a cornflower-blue elephant named after mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi who lives in my calculus teacher's classroom, happily grazing on old pencil shavings and worksheets. As I fasten off the final stitches on every creature, I hope to weave a little whimsy and color into someone's life.
Each piece I finish reminds me of the network of stitches that connects mother and daughter, past and present, tradition and innovation. In this vast cultural web, I am proud to be my family's link between East and West. As I prepare for adulthood, I am eager to weave my own mark into the great patchwork quilt that is America.
关键词：文化身份认同、传承与创新、价值观
主题内容：本文以编织手工艺术钩针这一家庭传统为线索，将其视为一种连接过去和现在、传统和创新的纽带。Clara通过描述作者祖母的传统编织技艺以及传承给母亲和作者自己的经历，展示了一种对过去家族历史的尊重和珍惜，同时也表达了将传统技艺与现代创新相结合的努力和尝试；通过描述自己对动物王国的创作灵感和作品展示了她对生命多样性和色彩丰富性的理解和表达。
亮点：Clara将她的声音、家族历史以及现在的性格无缝地融入到一个感人且有效的叙事中，呈现出了出色的叙事技巧和结构。文章开篇语言生动、具体、幽默，迅速引入主题；中间的内容和过过渡部分，细节丰富、顺滑流畅，焦点转换巧妙，快速的本文焦点转回到申请人身上，展现了申请人本人的性格特点
4. Francisco's Essay
The Zoo
As late afternoon sunlight danced on my shoulders, I squished my eight-year-old face against the glass of the outdoor tank, eyes wide and searching for any signs of life. There! I scrambled from where I was seated, chasing the flickering sight of my prize. The otter darted away from me, his lithe body disappearing into a crack in the stones. I slumped against the wall, disappointed. Ever the HR representative, my mother saw my face and asked me what was wrong. I explained my frustration with the otters -- they're so fun to watch, but they refuse to be seen. My mother leaned down, brushing a long lock of hair out of my face, and told me, "Sometimes, the animals get tired of being watched. They just want to be left alone."
I didn't think much of the otters after that. Until I became one.
In October of my sophomore year, I was four months into my transition from female to male. I wasn't out to my extended family, my wardrobe was a haphazard mess of cargo shorts and skirts, and my voice was still, to my distress, annoyingly high. Being transgender at Middleton High School was no small feat -- I stuck out in a sea of over 2,000 cisgender peers, and most of my teachers did not know how to deal with people "in my situation," as one put it.
One day, as I walked to my bus after school, I heard snickers from behind me. I turned around and saw a rowdy group of boys. One had his phone up, recording me. Everyone was laughing, and in an instant I knew they were laughing at me. I turned and walked away, doing my best to conceal myself from their view. The laughter continued.
I was the star of a humiliating show that I never asked to be a part of. I had become the otter. Their laughs kept ringing in my ears as I sat alone on the bus. I wanted to crawl inside myself and implode rather than think about going back to face them again the next day. My phone kept buzzing, but I refused to check it. It was only when I arrived home and checked those messages that I found that the video had been posted across social media for hundreds of my peers to see. It seemed like nothing, just a video of me walking, turning, and looking away. But their laughs were clear in the background, and I still understood the point of the video -- look at the freak. Look at the new zoo exhibit.
Seeing that video, I realized that I couldn't allow myself to turn into what they saw me as. They wanted an otter, a punching bag that wouldn't fight back. I was not going to be their otter. The next day, I went to my first Sexuality and Gender Equality club meeting. I spoke to the administration about what had happened. I saved the video and showed people. I took control.
Those boys wanted me to believe that I was merely an exhibit to be laughed at, but now I know I live for greater things. I live for lattes, for courtroom closing arguments, for the pesto I make at work. I live for Black Lives Matter and #enough and Pride. I live for kayaking and summer camp, for the kids in SAGE and my younger sister. My classmates tried to dehumanize me, trample me, and mold me into their image of transgender people. Maybe they'll never see me as an equal, but that is their blindness, not mine. I do not live on display. I do not live in a zoo.
关键词：自我认知、个人成长、人际关系
主题内容：本文讲述了Francisco在参加Minority Introduction To Engineering and Science (MITES)暑期项目期间，通过与同学们的互动和交流，逐渐找到自信、得到爱与支持的过程。在这个过程中，申请人与同学们分享了他们个人的故事和内心真实感受，建立了亲密的关系，获得了自信、社交技能、自我价值感和心理韧性。尽管申请人在开始时对人际关系和环境变化感到困惑和焦虑，但通过与团队的交流和支持，他逐渐融入团队，找到了自己真实的自我，并从中获得了成长和力量。
亮点：本文以放弃牛奶为健康原因而做出的一个看似微不足道的决定开头，但很快将其作为生命中改变性事件的隐喻。文章巧妙地利用这种内在转变来展示一个夏天的故事，这个夏天彻底改变了Francisco对自己和与他人互动的看法。总的来说，本文语言真挚平实，用完整、引人入胜的故事进行叙述，通过心路历程的转变，虽然结构简单，但是选材巧妙，展现Francisco作为一个多面的个体的形象。
5. Billy's Essay
As I rode up and down the gentle slopes of the Peabody skatepark, I watched my younger brother race down from the highest point on the halfpipe and fly past me at the speed of light. I wish I could do that, I thought, eyeing the enormous curve that towered over me. But I didn't dare make my way up to the top. Instead, I stuck with the routine I was comfortable with, avoiding the steep inclines at all costs.
Each week during the summer before my fourth grade year, my brother and I would visit that same skatepark, and I would take my mini-BMX bike to the bottom of that monstrous ramp, ready to attack the giant. I started off low reaching only a quarter of the way up at first, too scared to go any higher. But each week, I gained more confidence and kept reaching greater heights. Halfway there, two-thirds, three quarters. Until finally, I mustered up enough courage to complete my final challenge.
With my brother's shouts of joy ringing in my ears, it seemed as though the concrete mass was calling my name, drawing me closer and closer, until I couldn't resist its pleading any further. I walked my bike up the stairs and approached the steep drop off. My hands started to sweat and my legs began to shake as I inched toward the edge, staring in the face of doom. Finally at the lip of the ramp, I paused briefly, took a deep breath, and moved forward just enough to send myself speeding downwards. I couldn't contain my excitement as my, "Woooo!" echoed around the park. I had finally ridden down the tallest ramp!
Throughout my life I have enjoyed having a plan and being in control. When working in a group, I make sure that everyone knows exactly which aspect of the project they will complete. I organize all my homework in a planner so that I never miss a due date. Each night, I outline my schedule for the following day so that I know what meetings, sports events, and other activities I have to attend. When I visited New York City over the summer, I prepared a detailed itinerary to follow. Rarely is there a day when I don’t have a general idea of what I’m going to do, but sometimes my plan doesn’t correlate with how the day truly plays out.
关键词：勇气、自信、挑战自我
主题内容：本文主要围绕着“勇敢面对挑战和未知，克服内心的恐惧，实现个人成长和突破自我限制”展开，描述了Billy在滑板公园中经历的成长过程，并通过挑战自己对未知的恐惧，逐渐克服心理障碍，最终取得了成功的经历。在故事中，申请人在弟弟的示范和鼓励下，克服了对高坡道的恐惧，最终勇敢地完成了自己的挑战，从而锻炼了勇气、自信和面对困难的决心。
亮点：申请人毫不避讳地写明自己僵化、循规蹈矩的缺点，但是通过叙述在滑板公园挑战自我的经历，完美地平衡了这个缺点，向评判专家展现了一个勇敢、勇于挑战极限的鲜活形象，通过生动具体的描述和情感共鸣，吸引读者共情和思考。
6. Sarika's Essay
I, Too, Can Dance
I was in love with the way the dainty pink mouse glided across the stage, her tutu twirling as she pirouetted and her rose-colored bow following the motion of her outstretched arms with every grand jeté.
I had always dreamed I would dance, and Angelina Ballerina made it seem so easy. There was something so freeing about the way she wove her body into the delicate threads of the Sugar Plum Fairy's song each time she performed an arabesque. I longed for my whole being to melt into the magical melodies of music; I longed to enchant the world with my own stories; and I longed for the smile that glimmered on every dancer's face.
At recess, my friends and I would improvise dances. But while they seemed well on their way to achieving ballerina status, my figure eights were more like zeroes and every attempt at spinning around left me feeling dizzy. Sometimes, I even ran over my friends' toes. How could I share my stories with others if I managed to injure them with my wheelchair before the story even began?
I then tried piano, but my fingers stumbled across the keys in an uncoordinated staccato tap dance of sorts. I tried art, but the clumsiness of my brush left the canvas a colorful mess. I tried the recorder, but had Angelina existed in real life, my rendition of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" would have frozen her in midair, with flute-like screeches tumbling through the air before ending in an awkward split and shattering the gossamer world the Sugar Plum Fairy had worked so hard to build.
For as long as I could remember, I'd also been fascinated by words, but I'd never explored writing until one day in fourth grade, the school librarian announced a poetry contest. That night, as I tried to sleep, ideas scampered through my head like Nutcracker mice awakening a sleeping Clara to a mystical new world. By morning, I had choreographed the mice to tell a winning story in verse about all the marvelous outer space factoids I knew.
Now, my pencil pirouettes perfect O's on paper amidst sagas of doting mothers and evanescent lovers. The tip of my pen stipples the lines of my notebook with the tale of a father's grief, like a ballerina tiptoeing en pointe; as the man finds solace in nature, the ink flows gracefully, and for a moment, it leaps off the page, as if reaching out to the heavens to embrace his daughter's soul. Late at night, my fingers tap dance across the keys of my laptop, tap tap tapping an article about the latest breakthrough in cancer research—maybe LDCT scans or aneuploidy-targeted therapy could have saved the daughter's life; a Spanish poem about the beauty of unspoken moments; and the story of a girl in a wheelchair who learned how to dance.
As the world sleeps, I lose myself in the cathartic cadences of fresh ink, bursting with stories to be told and melting into parched paper. I cobble together phrases until they spring off my tongue, as if the Sugar Plum Fairy herself has transformed the staccato rumblings of my brain into something legato and sweet. I weave my heart, my soul, my very being into my words as I read them out loud, until they become almost like a chant. With every rehearsal, I search for the perfect finale to complete my creation. When I finally find it, eyes dry with midnight-induced euphoria, I remember that night so many years ago when I discovered the magic of writing, and smile.
I may not dance across the stage like Angelina Ballerina, but I can dance across the page.
I, too, can dance.
关键词：积极向上、坚持梦想、自我价值
主题内容：本文的作者Sarika是一位残疾女孩，她怀揣着像舞者一样在舞台上翩翩起舞的梦想，但是在尝试了钢琴、绘画等艺术形式后，仍然感受到自身的局限和困难，最终在写作中找到了适合自己的表达方式。通过文字创作，申请人能够自由地表达自己的情感和想法，通过艺术的形式将内心的舞蹈展现出来。本文展示了作者对写作的热爱和努力，以及通过创作实现个人价值和自我认知的过程，强调了每个人都有自己独特的表达方式，用心感受、用力创作，便能在文学舞台上翩翩起舞。
亮点：本文紧紧围绕顽强实现梦想这一主题，完美地展示了Sarika从早期对舞蹈的迷恋到发现写作可以满足自己深层次的需求的过程。总的来说，本文结构紧凑，以内容完成前后文的关联；语言形象丰富，善用隐喻、比喻，善借外来词汇。
7. Michelle's Essay
Fish Out of Water:
idiom. a person who is in an unnatural environment; completely out of place.
When I was ten, my dad told me we were moving to somewhere called "Eely-noise." The screen flashed blue as he scrolled through 6000 miles of water on Google Earth to find our new home. Swipe, swipe, swipe, and there it was: Illinois, as I later learned.
Moving to America was like going from freshwater into saltwater. Not only did my mom complain that American food was too salty, but I was helplessly caught in an estuary of languages, swept by daunting tides of tenses, articles, and homonyms. It's not a surprise that I developed an intense, breathless kind of thirst for what I now realize is my voice and self-expression.
This made sense because the only background I had in English was "Konglish"--an unhealthy hybrid of Korean and English--and broken phrases I picked up from SpongeBob. As soon as I stepped into my first class in America, I realized the gravity of the situation: I had to resort to clumsy pantomimes, or what I euphemistically called body language, to convey the simplest messages. School became an unending game of pictionary.
Amid the dizzying pool of vowels and phonemes and idioms (why does spilling beans end friendships?), the only thing that made sense was pictures and diagrams. Necessarily, I soon became interested in biology as its textbook had the highest picture-to-text ratio. Although I didn’t understand all the ant-like captions, the colorful diagrams were enough to catch my illiterate attention: a green ball of chyme rolling down the digestive tract, the rotor of the ATP synthase spinning like a waterwheel. Biology drew me with its ELL-friendliness and never let go.
I later learned in biology that when a freshwater fish goes in saltwater, it osmoregulates--it drinks a lot of water and urinates less. This used to hold true for my school day, when I constantly chugged water to fill awkward silences and lubricate my tongue to form better vowels. This habit in turn became a test of English-speaking and bladder control: I constantly missed the timing to go to the bathroom by worrying about how to ask. The only times I could express myself were through my fingers, between the pages of Debussy and under my pencil tip. To fulfill my need for self-expression and communication, I took up classical music, visual art, and later, creative writing. To this day, I will never forget the ineffable excitement when I delivered a concerto, finished a sculpture, and found beautiful words that I could not pronounce. If biology helped me understand, art helped me be understood.
There's something human, empathetic, even redemptive about both art and biology. While they helped me reconcile with English and my new home, their power to connect and heal people is much bigger than my example alone. In college and beyond, I want to pay them forward, whether by dedicating myself to scientific research, performing in benefit concerts, or simply sharing the beauty of the arts. Sometimes, language feels slippery like fish on my tongue. But knowing that there are things that transcend language grounds and inspires me. English seeped into my tongue eventually, but I still pursue biology and arts with the same, perhaps universal, exigency and sincerity: to understand and to be understood.
Over the years, I have come to acknowledge and adore my inner fish, that confused, tongue-twisted and home-sick ELL kid from the other side of the world, which will forever coexist within me. And I've forgiven English, although I still can't pronounce words like "rural," because it gifted me with new passions to look forward to every day. Now, when I see kids with the same breathless look that I used to have gasping for home water, Don't worry, I want to tell them.
You'll find your water.
关键词：文化适应、自我表达、自我认知、个人成长
主题内容：Michelle是一位来自韩国的美国新移民，他通过将自己比喻为“fish out of water”，暗示了自己在新环境中的陌生感和困惑。本文通过描绘生活中的困境和挑战，再通过生物学和艺术来寻找自我表达的方式，呈现了申请人在异国他乡的成长和自我认知过程；融合了自然科学和艺术的元素，表达了作者对生物学和艺术的热爱和对自我探索的执着，强调了通过努力学习和自我发展来适应新环境和克服困难的重要性。
亮点：本文巧妙运用了“鱼离开了水”的隐喻作为延伸，将他对生物学和艺术的热爱与和英语的抗争联系起来。总的来说，Michelle的语言坦率而幽默，细腻而深刻地记录了他适应美国生活和文化的过程，展现了他对学习的热爱和坚持写作的毅力。
8. Lauren's Essay
Lunch and recess were opportunities to 'play' Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, so we murdered our friends. We'd bake the dead into meat pies and scream cacophonously, "WE ALL DESERVE TO DIE!" Nine-year-old me even teased my hair, donned my Mrs. Lovett costume for Halloween, and rambled on about Australian penal colonies and how dead fiddle players make for "stringy" meat. You cannot imagine my disappointment when everybody thought I was Frankenstein's Bride.
Like Gypsy Rose Lee, my siblings and I spent our formative years at rehearsals and performances, where I was indoctrinated into the cult that worships Sondheim. In our household, Sondheimian theatre was a religion (I'm not sure how I feel about God, but I do believe in Sondheim.) My brother and I read Sondheim's autobiography, Finishing the Hat, like the bible, reading the book cover to cover and returning to page one the moment we finished. At six, he introduced me to Sondheim's West Side Story, which illustrates the harms of poverty and systematic racism. Initially, I only appreciated Jerome Robbins' choreography (Sorry, Mr. Shakespeare). When I revisited the musical years later, I had a visceral reaction as I witnessed young adults engaging in deadly gang rivalries. Experiencing Tony's gruesome death forced me, a middle-class suburbanite, to feel the devastating effects of inner-city violence, and my belief in the need for early intervention programs to prevent urban gun violence was born.
I began to discover political and historical undertones in all of Sondheim's work. For example, Assassins whirlwinds from the Lincoln era up to Reagan's Presidency. Originally, I simply thought it was hysterical to belt Lynette Fromme's love ballad to Charles Manson. Later, I realized how much history I had unknowingly retained from this musical. The song "November 22, 1963" reflects on America's most notorious assassination attempts, and alludes to each assassin being motivated by a desperate attempt to connect to a specific individual or culture to gain control over their life. Assassins awakened me to the flaws in some of our quintessential American ideals because the song "Everybody's Got the Right" illustrates how the American individualism enshrined in our Constitution can be twisted to support hate, harm, and entitlement. I internalized Sondheim’s political commentary, and I see its relevance in America's most pressing issues. The misconstrued idea of limitless freedom can be detrimental to public health, worsening issues such as the climate crisis, gun violence, and the coronavirus pandemic. These existential threats largely stem from antiquated ideas that the rights of the few outweigh the rights of the majority. Ironically, a musical about individuals who tried to dismantle our American political system sparked my political interests, but this speaks to the power of Sondheim‘s music and my ability to make connections and draw inspiration from unlikely sources.
Absorbing historical and political commentary set to music allows my statistical and logical brain to better empathize with the characters, giving me a deeper understanding of the conflicts portrayed on stage, almost like reading a diary. Theatremakers are influenced by both history and their life experiences. I internalize their underlying themes and values, and my mindset shifts to reflect the art that I adore. I'm an aspiring political changemaker, and Sondheim's musicals influence my political opinions by enabling me to empathize with communities living drastically different lives from my own.
I sang Sondheim melodies before I could talk. As I grew intellectually and emotionally, Sondheim's musicals began to carry more weight. With each viewing, I retained new historical and political information. This ritual drives me to continue studying Sondheim and enables me to confidently walk my own path because Sondheim's work passively strengthens my ethics as I continue to extrapolate relevant life lessons from his melodies. Sondheim's stories, with their complex, morally ambiguous characters, have solidified my ironclad set of morals which, together with my love of history, have blossomed into a passion for human rights and politics.
关键词：价值观、使命感、政治热情
主题内容：本文通过Lauren与Stephen Sondheim音乐剧之间的深刻联系，揭示了音乐剧如何影响了申请人的政治观点和道德信念。申请人通过探索Sondheim的作品，深入了解历史和政治评论，从而培养了对人权和政治的热情。文章展示了个人对音乐和表演艺术如何塑造了申请人的价值观和使命感，以及借助音乐表达政治观点的重要性。
亮点：本文引人入胜，亮点在于Lauren通过音乐剧展现出来的无限热情，这正是哈佛一直鼓励学生做的事情——让你的激情闪耀。你的大学文书是让你的真实声音得以表达的最佳场所。所以一定要选择一个你真正投入的话题。那种激情是具有感染力的，它会给读者留下持久的印象。此外，Lauren的写作语调亲切且讨人喜爱，这使得这篇文本成为她申请的有力背书。
12条策略呈现完美申请文书
哈佛大学官网曾总结了「12条完美文书的写作策略」，对于进入申请季的同学颇具指导意义：
1.真诚
讨论的话题一定要对你真的重要，记住，你的文书并非专门为了让招生官印象深刻，要用对你来说最自然的语气和讲述方式。
2.开篇抓人眼球
和你一起竞争的申请者成千上万，所以开头段落必须立刻抓住读者的想象力，例如可以用一句直白的陈述、引人深思的名句、一个设问或者描述一个场景等。
3.主旨深刻
招生官更想知道这些经历如何塑造了你，所以注意将你的故事和自身的成长联系起来。
4.创造情景
吸引人的故事不是复述自己的活动列表，而是创造情景，足够鲜活。
5.尝试差异化
给自己的故事找一个新鲜的角度，比如大部分学生会写自己成功的经历，但从失败中汲取教训就是另一个角度。
6.面向读者写作
从读者角度出发，来审视自己的文书是否逻辑清晰，论证有理，信息是否遗漏。
7.反复修改
写完一版后，几天后重新再看，可以给你新的视角，并发现改进空间。
8.朗读文书
把文字读出声，可以有效发现冗余段落和信息漏误。
9.避免重复
文书是对其他申请材料的补充，你的文书应该告诉招生官一些新的信息。
10.请他人提出修改意见
请老师、朋友、家长等阅读你的文书，他人的视角会给你新的修改建议。
11.注意格式
字数、标点、空行等都是要注意的细节。
12.结尾点题升华
结尾简洁连贯，能反映真诚的自省，能提供生动的细节并且巧妙表达出观点。
以上就是今天的内容啦！不知道大家看完有什么想法呢？欢迎来留言区积极评论！
欢迎添加任一老师咨询境外硕士申请方案
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