哈佛大学

申请季已然临近!2025秋季申请的小伙伴们是否开始准备你们的主文书了呢?我们知道,美本申请的主文书可以说是除硬性指标之外最重要的文字材料了,也是各位同学用personal voice向招生文员会展示自己独特存在的最佳机会!那么,什么样的文书才能受到顶尖大学的认可呢?我们可以从哪些角度出发,挖掘自己的成长经历,讲好展现自我探索的故事呢?

俗话说one should learn from the best! 近日,哈佛大学校报网站放出了一批于2024申请季录取哈佛大学的真实主文书。今天,TD的文书老师Scarly就为大家带来三篇录取哈佛大学本科的文书点评

哈佛录取文书第一篇:移民女孩在生物和艺术中接纳自我

原文:

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.

译文:

习语。指人处于不自然的环境中;完全不合适的场合。 当我十岁那年,爸爸告诉我我们将搬到一个名为“伊利诺伊”的地方。当他在谷歌地球上划过6000英里的海域寻找我们的新家时,屏幕上一片蓝光闪过。滑动、滑动再滑动,最终出现了伊利诺伊州,正如我后来才知道的那样。

搬到美国就像是从淡水区转到咸水区。不仅我妈妈抱怨美国的食物太咸,我也无助地陷入了语言的交汇处,被时态、冠词和同音异义词的惊涛骇浪所吞没。因此,我对现在意识到的自我声音和表达方式产生了一种强烈而急促的渴望。

这种感觉是合理的,因为我在英语方面的唯一基础是“Konglish”——韩语和英语的不健康混合体——以及我从《海绵宝宝》中学到的零散短语。当我步入美国的第一堂课时,我意识到了形势的严峻:我不得不通过笨拙的手势表演,或者我委婉地称之为“身体语言”,来传达最简单的信息。学校变成了一场无休止的画图游戏。

在这些令人眼花缭乱的元音、音素和习语之中(为什么吐豆子会结束友谊?),唯一让我感到舒适的是图片和图表。因此,我很快对生物学产生了兴趣,因为其教科书中的图片与文字比例最高。虽然我不理解所有细小如蚂蚁的图说,但那些丰富多彩的图表足以吸引我的注意力:一团绿色的胃糜在消化道中滚动,ATP合成酶的转子像水车一样旋转。生物学以其对英语学习者的友好性吸引了我,并始终未曾放手。

我后来在生物课上了解到,当淡水鱼进入咸水时,它会进行渗透调节——饮用大量水并减少排尿。这在我上学的日子里成为了现实,当我不断地喝水以填补尴尬的沉默,并润滑我的舌头以形成更好的元音时。这种习惯反过来成为了英语口语和膀胱控制的考验:我总是错过去洗手间的时机,因为我担心如何提问。唯一能表达自己的时候是在德彪西的曲子间和我的铅笔尖下。为了满足我对自我表达和沟通的需求,我开始学习古典音乐、视觉艺术,后来又尝试了创意写作。直到今天,我仍然无法忘记当我完成一场协奏曲、雕塑作品或找到我无法发音的美丽词汇时那难以言喻的兴奋。如果生物学帮助我理解,艺术帮助我被理解。

艺术和生物学都具有人性化、富有同理心甚至具有救赎性的特质。它们帮助我与英语和我的新家和解,但它们连接和治愈人们的力量远超过我个人的例子。在大学及以后,我希望将这种精神传承下去,无论是通过投身科学研究、参加慈善音乐会,还是简单地分享艺术之美。有时候,语言就像舌尖上的滑鱼。但知道有些东西超越了语言,这让我感到踏实并激励了我。最终,英语渗透到了我的舌头,但我仍以同样的、或许是普遍的迫切性和诚意追求生物学和艺术:理解与被理解。

多年来,我已经认识并爱上了我内心的那条鱼,那个困惑、舌头打结、思乡病的ELL孩子,来自世界的另一端,将永远与我共存。我已经原谅了英语,尽管我仍然无法正确发音像“rural”这样的词,因为它赐予了我每天期待的新激情。现在,当我看到那些有着我曾经渴望家乡之水的呼吸急促表情的孩子时,我想告诉他们: 别担心,你会找到你的水源。

点评:

如何融入新环境是我们很多国内学生同样会选择写的话题,从本部到国际部,从国内到美高,或者在大学暑校中体验多元化的学习氛围……这篇文书亦是选取了一个韩国移民进入美国社会中学习的视角,作者贴切地把这一过程比喻为从淡水到咸水的鱼,并细腻地给出了初来乍到适应新生活的细节:语言、声音、自我表达的重组。但她从生物概念的学习和艺术创作体验中,逐渐找到了自己贴合的那部分——而这恰恰是更普遍的、跨越文化的。而在这样一种对差异的接受和释怀中,作者逐渐找到了自己的节奏。她并没有完全抛弃那个身为外来者的自己,而是保护好她,并更自在地探索新生活。

哈佛录取文书第二篇:从烘焙中学习面对不确定的艺术

原文:

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.

译文:

每次我烘焙饼干,成品总是不同。黄油、糖、鸡蛋、面粉——我精确地称量,用力搅拌,然后将烤箱设定在375°F。这个配方已成常规,但从未觉得多余。 一场暴风雪让我被困在家里,手边只有一个搅拌器和满柜子的基本食材,我做出了我的第一批饼干:一盘热气腾腾、入口即化的巧克力块饼干,为我被雪封的心灵带来了安慰。

然而,这样完美的描述掩盖了我杂乱的过程。实际上,我的方法是偶然且随意的,饼干是一次美妙的偶发,此后一直无法复制。 我之后每做一批饼干都像是一场赌博。饼干会不会变平变脆?还是保持圆胖且黏糊糊的?是我烘焙技术不佳,还是饼干本就变化无常?即使有一本满是建议的食谱书,我也永远无法确切指出自己的错误。饼干变化莫测,易怒。烘焙它们就像在踩蛋壳上行走——而我用光了所有的鸡蛋,空盒子为证。或许,初学者的运气才是一直以来的秘密配料。 然而,好奇心让我不断翻阅食谱书中的同一页。我沉迷于完善饼干的过程,并不是因为看着食材混合成糊状的机械满足感,而是因为这给了我机会去惊叹于简单之美。这种不一致性令人着迷。毕竟,这是一个严格的配方,相同的原料以同样的方式组合。如何能从这些正统步骤中得到如此激进、不可预测的结果?即便是最有规律的任务,我也在质疑宇宙。 化学部分地解释了这些异常。例如,多加一半小撮的苏打粉可能会对面团起泡有惊人的影响。厨房成了我的实验室:我像科学家一样记录每次试验;我购买了一个更精确的秤;我从图书馆借来了《食物与烹饪:厨房的科学与传说》。但所有努力都无济于事——变量拒绝以任何形式达成平衡。

我像一位钢琴家一样处理这个问题,将老师在我的乐谱边缘写下的建议带入混合碗中。键盘上有88个音高,食谱中有十几种原料。为了创造出狂想曲般的甜点,我需要理解所有的旋律和和声线条以及它们如何相互补充。我想象着食谱用意大利式的字体书写,巧克力豆如快速的断奏在浓厚的慢板中悬浮。但我的手指总是在每次表演的尾声跌跌撞撞,饼干的细节变成了混杂的声音。

我搅拌,我筛选,我搅拌,我再次预热烤箱,但每一批都有其缺陷,要么太甜,边缘烧焦,质地粗糙,或者未烤透。尽管这些饼干源于无聊,它们的不规则性继续吸引我。每次我的努力都产生了不完美的结果,我都会培养出坚韧不拔的精神,在下周带着一条新围裙回来,准备再试一次。我被每次试验的小怪癖所吸引。仅仅搅拌和品尝是不够的——我必须去理解。

我的创造性视角使任务保持了吸引力。尽管我的过程中重复性很高,我找到了新的角度使食谱更加生动。在大学及以后的生活中,会有像烘焙饼干这样看似单调以至于可能变成家庭主妇苦差事的活动。但通过在厨房的时间,我学会了如何更深入地探索我的任务的机制,将音乐带入单调,将工作变成玩耍。无论未来的饼干如何破碎,我都将带着好奇心、创造力和真诚来对待我的工作。

点评:

从自己的爱好中发现某种面对世界的态度,这也是文书常见的写法之一,是能向招生官在展现你passion的同时,表现举一反三、融会贯通能力和广泛思考的好机会。本文作者从自己尽管努力控制变量,但还是会做出口感不同的饼干出发,讨论烦人的不确定性怎么变成了一场场充满期待的实验,并引领作者深入了解了烘焙的各个部分,并以一种创作和谐乐曲的方式去看待这个本来恼人的过程。以此,作者也意识运用好奇心、创造力去面对这种艰难、不受控制的问题是一种可以广泛应用的态度。

哈佛录取文书第三篇:朴实无华的first generation college student挣扎

原文:

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.

译文:

我已经独自生活了三年。

大一那年,我舅舅结婚搬走了,为了挣够房租和其他账单,我妈妈不得不找了一份住家护工的工作。我欣喜若狂。我终于可以独享整个房子了。我想象着无数个小时都在玩 PS4,没有人叫我睡觉或做作业。我感觉很自由。但出乎意料的是,这种自由是以牺牲我的童年为代价的。

为了弥补从未回家的遗憾,母亲每天给我打三次电话。第一个电话总是在早上 6 点,就像钟表一样。那是叫我起床的电话,以免我错过校车,上学迟到。然后是下午 4 点的电话,我们会复习当天学校发生的任何事情。最后是晚上 7 点的电话,似乎每次都要持续一个多小时。这是让我最想念母亲的一次通话。我们把这个电话称为 ‘多功能 ‘电话。有时我们只是聊聊彼此的近况。其他时候,她会教我一些我需要知道的事情,比如如何洗衣服、如何买菜或如何做饭。但有一件事她似乎总是会提起,那就是她是多么希望事情能有所不同,她是多么渴望能和儿子一起待在家里。

最后那通电话一直压在我的心头。和朋友及其家人在一起时,我常常会低头微笑,因为他们的互动会让我想起母亲每天和我在一起时的情景。这让我无比想念她,甚至开始鄙视这种 ‘独立 ‘的方方面面。对我来说,这就是孤独、寂寞,晚上躺在床上,希望家里有一个我可以倾诉或拥抱的亲人。我被迫成为一个男人,而不是过着孩子的日子。不过,最让我伤心的是,我知道母亲比我更痛恨我们的处境。她讨厌知道她唯一的孩子在没有她的陪伴下长大,这对她的伤害无法用言语来解释。她总是说我是她的骄傲和快乐,但我一直认为自己是她的希望,是她过上更好生活的希望。

这就是我在学校如此努力学习的原因。为了让她的儿子过上好日子,我的母亲奉献和牺牲了她多年的生命,而她对我的唯一要求就是好好学习。有无数次,我感到灰心丧气,无心向学,但一想到要辜负这位为我操碎了心的母亲,我就感到无比的疲惫。

漫长的三年里,放学后我走进家门,期待的只有寂静和黑暗。晚上,我躺在床上,渴望听到任何声音,让我知道房子里还有生命存在。第二天早上醒来,准备上学,又开始了新一轮的循环。我几乎已经习惯了孤独。但我不会让我的故事就此结束。我之所以如此努力地工作,是为了让我和妈妈的生活变得不一样。她总是说,她现在做的一切都是为了我,等她老了,就轮到我了。只是轮到我的时候,她就再也不用孤独了。

点评:

在往年和学生们合作的时候,学生们往往会认为好的文书一定要“高大上”,要抽象、极富思辨性,要语言花哨、有创意,虽然这是某一种好文书的标准,但真正的好文书除了情感真挚之外并没有统一的标准。这篇朴实无华的文书就是说明这一道理的绝佳例证。文书中,作者讲到因为自己妈妈去做帮工所以每天都只有一个人在家,享受自由的兴奋很快化成了对妈妈的想念,等妈妈早中晚的三个电话,心疼妈妈比自己更难过因为怀有无法陪在孩子身边的愧疚。

正是怀着这种对妈妈的挂念和理解,他投入到了辛苦的学习中并从不退缩。并没有多么高深的利益,但这篇文书充满动人的细节和真切的情感,也区分了感受的不同层次(自己的痛苦、妈妈的痛苦、自己对于一个人在家体验的转变等等)。因此,我们在写文书的过程中一定要直面最触动自己的问题,才能写出打动人心的文章。

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