【好文赏析】来看看申请哈佛本科的成功案例，她的文书怎么写？

前两篇好文赏析中，我们都了解到，招生官在短短十几秒内判断一篇文书的好坏，会从对一件事是否展开适当详细的描述、是否有生动形象的语言、是否有深刻的感悟成长，以及是否突出自己独到的见解等因素来进行评判。

那么，我们在了解了招生官这么多想法后，一定会好奇，那些拿到顶尖名校录取通知书的文书还会有哪些其他不为人知的特点？

今天，我们就来挑选哈佛the Crimson上10篇2018年哈佛申请文书的其中一篇跟大家最相关的亚裔申请者来作为案例来解析，相信看完这篇文章以及点评，大家会恍然大悟。

申请者背景

名字：Janice

所在州：美国得克萨斯州

高中：私立学校，145名毕业生

种族：亚裔

GPA：11.9/11（加权）

SAT：阅读800，数学800，写作800

ACT：N/A

参加过的SAT科目考试：数学2，生物E/M，美国历史

课外活动：校游泳队，新生引导员，法语社，中文社，仁爱之家

所获奖项：法语荣誉协会，优秀学生协会(PBK)，AP学者荣誉奖

专业：神经生物学

文书内容

What is love? A promise at the altar? The soft kiss of water on parched lips? A flash of his shadowed gray eyes, or the tender caress of pink pigment on her cheekbones?

“I love those Jimmy Choos!”

“I just love the pasta salad at La Madeleine.”

“Love you!”

“Love ya more!”

Love. For a word describing such a powerful emotion, it is always in the air. The word “love” has become so pervasive in everyday conversation that it hardly retains its roots in blazing passion and deep adoration. In fact, the word is thrown about so much that it becomes difficult to believe society isn’t just one huge, smitten party, with everyone holding hands and singing “Kumbaya.” In films, it’s the teenage boy’s grudging response to a doting mother. At school, it’s a habitual farewell between friends. But in my Chinese home, it’s never uttered.

Watching my grandmother lie unconscious on the hospital bed, waiting for her body to shut down, was excruciatingly painful. Her final quavering breaths formed a discordant rhythm with the steady beep of hospital equipment and the unsympathetic, tapping hands of the clock. That evening, I whispered—into unhearing ears—the first, and only, “I love you” I ever said to her, my rankling guilt haunting me relentlessly for weeks after her passing. My warm confession seemed anticlimactic, met with only the coldness of my surroundings—the blank room, impassive doctors, and empty silence. I struggled to understand why the “love” that so easily rolled off my tongue when bantering with friends dissipated from my vocabulary when I spoke to my family. Do Chinese people simply love less than Americans do?

As I look back on seventeen years growing up in my Chinese family, I don’t feel a gaping hole where “love” should be. I see my grandmother with her fluff of white hair, guiding my clumsy fingers as they grip the Chinese calligraphy brush, carefully dip just enough ink onto its thick bristles, and slowly smooth the pigment over tan parchment to form wobbly Chinese characters. I taste the sweet watermelon brought to my room at 3 a.m. during finals week by a worried mother, and I hear the booming voice of my father begging me to get more sleep. I envision baba, dad, waiting in the 100 ℉ heat every day to pick me up from school, just to drive home in traffic-infested roads. My mama, mother, staying home from work to care for my cold, then feeling no resentment when she contracted it herself. My mistakes yielded stern, harsh lectures brimming with concern, while my tears assuaged mama’s irritation. I picture that arcane emotion imprinted in tacit smiles and hidden tears—shining from chests and unabashed pride. Within the realm of my memories, I discovered a truth that lessened my crushing regret at the loss of my grandmother: just because Chinese love, ai, can never render a fondness for Britney Spears’ Toxic or be prostituted to mold description of delicious dishes, the emotion isn’t any more absent, or any less profound. Knowing that I could possibly have shared with my grandmother an implicit love that neither of us chose to address vocally, I could loosen my selfish grip on her past and allow her to ascend into her future.

Although the alien expression “wo ai ni, mama, baba,” would be met with a few awkward blinks and a “How much money do you need?” expression, I feel the fondness of my joking father like “[g]reat drums throbbing through the air [,]” and for my stern mother in “great pulsing tides[,]” as Countee Cullen articulates in Heritage. We Chinese aren’t limited by the cultural and linguistic “love” barrier; we learn, through living together as a family, through our shared experiences, the sensation of true devotion and compassion, and, if that’s not something Americans call love, then I don’t know what “love” is.

大家可以看到，这篇文书写得挺不错，避免了常见的陷阱（比如像简历一样地列出成就，写别人的事情而不写自己的事情等等），不仅讲述了自己的故事，还突出了对爱的理解和中国文化的精通。那么，这篇文章是怎么打动哈佛招生官的呢？相信你看了下面的评论就知道啦！

Janice对“爱“这个字有着微妙的理解，这展现出了她对中国文化的精通。这篇文书先写对爱的沉思，让读者热切地期待珍妮丝与这一话题的联系，然后写关于家庭和身份的自我描述。在整篇文书中，她始终保持着情感上的真实，但却不会让人觉得煽情，这是需要细腻的把握的。这篇文书的核心优势在于展现个人成长的方式，珍妮丝从一开始的对自己只向祖母表达过一次爱意而感到内疚，到最后接受了她家里对爱的不同表达方式。通过珍妮丝提供的她的童年细节，比如她生病时母亲对她的照顾，读者能真正了解她是谁，她来自哪里。

虽然这篇文书整体读起来很流畅，但最好能对一些短语和句子进行简化。清晰明确比华丽的语言更重要。最后，最后一段中的引用感觉没有必要。在这样一篇有说服力的个人文书中，转用别人的话似乎不合时宜。尽管存在这些小缺点，珍妮丝依旧出色地完成了文书的写作，展示了她的洞察力、她的个人成长以及独特的表达。

免责声明：除删去身份细节以外，文书均复制申请书原稿；原稿中的任何错误均得到保留，以保持文书的完整性。

这是一个非常有技巧的作家讲述她的华裔美国人身份的例子，以及她如何通过一个“爱”的概念来更好地理解这个身份。它的优点是高度内省和个人化，深入探究读者的身份，以及爱在美籍华人家庭中的意义。这篇文章给人的感觉非常真实，用的是真实的中文文字、生动的描述，以及她祖母去世的高度个人化的故事。

需要注意的是，在美国社会中，种族、身份和文化的观念是非常微妙的，并且在不断演变，而作者之所以能够以真实和成功的方式写这样一个高度敏感的话题，是因为她的技巧和对文化的理解。我们可以得出的结论是，写一些非常个人化的东西对读者来说也很有趣。

我们还可以欣赏其他一些东西。作者详细地描述事物，展现而不是叙述它。她没有说她的祖母爱她，而是描述了她的祖母是如何在凌晨3点带来“甜美的西瓜”，或者是如何用书法“引导她笨拙的手指”。开头也很有趣，她问了一个哲学问题“什么是爱?”在深入到个人话题之前，让读者想读更多。

总之，这是一篇非常好的文章。

看完这篇Sample Essay以及招生官和Alvin老师给出的评价，小伙伴们一定受益良多吧！下面小助手来帮大家把比较重要的几点内容总结一下：

另外，高考将近

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Reference: https://www.thecrimson.com/topic/sponsored-successful-harvard-essays-2018/