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Successful Harvard Essays

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Harvard Supplemental Essay: Travel, living, or working experiences in your own or other communities.

Travel, living, or working experiences in your own or other communities. I have had a fascination with the people, languages and cultures of Spain since…...

Harvard Supplemental Essay: What you would want your future college roommate to know about you

What you would want your future college roommate to know about you? Hello roomie! It’s nice to be able to talk to you about myself…...

Harvard Common App Essay: Evaluate a Significant Experience.

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. The  most  gratifyingly  productive  and…...

Harvard Common App Essay: Evaluate a significant experience.

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. The Cayman Islands, our home,…...

Harvard Common App Essay: Share an essay on any topic of your choice.

Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one…...

Harvard Supplemental Essay: Elaborate on One of Your Extracurricular Activities or Work Experiences

Short answer — Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences in the space below. As my cursor hits “refresh” at…...

Harvard Essay Prompts

Harvard University requires the Common Application, with its 250-650 word essay requirement, as well as their own short essay questions, included below.

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Prompts

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (50-150 words) Your intellectual life may extend beyond the academic requirements of your…...

Common Application Essay Prompts

The Common App Essay for 2020-2021 is limited to 250-650 word responses. You must choose one prompt for your essay. Some students have a background,…...

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How to Write the Harvard University Essays 2023-2024

Harvard University, perhaps the most prestigious and well-known institution in the world, is the nation’s oldest higher learning establishment with a founding date of 1636. Boasting an impressive alumni network from Sheryl Sandberg to Al Gore, it’s no surprise that Harvard recruits some of the top talents in the world.

It’s no wonder that students are often intimidated by Harvard’s extremely open-ended supplemental essays. However, CollegeVine is here to help and offer our guide on how to tackle Harvard’s supplemental essays. 

Read this Harvard essay example to inspire your own writing.

How to Write the Harvard University Supplemental Essays

Prompt 1: Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard? (200 words)

Prompt 2: Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you. (200 words)

Prompt 3: Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are. (200 words)

Prompt 4: How do you hope to use your Harvard education in the future? (200 words)

Prompt 5: Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you. (200 words)

Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard? (200 words)

Brainstorming Your Topic

This prompt is a great example of the classic diversity supplemental essay . That means that, as you prepare to write your response, the first thing you need to do is focus in on some aspect of your identity, upbringing, or personality that makes you different from other people.

As you start brainstorming, do remember that the way colleges factor race into their admissions processes will be different this year, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in June. Colleges can still consider race on an individual level, however, so if you would like to write your response about how your racial identity has impacted you, you are welcome to do so.

If race doesn’t seem like the right topic for you, however, keep in mind that there are many other things that can make us different, not just race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and the other aspects of our identities that people normally think of when they hear the word “diversity.” That’s not to say that you can’t write about those things, of course. But don’t worry if you don’t feel like those things have played a significant role in shaping your worldview. Here are some examples of other topics that could support a strong essay:

• Moving to several different cities because of your parents’ jobs
• An usual hobby, like playing the accordion or making your own jewelry
• Knowing a lot about a niche topic, like Scottish castles

The only questions you really need to ask yourself when picking a topic are “Does this thing set me apart from other people?” and “Will knowing this thing about me give someone a better sense of who I am overall?” As long as you can answer “yes” to both of those questions, you’ve found your topic!

Tips for Writing Your Essay

Once you’ve selected a topic, the question becomes how you’re going to write about that topic in a way that helps Harvard admissions officers better understand how you’re going to contribute to their campus community. To do that, you want to connect your topic to some broader feature of your personality, or to a meaningful lesson you learned, that speaks to your potential as a Harvard student.

For example, perhaps your interest in Scottish castles has given you an appreciation for the strength of the human spirit, as the Scots were able to persevere and build these structures even in incredibly remote, cold parts of the country. Alternatively, maybe being half Puerto Rican, but not speaking Spanish, has taught you about the power of family, as you have strong relationships even with relatives you can’t communicate with verbally. 

Remember that, like with any college essay, you want to rely on specific anecdotes and experiences to illustrate the points you’re making. To understand why, compare the following two excerpts from hypothetical essays.

Example 1: “Even though I can’t speak Spanish, and some of my relatives can’t speak English, whenever I visit my family in Puerto Rico I know it’s a place where I belong. The island is beautiful, and I especially love going to the annual party at my uncle’s house.”

Example 2: “The smell of the ‘lechón,’ or suckling pig greets me as soon as I enter my uncle’s home, even before everyone rushes in from the porch to welcome me in rapid-fire Spanish. At best, I understand one in every ten words, but my aunt’s hot pink glasses, the Caribbean Sea visible through the living room window, and of course, the smell of roasting pork, tell me, wordlessly yet undeniably, that I’m home.”

Think about how much better we understand this student after Example 2. If a few words were swapped out, Example 1 could’ve been written by anyone, whereas Example 2 paints us a clear picture of how this student’s Puerto Rican heritage has tangibly impacted their life.

Mistakes to Avoid

The biggest challenge with this particular “Diversity” essay is the word count. Because you only have 200 words to work with, you don’t have space to include more than one broader takeaway you’ve learned from this aspect of your identity. 

Of course, people are complicated, and you’ve likely learned many things from being Puerto Rican, or from being interested in Scottish castles. But for the sake of cohesion, focus on just one lesson. Otherwise your essay may end up feeling like a bullet-point list of Hallmark card messages, rather than a thoughtful, personal, reflective piece of writing.

The other thing you want to avoid is writing an essay that’s just about your topic. Particularly since you’re going to be writing about an aspect of your identity that’s important to you, you’ll likely have a lot to say just about that. If you aren’t careful, you may burn through all 200 words without getting to the broader significance of what this piece of your personality says about who you are as a whole. 

That component, however, is really the key to a strong response. Harvard receives over 40,000 applications a year, which means that, whether you write about being Puerto Rican or Scottish castles, it’s likely someone else is writing about something similar. 

That doesn’t mean you need to agonize over picking something absolutely nobody else is writing about, as that’s practically impossible. All it means is that you need to be clear about how this aspect of your identity has shaped you as a whole, as that is how your essay will stand out from others with similar topics.

Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you. (200 words)

Harvard admissions officers are being considerate here, as they’re telling you explicitly what they would like you to write about. Of course, there are still nuances to the prompt, but in terms of brainstorming, just ask yourself: What is an intellectual experience that’s been important to me?

Keep in mind that “intellectual” doesn’t necessarily mean “academic.” You absolutely can write a great response about a paper, project, or some other experience you had through school. But you could also write about attending a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic, or about a book you read for fun that made a big impact on you. So long as the experience was intellectually stimulating, you can write a strong essay about it.

Once you’ve picked an experience, the key is to describe it in a way that shows Harvard admissions officers how this experience has prepared you to contribute to their classrooms, and campus community as a whole. In other words, don’t just tell them what you did, but also what you learned and why that matters for understanding what kind of college student you’ll be.

For example, say you choose to write about a debate project you did in your American history class, where you had to prepare for both sides and only learned which one you would actually be defending on the day of the debate. You could describe how, although you came into the project with pre-existing opinions about the topic, the preparation process taught you that, if you’re thoughtful and open-minded, you can usually find merit and logic even in the polar opposite position from your own.

Alternatively, you could write about a book you read that had been translated from Danish, and how reading it got you interested in learning more about how to translate a text as faithfully as possible. After watching many interviews with translators and reading a book about translation, you have learned that sometimes, the most literal translation doesn’t capture the spirit from the original language, which to you is proof that, in any piece of writing, the human element is at least as important as the words on the page.

Notice that both of these examples include broader reflections that zoom out from the particular experiences, to show what you took away from them: increased open-mindedness to different perspectives, for the first, and a more nuanced understanding of what makes art, art, in the case of the second. 

A strong response must include this kind of big-picture takeaway, as it shows readers two things. First, that you can reflect thoughtfully on your experiences and learn from them. And second, it shows them a skill or perspective you’d be bringing with you to Harvard, which gives them a better sense of how you’d fit into their campus community.

The only real thing you need to watch out for is accidentally selecting an experience that, for whatever reason, doesn’t allow you to incorporate the kind of bigger-picture takeaway described above. Maybe the experience just happened, so you’re still in the process of learning from it. Or maybe the lessons you learned are too nuanced to describe in 200 words. 

Whatever this reason, if you find yourself unable to articulate the broader significance of this experience, head back to the drawing board, to select one that works better for this prompt. What you don’t want to do is try to force in a takeaway that doesn’t really fit, as that will make your essay feel generic or disjointed, since the “moral of the story” won’t clearly connect to the story itself.

Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are. (200 words)

This is a textbook example of the “Extracurricular” essay . As such, what you need to do is well-defined, although it’s easier said than done: select an extracurricular activity that has, as Harvard says, “shaped who you are,” and make sure you’re able to articulate how it’s been formative for you.

As you brainstorm which extracurricular you want to write about, note that the language of the prompt is pretty open-ended. You write about “any” activity, not just one you have a lot of accolades in, and you don’t even have to write about an activity—you can also write about a travel experience, or family responsibility. 

If the thing that immediately jumps to mind is a club, sport, volunteer experience, or other “traditional” extracurricular, that’s great! Run with that. But if you’re thinking and nothing in that vein seems quite right, or, alternatively, you’re feeling bold and want to take a creative approach, don’t be afraid to get outside the box. Here are some examples of other topics you could write a strong essay about:

• A more hobby-like extracurricular, like crocheting potholders and selling them on Etsy
• Driving the Pacific Coast Highway on your own
• Caring for your family’s two large, colorful macaws

These more creative topics can do a lot to showcase a different side of you, as college applications have, by their nature, a pretty restricted scope, and telling admissions officers about something that would never appear on your resume or transcript can teach them a lot about who you are. That being said, the most important thing is that the topic you pick has genuinely been formative for you. Whether it’s a conventional topic or not, as long as that personal connection is there, you’ll be able to write a strong essay about it.

The key to writing a strong response is focusing less on the activity itself, and more on what you’ve learned from your involvement in it. If you’re writing about a more conventional topic, remember that admissions officers already have your activities list. You don’t need to say “For the last five years, I’ve been involved in x,” because they already know that, and when you only have 200 words, wasting even 10 of them means you’ve wasted 5% of your space.

If you’re writing about something that doesn’t already show up elsewhere in your application, you want to provide enough details for your reader to understand what you did, but not more than that. For example, if you’re writing about your road trip, you don’t need to list every city you  stopped in. Instead, just mention one or two that were particularly memorable.

Rather than focusing on the facts and figures of what you did, focus on what you learned from your experience. Admissions officers want to know why your involvement in this thing matters to who you’ll be in college. So, think about one or two bigger picture things you learned from it, and center your response around those things.

For example, maybe your Etsy shop taught you how easy it is to bring some positivity into someone else’s life, as crocheting is something you would do anyways, and the shop just allows you to share your creations with other people. Showcasing this uplifting, altruistic side of yourself will help admissions officers better envision what kind of Harvard student you’d be.

As always, you want to use specific examples to support your points, at least as much as you can in 200 words. Because you’re dealing with a low word count, you probably won’t have space to flex your creative writing muscles with vivid, immersive descriptions. 

You can still incorporate anecdotes in a more economical way, however. For example, you could say “Every morning, our scarlet macaw ruffles her feathers and greets me with a prehistoric chirp.” You’re not going into detail about what her feathers look like, or where this scene is happening, but it’s still much more engaging than something like “My bird always says hello to me in her own way.”

The most common pitfall with an “Extracurricular” essay is describing your topic the way you would on your resume. Don’t worry about showing off some “marketable skill” you think admissions officers want to see, and instead highlight whatever it is you actually took away from this experience, whether it’s a skill, a realization, or a personality trait. The best college essays are genuine, as admissions officers feel that honesty, and know they’re truly getting to know the applicant as they are, rather than some polished-up version.

Additionally, keep in mind that, like with anything in your application, you want admissions officers to learn something new about you when reading this essay. So, if you’ve already written your common app essay about volunteering at your local animal shelter, you shouldn’t also write this essay about that experience. Your space in your application is already extremely limited, so don’t voluntarily limit yourself even further by repeating yourself when you’re given an opportunity to say something new.

How do you hope to use your Harvard education in the future? (200 words)

Although the packaging is a little different, this prompt has similarities to the classic “Why This College?” prompt . That means there are two main things you want to do while brainstorming. 

First, identify one or two goals you have for the future—with just 200 words, you won’t have space to elaborate on any more than that. Ideally, these should be relatively concrete. You don’t have to have your whole life mapped out, but you do need to be a lot more specific than “Make a difference in the world.” A more zoomed-in version of that goal would be something like “Contribute to conservation efforts to help save endangered species,” which would work.

Second, hop onto Harvard’s website and do some research on opportunities the school offers that would help you reach your goals. Again, make sure these are specific enough. Rather than a particular major, which is likely offered at plenty of other schools around the country, identify specific courses within that major you would like to take, or a professor in the department you would like to do research with. For example, the student interested in conservation might mention the course “Conservation Biology” at Harvard.

You could also write about a club, or a study abroad program, or really anything that’s unique to Harvard, so long as you’re able to draw a clear connection between the opportunity and your goal. Just make sure that, like with your goals, you don’t get overeager. Since your space is quite limited, you should choose two, or maximum three, opportunities to focus on. Any more than that and your essay will start to feel rushed and bullet point-y.

If you do your brainstorming well, the actual writing process should be pretty straightforward: explain your goals, and how the Harvard-specific opportunities you’ve selected will help you reach them. 

One thing you do want to keep in mind is that your goals should feel personal to you, and the best way to accomplish that is by providing some background context on why you have them. This doesn’t have to be extensive, as, again, your space is limited. But compare the following two examples, written about the hypothetical goal of helping conservation efforts from above, to get an idea of what we’re talking about:

Example 1: “As long as I can remember, I’ve loved all kinds of animals, and have been heartbroken by the fact that human destruction of natural resources could lead to certain species’ extinction.”

Example 2: “As a kid, I would sit in front of the aquarium’s walrus exhibit, admiring the animal’s girth and tusks, and dream about seeing one in the wild. Until my parents regretfully explained to me that, because of climate change, that was unlikely to ever happen.”

The second example is obviously longer, but not egregiously so: 45 words versus 31. And the image we get of this student sitting and fawning over a walrus is worth that extra space, as we feel a stronger personal connection to them, which in turn makes us more vicariously invested in their own goal of environmental advocacy.

As we’ve already described in the brainstorming section, the key to this essay is specificity. Admissions officers want you to paint them a picture of how Harvard fits into your broader life goals. As we noted earlier, that doesn’t mean you have to have everything figured out, but if you’re too vague about your goals, or how you see Harvard helping you reach them, admissions officers won’t see you as someone who’s prepared to contribute to their campus community.

Along similar lines, avoid flattery. Gushy lines like “At Harvard, every day I’ll feel inspired by walking the same halls that countless Nobel laureates, politicians, and CEOs once traversed” won’t get you anywhere, because Harvard admissions officers already know their school is one of the most prestigious and famous universities in the world. What they don’t know is what you are going to bring to Harvard that nobody else has. So, that’s what you want to focus on, not vague, surface-level attributes of Harvard related to its standing in the world of higher education.

Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you. (200 words)

Like Prompt 2, this prompt tells you exactly what you need to brainstorm: three things a roommate would like to know about you. However, also like Prompt 2, while this prompt is direct, it’s also incredibly open-ended. What really are the top three things you’d like a complete stranger to know about you before you live together for nine months?

Questions this broad can be hard to answer, as you might not know where to start. Sometimes, you can help yourself out by asking yourself adjacent, but slightly more specific questions, like the following:

• Do you have any interests that influence your regular routine? For example, do you always watch the Seahawks on Sunday, or are you going to be playing Taylor Swift’s discography on repeat while you study?
• Look around your room—what items are most important to you? Do you keep your movie ticket stubs? Are you planning on taking your photos of your family cat with you to college?
• Are there any activities you love and already know you’d want to do with your roommate, like weekly face masks or making Christmas cookies?

Hopefully, these narrower questions, and the example responses we’ve included, help get your gears turning. Keep in mind that this prompt is a great opportunity to showcase sides of your personality that don’t come across in your grades, activities list, or even your personal statement. Don’t worry about seeming impressive—admissions officers don’t expect you to read Shakespeare every night for two hours. What they want is an honest, informative picture of what you’re like “behind the scenes,” because college is much more than just academics.

Once you’ve selected three things to write about, the key to the actual essay is presenting them in a logical, cohesive, efficient way. That’s easier said than done, particularly if the three things you’ve picked are quite different from each other. 

To ensure your essay feels like one, complete unit, rather than three smaller ones stuck together, strong transitions will be crucial. Note that “strong” doesn’t mean “lengthy.” Just a few words can go a long way towards helping your essay flow naturally. To see what we mean here, take the following two examples:

Example 1: “Just so you know, every Sunday I will be watching the Seahawks, draped in my dad’s Steve Largent jersey. They can be a frustrating team, but I’ll do my best to keep it down in case you’re studying. I also like to do facemasks, though. You’re always welcome to any of the ones I have in my (pretty extensive) collection.”

Example 2: “Just so you know, every Sunday I will be watching the Seahawks, draped in my dad’s Steve Largent jersey. But if football’s not your thing, don’t worry—once the game’s over, I’ll need to unwind anyways, because win or lose the Hawks always find a way to make things stressful. So always feel free to join me in picking out a face mask from my (pretty extensive) collection, and we can gear up for the week together.”

The content in both examples is the same, but in the first one, the transition from football to facemasks is very abrupt. On the other hand, in the second example the simple line “But if football’s not your thing, don’t worry” keeps things flowing smoothly. 

There’s no one right way to write a good transition, but as you’re polishing your essay a good way to see if you’re on the right track is by asking someone who hasn’t seen your essay before to read it over and tell you if there are any points that made them pause. If the answer is yes, your transitions probably still need more work.

Finally, you probably noticed that the above examples are both written in a “Dear roomie” style, as if you’re actually speaking directly to your roommate. You don’t have to take this exact approach, but your tone should ideally be light and fun. Living alone for the first time, with other people your age, is one of the best parts of college! Plus, college applications are, by their nature, pretty dry affairs for the most part. Lightening things up in this essay will give your reader a breath of fresh air, which will help them feel more engaged in your application as a whole.

Harvard is doing you a favor here by keeping the scope of the essay narrow—they ask for three things, not more. As we’ve noted many times with the other supplements, 200 words will be gone in a flash, so don’t try to cram in extra things. It’s not necessary to do that, because admissions officers have only asked for three, and trying to stuff more in will turn your essay into a list of bullet points, rather than an informative piece of writing about your personality.

Finally, as we’ve hinted at a few times above, the other thing you want to avoid is using this essay as another opportunity to impress admissions officers with your intellect and accomplishments. Remember, they have your grades, and your activities list, and all your other essays. Plus, they can ask you whatever questions they want—if they wanted to know about the most difficult book you’ve ever read, they would. So, loosen up, let your hair down, and show them you know how to have fun too!

Where to Get Your Harvard Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your Harvard essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools.  Find the right advisor for you  to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, 5th Edition: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice Paperback – May 9, 2017

Fifty all-new essays that got their authors into Harvard - with updated statistics, analysis, and complete student profiles - showing what worked, what didn’t, and how you can do it, too. With talented applicants coming from top high schools as well as the pressure to succeed from family and friends, it’s no wonder that writing college application essays is one of the most stressful tasks high schoolers face. To help, this completely new edition of 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays , edited by the staff of the Harvard Crimson , gives readers the most inspiring approaches, both conventional and creative, that won over admissions officers at Harvard University, the nation’s top-ranked college. From chronicling personal achievements to detailing unique talents, the topics covered in these essays open applicants up to new techniques to put their best foot forward. It teaches students how to: - Get started - Stand out - Structure the best possible essay - Avoid common pitfalls Each essay in this collection is from a Harvard student who made the cut, is accompanied by a student profile that includes SAT scores and grades, and is followed by a detailed analysis by the staff of the Harvard Crimson that shows readers how they can approach their own stories and ultimately write their own high-caliber essay. 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays ’ all-new examples and straightforward advice make it the first stop for college applicants who are looking to craft essays that get them accepted to the school of their dreams.

• Print length 224 pages
• Language English
• Publication date May 9, 2017
• Dimensions 5.45 x 0.75 x 8.2 inches
• ISBN-10 9781250127556
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1250127556
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• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.9 ounces
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50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, 5th Edition

What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice

Author: Staff of the Harvard Crimson

M ICHAEL B ERVELL Hometown : Mukilteo, Washington, USA High School : Public school, 550 students in graduating class Ethnicity : Black, African American Gender : Male GPA : 3.9 out of 4.0 SAT : Reading 800, Math 800, Writing 800 ACT : 35 SAT Subject Tests Taken : Mathematics Level 1, Mathematics Level 2, Physics, World History Extracurriculars : Student body president; newspaper editor in chief; varsity debate captain; Hugs for Ghana (nonprofit) cofounder and executive director; GMAZ Jazz Quartet cofounder, drummer, and manager Awards : International Build-a-Bear Workshop Huggable Heroes Award, National Bank of America Student Leader Delegate, Evergreen Boys State Delegate and Governor, National Radio Disney Hero for Change Award, National Achievement Scholar, National Coca-Cola Scholar Major : Philosophy and Computer Science ESSAY “A-one,” I adjust my earphones. “A-two,” I wipe the sweat off my sticks. “A-one-two-three-four!” The sharp rhythm of Mr. Dizzy Gillespie’s iconic bebop tune “Salt Peanuts” rattles through my head like saline seeds as I silently count myself off. Then—without a hitch—Gillespie, his quintet, and I are off. My left foot taps the AP biology textbook, my sticks bounce along the metal frame of my bed, and my soul dances to the beat I am creating. This makeshift drum set is a liberating entrance into an abstract world where I am free to express myself. As I sit on the edge of my bed imitating the monophonic flow of drummer Max Roach, I close my eyes and envision myself performing onstage with world-renowned Gillespie. We stand before thousands of people, steeped in the spotlight’s brilliant glare, and as we play my arms become a flurry of motion when, suddenly, crack ! I snap back into reality and my eyes shoot open only to realize that the moment of pure ecstasy had been interrupted—another broken drumstick! Smiling, I pick up the pieces and walk toward a worn, old, black Ikea desk in the corner of my room. Since 5th grade, my DrumDrawer has been the keeper of every pair of new and broken drumsticks I have ever owned. I pull open the big bottom drawer and stand admiring the sacred splinters for a brief moment before finally dropping in this latest offering. The sticks in my small pine sepulcher illustrate the quintessential facets of who I am—a musician, leader, and philanthropist. While most people typically collect rocks or baseball cards, I collect musical phrases from my life and store them in this drawer. As I reach to the bottom, my fingers wrap around two white Vic Firth sticks. Rubbing my fingers along the bumps on the wood, I grin. This exclusive pair shared my accomplishments of playing jazz under the Eiffel Tower in Paris, drumming in award-winning spring musicals, and being inducted into the National Tri-M Music Honor Society. Moreover, these sticks not only inspired me to persevere as I cofounded, managed, and drummed in the GMAZ Jazz Quartet, but they also instilled confidence in me when I needed it most. After I decided to run for Student Body President of my 2,200-student high school in what turned out to be a competitive election against two of my closest friends, these tattered drumsticks soothed and comforted me. Despite turbulent weeks of campaigning and preparing a daunting school-wide campaign speech, I always looked forward to returning to my bedroom and playing my favorite jazz melodies. The ups and downs of musical arrangements never failed to strike a chord. Reminiscing, I twirl the white drumsticks between my fingers and realize that they also profoundly influenced my view of service. Once a month, these wooden wonders and I would trek from my desk to the local retirement home where we performed with other musicians in monthly “Play-It-Forward” retirement home concerts. On these Friday nights, my sticks danced on the drums, our music floated throughout the concert hall, elderly faces glowed, and I was free to let out my creative exuberance. In organizing dozens of these events, I have shared with both peers and audience members my own musical definition of altruism. I return my Vic Firth sticks to the drawer and contentedly appreciate the collection of memories. While the wooden contents physically have no other value than, perhaps, kindling a small fire, I cannot bear to part with them. Someday the sticks will go, I realize, but the music will not. Fresh pair of sticks in hand, I slowly shut the DrumDrawer, return to my bed, and count myself off, eyes closed, to John Coltrane’s jazz rendition of “My Favorite Things” by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. “A-one, a-two, a-one-two-three-four!” REVIEW Right from the introduction, readers are thrown into the vibrant and colorful world that Michael’s essay creates. Passion for a musical instrument is a topic that is doubtlessly written about by many applicants, but Michael differentiates himself by using his passion for drumming to demonstrate his stylistic flair, cleverly finding ways to discuss his other, non-musical accomplishments and pursuits. Michael clearly aims to communicate that he is a “musician, leader, and philanthropist” throughout his essay—a goal he successfully accomplishes. His musical talent and passion come alive through the vivid imagery and onomatopoeia that he uses. To demonstrate leadership, he shows how he dealt with a difficult situation maturely. Finally, his dedication to volunteer work is seamlessly worked into the essay when he recalls playing concerts at a retirement home. Michael roots the essay in the physical space of his bedroom, but chooses a place that allows him to be creative and cover a lot of aspects of himself that might not be accessible in other parts of his application. The full-circle ending is a nice touch to further root the essay in the prompt. Michael does a wonderful job of demonstrating that you don’t need a particularly unique topic to create a memorable essay. —Mia Karr J ANG L EE Hometown : Flower Mound, Texas, USA High School : Public school, 816 students in graduating class Ethnicity : Asian Gender : Male GPA : 4.0 out of 4.0 SAT : Reading 800, Math 740, Writing 790 ACT : n/a SAT Subject Tests Taken : Mathematics Level 2, Chemistry Extracurriculars : President of art club / National Art Honor Society, vice president of Science National Honor Society, founding member and vice president of creative engagement and design for 501(c)3 nonprofit Raise4aCause, volunteer at church summer school Awards : PSAT semifinalist, Welch Summer Scholar, 1 Scholastic Silver Key and 2 Gold Keys, artwork exhibited at the Texas Legislative Budget Board and part of the Texas Art Education Association traveling exhibition, Gold Seal at UIL Texas art competition (highest possible award given to .6% of artworks out of over twenty thousand submissions) Major : Visual and Environmental Studies ESSAY Like it does on most nights, the smell of toxic fumes drifts through my room. Occasionally washing my paintbrushes in turpentine oil thinner, I am uncomfortably aware that these vapors can cause brain damage, lung cancer, and chronic respiratory problems. My lifelong passion is killing me— literally. Yet, this smell is strangely comforting. It blankets me with a sense of security I find nowhere else. An artist at the core, my paint-smeared heart pumps pigments of red through veins and arteries—the love for painting permeates every part of my body and has transformed me. By constantly observing subtle details of objects, breathtaking spectrums of color, and the interactions of lights and darks, my perception of the world has shifted. I walk down the school hallway during passing period. Carried by a stream of teenage bodies, I notice ceiling lights scattering among clothes and locks of glossy hair. Looking down, shadows crisscross and overlap on the laminated floor to create a kaleidoscope of dancing silhouettes. Faces draw my attention—delicate hues of rosy pink on tips of ears and softly chiseled curves of bone. I observe my surroundings from an artist’s perspective, fully immersed in a state of perpetual learning. Ultimately, my goal as an artist is to give my art personal, profound depth that transcends aesthetic purpose or technical skill. Paintings do not have to be of flowers or landscapes; they can portray story, emotion, and experience. Consequently, my art is inspired by personal experiences and observations. I hope to convey a fresh perspective of my life through strokes of color. The ambition of creating depth in my art forces me to reflect on myself as I continually ask why I am painting what I am painting. And because of the rigorous reflection of my values and experiences, I am given a greater sense of self-identity. This overwhelming position as an artist is humbling, teaching me an appreciation for self-worth often neglected or trivialized in a fast-paced American lifestyle. I want to show others this same value through my art so they can slow down to recognize and appreciate the value of their own lives. Wonderland Unknown, a painting based on my favorite childhood story, Alice in Wonderland, depicts a rabbit in a forest of overgrown mushrooms and twisted trees. The piece builds on the idea that children’s innate creativity and capacity for imagination are stifled as they mature. Growing up, I began to feel estranged from the tale because it turned unrealistically ridiculous, a personal testimony to the slow deterioration of childhood wonder. Painting Wonderland Unknown was an epiphany—I realized that creativity is inherent: a universal thread within all of us that stitches humanity together. Most importantly, it is a trait that should be nurtured and valued instead of taken for granted. Truly, art is a world of possibility and a world I would like to share. It is a place where one is encouraged to break rules, be unapologetically audacious, and take pride in unorthodoxy. Ready to play creator of my universe, I rule with brush in one hand and palette in the other, painting because of a chance to explore this liberating world and discover myself through it. And in the end, art will always stay a constant in my life, forever my private sanctuary of creativity and personal expression. A place where I am infinite. I feel relieved knowing that the smell of turpentine will always comfort me. It is a thin, oily smell of ironic undertones, vaguely nauseating and coffee-ground bitter. It is a smell that has given me life. REVIEW Jang’s essay is filled with beautiful phrasing and flowery descriptions, which shows off his writing skills and creativity. One of the biggest strengths of the essay is how Jang pairs explanation of art’s function in his life with an artistic analysis of the piece Wonderland Unknown . Being able to write exceedingly well in a distinctive narrative form proves to be a strength for Jang. His essay weds two distinct types of writing—narrative and analytical—together, which is the very essence of what a good college essay should be. But, rather than present a single, overarching narrative, the writer takes the reader through separate vignettes: a crowded hallway, his work space at home, the scene depicted in the painting—all of which combine to provide a distinct and colorful look into the writer’s relationship with art. —Brandon J. Dixon Copyright © 2017 by the Staff of The Harvard Crimson

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Fifty all-new essays that got their authors into Harvard - with updated statistics, analysis, and complete student profiles - showing what worked, what didn’t, and how you can do it, too. With talented applicants coming from top high schools as well as the pressure to succeed from family and friends, it’s no wonder that writing college application essays is one of the most stressful tasks high schoolers face. To help, this completely new edition of 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays , edited by the staff of the Harvard Crimson , gives readers the most inspiring approaches, both conventional and creative, that won over admissions officers at Harvard University, the nation’s top-ranked college. From chronicling personal achievements to detailing unique talents, the topics covered in these essays open applicants up to new techniques to put their best foot forward. It teaches students how to: - Get started - Stand out - Structure the best possible essay - Avoid common pitfalls Each essay in this collection is from a Harvard student who made the cut, is accompanied by a student profile that includes SAT scores and grades, and is followed by a detailed analysis by the staff of the Harvard Crimson that shows readers how they can approach their own stories and ultimately write their own high-caliber essay. 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays ’ all-new examples and straightforward advice make it the first stop for college applicants who are looking to craft essays that get them accepted to the school of their dreams.

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Harvard University Essay Examples (And Why They Worked)

The following essay examples were written by several different authors who were admitted to Harvard University and are intended to provide examples of successful Harvard University application essays. All names have been redacted for anonymity. Please note that Bullseye Admissions has shared these essays with admissions officers at Harvard University in order to deter potential plagiarism.

For more help with your Harvard supplemental essays, check out our 2020-2021 Harvard University Essay Guide ! For more guidance on personal essays and the college application process in general, sign up for a monthly plan to work with an admissions coach 1-on-1.

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (50-150 words)

Feet moving, eyes up, every shot back, chants the silent mantra in my head. The ball becomes a beacon of neon green as I dart forward and backward, shuffling from corner to far corner of the court, determined not to let a single point escape me. With bated breath, I swing my racquet upwards and outwards and it catches the ball just in time to propel it, spinning, over the net. My heart soars as my grinning teammates cheer from the sidelines.

While I greatly value the endurance, tenacity, and persistence that I have developed while playing tennis throughout the last four years, I will always most cherish the bonds that I have created and maintained each year with my team.

Why this Harvard essay worked: From an ex-admissions officer

When responding to short essays or supplements, it can be difficult to know which info to include or omit. In this essay, the writer wastes no time and immediately captivates the reader. Not only are the descriptions vivid and compelling, but the second portion highlights what the writer gained from this activity. As an admissions officer, I learned about the student’s level of commitment, leadership abilities, resiliency, ability to cooperate with others, and writing abilities in 150 words.

I founded Teen Court at [High School Name Redacted] with my older brother in 2016. Teen Court is a unique collaboration with the Los Angeles Superior Court and Probation Department, trying real first-time juvenile offenders from all over Los Angeles in a courtroom setting with teen jurors. Teen Court’s foundational principle is restorative justice: we seek to rehabilitate at-risk minors rather than simply punish them. My work provides my peers the opportunity to learn about the justice system. I put in over fifty hours just as Secretary logging court attendance, and now as President, I mentor Teen Court attendees. My goal is to improve their empathy and courage in public speaking, and to expand their world view. People routinely tell me their experience with Teen Court has inspired them to explore law, and I know the effort I devoted bringing this club to [High School Name Redacted] was well worth it.

This writer discussed a passion project with a long-lasting impact. As admissions officers, we realize that post-secondary education will likely change the trajectory of your life. We hope that your education will also inspire you to change the trajectory of someone else’s life as well. This writer developed an organization that will have far-reaching impacts for both the juvenile offenders and the attendees. They saw the need for this service and initiated a program to improve their community. College Admissions Quiz: If you’re planning on applying to Harvard, you’ll want to be as prepared as possible. Take our quiz below to put your college admissions knowledge to the test!

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: Books Read During the Last Twelve Months

Reading Frankenstein in ninth grade changed my relationship to classic literature. In Frankenstein , I found characters and issues that resonate in a modern context, and I began to explore the literary canon outside of the classroom. During tenth grade, I picked up Jane Eyre and fell in love with the novel’s non-traditional heroine whose agency and cleverness far surpassed anything that I would have imagined coming from the 19th century. I have read the books listed below in the past year.

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus *
• Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger *
• Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• Aphra Behn, The Fair Jilt ♰
• Mongo Beti, Mission Terminée * (in French)
• Kate Chopin, The Awakening
• Arthur Conan-Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
• Kamel Daoud, Meursault, contre-enquête * (in French)
• Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry *
• Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane *
• Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
• William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying *
• Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
• E. M. Forster, Maurice
• E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
• E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
• Eliza Haywood, The City Jilt ♰
• Homer, The Iliad
• Christopher Isherwood, All The Conspirators
• Christopher Isherwood, A Meeting by the River
• Christopher Isherwood, Sally Bowles
• Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
• Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
• Franz Kafka, The Trial
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies *
• Morrissey, Autobiography
• Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy *
• Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
• Charlotte Perkins-Gilman, Herland
• Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
• Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
• Mary Renault, Fire From Heaven
• Mary Renault, The Friendly Young Ladies
• Mary Renault, The King Must Die
• Mary Renault, The Persian Boy
• J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des hommes * (in French)
• Shakespeare, Hamlet *
• Mary Shelley, The Last Man
• Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead *
• Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
• Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
• Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
• Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
• Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
• Jeanette Winterson, The Passion
• Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary: A Fiction ♰
• Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman ♰
• Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House and Other Stories
• * indicates assigned reading
• ♰ indicates independent study reading

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: What would you want your future college roommate to know about you? (No word limit)

Hi Roomie!!!!

You probably have noticed that I put four exclamation points. Yes, I am that excited to meet you, roomie!

Also, I don’t believe in the Rule of Three. It’s completely unfair that three is always the most commonly used number. Am I biased in my feelings because four is my favorite number? Perhaps. However, you have to admit that our reason for the Rule of Three is kinda arbitrary. The Rule of Three states that a trio of events is more effective and satisfying than any other numbers. Still, the human psyche is easily manipulated through socially constructed perceptions such as beauty standards and gender roles. Is having three of everything actually influential or is it only influential because society says so? Hmm, it’s interesting to think about it, isn’t it?

But if you’re an avid follower of the Rule of three, don’t worry, I won’t judge. In fact, if there’s one thing I can promise you I will never do, it’s being judgmental. Life is too short to go around judging people. Besides, judgments are always based on socially constructed beliefs. With so many backgrounds present on campus, it really would be unfair if we start going around judging people based on our own limited beliefs. My personal philosophy is “Mind your own business and let people be,” So, if you have a quirk that you’re worrying is too “weird” and are afraid your roommate might be too judgy, rest assured, I won’t be.

In fact, thanks to my non-judginess, I am an excellent listener. If you ever need to rant with someone about stressful classes, harsh gradings, or the new ridiculous plot twists of your favorite TV show (*cough* Riverdale), I am always available.

Now, I know what you are thinking. A non-judgmental and open-minded roommate? This sounds too good to be true. This girl’s probably a secret villain waiting to hear all my deepest and darkest secrets and blackmail me with them!

Well, I promise you. I am not a secret villain. I am just someone who knows how important it is to be listened to and understood.

I grew up under the communist regime of Vietnam, where freedom of speech and thought was heavily suppressed. Since childhood, I was taught to keep my opinion to myself, especially if it is contradictory to the government’s. No matter how strongly I felt about an issue, I could never voice my true opinion nor do anything about it. Or else, my family and I would face oppression from the Vietnamese government.

After immigrating to America, I have made it my mission to fight for human rights and justice. Back in Vietnam, I have let fear keep me from doing the right thing. Now, in the land of freedom, I won’t use that excuse anymore. I can finally be myself and fight for what I believe in. However, I can still remember how suffocating it was to keep my beliefs bottled up and to be silenced. Trust me, a conversation may not seem much, but it can do wonders. So, if you ever need a listener, know that I am right here.

See, I just shared with you a deep secret of mine. What secret villain would do that?

See ya soon!!!!!

[Name redacted] : )

P/S: I really love writing postscripts. So, I hope you won’t find it weird when I always end my emails, letters, and even texts with a P/S. Bye for real this time!!!!!

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: Unusual circumstances in your life

I would like the Harvard Admissions Committee to know that my life circumstances are far from typical. I was born at twenty-four weeks gestation, which eighteen years ago was on the cusp of viability. Even if I was born today, under those same circumstances, my prospects for leading a normal life would be grim. Eighteen years ago, those odds were worse, and I was given a less than 5% chance of survival without suffering major cognitive and physical deficits.

The first six months of my life were spent in a large neonatal ICU in Canada. I spent most of that time in an incubator, kept breathing by a ventilator. When I was finally discharged home, it was with a feeding tube and oxygen, and it would be several more months before I was able to survive without the extra tubes connected to me. At the age of two, I was still unable to walk. I engaged in every conventional and non-conventional therapy available to me, including physical and speech therapy, massage therapy, gymnastics, and several nutritional plans, to try to remedy this. Slowly, I began to make progress in what would be a long and arduous journey towards recovery.

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of repeated, often unsuccessful attempts to grip a large-diameter crayon since I was unable to hold a regular pencil. I would attempt to scrawl out letters on a page to form words, fueled by either determination or outright stubbornness, persevering until I improved. I spent countless hours trying to control my gait, eventually learning to walk normally and proving the doctors wrong about their diagnoses. I also had to learn how to swallow without aspirating because the frequent intubations I had experienced as an infant left me with a uncoordinated swallow reflex. Perhaps most prominently, I remember becoming very winded as I tried to keep up with my elementary school peers on the playground and the frustration I experienced when I failed.

Little by little, my body’s tolerance for physical exertion grew, and my coordination improved. I enrolled in martial arts to learn how to keep my balance and to develop muscle coordination and an awareness of where my limbs were at any given time. I also became immersed in competition among my elementary school peers to determine which one of us could become the most accomplished on the recorder. For each piece of music played correctly, a “belt” was awarded in the form of a brightly colored piece of yarn tied around the bottom of our recorders- meant as symbols of our achievement. Despite the challenges I had in generating and controlling enough air, I practiced relentlessly, often going in before school or during my lunch hour to obtain the next increasingly difficult musical piece. By the time the competition concluded, I had broken the school record of how far an elementary school child could advance; in doing so, my love of instrumental music and my appreciation for the value of hard work and determination was born.

Throughout my middle and high school years, I have succeeded at the very highest level both academically and musically. I was even able to find a sport that I excelled at and would later be able to use as an avenue for helping others, volunteering as an assistant coach once I entered high school. I have mentored dozens of my high school peers in developing trumpet skills, teaching them how to control one’s breathing during musical phrases and how to develop effective fingering techniques in order to perform challenging passages. I believe that my positive attitude and hard work has allowed for not only my own success, but for the growth and success of my peers as well.

My scholastic and musical achievements, as well as my leadership abilities and potential to succeed at the highest level will hopefully be readily apparent to the committee when you review my application. Perhaps more importantly, however, is the behind-the-scenes character traits that have made these possible. I believe that I can conquer any challenge put in front of me. My past achievements provide testimony to my work ethic, aptitudes and grit, and are predictive of my future potential.

Thank you for your consideration.

In this essay, the writer highlighted their resilience. At some point, we will all endure challenges and struggles, but it is how we redeem ourselves that matters. This writer highlighted their initial struggles, their dedication and commitment, and the ways in which they’ve used those challenges as inspiration and motivation to persevere and also to encourage others to do the same.

Harvard University Supplemental Essay Option: An intellectual experience (course, project, book, discussion, paper, poetry, or research topic in engineering, mathematics, science or other modes of inquiry) that has meant the most to you.

I want to be a part of something amazing, and I believe I can. The first line of the chorus springs into my mind instantaneously as my fingers experiment with chords on the piano. In this moment, as I compose the protagonist’s solo number, I speak from my heart. I envision the stage and set, the actors, the orchestra, even the audience. Growing increasingly excited, I promptly begin to create recordings so I can release the music from the confines of my imagination and share it with any willing ears.

My brother [name redacted] and I are in the process of writing a full-length, two-act musical comprised of original scenes, songs, characters. I began creating the show not only because I love to write music and entertain my friends and family, but also with the hope that I might change the way my peers view society. Through Joan, the protagonist of my musical, I want to communicate how I feel about the world.

The story centers around Joan, a high schooler, and her connection to the pilot Amelia Earhart. Ever since I saw a theatrical rendition of Amelia Earhart’s life in fifth grade, she has fascinated me as an extraordinary feminist and a challenger of society’s beliefs and standards. As I began researching and writing for the show, I perused through biographies and clicked through countless youtube documentaries about the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, astounded by her bravery and ability to overcome a troubled childhood and achieve her dream. In my musical, as Amelia transcends 20th century norms, changing the way that people regard women and flight, Joan strives to convince her peers and superiors that the worth of one’s life spans not from material success and grades, but from self-love and passion.

As I compose, the essence of each character and the mood of each scene steer the flow of each song. To me, it seems as though everything falls into place at once – as I pluck a melody out of the air, the lyrics come to me naturally as if the two have been paired all along. As I listen to the newly born principal line, I hear the tremolo of strings underscoring and the blaring of a brass section that may someday audibly punctuate each musical phrase.

The project is certainly one of the most daunting tasks I’ve ever undertaken – we’ve been working on it for almost a year, and hope to be done by January – but, fueled by my passion for creating music and writing, it is also one of the most enjoyable. I dream that it may be performed one day and that it may influence society to appreciate the success that enthusiasm for one’s relationships and work can bring.

These essay examples were compiled by the advising team at Bullseye Admissions. If you want to get help writing your Harvard University application essays from Bullseye Admissions advisors , register with Bullseye today .

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50 MBA Essays That Got Applicants Admitted To Harvard & Stanford

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What Matters? and What More? is a collection of 50 application essays written by successful MBA candidates to Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business

I sat alone one Saturday night in a boardroom in Eastern Oregon, miles from home, my laptop lighting the room. I was painstakingly reviewing a complex spreadsheet of household energy consumption data, cell by cell. ‘Why am I doing this to myself? For remote transmission lines?’…I felt dejected. I’d felt that way before, during my summer at JP Morgan, standing alone in the printing room at 3 a.m., binding decks for a paper mill merger that wouldn’t affect my life in the least.

That’s how an analyst at an MBB firm started his MBA application essay to Stanford Graduate School of Business. His point: In a well-crafted essay, he confronts the challenge of finding meaning in his work and a place where he can make a meaningful difference. That is what really matters most to him, and his answer to Stanford’s iconic MBA application essay helped get him defy the formidable odds of acceptance and gain an admit to the school.

Getting into the prestigious MBA programs at either Stanford Graduate School of Business or Harvard Business School are among the most difficult journeys any young professional can make.

NEARLY 17,000 CANDIDATES APPLIED TO HARVARD & STANFORD LAST YEAR. 1,500 GOT IN

This collection of 50 successful HBS and GSB essays, with smart commentary, can be downloaded for $60

They are two of the most selective schools, routinely rejecting nine or more out of every ten applicants. Last year alone, 16,628 candidates applied to both schools; just 1,520 gained an acceptance, a mere 9.1% admit rate.

Business school admissions are holistic, meaning that while standardized test scores and undergraduate transcripts are a critical part of the admissions process, they aren’t the whole story. In fact, the stories that applicants tell the schools in the form of essays can be a critical component of a successful application.

So what kinds of stories are successful applicants to Harvard and Stanford telling their admission officers? For the first time ever, a newly published collection of 50 of these essays from current MBA students at these two schools has been published. In ten cases, applicants share the essays they wrote in applying to both schools so you can see whether they merely did a cut-and-paste job or approached the task anew. The 188-page book, What Matters? and What More?, gains its title from the two iconic essay prompts at Harvard and Stanford.

THOUGHTFUL CRITIQUES OF THE ESSAYS

Stanford can easily boast having the most difficult question posed to MBA applicants in any given year: In 650 words or less, candidates must tell the school what matters most to them and why. Harvard gives applicants ample room to hang themselves, providing no word limit at all, “What more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy?”

One makes this unusual collection of essays powerful are the thoughtful critiques by the founders of two MBA admissions consulting firms, Jeremy Shinewald of mbaMission and Liza Weale of Gatehouse Admissions. They write overviews of each essay in the book and then tear apart portions by paragraphs to either underline a point or address a weakness. The book became available to download for $60 a pop.

As I note in a foreword to the collection, published in partnership with Poets&Quants, the essay portion of an application is where a person can give voice to who they are, what they have achieved so far, and what they imagine their future to be. Yet crafting a powerful and introspective essay can be incredibly daunting as you stare at a blank computer screen.

APPLICANTS OPEN UP WITH INTIMATE STORIES THAT SHOW VULNERABILITY

One successful applicant to Harvard Business School begins his essay by conveying a deeply personal story: The time his father was told that he had three months to live, with his only hope being a double lung transplant. had to undergo a lung transplant. His opening line: “Despite all we had been through in recent years, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I asked my mother one summer evening in Singapore, ‘What role did I play during those tough times?’”

For this candidate to Stanford Graduate School of Business, the essay provided a chance to creatively engage admission readers about what matters most to him–equality-by cleverly using zip codes as a hook.

60605, 60606, 60607.

These zip codes are just one digit apart, but the difference that digit makes in someone’s life is unfathomable. I realized this on my first day as a high school senior. Leafing through my out-of- date, stained, calculus textbook, I kept picturing the new books that my friend from a neighboring (more affluent) district had. As college acceptances came in, I saw educational inequality’s more lasting effects—my friends from affluent districts that better funded education were headed to prestigious universities, while most of my classmates were only accepted by the local junior college. I was unsettled that this divergence wasn’t the students’ doing, but rather institutionalized by the state’s education system. Since this experience, I realized that the fight for education equality will be won through equal opportunity. Overcoming inequality, to ensure that everyone has a fair shake at success, is what matters most to me.

HOW AN APPLICANT TO BOTH SCHOOLS ALTERED HIS ESSAYS

Yet another candidate, who applied to both Harvard and Stanford, writes about being at but not fully present at his friend’s wedding.

The morning after serving as my friend’s best man, I was waiting for my Uber to the airport and—as usual—scrolling through my phone,” he wrote. “I had taken seemingly hundreds of photos of the event, posting in real time to social media, but had not really looked through them. With growing unease, I noticed people and things that had not registered with me the night before and realized I had been so preoccupied with capturing the occasion on my phone that I had essentially missed the whole thing. I never learned the name of the woman beside me at the reception. I could not recall the wedding cake flavor. I never introduced myself to my friend’s grandfather from Edmonton. I was so mortified that before checking into my flight, I turned my phone off and stuffed it into my carry-on.

The Stanford version of his essay is more compact. In truth, it’s more succinctly written and more satisfying because it is to the point. By stripping away all but the most critical pieces of his narrative, the candidate focuses his essay entirely on his central point: the battle of man versus technology.

Even if you’re not applying to business school, the essays are entertaining and fun to read. Sure, precious few are New Yorker worthy. In fact, many are fairly straightforward tales, simply told. What the successful essays clearly show is that there is no cookie-cutter formula or paint-by-the-numbers approach. Some start bluntly and straightforwardly, without a compelling or even interesting opening. Some meander through different themes. Some betray real personality and passion. Others are frankly boring. If a pattern of any kind could be discerned, it is how genuine the essays read.

The greatest benefit of reading them? For obsessive applicants to two of the very best business schools, they’ll take a lot of pressure off of you because they are quite imperfect.

GET YOUR COPY OF WHAT MATTERS? AND WHAT MORE? NOW

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10 Successful Harvard Application Essays And Reviews

We are excited to announce our sponsorship with The Harvard Crimson, one of the premier student newspapers in the nation, for their annual release of "10 Successful Harvard Application Essays," a must-read for aspiring students.  This collection showcases stellar essays and offers detailed reviews that reveal what makes these essays stand out to admission committees.

Reading these essays is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the qualities and writing styles that Harvard and other top colleges value. Each essay is a testament to the unique voices and compelling stories that resonate with admissions officers.

https://www.thecrimson.com/topic/sponsored-successful-harvard-essays-2024/

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My Successful Harvard Application (Complete Common App + Supplement)

Other High School , College Admissions , Letters of Recommendation , Extracurriculars , College Essays

In 2005, I applied to college and got into every school I applied to, including Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT. I decided to attend Harvard.

In this guide, I'll show you the entire college application that got me into Harvard—page by page, word for word .

In my complete analysis, I'll take you through my Common Application, Harvard supplemental application, personal statements and essays, extracurricular activities, teachers' letters of recommendation, counselor recommendation, complete high school transcript, and more. I'll also give you in-depth commentary on every part of my application.

To my knowledge, a college application analysis like this has never been done before . This is the application guide I wished I had when I was in high school.

If you're applying to top schools like the Ivy Leagues, you'll see firsthand what a successful application to Harvard and Princeton looks like. You'll learn the strategies I used to build a compelling application. You'll see what items were critical in getting me admitted, and what didn't end up helping much at all.

Reading this guide from beginning to end will be well worth your time—you might completely change your college application strategy as a result.

First Things First

Here's the letter offering me admission into Harvard College under Early Action.

I was so thrilled when I got this letter. It validated many years of hard work, and I was excited to take my next step into college (...and work even harder).

I received similar successful letters from every college I applied to: Princeton, Stanford, and MIT. (After getting into Harvard early, I decided not to apply to Yale, Columbia, UChicago, UPenn, and other Ivy League-level schools, since I already knew I would rather go to Harvard.)

The application that got me admitted everywhere is the subject of this guide. You're going to see everything that the admissions officers saw.

If you're hoping to see an acceptance letter like this in your academic future, I highly recommend you read this entire article. I'll start first with an introduction to this guide and important disclaimers. Then I'll share the #1 question you need to be thinking about as you construct your application. Finally, we'll spend a lot of time going through every page of my college application, both the Common App and the Harvard Supplemental App.

Important Note: the foundational principles of my application are explored in detail in my How to Get Into Harvard guide . In this popular guide, I explain:

• what top schools like the Ivy League are looking for
• how to be truly distinctive among thousands of applicants
• why being well-rounded is the kiss of death

If you have the time and are committed to maximizing your college application success, I recommend you read through my Harvard guide first, then come back to this one.

You might also be interested in my other two major guides:

• How to Get a Perfect SAT Score / Perfect ACT Score
• How to Get a 4.0 GPA

What's in This Harvard Application Guide?

From my student records, I was able to retrieve the COMPLETE original application I submitted to Harvard. Page by page, word for word, you'll see everything exactly as I presented it : extracurricular activities, awards and honors, personal statements and essays, and more.

In addition to all this detail, there are two special parts of this college application breakdown that I haven't seen anywhere else :

• You'll see my FULL recommendation letters and evaluation forms. This includes recommendations from two teachers, one principal, and supplementary writers. Normally you don't get to see these letters because you waive access to them when applying. You'll see how effective strong teacher advocates will be to your college application, and why it's so important to build strong relationships with your letter writers .
• You'll see the exact pen marks made by my Harvard admissions reader on my application . Members of admissions committees consider thousands of applications every year, which means they highlight the pieces of each application they find noteworthy. You'll see what the admissions officer considered important—and what she didn't.

For every piece of my application, I'll provide commentary on what made it so effective and my strategies behind creating it. You'll learn what it takes to build a compelling overall application.

Importantly, even though my application was strong, it wasn't perfect. I'll point out mistakes I made that I could have corrected to build an even stronger application.

Here's a complete table of contents for what we'll be covering. Each link goes directly to that section, although I'd recommend you read this from beginning to end on your first go.

Common Application

Personal Data

Educational data, test information.

• Activities: Extracurricular, Personal, Volunteer
• Short Answer
• Additional Information

Academic Honors

Personal statement, teacher and counselor recommendations.

• Teacher Letter #1: AP Chemistry
• Teacher Letter #2: AP English Lang

School Report

• Principal Recommendation

Harvard Application Supplement

• Supplement Form
• Writing Supplement Essay

Supplementary Recommendation #1

Supplementary recommendation #2, supplemental application materials.

Final Advice for You

I mean it—you'll see literally everything in my application.

In revealing my teenage self, some parts of my application will be pretty embarrassing (you'll see why below). But my mission through my company PrepScholar is to give the world the most helpful resources possible, so I'm publishing it.

One last thing before we dive in—I'm going to anticipate some common concerns beforehand and talk through important disclaimers so that you'll get the most out of this guide.

Important Disclaimers

My biggest caveat for you when reading this guide: thousands of students get into Harvard and Ivy League schools every year. This guide tells a story about one person and presents one archetype of a strong applicant. As you'll see, I had a huge academic focus, especially in science ( this was my Spike ). I'm also irreverent and have a strong, direct personality.

What you see in this guide is NOT what YOU need to do to get into Harvard , especially if you don't match my interests and personality at all.

As I explain in my Harvard guide , I believe I fit into one archetype of a strong applicant—the "academic superstar" (humor me for a second, I know calling myself this sounds obnoxious). There are other distinct ways to impress, like:

• being world-class in a non-academic talent
• achieving something difficult and noteworthy—building a meaningful organization, writing a novel
• coming from tremendous adversity and performing remarkably well relative to expectations

Therefore, DON'T worry about copying my approach one-for-one . Don't worry if you're taking a different number of AP courses or have lower test scores or do different extracurriculars or write totally different personal statements. This is what schools like Stanford and Yale want to see—a diversity in the student population!

The point of this guide is to use my application as a vehicle to discuss what top colleges are looking for in strong applicants. Even though the specific details of what you'll do are different from what I did, the principles are the same. What makes a candidate truly stand out is the same, at a high level. What makes for a super strong recommendation letter is the same. The strategies on how to build a cohesive, compelling application are the same.

There's a final reason you shouldn't worry about replicating my work—the application game has probably changed quite a bit since 2005. Technology is much more pervasive, the social issues teens care about are different, the extracurricular activities that are truly noteworthy have probably gotten even more advanced. What I did might not be as impressive as it used to be. So focus on my general points, not the specifics, and think about how you can take what you learn here to achieve something even greater than I ever did.

With that major caveat aside, here are a string of smaller disclaimers.

I'm going to present my application factually and be 100% straightforward about what I achieved and what I believed was strong in my application. This is what I believe will be most helpful for you. I hope you don't misinterpret this as bragging about my accomplishments. I'm here to show you what it took for me to get into Harvard and other Ivy League schools, not to ask for your admiration. So if you read this guide and are tempted to dismiss my advice because you think I'm boasting, take a step back and focus on the big picture—how you'll improve yourself.

This guide is geared toward admissions into the top colleges in the country , often with admissions rates below 10%. A sample list of schools that fit into this: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, MIT, UChicago, Duke, UPenn, CalTech, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Brown. The top 3-5 in that list are especially looking for the absolute best students in the country , since they have the pick of the litter.

Admissions for these selective schools works differently from schools with >20% rates. For less selective schools, having an overall strong, well-rounded application is sufficient for getting in. In particular, having an above average GPA and test scores goes the majority of the way toward getting you admission to those schools. The higher the admission rate, the more emphasis will be placed on your scores. The other pieces I'll present below—personal statements, extracurriculars, recommendations—will matter less.

Still, it doesn't hurt to aim for a stronger application. To state the obvious, an application strong enough to get you Columbia will get you into UCLA handily.

In my application, I've redacted pieces of my application for privacy reasons, and one supplementary recommendation letter at the request of the letter writer. Everything else is unaltered.

Throughout my application, we can see marks made by the admissions officer highlighting and circling things of note (you'll see the first example on the very first page). I don't have any other applications to compare these to, so I'm going to interpret these marks as best I can. For the most part, I assume that whatever he underlines or circles is especially important and noteworthy —points that he'll bring up later in committee discussions. It could also be that the reader got bored and just started highlighting things, but I doubt this.

Finally, I co-founded and run a company called PrepScholar . We create online SAT/ACT prep programs that adapt to you and your strengths and weaknesses . I believe we've created the best prep program available, and if you feel you need to raise your SAT/ACT score, then I encourage you to check us out . I want to emphasize that you do NOT need to buy a prep program to get a great score , and the advice in this guide has little to do with my company. But if you're aren't sure how to improve your score and agree with our unique approach to SAT/ACT prep, our program may be perfect for you.

With all this past us, let's get started.

The #1 Most Important College Application Question: What Is Your PERSONAL NARRATIVE?

If you stepped into an elevator with Yale's Dean of Admissions and you had ten seconds to describe yourself and why you're interesting, what would you say?

This is what I call your PERSONAL NARRATIVE. These are the three main points that represent who you are and what you're about . This is the story that you tell through your application, over and over again. This is how an admissions officer should understand you after just glancing through your application. This is how your admissions officer will present you to the admissions committee to advocate for why they should accept you.

The more unique and noteworthy your Personal Narrative is, the better. This is how you'll stand apart from the tens of thousands of other applicants to your top choice school. This is why I recommend so strongly that you develop a Spike to show deep interest and achievement. A compelling Spike is the core of your Personal Narrative.

Well-rounded applications do NOT form compelling Personal Narratives, because "I'm a well-rounded person who's decent at everything" is the exact same thing every other well-rounded person tries to say.

Everything in your application should support your Personal Narrative , from your course selection and extracurricular activities to your personal statements and recommendation letters. You are a movie director, and your application is your way to tell a compelling, cohesive story through supporting evidence.

Yes, this is overly simplistic and reductionist. It does not represent all your complexities and your 17 years of existence. But admissions offices don't have the time to understand this for all their applicants. Your PERSONAL NARRATIVE is what they will latch onto.

Here's what I would consider my Personal Narrative (humor me since I'm peacocking here):

1) A science obsessive with years of serious research work and ranked 6 th in a national science competition, with future goals of being a neuroscientist or physician

2) Balanced by strong academic performance in all subjects (4.0 GPA and perfect test scores, in both humanities and science) and proficiency in violin

3) An irreverent personality who doesn't take life too seriously, embraces controversy, and says what's on his mind

These three elements were the core to my application. Together they tell a relatively unique Personal Narrative that distinguishes me from many other strong applicants. You get a surprisingly clear picture of what I'm about. There's no question that my work in science was my "Spike" and was the strongest piece of my application, but my Personal Narrative included other supporting elements, especially a description of my personality.

My College Application, at a High Level

Drilling down into more details, here's an overview of my application.

• This put me comfortably in the 99 th percentile in the country, but it was NOT sufficient to get me into Harvard by itself ! Because there are roughly 4 million high school students per year, the top 1 percentile still has 40,000 students. You need other ways to set yourself apart.
• Your Spike will most often come from your extracurriculars and academic honors, just because it's hard to really set yourself apart with your coursework and test scores.
• My letters of recommendation were very strong. Both my recommending teachers marked me as "one of the best they'd ever taught." Importantly, they corroborated my Personal Narrative, especially regarding my personality. You'll see how below.
• My personal statements were, in retrospect, just satisfactory. They represented my humorous and irreverent side well, but they come across as too self-satisfied. Because of my Spike, I don't think my essays were as important to my application.

Finally, let's get started by digging into the very first pages of my Common Application.

There are a few notable points about how simple questions can actually help build a first impression around what your Personal Narrative is.

First, notice the circle around my email address. This is the first of many marks the admissions officer made on my application. The reason I think he circled this was that the email address I used is a joke pun on my name . I knew it was risky to use this vs something like [email protected], but I thought it showed my personality better (remember point #3 about having an irreverent personality in my Personal Narrative).

Don't be afraid to show who you really are, rather than your perception of what they want. What you think UChicago or Stanford wants is probably VERY wrong, because of how little information you have, both as an 18-year-old and as someone who hasn't read thousands of applications.

(It's also entirely possible that it's a formality to circle email addresses, so I don't want to read too much into it, but I think I'm right.)

Second, I knew in high school that I wanted to go into the medical sciences, either as a physician or as a scientist. I was also really into studying the brain. So I listed both in my Common App to build onto my Personal Narrative.

In the long run, both predictions turned out to be wrong. After college, I did go to Harvard Medical School for the MD/PhD program for 4 years, but I left to pursue entrepreneurship and co-founded PrepScholar . Moreover, in the time I did actually do research, I switched interests from neuroscience to bioengineering/biotech.

Colleges don't expect you to stick to career goals you stated at the age of 18. Figuring out what you want to do is the point of college! But this doesn't give you an excuse to avoid showing a preference. This early question is still a chance to build that Personal Narrative.

Thus, I recommend AGAINST "Undecided" as an area of study —it suggests a lack of flavor and is hard to build a compelling story around. From your high school work thus far, you should at least be leaning to something, even if that's likely to change in the future.

Finally, in the demographic section there is a big red A, possibly for Asian American. I'm not going to read too much into this. If you're a notable minority, this is where you'd indicate it.

Now known as: Education

This section was straightforward for me. I didn't take college courses, and I took a summer chemistry class at a nearby high school because I didn't get into the lottery at my school that year (I refer to this briefly in my 4.0 GPA guide ).

The most notable point of this section: the admissions officer circled Principal here . This is notable because our school Principal only wrote letters for fewer than 10 students each year. Counselors wrote letters for the other hundreds of students in my class, which made my application stand out just a little.

I'll talk more about this below, when I share the Principal's recommendation.

(In the current Common Application, the Education section also includes Grades, Courses, and Honors. We'll be covering each of those below).

Now known as: Testing

Back then AP scores weren't part of this section, but I'll take them from another part of my application here.

However, their standards are still very high. You really do want to be in that top 1 percentile to pass the filter. A 1400 on the SAT IS going to put you at a disadvantage because there are so many students scoring higher than you. You'll really have to dig yourself out of the hole with an amazing application.

I talk about this a lot more in my Get into Harvard guide (sorry to keep linking this, but I really do think it's an important guide for you to read).

Let's end this section with some personal notes.

Even though math and science were easy for me, I had to put in serious effort to get an 800 on the Reading section of the SAT . As much as I wish I could say it was trivial for me, it wasn't. I learned a bunch of strategies and dissected the test to get to a point where I understood the test super well and reliably earned perfect scores.

I cover the most important points in my How to Get a Perfect SAT Score guide , as well as my 800 Guides for Reading , Writing , and Math .

Between the SAT and ACT, the SAT was my primary focus, but I decided to take the ACT for fun. The tests were so similar that I scored a 36 Composite without much studying. Having two test scores is completely unnecessary —you get pretty much zero additional credit. Again, with one test score, you have already passed their filter.

Finally, class finals or state-required exams are a breeze if you get a 5 on the corresponding AP tests .

Now known as: Family (still)

This section asks for your parent information and family situation. There's not much you can do here besides report the facts.

I'm redacting a lot of stuff again for privacy reasons.

The reader made a number of marks here for occupation and education. There's likely a standard code for different types of occupations and schools.

If I were to guess, I'd say that the numbers add to form some metric of "family prestige." My dad got a Master's at a middle-tier American school, but my mom didn't go to graduate school, and these sections were marked 2 and 3, respectively. So it seems higher numbers are given for less prestigious educations by your parents. I'd expect that if both my parents went to schools like Caltech and Dartmouth, there would be even lower numbers here.

This makes me think that the less prepared your family is, the more points you get, and this might give your application an extra boost. If you were the first one in your family to go to college, for example, you'd be excused for having lower test scores and fewer AP classes. Schools really do care about your background and how you performed relative to expectations.

In the end, schools like Harvard say pretty adamantly they don't use formulas to determine admissions decisions, so I wouldn't read too much into this. But this can be shorthand to help orient an applicant's family background.

Extracurricular, Personal, and Volunteer Activities

Now known as: Activities

For most applicants, your Extracurriculars and your Academic Honors will be where you develop your Spike and where your Personal Narrative shines through. This was how my application worked.

Just below I'll describe the activities in more detail, but first I want to reflect on this list.

As instructed, my extracurriculars were listed in the order of their interest to me. The current Common App doesn't seem to ask for this, but I would still recommend it to focus your reader's attention.

The most important point I have to make about my extracurriculars: as you go down the list, there is a HUGE drop in the importance of each additional activity to the overall application. If I were to guess, I assign the following weights to how much each activity contributed to the strength of my activities section:

Research Science Institute 2004	75%
Jisan Research Institute	10%
Pasadena Young Musicians Orchestra	6%
Science Olympiad/Science Bowl/Math Team	4%
City of Hope Medical Center	1%
Pre-Medicine Club	1%
Hospital Quartet Performances	1%
Chemistry Club	1%

In other words, participating in the Research Science Institute (RSI) was far more important than all of my other extracurriculars, combined. You can see that this was the only activity my admissions reader circled.

You can see how Spike-y this is. The RSI just completely dominates all my other activities.

The reason for this is the prestige of RSI. As I noted earlier, RSI was (and likely still is) the most prestigious research program for high school students in the country, with an admission rate of less than 5% . Because the program was so prestigious and selective, getting in served as a big confirmation signal of my academic quality.

In other words, the Harvard admissions reader would likely think, "OK, if this very selective program has already validated Allen as a top student, I'm inclined to believe that Allen is a top student and should pay special attention to him."

Now, it took a lot of prior work to even get into RSI because it's so selective. I had already ranked nationally in the Chemistry Olympiad (more below), and I had done a lot of prior research work in computer science (at Jisan Research Institute—more about this later). But getting into RSI really propelled my application to another level.

Because RSI was so important and was such a big Spike, all my other extracurriculars paled in importance. The admissions officer at Princeton or MIT probably didn't care at all that I volunteered at a hospital or founded a high school club .

This is a good sign of developing a strong Spike. You want to do something so important that everything else you do pales in comparison to it. A strong Spike becomes impossible to ignore.

In contrast, if you're well-rounded, all your activities hold equal weight—which likely means none of them are really that impressive (unless you're a combination of Olympic athlete, internationally-ranked science researcher, and New York Times bestselling author, but then I'd call you unicorn because you don't exist).

Apply this concept to your own interests—what can be so impressive and such a big Spike that it completely overshadows all your other achievements?

This might be worth spending a disproportionate amount of time on. As I recommend in my Harvard guide and 4.0 GPA guide , smartly allocating your time is critical to your high school strategy.

In retrospect, one "mistake" I made was spending a lot of time on the violin. Each week I spent eight hours on practice and a lesson and four hours of orchestra rehearsals. This amounted to over 1,500 hours from freshman to junior year.

The result? I was pretty good, but definitely nowhere near world-class. Remember, there are thousands of orchestras and bands in the country, each with their own concertmasters, drum majors, and section 1 st chairs.

If I were to optimize purely for college applications, I should have spent that time on pushing my spike even further —working on more Olympiad competitions, or doing even more hardcore research.

Looking back I don't mind this much because I generally enjoyed my musical training and had a mostly fun time in orchestra (and I had a strong Spike anyway). But this problem can be a lot worse for well-rounded students who are stretched too thin.

Aside from these considerations about a Spike, I have two major caveats.

First, developing a Spike requires continuous, increasingly ambitious foundational work. It's like climbing a staircase. From the beginning of high school, each step was more and more ambitious—my first academic team, my first research experience, leading up to state and national competitions and more serious research work.

So when I suggest devoting a lot of time to developing your Spike, it's not necessarily the Spike in itself—it's also spending time on foundational work leading up to what will be your major achievement. That's why I don't see my time with academic teams or volunteering as wasted, even though in the end they didn't contribute as much to my application.

Second, it is important to do things you enjoy. I still enjoyed playing the violin and being part of an orchestra, and I really enjoyed my school's academic teams, even though we never went beyond state level. Even if some activities don't contribute as much to your application, it's still fine to spend some time on them—just don't delude yourself into thinking they're stronger than they really are and overspend time on them.

Finally, note that most of my activities were pursued over multiple years. This is a good sign of commitment—rather than hopping from activity year to year, it's better to show sustained commitment, as this is a better signal of genuine passion.

In a future article, I'll break down these activities in more detail. But this guide is already super long, so I want to focus our attention on the main points.

Short Answer: Extracurricular Activities

In today's Common Application, you have 50 characters to describe "Position/Leadership description and organization name" and 150 characters for "Please describe this activity, including what you accomplished and any recognition you received, etc."

Back then, we didn't have as much space per activity, and instead had a short answer question.

The Short Answer prompt:

Please describe which of your activities (extracurricular and personal activities or work experience) has been most meaningful and why.

I chose RSI as my most significant activity for two reasons—one based on the meaning of the work, and another on the social aspect.

It's obvious that schools like Yale and UChicago want the best students in the world that they can get their hands on. Academic honors and awards are a great, quantifiable way to show that.

Here's the complete list of Academic Honors I submitted. The Common Application now limits you to five honors only (probably because they got tired of lists like these), but chances are you capture the top 98% of your honors with the top five.

Charlie wins a Golden Ticket to Harvard.

I know this is intimidating if you don't already have a prestigious honor. But remember there are thousands of nationally-ranked people in a multitude of honor types, from science competitions to essay contests to athletics to weird talents.

And I strongly believe the #1 differentiator of high school students who achieve things is work ethic, NOT intelligence or talent. Yes, you need a baseline level of competence to get places, but people far undervalue the progress they can make if they work hard and persevere. Far too many people give up too quickly or fatigue without putting in serious effort.

If you're stuck thinking, "well I'm just an average person, and there's no way I'm going to become world-class in anything," then you've already lost before you've begun. The truth is everyone who achieves something of note puts in an incredible amount of hard work. Because this is invisible to you, it looks like talent is what distinguishes the two of you, when really it's much more often diligence.

I talk a lot more about the Growth Mindset in my How To Get a 4.0 GPA guide .

So my Chemistry Olympiad honor formed 90% of the value of this page. Just like extracurriculars, there's a quick dropoff in value of each item after that.

My research work took up the next two honors, one a presentation at an academic conference, and the other (Siemens) a research competition for high school researchers.

The rest of my honors were pretty middling:

• National Merit Scholarship semifinalist pretty much equates to PSAT score, which is far less important than your SAT/ACT score. So I didn't really get any credit for this, and you won't either.
• In Science Olympiad (this is a team-based competition that's not as prestigious as the academic Olympiads I just talked about), I earned a number of 1 st place state and regional medals, but we never made it to nationals.
• I was mediocre at competition math because I didn't train for it, and I won some regional awards but nothing amazing. This is one place I would have spent more time, maybe in the time I'd save by not practicing violin as much. There are great resources for this type of training, like Art of Problem Solving , that I didn't know existed and could've helped me rank much higher.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, think about how many state medalists there are in the country, in the hundreds of competitions that exist . The number of state to national rankers is probably at least 20:1 (less than 50:1 because of variation in state size), so if there are 2,000 nationally ranked students, there are 40,000 state-ranked students in something !

So state honors really don't help you stand out on your Princeton application. There are just too many of them around.

On the other hand, if you can get to be nationally ranked in something, you will have an amazing Spike that distinguishes you.

Now known as: Personal Essay

Now, the dreaded personal statement. Boy, oh boy, did I fuss over this one.

"What is the perfect combination of personal, funny, heartrending, and inspirational?"

I know I was wondering this when I applied.

Having read books like 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays , I was frightened. I didn't grow up as a refugee, wrenched from my war-torn home! I didn't have a sibling with a debilitating illness! How could anything I write compare to these tales of personal strength?

The trite truth is that colleges want to know who you really are . Clearly they don't expect everyone to have had immense personal struggle. But they do want students who are:

• growth-oriented
• introspective
• kind and good-hearted

Whatever those words mean to you in the context of your life is what you should write about.

In retrospect, in the context of MY application, the personal statement really wasn't what got me into Harvard . I do think my Spike was nearly sufficient to get me admitted to every school in the country.

I say "nearly" because, even if you're world-class, schools do want to know you're not a jerk and that you're an interesting person (which is conveyed through your personal essay and letters of recommendation).

Back then, we had a set of different prompts :

What did you think?

I'm still cringing a bit. Parts of this are very smug (see /r/iamverysmart ), and if you want to punch the writer in the face, I don't blame you. I want to as well.

We'll get to areas of improvement later, but first, let's talk about what this personal essay did well.

As I said above, I saw the theme of the snooze button as a VEHICLE to showcase a few qualities I cared about :

1) I fancied myself a Renaissance man (obnoxious, I know) and wanted to become an inventor and creator . I showed this through mentioning different interests (Rubik's cube, chemistry, Nietzsche) and iterating through a few designs for an alarm clock (electric shocks, explosions, Shakespearean sonnet recitation).

2) My personality was whimsical and irreverent. I don't take life too seriously. The theme of the essay—battling an alarm clock—shows this well, in comparison to the gravitas of the typical student essay. I also found individual lines funny, like "All right, so I had violated the divine honor of the family and the tenets of Confucius." At once I acknowledge my Chinese heritage but also make light of the situation.

3) I was open to admitting weaknesses , which I think is refreshing among people taking college applications too seriously and trying too hard to impress. The frank admission of a realistic lazy habit—pushing the Snooze button—served as a nice foil to my academic honors and shows that I can be down-to-earth.

So you see how the snooze button acts as a vehicle to carry these major points and a lot of details, tied together to the same theme .

In the same way, The Walking Dead is NOT a zombie show—the zombie environment is a VEHICLE by which to show human drama and conflict. Packaging my points together under the snooze button theme makes it a lot more interesting than just outright saying "I'm such an interesting guy."

So overall, I believe the essay accomplishes my goals and the main points of what I wanted to convey about myself.

Note that this is just one of many ways to write an essay . It worked for me, but it may be totally inappropriate for you.

Now let's look at this essay's weaknesses.

Looking at it with a more seasoned perspective, some parts of it are WAY too try-hard. I try too hard to show off my breadth of knowledge in a way that seems artificial and embellishing.

The entire introduction with the Rubik's cube seems bolted on, just to describe my long-standing desire to be a Renaissance man. Only three paragraphs down do I get to the Snooze button, and I don't refer again to the introduction until the end. With just 650 words, I could have made the essay more cohesive by keeping the same theme from beginning to end.

Some phrases really make me roll my eyes. "Always hungry for more" and "ever the inventor" sound too forced and embellishing. A key principle of effective writing is to show, not say . You don't say "I'm passionate about X," you describe what extraordinary lengths you took to achieve X.

The mention of Nietzsche is over-the-top. I mean, come on. The reader probably thought, "OK, this kid just read it in English class and now he thinks he's a philosopher." The reader would be right.

The ending: "with the extra nine minutes, maybe I'll teach myself to cook fried rice" is silly. Where in the world did fried rice come from? I meant it as a nod to my Chinese heritage, but it's too sudden to work. I could have deleted the sentence and wrapped up the essay more cleanly.

So I have mixed feelings of my essay. I think it accomplished my major goals and showed the humorous, irreverent side of my personality well. However, it also gave the impression of a kid who thought he knew more than he did, a pseudo-sophisticate bordering on obnoxious. I still think it was a net positive.

At the end of the day, I believe the safest, surefire strategy is to develop a Spike so big that the importance of the Personal Essay pales in comparison to your achievements. You want your Personal Essay to be a supplement to your application, not the only reason you get in.

There are probably some cases where a well-rounded student writes an amazing Personal Essay and gets in through the strength of that. As a Hail Mary if you're a senior and can't improve your application further, this might work. But the results are very variable—some readers may love your essay, others may just think it's OK. Without a strong application to back it up, your mileage may vary.

This is a really fun section. Usually you don't get to read your letter of recommendation because you sign the FERPA waiver. I've also reached out to my letter writers to make sure they're ok with my showing this.

Teacher recommendations are incredibly important to your application. I would say that after your coursework/test scores and activities/honors, they're the 3 rd most important component of your application .

The average teacher sees thousands of students through a career, and so he or she is very well equipped to position you relative to all other students. Furthermore, your teachers are experienced adults—their impressions of you are much more reliable than your impressions of yourself (see my Personal Essay above). They can corroborate your entire Personal Narrative as an outside observer.

The most effective recommendation letters speak both to your academic strengths and to your personality. For the second factor, the teacher needs to have interacted with you meaningfully, ideally both in and out of class. Check out our guide on what makes for effective letters of recommendation .

Starting from sophomore year, I started thinking about whom I connected better with and chose to engage with those teachers more deeply . Because it's standard for colleges to require two teachers in different subjects, I made sure to engage with English and history teachers as well as math and science.

The minimum requirement for a good letter is someone who taught a class in which you did well. I got straight A's in my coursework, so this wasn't an issue.

Beyond this, I had to look for teachers who would be strong advocates for me on both an academic and personal level . These tended to be teachers I vibed more strongly with, and typically these were teachers who demonstrably cared about teaching. This was made clear by their enthusiasm, how they treated students, and how much they went above expectations to help.

I had a lot of teachers who really just phoned it in and treated their job perfunctorily—these people are likely to write pretty blasé letters.

A final note before reading my actual teacher evaluations— you should avoid getting in the mindset where you get to know teachers JUST because you want a good recommendation letter . Your teachers have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of students pass through, and it's much easier to detect insincerity than you think.

If you honestly like learning and are an enthusiastic, responsible, engaging student, a great recommendation letter will follow naturally. The horse should lead the cart.

Read my How to Get a 4.0 GPA for tips on how to interact with teachers in a genuine way that'll make them love you.

Teacher Letter #1: AP Chemistry Teacher

I took AP Chemistry in 10 th grade and had Miss Cherryl Vorak (now Mynster). She was young, having taught for fewer than 5 years when I had her. She was my favorite teacher throughout high school for these reasons:

• She was enthusiastic, very caring, and spent a lot of time helping struggling students. She exuded pride in her work and seemed to consider teaching her craft.
• She had a kind personality and was universally well liked by her students, even if they weren't doing so well. She was fair in her policies (it probably helped that science is more objective than English). She was also a younger teacher, and this helped her relate to kids more closely.
• She was my advocate for much of the US National Chemistry Olympiad stuff, and in this capacity I got to know her even better outside of class. She provided me a lot of training materials, helped me figure out college chemistry, and directed me to resources to learn more.

By the time of the letter writing, I had known her for two full years and engaged with her continuously, even when I wasn't taking a class with her in junior year. We'd build up a strong relationship over the course of many small interactions.

All of this flowed down to the recommendation you see here. Remember, the horse leads the cart.

First, we'll look at the teacher evaluation page. The Common Application now has 16 qualities to rate, rather than the 10 here. But they're largely the same.

You can see a very strong evaluation here, giving me the highest ratings possible for all qualities.

In today's Common Application, all of these Ratings are retained, aside from "Potential for Growth." Today's Common App also now includes Faculty Respect, Maturity, Leadership, Integrity, Reaction to Setbacks, Concern for Others, and TE Overall. You can tell that the updated Common App places a great emphasis on personality.

The most important point here: it is important to be ranked "One of the top few encountered in my career" for as many ratings as possible . If you're part of a big school, this is CRITICAL to distinguish yourself from other students. The more experienced and trustworthy the teacher, the more meaningful this is.

Again, it's a numbers game. Think about the 20,000+ high schools in the country housing 4 million+ high school students—how many people fit in the top 5% bucket?

Thus, being marked merely as Excellent (top 10%) is actually a negative rating , as far as admissions to top colleges is concerned. If you're in top 10%, and someone else with the SAME teacher recommender is being rated as "One of the top ever," it's really hard for the admissions officer to vouch for you over the other student.

You really want to make sure you're one of the best in your school class, if not one of the best the teacher has ever encountered. You'll see below how you can accomplish this.

Next, let's look at her letter.

As you read this, think— what are the interactions that would prompt the teacher to write a recommendation like this? This was a relationship built up in a period of over 2 years, with every small interaction adding to an overall larger impression.

You can see how seriously they take the letter because of all the underlining . This admissions reader underlined things that weren't even underlined in my application, like my US National Chemistry Olympiad awards. It's one thing for a student to claim things about himself—it's another to have a teacher put her reputation on the line to advocate for her student.

The letter here is very strong for a multitude of reasons. First, the length is notable —most letters are just a page long, but this is nearly two full pages , single spaced. This indicates not just her overall commitment to her students but also of her enthusiastic support for me as an applicant.

The structure is effective: first Miss Vorak talks about my academic accomplishments, then about my personal qualities and interactions, then a summary to the future. This is a perfect blend of what effective letters contain .

On the micro-level, her diction and phrasing are precise and effective . She makes my standing clear with specific statements : "youngest student…top excelling student among the two sections" and "one of twenty students in the nation." She's clear about describing why my achievements are notable and the effort I put in, like studying college-level chemistry and studying independently.

When describing my personality, she's exuberant and fleshes out a range of dimensions: "conscientious, motivated and responsible," "exhibits the qualities of a leader," "actively seeks new experiences," "charismatic," "balanced individual with a warm personality and sense of humor." You can see how she's really checking off all the qualities colleges care about.

Overall, Miss Vorak's letter perfectly supports my Personal Narrative —my love for science, my overall academic performance, and my personality. I'm flattered and grateful to have received this support. This letter was important to complement the overall academic performance and achievements shown on the rest of my application.

Teacher Letter #2: AP English Language Teacher

My second teacher Mrs. Swift was another favorite. A middle-aged, veteran English teacher, the best way I would describe her is "fiery." She was invigorating and passionate, always trying to get a rise out of students and push their thinking, especially in class discussions. Emotionally she was a reliable source of support for students.

First, the evaluation:

You can see right away that her remarks are terser. She didn't even fill out the section about "first words that come to mind to describe this student."

You might chalk this up to my not being as standout of a student in her mind, or her getting inundated with recommendation letter requests after over a decade of teaching.

In ratings, you can see that I only earned 3 of the "one of the top in my career." There are a few explanations for this. As a teacher's career lengthens, it gets increasingly hard to earn this mark. I probably also didn't stand out as much as I did to my Chemistry teacher—most of my achievement was in science (which she wasn't closely connected to), and I had talented classmates. Regardless, I did appreciate the 3 marks she gave me.

Now, the letter. Once again, as you read this letter, think: what are the hundreds of micro-interactions that would have made a teacher write a letter like this?

Overall, this letter is very strong. It's only one page long, but her points about my personality are the critical piece of this recommendation. She also writes with the flair of an English teacher:

"In other situations where students would never speak their minds, he showed no hesitation to voice questions, thoughts, and ideas."

"controversial positions often being the spark that set off the entire class"

"ability to take the quiet and shy student and actively engage"…"went out of my way to partner him with other students who needed"

"strength of conviction"…"raw, unbridled passion"…"He will argue on any topic that has touched a nerve."

These comments most support the personality aspect of my Personal Narrative—having an irreverent, bold personality and not being afraid of speaking my mind. She stops just short of making me sound obnoxious and argumentative. An experienced teacher vouching for this adds so much more weight than just my writing it about myself.

Teacher recommendations are some of the most important components of your application. Getting very strong letters take a lot of sustained, genuine interaction over time to build mutual trust and respect. If you want detailed advice on how to interact with teachers earnestly, check out my How to Get a 4.0 GPA and Better Grades guide .

Let's go to the final recommendation, from the school counselor.

Now known as: School Report

The first piece of this is reporting your academic status and how the school works overall. There's not much to say here, other than the fact that my Principal wrote my recommendation for me, which we'll get into next.

Counselor Recommendation

Now known as: Counselor Recommendation

Let's talk about my school principal writing my recommendation, rather than a school counselor.

This was definitely advantageous—remember how, way up top in Educational Data, the reader circled the "Principal." Our Principal only wrote a handful of these recommendations each year , often for people who worked closely with him, like student body presidents. So it was pretty distinctive that I got a letter from our Principal, compared to other leading applicants from my school.

This was also a blessing because our counseling department was terrible . Our school had nearly 1,000 students per grade, and only 1 counselor per grade. They were overworked and ornery, and because they were the gatekeepers of academic enrollment (like class selection and prerequisites), this led to constant frictions in getting the classes you wanted.

I can empathize with them, because having 500+ neurotic parents pushing for advantages for their own kids can get REALLY annoying really fast. But the counseling department was still the worst part of our high school administration, and I could have guessed that the letters they wrote were mediocre because they just had too many students.

So how did my Principal come to write my recommendation and not those for hundreds of other students?

I don't remember exactly how this came to be, to be honest. I didn't strategize to have him write a letter for me years in advance. I didn't even interact with him much at all until junior year, when I got on his radar because of my national rankings. Come senior year I might have talked to him about my difficulty in reaching counselors and asked that he write my recommendation. Since I was a top student he was probably happy to do this.

He was very supportive, but as you can tell from the letter to come, it was clear he didn't know me that well.

Interestingly, the prompt for the recommendation has changed. It used to start with: "Please write whatever you think is important about this student."

Now, it starts with: " Please provide comments that will help us differentiate this student from others ."

The purpose of the recommendation has shifted to the specific: colleges probably found that one counselor was serving hundreds of students, so the letters started getting mushy and indistinguishable from each other.

Here's the letter:

This letter is probably the weakest overall of all my letters. It reads more like a verbal resume than a personal account of how he understands me.

Unlike my two teacher recommendations, he doesn't comment on the nature of our interactions or about my personality (because he truly didn't understand them well). He also misreported by SAT score as 1530 instead of 1600 (I did score a 1530 in an early test, but my 1600 was ready by January 2004, so I don't know what source he was using).

Notably, the letter writer didn't underline anything.

I still appreciate that he wrote my letter, and it was probably more effective than a generic counselor letter. But this didn't add much to my application.

At this point, we've covered my entire Common Application. This is the same application I sent to every school I applied to, including Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. Thanks for reading this far—I hope you've gotten a lot out of this already.

If you keep reading to the end, I'll have advice for both younger students and current applicants to build the strongest application possible.

Next, we'll go over the Harvard Supplemental Application, which of course is unique to Harvard.

For most top colleges like Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and so on, you will need to complete a supplemental application to provide more info than what's listed on the Common Application.

Harvard was and is the same. The good news is that it's an extra chance for you to share more about yourself and keep pushing your Personal Narrative.

There are four major components here:

• The application form
• Writing supplement essay
• Supplementary recommendations
• Supplemental application materials

I'll take you through the application section by section.

Harvard Supplement Form

First, the straightforward info and questions.

This section is pretty straightforward and is similar to what you'd see on a Columbia application.

I planned to live in a Harvard residence, as most students do.

Just as in my Common App, I noted that I was most likely to study biological sciences, choose Medicine as my vocation, and participate in orchestra, writing, and research as my extracurriculars. Nothing surprising here—it's all part of my Personal Narrative.

Interestingly, at the time I was "absolutely certain" about my vocational goals, which clearly took a detour once I left medical school to pursue entrepreneurship to create PrepScholar...

I had the space to list some additional honors, where I listed some musical honors that didn't make the cut in my Common App.

Here are the next two pages of the Harvard supplemental form.

The most interesting note here is that the admissions officer wrote a question mark above "Music tape or CD." Clearly this was inconsistent with my Personal Narrative —if violin was such an important part of my story, why didn't I want to include it?

The reason was that I was actually pretty mediocre at violin and was nowhere near national-ranked. Again, remember how many concertmasters in the thousands of orchestras there are in the world—I wasn't good enough to even be in the top 3 chairs in my school orchestra (violin was very competitive).

I wanted to focus attention on my most important materials, which for my Personal Narrative meant my research work. You'll see these supplementary materials later.

Additional Essays

Now known as: Writing Supplement

For the most part, the Harvard supplemental essay prompt has stayed the same. You can write about a topic of your choice or about any of the suggestions. There are now two more prompts that weren't previously there: "What you would want your future college roommate to know about you" and "How you hope to use your college education."

Even though this is optional, I highly recommend you write something here. Again, you have so few chances in the overall application to convey your personal voice—an extra 500 words gives you a huge opportunity. I would guess that the majority of admitted Harvard students submit a Writing Supplement.

After a lot of brainstorming, I settled on the idea that I wanted to balance my application by writing about the major non-academic piece of my Personal Narrative—my music training . Also, I don't think I explicitly recognized this at the time, but I wanted to distance myself from the Asian-American stereotype—driven entirely by parent pressure, doing most things perfunctorily and without interest. I wanted to show I'd broken out of that mold.

Here's my essay:

Reading it now, I actually think this was a pretty bad essay, and I cringe to high heaven. But once again, let's focus on the positive first.

I used my violin teacher as a vehicle for talking about what the violin meant to me. (You can tell I love the concept of the vehicle in essays.) He represented passion for the violin—I represented my academic priorities. Our personal conflict was really the conflict between what we represented.

By the end of the essay, I'd articulated the value of musical training to me—it was cathartic and a way to balance my hard academic pursuits.

Halfway in the essay, I also explicitly acknowledged the Asian stereotype of parents who drove their kids, and said my parents were no different. The reader underlined this sentence. By pointing this out and showing how my interest took on a life of its own, I wanted to distance myself from that stereotype.

So overall I think my aims were accomplished.

Despite all that, this essay was WAY overdramatic and overwrought . Some especially terrible lines:

"I was playing for that cathartic moment when I could feel Tchaikovsky himself looking over my shoulder."

"I was wandering through the fog in search of a lighthouse, finally setting foot on a dock pervaded by white light."

OK, please. Who really honestly feels this way? This is clumsy, contrived writing. It signals insincerity, actually, which is bad.

To be fair, all of this is grounded in truth. I did have a strict violin teacher who did get pretty upset when I showed lack of improvement. I did appreciate music as a diversion to round out my academic focus. I did practice hard each day, and I did have a pretty gross callus on my pinky.

But I would have done far better by making it more sincere and less overworked.

As an applicant, you're tempted to try so hard to impress your reader. You want to show that you're Worthy of Consideration. But really the best approach is to be honest.

I think this essay was probably neutral to my application, not a strong net positive or net negative.

Supplementary Recommendations

Harvard lets you submit letters from up to two Other Recommenders. The Princeton application, Penn application, and others are usually the same.

Unlike the other optional components (the Additional Information in the Common App, and the Supplementary Essay), I would actually consider these letters optional. The reader gets most of the recommendation value from your teacher recommendations—these are really supplementary.

A worthwhile Other Recommender:

• has supervised an activity or honor that is noteworthy
• has interacted with you extensively and can speak to your personality
• is likely to support you as one of the best students they've interacted with

If your Other Recommenders don't fulfill one or more of these categories, do NOT ask for supplementary letters. They'll dilute your application without adding substantively to it.

To beat a dead horse, the primary component of my Personal Narrative was my science and research work. So naturally I chose supervisors for my two major research experiences to write supplemental letters.

First was the Director of Research Science Institute (the selective summer research program at MIT). The second was from the head of Jisan Research Institute, where I did Computer Science research.

This letter validates my participation in RSI and incorporates the feedback from my research mentor, David Simon. At the time, the RSI students were the most talented students I had met, so I'm also flattered by some of the things the letter writer said, like "Allen stood out early on as a strong performer in academic settings."

I didn't get to know the letter writer super well, so he commented mainly on my academic qualifications and comments from my mentor.

My mentor, who was at one of the major Harvard-affiliated hospitals, said some very nice things about my research ability, like:

"is performing in many ways at the level of a graduate student"

"impressed with Allen's ability to read even advanced scientific publications and synthesize his understanding"

Once again, it's much more convincing for a seasoned expert to vouch for your abilities than for you to claim your own abilities.

My first research experience was done at Jisan Research Institute, a small private computer science lab run by a Caltech PhD. The research staff were mainly high school students like me and a few grad students/postdocs.

My research supervisor, Sanza Kazadi, wrote the letter. He's requested that I not publish the letter, so I'll only speak about his main points.

In the letter, he focused on the quality of my work and leadership. He said that I had a strong focus in my work, and my research moved along more reliably than that of other students. I was independent in my work in swarm engineering, he says, putting together a simulation of the swarm and publishing a paper in conference proceedings. He talked about my work in leading a research group and placing a high degree of trust in me.

Overall, a strong recommendation, and you get the gist of his letter without reading it.

One notable point—both supplemental letters had no marks on them. I really think this means they place less emphasis on the supplementary recommendations, compared to the teacher recommendations.

Finally, finally, we get to the very last piece of my application.

Let me beat the dead horse even deader. Because research was such a core part of my Personal Narrative, I decided to include abstracts of both of my papers. The main point was to summarize the body of work I'd done and communicate the major results.

As Harvard says, "These materials are entirely optional; please only submit them if you have unusual talents."

This is why I chose not to submit a tape of my music: I don't think my musical skill was unusually good.

And frankly, I don't think my research work was that spectacular. Unlike some of my very accomplished classmates, I hadn't ranked nationally in prestigious competitions like ISEF and Siemens. I hadn't published my work in prominent journals.

Regardless, I thought these additions would be net positive, if only marginally so.

I made sure to note where the papers had been published or were entering competitions, just to ground the work in some achievement.

Recommendation Letters: Hopefully you should have developed strong, genuine relationships with teachers you care about. The letters should flow naturally from here, and you will only need to do gentle prodding to make sure they meet deadlines.

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Writing Application Essays and Personal Statements

Some applications ask that you write an essay that draws on more personal reflections. These essays, sometimes called Personal Statements, are an opportunity to show the selection committee who you are as a person: your story, your values, your interests, and why you—and not your peer with a similar resume—are a perfect fit for this opportunity. These narrative essays allow you to really illustrate the person behind the resume, showcasing not only what you think but how you think.

Before you start writing, it’s helpful to really consider the goals of your personal statement:

• To learn more about you as a person: What would you like the selection committee to know about you that can't be covered by other application materials (e.g. resume, transcript, letters of recommendation)? What have been the important moments/influences throughout your journey that have led to where (and who!) you are?
• To learn how you think about the unsolved problems in your field of study/interest: What experiences demonstrate how you've been taught to think and how you tackle challenges?
• To assess whether you fit with the personal qualities sought by the selection committee:  How can you show that you are thoughtful and mature with a good sense of self; that you embody the character, qualities, and experience to be personally ready to thrive in this experience (graduate school and otherwise)? Whatever opportunity you are seeking—going to graduate school, spending the year abroad, conducting public service—is going to be challenging intellectually, emotionally, and financially. This is your opportunity to show that you have the energy and perseverance to succeed.

In general, your job through your personal statement is to show, don’t tell the committee about your journey. If you choose to retell specific anecdotes from your life, focus on one or two relavant, formative experiences—academic, professional, extracurricular—that are emblematic of your development. The essay is where you should showcase the depth of your maturity, not the breadth—that's the resume's job!

Determining the theme of an essay

The personal statement is usually framed with an overarching theme. But how do you come up with a theme that is unique to you? Here are some questions to get you started:

• Question your individuality:  What distinguishes you from your peers? What challenges have you overcome? What was one instance in your life where your values were called  into question?
• Question your field of study:  What first interested you about your field of study? How has your interest in the field changed and developed? How has this discipline shaped you? What are you most passionate about relative to your field?
• Question your non-academic experiences:  Why did you choose the internships, clubs, or activites you did? And what does that suggest about what you value?

Once you have done some reflection, you may notice a theme emerging (justice? innovation? creativity?)—great! Be careful to think beyond your first idea, too, though. Sometimes, the third or fourth theme to come to your mind is the one that will be most compelling to center your essay around.

Writing style

Certainly, your personal statement can have moments of humor or irony that reflect your personality, but the goal is not to show off your creative writing skills or present you as a sparkling conversationalist (that can be part of your interview!). Here, the aim is to present yourself as an interesting person, with a unique background and perspective, and a great future colleague. You should still use good academic writing—although this is not a research paper nor a cover letter—but the tone can be a bit less formal.

Communicating your values

Our work is often linked to our own values, identities, and personal experiences, both positive and negative. However, there can be a vulnerability to sharing these things with strangers. Know that you don't have to write about your most intimate thoughts or experiences, if you don't want to. If you do feel that it’s important that a selection committee knows this about you, reflect on why you would like for them to know that, and then be sure that it has an organic place in your statement. Your passion will come through in how you speak about these topics and their importance in forming you as an individual and budding scholar. 

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The applications of veterans are most welcome and your service is a positive factor in our admissions process. We’re proud to help veterans continue their education by participating in the Yellow Ribbon Program and Service to School’s VetLink program. Learn more about applying as a veteran here .

Application Fee Waiver

The application fee covers a very small portion of the administrative costs of processing applications. However, if the fee presents a hardship for you or your family, it will be waived. Each applicant applying with a fee waiver should select an option for a need-based fee waiver. Do not let the application fee stand in the way of applying! 

How to Request an Application Fee Waiver

Do not let the admissions application fee prevent you from applying! In the spirit of our  honor code , if the admissions application fee presents a hardship for you or your family, the fee will be waived. Please follow the steps below to request a fee waiver:

Common Application

• Confirm that you meet at least one of the indicators of economic need and then select “Yes” to the prompt “You are eligible for application fee waivers if you meet one or more of the following criteria."
• Complete the fee waiver signature.

Coalition Application

• Confirm that you meet at least one of the indicators of economic need listed in the Fee Waiver section of your Profile.
• If you do not meet one of the indicators of economic need, you may enter the Harvard-specific fee waiver code on the payment page: JH3S5Q2LX9

Transfer Applicants

• Please send an email to  [email protected]  to request a transfer application fee waiver.

In the family section, you'll share information about your household, your parents, and any siblings. Most colleges collect this information for demographic purposes. Even if you're an adult or an emancipated minor, you'll need to fill out this section.

Unknown Parent

Answer the questions as honestly and fully as you can, but don’t worry if you and your parent/guardian do not know all of the details about your family.

Family Information

Part of an admissions officer’s job in reading your application is to understand your background and how these circumstances have affected your upbringing, the opportunities available to you, academic preparation, and other factors relevant to the college admissions process.

Family life is an important factor in helping us to learn more about the circumstances and conditions in which you were raised, and how you have made the most of the opportunities provided by your family. We want to understand where you’re coming from, not only in school, but at home as well.

Parent Education

Parents almost always have a significant effect on students’ lives. Information about parents may indicate challenges you have faced – and overcome. In your essay you might elaborate on your family experiences in a wide variety of ways that can illuminate your character and personal qualities, including the positive aspects of your family life.

In the Education section is where you will share information about your current school or coursework, academic honors, and future education plans. Here are some tips on commonly asked questions.

Interruption in Education

It is not uncommon for students to change schools or take time off during high school. While this information will most likely appear on your transcript, hearing directly from you about any interruption in schooling will help us to fill in any gaps.

We always defer to the secondary school report for information about grades. If yours is not provided by the counselor or school, we will take into consideration what is self-reported, making sure to confirm with your school officials.

Current or Most Recent Year Courses

Please list the courses you are currently taking and/or are planning on taking before you graduate. If your schedule changes after you have submitted your application, please keep us updated by submitting additional materials in the Applicant Portal.

Honors & Level(s) of Recognition

This is a place to highlight any achievements or awards you have received. If you receive any significant honors or awards after submitting the application, you may notify us by submitting additional materials in the Applicant Portal and we will include this information with your application materials.

Future Plans & Career Interest

You do not need to have a ten year plan, but getting a sense of what kinds of professions you have considered gives us insight into your current plans. Don’t fret about it: put a few ideas down and move on with your application.

Since there are some students who do have a developed career interest already established while they are in high school, this question provides an opportunity to indicate such a plan.

The Testing section is where you'll enter your self-reported scores for any standardized tests that you've taken and wish to report to colleges. However, remember that if you self-report your SAT or ACT test scores and you are admitted and choose to enroll at Harvard, you'll be required to submit your official score reports from the College Board or ACT. View more information on our standardized testing requirements on our Application Requirements page.

Tests Taken

Test scores.

We have always looked at the best scores applicants choose to submit. If you haven’t yet taken the tests, please indicate which tests you are taking and when.

The TOEFL is not required for Harvard, but if you are taking it for another college, you may elect to submit it as part of your Harvard application. Your score can be one more piece of evidence regarding your English language proficiency, so you may choose to submit it if you feel it provides additional helpful information. 

AP/IB Tests

These exam scores are additional pieces of academic information which can help us as we think about your preparation and potential for college level work. Sometimes AP or IB scores can demonstrate a wide range of academic accomplishments.

If you have the opportunity to take AP and IB exams, the results may also be helpful for academic placement, should you be accepted and choose to enroll at Harvard. 

The activities section gives you the opportunity to tell schools more about who you are and activities you're involved with outside the classroom. You'll have the opportunity to list up to ten activities, but that doesn't mean you need to enter all ten.

How we use extracurricular activities and work experience in the admissions process

We are much more interested in the quality of students’ activities than their quantity so do not feel you need to fill in the entire grid! Contributions students make to the well-being of their secondary schools, communities and families are of great interest to us. So indicate for us the time you spend and the nature of the contribution to extracurricular activities, the local community, work experiences and help provided to your family. Activities you undertake need not be exotic but rather might show a commitment to excellence regardless of the activity. Such a commitment can apply to any activity in your life and may reflect underlying character and personal qualities.

For example, a student can gain a great deal from helping his or her family with babysitting or other household responsibilities or working in a restaurant to help with family or personal expenses. Such experiences are important “extracurricular” activities and can be detailed in the extracurricular section and discussed in essays.

Some students list only activities they feel will appear significant to the admissions office, while others endeavor to list every single thing they have ever done. Neither approach is right for everyone. Rather, you should think about the activities (in-school, at home, or elsewhere) that you care most about and devote most of your time doing, and list those.

We realize that extracurricular and athletic opportunities are either unavailable or limited at many high schools. We also know that limited economic resources in many families can affect a student’s chances for participation on the school teams, travel teams, or even prevent participation at all due to the costs of the equipment or the logistical requirements of some sports and activities. You should not feel that your chances for admission to college are hindered by the lack of extracurricular opportunities. Rather, our admissions committee will look at the various kinds of opportunities you have had in your lifetime and try to assess how well you have taken advantage of those opportunities.

For additional thoughts on extracurricular activities, please refer to this 2009 article in the New York Times:  Guidance Office: Answers From Harvard’s Dean, Part 3 .

Positions held, honors won, letters earned, or employer

In this section, please describe the activity and your level of participation. Please note that your description should be concise, or it may be cut off by the Common Application.

Participation Grade Level

The grades during which you have participated are important because they help us to understand the depth of your involvement in that activity and your changing interests over time. Not all extracurricular activities must be a four-year commitment for our applicants.

Approximate Time Spent

We are interested to know how you manage your time and to understand how you balance your life outside of the classroom. Some students dedicate their time to one or two activities, while others spread their time among many.

When did you participate

We know that students are often active both during the school year and the summer – working, babysitting siblings, enrolling in courses, traveling, playing sports, holding internships, etc. Distinguishing school-year activities from summer activities helps us understand how you have spent your time and taken advantage of opportunities available to you.

Plans to participate in college?

Harvard is a residential institution, and our students are actively engaged in college life. This section helps us to understand how you might contribute at Harvard. Some students who were involved in several activities during high school choose to narrow their focus in college and/or to try new activities not previously available.

What if there's not enough space?

Filling out the grid is an act of prioritization: your responses tell us what activities or work experiences are most meaningful to you. And there’s quite a bit of space there, too; almost everyone should be able to convey the breadth and depth of out-of-class commitments on the application. Conversely, please do not feel a need to fill every line!

The first section is the personal essay. Harvard requires the submission of the personal essay with your application. We also offer an opportunity to add any additional information.

Personal Essay

The Common Application essay topics are broad. Please note that Coalition essay questions may differ. While this might seem daunting at first, look at it as an opportunity to write about something you care about, rather than what you think the Admissions Committee wants to hear. The point of the personal statement is for you to have the chance to share whatever you would like with us. Remember, your topic does not have to be exotic to be compelling.

Essay topics include:

• Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
• The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
• Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
• Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you? 
• Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
• Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
• Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Additional Information

Do not feel obligated to fill this space, but some students have used this opportunity to tell us about challenging circumstances in their lives such as illness or other difficulties that may have affected their grades. Any information that can tell us more about the person behind the test scores and grades can be helpful.

Harvard Questions

Each college or university that is a member of the Common Application and/or the Coalition Application - Powered by Scoir has an opportunity to ask applicants a series of school-specific questions separate from the common part of the application. The Harvard supplement contains a series of questions that help us learn more about your academic, extracurricular, and personal interests. You application is not considered complete until you submit the supplement. 

General: Applying for Financial Aid

Harvard has a need-blind admissions process and applying for aid is never detrimental to your admissions decision. We ask this question because we want to be able to calculate your financial need in advance of our April notification date so that we can send your admission letter and financial aid offer at the same time. One thing to note – not all institutions have such policies.

General: Submitting Supplementary Materials

Supplementary materials (art slides, music recordings, research papers, etc.) help when they reveal unusual talent. You absolutely do not have to include anything supplementary to gain acceptance to Harvard, and the vast majority of admitted students do not submit supplementary materials with their applications. You can submit art and media files through Slideroom  and any documents or articles directly in the Applicant Portal with an uploader tool.

Academics: Fields of Study

When you select from the full list of Harvard's academic concentrations, you give us a sense of the direction you may choose when it comes time for you to choose a concentration at Harvard in your sophomore year.

While we realize that this question is quite similar to the one asked on the Common Application, our own format allows us to fit this information into data fields that Harvard has been collecting for many years. While we know students might well change their minds once they are in college, it is helpful for us to get a sense of their current interests and those academic areas in which they have already spent time and effort.

We do not admit students into specific academic programs, and we have no quotas or targets for academic fields.

Academics: Future Plans

As a liberal arts institution with fifty academic concentrations and more than 450 extracurricular organizations, we expect and encourage our students to explore new opportunities. We understand that as you answer these questions, you may not be entirely sure of your plans, but this information helps us to understand how you might use Harvard.

One of the principal ways students meet and educate each other during college is through extracurricular activities. Your answer to this question gives us a better sense of the interests you might bring to college and how definite your academic, vocational, extracurricular or athletic interests might be. This information helps us understand better how you might use Harvard. Of course, one of the best things about a liberal arts education is that plans may change. There is no “right” answer to these questions.

If you have applied to Harvard before, we want to include your previous application with your current one. We also want to have a record of any other involvement at Harvard you may have had, including the Summer School and the Extension School and associated transcripts. This information adds to the context of your present application. It can be helpful for us to note changes in your application—perhaps areas where you have strengthened the academic and/or extracurricular aspects of your candidacy.

Writing Supplement

The supplement includes five required short-answer questions, each with a 200 word limit. We want to ensure that every student has the same opportunity to reflect on and share how their life experiences and academic and extracurricular activities shaped them, how they will engage with others at Harvard, and their aspirations for the future. Our continued focus is on considering the whole student in the admissions process and how they have interacted with the world.

Required Short Answer Questions

Each question has a 200 word limit. 

• Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?
• Briefly describe an intellectual experience that was important to you. 
• Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are.
• How do you hope to use your Harvard education in the future?
• Top 3 things your roommates might like to know about you. 

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How To Answer Harvard's 2023/24 Supplemental Essays: Tips & Insights

What's New in 2023/24

What are Harvard's Essay Prompts?

How to Answer Harvard's Essay Prompts

General Guidelines

Explore the changes in Harvard's supplemental essay prompts for 2023/24, understand the nuances of each question, and gain insights on crafting compelling responses with our detailed guide, complete with expert tips and links to successful Harvard essay examples.

Harvard's 2023/24 Supplemental Essay Updates: What's Changed?

Gaining admission to Harvard is no small feat, with acceptance rates sometimes plummeting as low as 3% . In such a competitive environment, every component of your application, especially your essay, becomes a crucial tool to stand out to admissions officers.

Every year, top-tier universities like Harvard fine-tune their application process to get a deeper understanding of their applicants. For the 2023/24 admissions cycle, Harvard University has made notable modifications to its supplemental essay questions .

Last year, applicants had a mix of required and optional prompts, with varying word limits, ranging from 50 to 150 words. These prompts touched on extracurricular activities, intellectual experiences, personal backgrounds, and more.

This year, Harvard has streamlined the process, requiring all applicants to answer five questions, each with a strict 200-word limit . The questions emphasize the importance of diversity, intellectual experiences, extracurricular activities, the utilization of a Harvard education, and personal insights for potential roommates.

This shift indicates a desire for more concise, focused responses from applicants, allowing the admissions committee to gain a clearer, more uniform understanding of each student's background, aspirations, and personality.

What Are Harvard’s Supplemental Essay Prompts for 2023/24?

For the 2023/24 application cycle, Harvard University has outlined specific supplemental essay prompts to understand applicants better in addition to the Common App or Coalition App questions. These questions delve into your experiences, intellectual pursuits, and personal insights. Students are required to answer each Harvard-specific question in under 200 words. Here's a breakdown of the prompts:

• Diversity and Contribution : Harvard values a diverse student body. Reflect on your life experiences and explain how they have shaped you and how you plan to contribute to Harvard. (200 words)
• Intellectual Experience : Discuss an intellectual experience that has had a significant impact on you. (200 words)
• Personal Shaping Experiences : Elaborate on extracurricular activities, employment, travel, or family responsibilities that have played a pivotal role in defining who you are. (200 words)
• Future Aspirations : Describe how you envision utilizing your Harvard education in the future. (200 words)
• Getting to Know You : List three things your future roommates should know about you. (200 words)

These prompts offer applicants a chance to showcase their personalities, aspirations, and experiences, providing a holistic view of their candidacy.

Looking for inspiration? Dive into these Harvard essay examples to see what successful applications look like!

How to Answer Harvard’s Supplemental Essay Questions?

This guide aims to help you craft a compelling response that showcases your unique journey and potential contributions to Harvard's diverse community.

As you begin planning responses to each individual prompt, be sure to consider what experiences, reflections, and qualities you want to showcase once you’ve responded to all the prompts:

• Ensure you won’t leave out any important experiences, reflections, and qualities you want Harvard to know about.
• Be sure you’ll avoid repeating the same experiences, reflections, or qualities in the other prompts.

Answering Prompt 1

“harvard values a diverse student body. reflect on your life experiences and explain how they have shaped you and how you plan to contribute to harvard.”, - 200 words or fewer, 1. understand the question.

Harvard is not merely asking for a list of experiences. They want to understand the depth of your experiences , how they've molded your character, and how you'll use that growth to contribute to the Harvard community.

Since Harvard is telling you they value diversity, consider emphasizing unique experiences or circumstances that highlight the most personal and profound aspects of your personality, values, and perspectives.

2. Reflect on Your Unique Experiences

Consider moments in your life that have had a significant impact on your worldview:

• Have you lived in multiple countries, exposing you to various cultures?
• Did you overcome challenges that forced you to view the world differently?
• Were there pivotal moments in your upbringing that shaped your identity?
• How did interactions with diverse individuals or groups influence your perspectives?

3. Dive Deep into Personal Growth

Discuss the evolution of your perspectives, values, or aspirations.

• How did these experiences challenge your beliefs or expand your understanding?
• What lessons did you derive, and how have they influenced your subsequent actions or decisions?
• What experiences or reflections shape your deepest beliefs and values? — or, shape some deep questions or doubts you wrestle with?

4. Connect to Harvard

Consider how your unique perspective will enrich Harvard's community .

• Will you introduce new viewpoints in classroom discussions or help teams work together more successfully?
• Will you contribute to or initiate student organizations or community projects?
• Will you exemplify certain traits that enhance a vibrant, curious, and inclusive learning environment?

5. Be Concise and Authentic

With a 200-word limit, precision is key. Ensure your narrative is genuine, making your essay resonate with the reader. Avoid generic statements; instead, provide specific examples that showcase your journey.

Harvard's first supplemental essay is an opportunity to showcase the depth of your experiences and how they've shaped you . Reflecting on significant moments, emphasizing personal growth, and connecting your unique perspective to how you'll contribute to Harvard is essential. Remember to be concise, authentic, and ensure your essay is polished to perfection.

Answering Prompt 2

“discuss an intellectual experience that has had a significant impact on you.”.

This question aims to help you articulate the depth and significance of an intellectual experience and its profound impact on your academic and personal journey.

1. Define "Intellectual Experience"

Before diving in, understand that an intellectual experience isn't limited to classroom learning . It could be:

• A book that changed your perspective
• A conversation that challenged your beliefs
• An experience that triggered a profound insight or understanding
• Or even a personal project or research endeavor

2. Choose a Meaningful Experience

Reflect on experiences that genuinely transformed your thinking:

• Was there a particular course or project that ignited a passion?
• Did a specific book, article, or documentary challenge your pre-existing beliefs?
• Have you attended seminars, workshops, or lectures that introduced you to new ideas?

3. Delve into the "Why"

Discuss why this experience was transformative:

• What preconceptions or beliefs did it challenge?
• How did it expand or deepen your understanding of a particular subject or idea?
• Did it inspire further exploration or study into the topic?

4. Highlight Personal Growth

Describe how this intellectual experience influenced your academic and personal journey:

• Did it guide your academic pursuits or career aspirations?
• How did it shape your values, beliefs, or worldview?

5. Be Authentic and Reflective

Your genuine curiosity and passion should shine through. Avoid using jargon or overly complex language. Instead, focus on genuine reflection and personal growth .

Harvard's second supplemental essay seeks to understand your intellectual journey . It's an opportunity to showcase your curiosity, passion, and the transformative power of learning. By reflecting on a significant intellectual experience and its impact on you, you can demonstrate your academic depth, your own intellectual processes and aptitudes, and intellectual growth.

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Answering Prompt 3

“elaborate on extracurricular activities, employment, travel, or family responsibilities that have played a pivotal role in defining who you are.”.

This question is designed to help you articulate the significance of experiences outside the classroom and their profound impact on your personal journey.

1. Prioritize Depth Over Quantity

While you might have multiple experiences, focus on one or two that have had the most profound impact on you . This allows you to delve deeper and provide a more insightful reflection.

2. Choose a Defining Experience

Reflect on moments that genuinely shaped your character:

• Was there an extracurricular activity that taught you leadership, teamwork, or dedication?
• Did a job teach you responsibility, time management, or the value of hard work?
• Has travel exposed you to diverse cultures, broadening your perspectives?
• Were there family responsibilities that instilled in you a sense of maturity, empathy, or resilience?

3. Describe the Experience

Briefly set the scene. Whether it's the bustling environment of a part-time job, the challenges of a leadership role in a club, or the nuances of a family responsibility, paint a picture for the reader.

4. Reflect on the Impact

Discuss how this experience influenced your personal growth:

• What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?
• What skills or values did you acquire or strengthen?
• How did this experience shape your aspirations, perspectives, or values?

5. Connect to the Present

Highlight how this experience continues to influence you:

• How do the lessons you learned guide your current decisions or actions?
• How has it influenced your academic interests or future aspirations?

Harvard's third supplemental essay is an opportunity to showcase experiences outside the classroom that have significantly influenced your personal growth . Reflecting on these pivotal moments and their lasting impact can provide a holistic picture of your character, values, and aspirations.

Answering Prompt 4

“describe how you envision utilizing your harvard education in the future.”.

This question aims to help you articulate how a Harvard education aligns with your future goals and the impact you aim to make in your chosen field or community.

1. Reflect on Your Goals

Begin by identifying your long-term aspirations . Have a clear vision in mind, whether it's a specific career, a desire to address a global challenge, or a passion you wish to pursue further.

2. Highlight Harvard's Unique Offerings

Research specific programs, courses, or opportunities at Harvard that align with your goals. This could be a particular academic program, research opportunities, or extracurricular activities.

3. Draw a Connection

Discuss how these unique offerings will equip you with the skills, knowledge, or experiences needed to achieve your future aspirations . Make it evident that Harvard is the ideal place for you to realize these goals.

4. Go Beyond the Obvious

While Harvard's academic excellence is a given, delve into the broader Harvard experience. Consider the influence of its diverse community, its culture of innovation, or its commitment to leadership and service.

5. Discuss the Broader Impact

Expand on how you plan to use your Harvard education to make a difference . Whether it's in your community, in a particular field, or on a global scale, showcase your commitment to creating positive change.

6. Stay Authentic

Ensure your response is genuine and reflects your true aspirations. Admissions officers can discern genuine passion and commitment from generic responses.

Harvard's fourth supplemental essay is an opportunity to showcase your forward-thinking approach and how you plan to leverage Harvard's resources to achieve your future goals. By drawing a clear connection between what Harvard offers and your aspirations, you demonstrate a purposeful approach to your education.

Answering Prompt 5

“list three things your future roommates should know about you.”.

This question aims to help you present a genuine and well-rounded picture of yourself, offering insights into your personality, habits, and values.

1. Reflect on Your Personality

This prompt is an invitation to share more about your personal side. Think about the quirks, habits, or values that define you. What are the things that make you, well, you?

2. Balance Seriousness with Lightness

While one point could be a deep reflection of your values or beliefs, another could be a fun fact or a unique hobby. This mix gives a rounded picture of who you are.

3. Be Genuine

Avoid coming up with things you believe the admissions committee wants to hear. This is your chance to let your true self shine through.

4. Consider Your Daily Life

Think about your habits or routines, the music you listen to, or the books you read. These can offer insights into your personality and preferences.

5. Reflect on Past Living Experiences

Have you shared a space with someone before — roommate, sibling, family members, fellow campers?… Think about what made the experience harmonious. Were there particular habits, routines, or guiding principles you followed that were appreciated by those you were sharing space with?

Harvard's fifth supplemental essay is a chance to showcase your personality beyond academics and extracurriculars . By sharing genuine aspects of yourself related to day-to-day living and the many small ways you interact with those around you in more personal spaces, you give a glimpse into your life outside the classroom and what it might be like to share a living space with you.

5 Tips for the "Why This School?" Essay

General Guidelines for Crafting Stellar Harvard Supplemental Essays

1. Understand the Question: Before you start writing, ensure you fully understand what the prompt is asking. Break it down and consider its nuances. This will help you stay on track and address all aspects of the question.

2. Be Authentic: Harvard isn't just looking for high achievers; they're looking for genuine individuals. Your essay should reflect your true self, not what you think the admissions committee wants to hear.

3. Show, Don't Tell: Instead of just stating facts or beliefs, use anecdotes, experiences, or stories to convey your points. This makes your essay more engaging and paints a clearer picture of who you are.

4. Stay Within the Word Limit: While it might be tempting to write more, respect the word limits. It shows that you can convey your thoughts concisely and respect guidelines.

5. Proofread and Edit: Always review your essay multiple times for clarity, coherence, and grammar. Consider also asking a teacher, mentor, or friend to review it.

6. Connect to Harvard: While the prompts might not explicitly ask for it, subtly showing why your experiences, values, or aspirations align with Harvard's culture or offerings can be a plus.

7. Reflect on Growth: Colleges love to see personal growth. Reflect on how experiences have shaped you, lessons learned, and how you've evolved.

8. Avoid Repetition: Ensure that your supplemental essays present new information and don't repeat what's already in your Common App essay or other parts of your application.

9. Be Forward-Looking: While it's essential to reflect on past experiences, also touch on how these experiences prepare you for future endeavors, especially at Harvard.

10. Start Early: Give yourself ample time to brainstorm, draft, and revise. Starting early reduces stress and allows you to approach the essay with a clear mind.

Remember, the supplemental essays are an opportunity to showcase aspects of yourself that aren't evident in other parts of your application . Use them wisely to provide a holistic picture of yourself and why you'd be a great fit for Harvard.

Final Thoughts

The journey to Harvard is more than just academic prowess; it's about crafting a narrative that resonates deeply with the admissions committee. Your supplemental essays provide a unique window into your personality, aspirations, and the distinct perspectives you'll bring to the Harvard community.

Every Harvard aspirant has a story waiting to be told. This is your moment to share yours. Approach your essays with authenticity, introspection, and a genuine passion for your narrative.

If you're wondering whether your essay truly captures your essence or if it stands out from the multitude of applications, our essay review service is here to help. Our team of experts will meticulously review and provide feedback to refine your essay, ensuring it resonates with admissions officers. For further inspiration, delve into our ebook , which showcases essays from students who clinched spots at top universities. And if Harvard is your dream, these successful Harvard essay examples will provide invaluable insights.

For those just starting their college application journey, consider booking a free consultation with our seasoned college counselors. We're dedicated to guiding you in creating an application that significantly enhances your chances of donning the Crimson colors. Harvard is within reach, and we're here to help you every step of the way.

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Key Resources & Further Reading

• Everything you need to know about US Application Supplemental Essays
• Acing your College Application Essay: 5 Expert Tips to Make it Stand Out from the Rest
• How to Tackle Every Type of Supplemental Essay
• 2023-24 Common App Essay Prompts
• What are the Most Unusual US College Supplemental Essay Prompts?

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10 great common app essay examples from accepted students.

How to Answer the 2024-25 Common App Essay Prompts

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Harvard Staff Writer

Emily Ogden describes her new book, “On Not Knowing,” as a series of essays that ask, “Let’s see what the value is of things that we don’t know.”

Photo by Jen Fariello

Emily Ogden, a 2002 graduate of Harvard College and now an associate professor at the University of Virginia, recently published her second book, “On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays.” She spoke to the Gazette about the ways her writing highlights her interest in subjects “around the edges of scholarship,” and how uncertainty can lead to a new way of approaching life. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Emily Ogden

GAZETTE:  Your first book, “Credulity” (2018), was a cultural history of mesmerism. What was the inspiration for your new book? How are the two books connected?

OGDEN:  One way to answer this is to say that the books are not closely related except on a deep level of my own preoccupations. They’re in very different genres, but in a sense, they’re both about trying to think around the edges of scholarship. The first book is a history of mesmerism, a practice that is located between medicine, science, and religion, and involved putting people in trances and sometimes getting them to access forms of clairvoyant knowledge that they might not realize they have. “On Not Knowing” is a series of essays that ask, “Let’s see what the value is of things that we don’t know.”

GAZETTE:  In a world driven by the pursuit of knowledge, what role can or should “not knowing” play?

OGDEN:  If the world you mean is scholarship, then it’s important to note that the book is not a traditional work of scholarship; it’s a book of essays and they are more personal than scholarship might usually be.

In the larger sense of your question: Whether unknowingness has a particular role to play in the world in general, I’d say that at this moment of strong political polarization, it can become a strong temptation to adopt a position of knowingness that maybe is beyond what’s called for. There are some things we should be certain about, but sometimes certainty can become a habit. I thought, when I started writing this book, that it would be a good task to set myself to retain space for uncertainty when it was the appropriate response and not get locked into a posture of always knowing in advance what I think and what one ought to think.

GAZETTE:  Why should people embrace unknowing and the uncertainty that comes with it?

OGDEN:  The psychoanalyst Anne Dufourmantelle talks about something she calls the “risk of not yet dying.” What she means by that is that we should take the risk of not yet becoming ossified people who know exactly what’s coming next and know exactly what there is to expect from the world. It’s hard to do because it’s more comfortable to know what there is to expect from the world, right? But she thinks that when we know too much about what to expect, we’re not truly alive. She has a story about a patient who is sure she knows the day she is going to die. This patient spends her whole life knowing the day that she’s going to die, and then one day she wakes up and realizes that she’s scared of this possibility for the first time, and she doesn’t want to die. And for Dufourmantelle this is what it means to take the risk of not yet dying — to be sufficiently aware of the possibility of loss or risk so that you experience some fear because without that, you’re just on autopilot. I think something similar happens with being able to deal with some uncertainty. Without being open to that raw edge of experience, you lose something about what it means to be alive.

GAZETTE:  In your essays you cite the work of Emily Dickinson, James Baldwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other writers and thinkers. How have they influenced your writing?

OGDEN:  Ralph Waldo Emerson and Elizabeth Hardwick both achieve a lot through subtraction. They want their essays to be short, quick, surprising — to leave things for the reader to fill in. Adam Phillips, who is also a major influence on me, says of Emerson that he wants his essays to provoke the reader to their own thoughts, to turn the reader away from the writing and toward their own thoughts. I like to write in a way that it is like that, to the extent that I can. I like to offer things that have not been fully digested so that readers have the opportunity to digest them for themselves.

“Without being open to that raw edge of experience, you lose something about what it means to be alive.”

GAZETTE:  What do you hope people can take away from your book?

OGDEN:  More than anything, I want it to be a pleasurable experience to read. I worked hard to make the style as beautiful as I could make it. For me, the essays that I love the most seem to provide a stable environment that I can return to, like a room that I’m familiar with. I can come back to those essays, even just in thought, and they’re there for me to do a certain kind of work or do a certain kind of thinking. And I hope that for some readers these essays can be like that.

Going back to the distinction between essays and scholarship, I’d say that when we write scholarship about a concept like unknowing, we don’t necessarily turn toward personal experience. I’ve had the impression with scholarly writing of almost editing out the experiences that seemed metaphorically connected in my mind to whatever I was writing about. In this book, I didn’t edit those things out. I included those ordinary experiences in a way that I wouldn’t have in other writing that I’ve done.

I hope it’s a very approachable book. It’s about a pretty ordinary life to the extent that it has life experiences in it, such as childbirth and childcare and swimming and things that will be very familiar to many people. I think of the book as owing a debt to Emily Dickinson, who was, in a lot of ways, a poet of her own backyard, although her poems couldn’t really be bigger in their stakes. She’s dealing with the biggest possible metaphysical issues. Nonetheless, her scope in the world tends to be half a mile from her house. Mine is a book that has a debt to that way of marrying the ordinary with the extraordinary.

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1 in 3 College Applicants Used AI for Essay Help. Did They Cheat?

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Last spring, Makena, then a high school senior, was deep into cranking out some 70 essays for 20 college applications when her creativity started to wane.

So, she turned to a high-tech brainstorming partner: artificial intelligence.

One essay prompt asked Makena to describe a class she’d want to teach if she were a college professor. “I had no idea,” said Makena, who asked to be identified only by her first name to speak candidly about the admissions process. “I had never thought about it.”

She put her intended major and some favorite topics into an AI tool, which spit out a list of potential courses. Makena selected one and crafted her essay around it, without any further AI assistance.

In Makena’s mind, this wasn’t cheating.

“I wrote my own essays, 100 percent,” she said. After all, she could have found the same information on Google or by picking up a course catalogue. AI was just more efficient.

About a third of high school seniors who applied to college in the 2023-24 school year acknowledged using an AI tool for help in writing admissions essays, according to research released this month by foundry10 , an organization focused on improving learning.

About half of those students—or roughly one in six students overall—used AI the way Makena did, to brainstorm essay topics or polish their spelling and grammar. And about 6 percent of students overall—including some of Makena’s classmates, she said—relied on AI to write the final drafts of their essays instead of doing most of the writing themselves.

Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of students admitted to Harvard University’s class of 2027 paid a private admissions consultant for help with their applications .

The use of outside help, in other words, is rampant in college admissions, opening up a host of questions about ethics, norms, and equal opportunity.

Top among them: Which—if any—of these students cheated in the admissions process?

For now, the answer is murky.

Colleges permit students to use pricey admissions coaches . But they are mostly silent on how AI can be used in crafting essays.

That’s created “this ethical gray area that students and [high school] counselors don’t have any guidance” on how to navigate, said Jennifer Rubin, a senior researcher at foundry10 and the lead author the report.

A ‘double standard’ on college admissions

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT have put a high-tech twist on decades-old questions of fairness in the college admissions process.

The system has “never been a level playing field,” Rubin said, citing the advantages that mostly benefit wealthier students, such as SAT tutors, paid college admissions coaches, and savvy, college-educated parents. “I think [AI] is just complicating it a little bit more because it’s a tool that’s readily available to everyone.”

To get a sense of the public’s perceptions on AI in college admissions, foundry10 included an experimental portion in its survey.

Participants reviewed an identical portion of a college essay. But one group was instructed that the applicant had help from ChatGPT in brainstorming ideas, refining content, and polishing the final draft—essentially the same tasks Makena used AI for.

Another group was told the applicant got assistance with the same parts of the writing process, from a paid college admissions coach. A third group was informed that the student worked entirely alone.

Participants rated the applicant who used ChatGPT as less authentic, less ethical, and less likable than the student who paid for professional help. (The student who worked solo got the highest ratings.)

Rubin perceives a “double standard” at work.

A student who can pay “thousands of dollars to someone who has the knowledge of how a [particular college] works and what’s needed or wanted in a college admissions essay is going to have an undue advantage,” she said.

College admissions coaching services typically cost from $60 to $349 per hour, according to data cited in Rubin’s report from Prepmaven, an admissions-preparation company.

The website of one such service, Ivy College Essay , advertises its Harvard connections. For between $1,500 and $4,800, depending on the number of applications, students receive help in brainstorming topics and “extensive written notes, comments, and guidance, focusing on both content and structure,” according to the site.

“We go back and forth as many times as needed until we have a very strong and solid Ivy League college application!” the company promises.

Assistance from ChatGPT on similar tasks “probably isn’t going to be as strong” as what such a service offers, Rubin said. “But it might provide students some form of feedback that they might not be able to get in their lives because they don’t have parents or caregivers” who have the savvy to help.

These issues are especially personal for Rubin, a first-generation college graduate who attended a private high school on scholarship. She had the help of her school counselors in applying to college.

But that assistance couldn’t make up for the gap between Rubin and many of her peers with highly educated parents, who could offer all sorts of support, she said.

Big questions on AI use go mostly unanswered by colleges

For now, high school counselors aren’t sure what to tell their students when it comes to how AI can be ethically used in the admissions process.

“My seniors have come to me and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got to write an essay about this. Where do I even start?’ Or ‘is it OK if I use ChatGPT?’” said Melissa Millington, a school counselor in Missouri. “I just really hit on, you cannot pass that off as your own work, because that’s not ethical.”

But, like Rubin, she sees some possibility for the technology in crafting applications that stop short of making AI a sole, uncredited ghost writer.

“If you are going to use it to get a starting point, that’s totally fine,” she said she’s told students. “Or if you want to write your essay, and then put it in there and ask it to clean [the] grammar,” that’s likely fair game.

While most colleges and universities are silent on the AI issue, some individual institutions have given applicants the green light to use AI in a limited fashion.

One of the country’s most prestigious institutions focusing on science, math, engineering and technology, CalTech, tells prospective students that it’s unethical to copy and paste an essay written entirely by generative AI. But it is acceptable to use AI to brainstorm or check grammar and spelling, the college says.

Georgia Polytechnical Institute, another highly regarded STEM-focused university, has a similar policy .

“If you choose to utilize AI-based assistance … we encourage you to take the same approach you would when collaborating with people,” the school’s website says. “Use it to brainstorm, edit, and refine your ideas.”

But for other colleges, any use of AI is unacceptable, at least officially. Brown University, for instance, cites its fraud policy and tells applicants that the use of AI is “not permitted under any circumstances.”

‘It always been an honor system’

Brown and other institutions have no real way of enforcing those policies, Rubin said.

AI detectors are notoriously unreliable. And they are disproportionately likely to flag writing by students who are not native English speakers, even if they didn’t use AI.

In fact, Kristin Woelfel, a policy counsel specializing in equity in civic technology for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit organization that aims to shape technology policy, has gone so far as to say the detectors have the potential to violate students’ civil rights .

It doesn’t really matter if colleges have guidelines that prohibit AI use, Rubin said, because there’s no way to check on what kind of assistance an applicant received, human or not.

“It’s always been on the honor system,” she said.

Colleges that haven’t outlined their policies on AI in the application process are ignoring the obvious—and making life harder for high school counselors and their students, said Maritza Cha, who worked as a school counselor in Southern California for nearly a decade and has taught high school counseling as an adjunct professor.

“We’re at the point of either you can kind of put your head down in the sand and pretend it’s not happening, which is not realistic,” Cha said. “Or you can just acknowledge that they’re using some kind of AI” in the admissions process.

Counselors can model proper use of AI in the college search

While much of the work in setting clear guidelines needs to happen at the college level, there are steps high school educators can take.

Rubin believes that if counselors and teachers are really thinking about leveling the playing field between first-generation college students from low-income families and their peers, it might be helpful to show how generative AI can ethically guide the college admissions process.

For instance, students could put areas of study they are interested in and a desired geographic region into a tool like ChatGPT and ask for recommendations on where to apply.

“Generative AI can provide them some really concrete information,” Rubin said. Even though they should check that data against more accurate sources, it can help a student narrow their search.

Students can even have a “conversation back and forth” with AI if they don’t have access to a college counselor at school who can meet with them consistently, she said.

And they can model how to use AI to spur their creativity or proofread final drafts, without crossing the line into wholesale cheating, she said.

But, ultimately, high school educators and college officials need to have conversations about what responsible use of AI looks like, including in crafting college applications, Rubin said.

In Rubin’s view, those discussions should acknowledge that many students already have access to other types of help—whether that’s from professional consultants or parents and older siblings familiar with the process of applying to college.

Makena, for instance, thinks she can write a stronger, more personal essay than anything ChatGPT could cook up. She didn’t feel the need to pay a private counselor either, since she wanted to rely on her own voice as much as possible.

She did, however, have a low-tech, presumably cost-free assistant: Her father, who edited all 70-plus of her essays.

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How Yale Propelled J.D. Vance’s Career

The G.O.P. vice-presidential nominee is remembered as a warm and personable student. But some are perplexed by what they see as his shift in ideology.

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By Stephanie Saul

When J.D. Vance applied to law school, he viewed it as a pathway out of his chaotic upbringing in working-class Middletown, Ohio.

Then he won a spot at his dream school. Yale Law not only accepted him for the fall of 2010, but also offered a nearly full ride the first year.

Over the next three years, Yale dramatically influenced the trajectory of his life, leading to important connections, a job in venture capital and marriage to a classmate.

Even his memoir, “ Hillbilly Elegy ,” was partly the outgrowth of a paper he wrote in a Yale class. And he leveraged the story, which chronicles his childhood and the alienation of the working class, into a best seller, a movie deal and a political career — winning election to the U.S. Senate in 2022, at age 38.

Despite Yale’s transformative role in his life, Mr. Vance’s relationship with the school could be summed up as conflicted.

Graduating from Yale was “the coolest thing” he had ever done, “at least on paper,” he wrote in his memoir. But he also portrayed himself as an outsider who flubbed law firm interviews and was baffled when asked whether he preferred chardonnay or sauvignon blanc — he had never heard of either. And his classmates remember his sarcasm and cynicism when discussing what he thought of as the school’s liberal bubble.

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100 Successful College Application Essays (Updated, Third Edition) The Largest Collection of Successful College Application Essays Available in One Volume   These are the essays that helped their authors gain admission to Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Wellesley, Pomona, and other outstanding schools—followed by invaluable comments by experts in admissions, placement, and college counseling at some of the best learning institutions around the country. This helpful guide includes:   100 complete essays with professional commentary Examples of essays on common topics (family background, athletics, work experience), as well as the more offbeat Essays on the immigrant experience by foreign-born students A section of drawing and cartoon essays Insider advice from a Princeton Dean of Admission And more   Compiled by members of The Harvard Independent, the weekly newsmagazine of Harvard University, this revised and updated edition is an invaluable resource for students who want to write the best possible essay—and improve their chances of admission to the best possible school. There are no customer reviews for this item yet. Classic Totes Tote bags and pouches in a variety of styles, sizes, and designs , plus mugs, bookmarks, and more! Shipping & Pickup We ship anywhere in the U.S. and orders of $75+ ship free via media mail! Noteworthy Signed Books: Join the Club! Join our Signed First Edition Club (or give a gift subscription) for a signed book of great literary merit, delivered to you monthly. Harvard Square's Independent Bookstore © 2024 Harvard Book Store All rights reserved Contact Harvard Book Store 1256 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel (617) 661-1515 Toll Free (800) 542-READ Email [email protected] View our current hours » Join our bookselling team » We plan to remain closed to the public for two weeks, through Saturday, March 28 While our doors are closed, we plan to staff our phones, email, and harvard.com web order services from 10am to 6pm daily. Store Hours Monday - Saturday: 9am - 11pm Sunday: 10am - 10pm Holiday Hours 12/24: 9am - 7pm 12/25: closed 12/31: 9am - 9pm 1/1: 12pm - 11pm All other hours as usual. Map Find Harvard Book Store » Online Customer Service Shipping » Online Returns » Privacy Policy » Harvard University harvard.edu » Clubs & Services What We Did and Did Not Argue in United States v. Trump – Seth Barrett Tillman & Josh Blackman Posted by JLPP on Jul 16, 2024 in Per Curiam What We Did and Did Not Argue in United States v. Trump Seth barrett tillman *, josh blackman **. Editor’s Note : This essay had already been submitted to the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy before United States v. Trump was decided by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida on July 15, 2024. The authors have decided to publish this essay without regard to the District Court’s decision, and they will address that decision in future writings. On June 21, 2024, Judge Aileen Cannon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida heard oral argument in United States v. Trump . This prosecution was brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith with regard to former President Trump’s possession of certain documents at Mar-A-Lago. Blackman presented oral argument that day based on an amicus brief we had filed, with the Landmark Legal Foundation, in March. Our goal here is to explain the lines of argument we put forward in our amicus brief , our motion , and at the hearing on Friday, June 21, 2024. [1] We will address three questions. First, does United States v. Nixon require the District Court to dismiss the former President’s motion to dismiss the indictment? Second, does the Special Counsel hold a continuous “Officer of the United States” position? And third, has Congress appropriated money to pay the Special Counsel and his staff and contractors? I. Does Nixon Require the District Court to Dismiss Former President’s Motion to Dismiss the Indictment? There are two primary legal questions raised by Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment. First, is the Special Counsel’s office or position constitutional? [2] And second, was Smith lawfully appointed to hold that position? Not surprisingly, the Special Counsel answered both questions in the affirmative. The Special Counsel’s position squarely relied upon United States v. Nixon (1974). [3] In Nixon , Special Prosecutor Jaworski sought to enforce a subpoena against President Nixon, and the Supreme Court, with certain limitations, upheld the lawfulness of the subpoena. Even if not expressly stated, the Court’s opinion implied, to some extent, that the position of special prosecutor was constitutional. In the Trump litigation in the Southern District of Florida, Special Counsel Smith analogized the position he (purportedly) holds to that held by Special Prosecutor Jaworski. To put it simply, Special Counsel Smith argued that Nixon was on-point, controlling, and remains good law—until overruled by the Supreme Court. Trump’s counsel made three arguments in response. First, that Nixon was undermined by subsequent developments in the Supreme Court’s Appointments Clause jurisprudence. Second, that the lawfulness of the special prosecutor’s position was not argued by the parties in Nixon . And third, that the Nixon Court’s implicit determination (such as it was) that the special prosecutor’s position was lawful was, at best, dicta, and so not controlling. These arguments were also advanced by an amicus brief filed by Attorneys General Meese and Mukasey, Professors Calabresi and Lawson, and Citizens United. During oral argument, we made a different argument. We assumed for the sake of argument that the parties in Nixon had raised the issue: that is, whether the special prosecutor’s position was lawful. We further assumed that the Court’s decision squarely addressed that issue. We even assumed that in addressing that issue, the decision on this point was the Court’s holding , and not dicta . Even with all of these assumptions in place, Nixon is not controlling in United States v. Trump . Why? A prior decision is only controlling, as opposed to persuasive, where the facts are the same. And here, the facts are not the same. [4] We put forward three reasons in support of our position. First , the Nixon Court repeatedly described the circumstances giving rise to the conflict as unique . [5] The Court described the special prosecutor as having “unique authority and tenure. [6] And finally, the Court plainly stated that the case was decided based on “the unique facts of this case.” [7] When the Court tells the parties, the legal community, and the country that the facts are “unique” and when it does so multiple times, the implication is that other cases are, in fact, dis similar and that the holding should not be extended to different facts at a subsequent date. Nixon was the proverbial ticket good for one ride—or perhaps, one president. Bush v. Gore could be characterized in a similar fashion. [8] Second , the Nixon Court supported its decision by expressly relying on several statutory provisions, and on regulations put into effect in 1973 by Acting Attorney General Robert Bork. [9] Although the former statutory provisions remain in effect, the latter regulations were superseded by the Ethics in Government Act (1978), which created independent counsels. The 1978 act, because it was not re-authorized by Congress, expired in 1999. Subsequently, new regulations were put into effect in 1999 by Attorney General Reno. The Nixon -Court-era regulations for special prosecutors and the modern, now-in-force Reno regulations for special counsels are not the same. For that reason alone, Nixon is not and cannot be controlling: Nixon relied upon federal regulations which are no longer in effect. [10] Third , the Nixon Court explained why the 1973 Bork regulations were significant. The Court noted: The Attorney General will not countermand or interfere with the Special Prosecutor’s decisions or actions. The Special Prosecutor will determine whether and to what extent he will inform or consult with the Attorney General about the conduct of his duties and responsibilities. In accordance with assurances given by the President to the Attorney General that the President will not exercise his Constitutional powers to effect the discharge of the Special Prosecutor or to limit the independence that he is hereby given, the Special Prosecutor will not be removed from his duties except for extraordinary improprieties on his part and without the President’s first consulting the Majority and the Minority Leaders and Chairmen and ranking Minority Members of the Judiciary Committees of the Senate and House of Representatives and ascertaining that their consensus is in accord with his proposed action. [11] Under the 1973 Bork regulations, the special prosecutor enjoyed unique and a since unmatched level of independence. The special prosecutor was beyond the ordinary removal power of the President, who, in the ordinary course, can remove high ranking Executive Branch officers of the United States at pleasure. Under the Bork regulations, the special prosecutor could not be removed even for “good cause;” rather, he could only be removed for “extraordinary improprieties.” Again, this level of independence is well beyond what appears in the Reno regulations. [12] Finally, the 1973 Bork regulations permitted removal of a special prosecutor only after the President had consulted and sought consensus from eight high ranking members of Congress. Not only do modern special counsels enjoy no such protections against removal, any effort in this manner to insulate special counsels against presidential removal would seem to be plainly forbidden by more recent developments in Supreme Court case law. [13] To put it simply, the Nixon decision, to the extent it validated the office of special prosecutor as lawful, did so based on a regulatory framework that is no longer in force and which could not be put into effect today by statute due to Bowsher v. Synar . Nixon was predicated on a unique and an unmatched level of independence vested in special prosecutors. By contrast, today’s special counsel, including Jack Smith, enjoy no such independence against removal. Thus, Nixon is not controlling. In making the argument above, we only conclude that Nixon is not controlling ; it does remain persuasive —as do other more recent Supreme Court Appointments Clause decisions. II. Does the Special Counsel hold a continuous “Officer of the United States” position? In United States v. Hartwell (1867), a clerk in the Treasury Department was charged with embezzlement. [14] The relevant federal statute applied to an “officer” who was “charged with the safe-keeping of the public money.” [15] The defendant argued that because he was not an “officer,” the indictment was defective. The Supreme Court disagreed and found that he was an “officer.” Justice Swayne, writing for the majority, offered the following definition of an office: “An office is a public station, or employment, conferred by the appointment of government. The term embraces the ideas of tenure, duration, emolument, and duties.” [16] To be sure, in Hartwell , the Court’s definition of “officer” involved only statutory construction. Hartwell ’s four-factor test would again play a role in United States v. Germaine (1879)—another statutory construction case construing “officer.” [17] Finally, in 1890, the Court would apply the Germaine-Hartwell four-factor framework in Aufformordt v. Hedden , where the Court construed the meaning of “officer” as used in the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. [18] The Court returned to this issue in Buckley v. Valeo (1976), two years after Nixon . [19] Buckley did not entirely abandon the Germaine-Hartwell four-factor test, but the Court took a different approach to the “officer” issue. The Buckley Court distinguished “employees” of the United States from “officers of the United States.” The former “are lesser functionaries subordinate to officers of the United States.” [20] By contrast, in regard to Article II “officers of the United States,” the Court explained: “We think . . . any appointee exercising significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States is an ‘Officer of the United States,’ and must , therefore, be appointed in the manner prescribed by § 2, cl. 2, of that Article.” [21] Must , not may . And more recently, in Lucia v. SEC (2018), the Court adopted Buckley ’s “significant authority” test, [22] and further held that in order for a position to be an “officer of the United States that . . . individual must occupy a ‘continuing’ position established by law.” [23] Again, must , not may . [24] The position held by Special Counsel Smith does not meet this standard. What makes a position “continuous”? In Morrison v. Olson (1988), Chief Justice Rehnquist identified three factors: Finally, appellant’s office is limited in tenure. There is concededly no time limit on the appointment of a particular counsel. Nonetheless, the office of independent counsel is “temporary” in the sense that an independent counsel is [1] appointed essentially to accomplish a single task, and [2] when that task is over the office is terminated, either by the counsel herself or by action of the Special Division. Unlike other prosecutors, [3] appellant has no ongoing responsibilities that extend beyond the accomplishment of the mission that she was appointed for and authorized by the Special Division to undertake. [25] Smith does not hold a “continuing position.” [26] First, Attorney General Garland’s order appointing Smith listed a finite set of circumstances to investigate. Indeed, if Smith wanted to conduct an investigation beyond the items enumerated in the order, he would need to seek further authorization from the Attorney General. Second, once Smith completes his investigation and prosecution of those finite set of circumstances, his position ceases to exist. By contrast, a continuing position is a position which exists independent of the current holder, and even exists if the position is vacant. As we explain in our brief, the position of Independent Counsel under the former Ethics in Government Act (1978) met this standard due to the statutory regime that created a permanent umbrella structure. That continuing position expressly provided for a successor if the current holder had been removed, died, or resigned. By contrast, Smith’s position is entirely tied to his person, and his continuing in that position. Smith’s position or “office” is entirely tied to Smith. If Smith were removed, died, or resigned, then the position he holds would cease to exist. Third, Smith has no ongoing responsibilities after the finite set of circumstances in the appointing order are resolved. Were President Biden to issue a complete pardon to Donald Trump and his co-defendants tomorrow, Smith would have nothing to do. At oral argument, Jack Smith’s counsel was pressed on the issue of continuity. He stated: We think Jack Smith’s counsel has erred here by conflating a continuous position and episodic duties. In Morrison , Chief Justice Rehnquist expressly distinguished these categories. Above, we quoted a Rehnquist passage concerning the need for a position to be continuous. In the immediately preceding paragraph, Rehnquist offered a different analysis to explain why the duties must be regular, rather than episodic. In other words, as under the Germaine-Hartwell framework, the duration or continuity of an office as opposed to the regularity of the duties of the office are distinct factors or categories. As Rehnquist stated: Second, appellant is empowered by the Act to perform only certain, limited duties . An independent counsel’s role is restricted primarily to investigation and, if appropriate, prosecution for certain federal crimes. Admittedly, the Act delegates to appellant “full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions and powers of the Department of Justice,” § 594(a), but this grant of authority does not include any authority to formulate policy for the Government or the Executive Branch, nor does it give appellant any administrative duties outside of those necessary to operate her office. The Act specifically provides that, in policy matters, appellant is to comply to the extent possible with the policies of the Department. § 594(f). [28] To be an “officer of the United States,” the position held must have a continuous duration and regular duties . For example, Germaine and Hartwell used words like “intermittent” and “occasional” to refer to the nature of the position’s “duties.” [29] Where the duties are episodic as opposed to regular, constant, and ongoing, that would indicate that the position is not an “officer” position, and is instead an employee, contractor, or agent. In Lucia , the Court held that the position (as opposed to its duties ) must be “continuing.” [30] Again, the Hartwell-Germaine test was a four-factor test, the position’s duration or continuity was one factor, and the position’s duties were a different, separate factor. The fact that the duties can be described as ongoing, as opposed to episodic, does not mean that the position itself is continuous, and will continue from its current holder to future successors. Jack Smith’s position is not a continuing one. It fails the tests mandated by Buckley , Morrison , and Lucia .  Smith does not hold an “officer of the United States” position. And as such, he cannot prosecute Trump—or anyone else for that matter. III. Has Congress appropriated money to pay the Special Counsel and his staff and contractors? According to the Special Counsel, Congress has appropriated monies to pay the Special Counsel and his staff. The Special Counsel relies upon a note to 28 U.S.C. § 591 . The note states: “A permanent indefinite appropriation is established within the Department of Justice to pay all necessary expenses of investigations and prosecutions by independent counsel appointed pursuant to the provisions of 28 U.S.C. [§] 591 et seq. or other law.” The Special Counsel’s reliance on this funding mechanism is problematic for several reasons. First, the note is not a numbered section of the United States Code. (The precise status of a “ statutory note ” is a complicated matter.) The Special Counsel argues that the note is part of the United States Code even if not a numbered provision. Second, Section 591 was part of the regime under the Ethics in Government Act (1978). Congress failed to reauthorize that act, and, as such, Section 591 expired. The Special Counsel argues that that the funding provision in the note survives Congress’s failure to reauthorize the statute with which it was codified. But it is not entirely clear how a “note” to Section 591 survives after Section 591 is no longer in effect. And third, the note is a funding mechanism for “independent counsels”—a position established by the prior independent counsel regime. The text of the note does not expressly reach today’s “special counsels,” which is how the Reno-era regulations refer to the position at issue in United States v. Trump . For the reasons we explain below, the positions of “independent counsel” and “special counsel” are not analogous. The traditional purpose of Independent Counsels (under the 1978 act) and Special Prosecutors (as in Nixon ) was to prevent a particular conflict of interest: where the DOJ would investigate itself , the President, as well as the President’s family and close confidants. There would be a conflict in such cases because the DOJ is ultimately responsible to the President. In other words, prosecutors outside the usual chain of responsibility, and who enjoyed unusual independence, were needed so that DOJ could avoid internal conflicts—the conflicts that arise where the prosecutor investigates itself and/or those to whom the prosecutor is responsible. For example, Attorney General Garland’s decision to appoint a special counsel to investigate President Biden’s document case, as well as Hunter Biden’s criminal case, fits into this paradigm. Special Counsel Jack Smith explained this approach in his opposition brief: Smith’s brief also relied on United States v. Stone (2019). [32] Stone relied upon the same GAO report discussed above, and the Stone court explained: “The [Ethics in Government Act] authorized the Attorney General to refer criminal matters involving certain high-level government officials, including the President, to a three-judge court, which would be responsible for the appointment of an independent investigating attorney.” [33] Special Counsel Smith has not been asked to investigate the DOJ, the President, the President’s family or his close confidants. Special Counsel Smith indicted Trump after he was out of office for more than a year. At that time, he was not President—he was a former President. In other words, he was a private citizen. Indeed, not only was he charged after he was no longer President, but the charges in the Florida indictment relate exclusively to conduct that took place after he was President. As Smith explained in his own brief, the scope of “independent counsel” in Section 591’s note does not permit the Attorney General to fund any prosecution at his discretion via independent counsels, but only those “independent counsels” where the DOJ would face an internal conflict associated with the DOJ investigating a “high ranking government official.” Given that Trump was not a “high ranking,” “high-level,” or any type of government official at the time he was indicted, and that the alleged conduct also took place after he was out of office, the DOJ faces no internal conflict. In these circumstances, the funding mechanism in Section 591’s note cannot be used to pay Smith, his employees, and his contractors. And if this argument is correct, all work by the Special Counsel’s office must cease—except, perhaps, that associated with making filings for reconsideration and appeal. We take no position here as to whether Smith’s continued work, particularly if Judge Cannon should rule against him, would trigger criminal or civil liability under the Anti-Deficiency Act, federal or state RICO, or other state offenses. Moreover, if Judge Cannon rules that Smith is not in fact a duly-appointed officer under federal law, should he be sued in state court, then any attempt to invoke the federal officer removal statute would be frustrated by Judge Cannon’s extant ruling. Indeed, such a removal action may automatically be referred to Judge Cannon’s courtroom as a related matter. When pressed on this point, the Special Counsel stated that if the District Court should determine that the funding mechanism in Section 591’s note is not available to fund Jack Smith and his office, the DOJ is sure that other statutes provide a lawful means to fund the Special Counsel. However, counsel for the Special Counsel made reference to no specific federal statute that could lawfully fund Jack Smith and his office. To us, this sort of abstract “defense,” absent specificity, seemed highly irregular. [34] United States v. Trump poses more than a few threshold legal questions. We do not suggest that all the answers to those questions line up neatly in former President Trump’s favor. But we do say that those lines of argument supporting a dismissal of the indictment are substantially more than frivolous; indeed, we believe that several of those arguments have considerable merit. These issues are of the variety regularly seen by federal courts—they are the sort of issues and arguments that reasonable minds may disagree. And unless we are mistaken, that is also, now, the position of the Special Counsel. [35] * Seth Barrett Tillman is an associate professor in the Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology, Ireland / Scoil an Dlí ages na Coireolaíochta Ollscoil Mhá Nuad. ** Josh Blackman holds the Centennial Chair of Constitutional Law at the South Texas College of Law Houston, and the author of An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know . We thank the editors and reviewers at HJLPP: Per Curiam . All errors remain ours. [1] Brief of Professor Seth Barrett Tillman and Landmark Legal Foundation as Amici Curiae in Support of Defendant Trump’s Motion to Dismiss the Indictment, United States v. Trump, Case No. 9:23-cr-80101-AMC-BER (S.D. Fla. Mar. 21, 2024), ECF No. 410, 2024 WL 1214430, https://ssrn.com/abstract=4755563, https://tinyurl.com/3kju33w4; Motion for Leave of Professor Seth Barrett Tillman and Landmark Legal Foundation to Participate in Oral Argument as Amici Curiae in Support of Defendant Trump’s Motion to Dismiss the Indictment [ECF No. 326], United States v. Trump, Case No. 9:23-cr-80101-AMC-BER (S.D. Fla. May 30, 2024), ECF No. 590, 2024 WL 2833495 https://ssrn.com/abstract=4837841, https://tinyurl.com/3kju33w4; Trs. of Oral Arguments (June 21, 2024), ECF No. 635, 647–50, https://tinyurl.com/3kju33w4. The motion was decided. See United States v. Trump, Case No. 9:23-cr-80101-AMC, 2024 WL 3404555 (S.D. Fla. July 15, 2024), ECF No. 672, https://tinyurl.com/hk4z7e76. [2] See U.S. Const. art. II, § 2. [3] 418 U.S. 683 (1974). [4] See United States v. Johnson, 921 F.3d 991, 1001 (11th Cir. 2019) (William Pryor, J.) (en banc) (“Although Johnson argues that Terry is inconsistent with the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment and that we should apply it narrowly to ‘limit[] the damage,’ we must apply Supreme Court precedent neither narrowly nor liberally—only faithfully.”); Jefferson County v. Acker, 210 F.3d 1317, 1320 (11th Cir. 2000) (“There is, however, a difference between following a precedent and extending a precedent.”). [5] See 418 U.S. at 691 (“unique”), 697 (“uniqueness of the setting”). [6] Id . at 694. [7] Id . at 697 (emphasis added). [8] 531 U.S. 98, 109 (2000) (“Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances . . . .”). [9] See Nixon , 481 U.S. at 694–95, 694 n.8 (citing 38 Fed. Reg. 30738–39, as amended by 38 Fed. Reg. 32805). [10] See Id. at 695 (characterizing the 1973 Bork regulations as having “the force of law”); cf. Allapattah Services, Inc. v. Exxon Corp., 362 F.3d 739, 765 (11th Cir. 2004) (suggesting that a Supreme Court holding is no longer controlling “where specific statutory language that had previously been interpreted by the Court is amended . . . .”). [11] Nixon , 418 U.S. at 694 n.8 (quoting the underlying regulation). [12] See 28 C.F.R. 600.7(d) (1999) (permitting a special counsel’s removal for “good cause”). [13] See, e.g ., Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714 (1986). [14] 73 U.S. 385, 387 (1867). [15] Id at 390. [16] Id . at 393. [17] 99 U.S. 508 (1879). [18] 137 U.S. 310 (1890). [19] 424 U.S. 1, 126 (1976); see supra note 3 (citing United States v. Nixon ). [20] Id. at 126 n.162 [21] Id . at 126 (emphases added). [22] 585 U.S. 237, 245 (2018). [23] Id. at 245 (emphasis added). [24] See also Id. at 269 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (characterizing Buckley’s “significant authority” test and the Lucia majority’s continuing position test as “two prerequisites to officer status” (emphasis added)). [25] Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 672 (1988). [26] Lucia , 585 U.S. at 245 (quotation marks omitted). [27] Tr. of Oral Argument, 155:13–20 (June 21, 2024). [28] Morrison , 487 U.S. at 671–72 (emphasis added). [29] United States v. Germaine, 99 U.S. 508, 512 (1879); United States v. Hartwell, 73 U.S. 385, 393 (1867); see also In re Grand Jury Investigation , 315 F. Supp. 3d 602, 644 (D.D.C. 2018) (explaining that the special counsel’s work or duties are “not occasional, intermittent, or episodic” because the duties remain “ongoing and regular until complete”). [30] Lucia , 585 U.S. at 237. [31] Smith Brief at 20 (Mar. 7, 2024), ECF No. 374 (citing GAO, Special Counsel and Permanent Indefinite Appropriation , B-302582, 2004 WL 2213560, at *4 (Comp. Gen. Sept. 30, 2004)) (underscore added). [32] 394 F. Supp. 3d 1 (D.D.C. 2019). [33] Id. at 17 (emphasis added); see also Tr. of Oral Argument, 60 (June 21, 2024) (Pearce on behalf of the Special Counsel: “It is inherent in the effort to, on the one hand, ensure that—whether we call it an independent counsel or a Special Counsel—has adequate independence when a situation presents itself that requires the avoidance of conflict or somebody who can operate outside of the typical Justice Department, sort of, operations because it’s investigating the Justice Department itself or it’s investigating some sort of high-ranking or high-level political official .” (emphasis added)). [34] Tr. of Oral Argument, 44 (June 21, 2024) (Pearce on behalf of Special Counsel: “[T]o the extent that the Court is seriously entertaining the notion that there is a constitutional or funding problem, I actually think it would behoove the Court and the parties to have some additional briefing.”). [35] Tr. of Oral Argument, 46:7–8 (June 24, 2024) (“To be candid with the Court, we find [Tillman’s position] to be not a frivolous [one], but a . . . .”). Post a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed . About Harvard JLPP The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy is published three times annually by the Harvard Society for Law & Public Policy, Inc., an organization of Harvard Law School students. The Journal is one of the most widely circulated law reviews and the nation’s leading forum for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship. The late Stephen Eberhard and former Senator and Secretary of Energy E. Spencer Abraham founded the journal forty years ago and many journal alumni have risen to prominent legal positions in the government and at the nation’s top law firms. Current Issue Submissions Permissions The Roundtable CGC Symposium Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress Legal scholar Patricia Williams explores race, bodily integrity and law in ‘The Miracle of the Black Leg’ Search Search Patricia Williams, a distinguished professor of law and humanities at Northeastern University and a renowned scholar, releases a new book of essays. Copy Link Link Copied! Patricia Williams humbly compares herself to a bird that finds random shiny objects and brings them to the nest in the form of notes, newspaper clippings and photographs. “I go after it, write a paragraph about it, and then I string it together like a necklace,” she says. “I’m completely somebody who only understands the world by writing things down.”  The result is Williams’ compelling and accessible writings that, like stained glass, join reflections on pivotal contemporary topics, critical and literary theories, empirical and sociological research, and personal narrative with classical legal doctrine.     “All of my writing is informed by my training as a lawyer,” says Williams, a celebrated legal scholar, distinguished professor of law and humanities at Northeastern University, and author of numerous books, essays and articles for leading American publications. This summer, lovers of literary journalism and legal thought will be able to find out what has been on Williams’ mind recently by reading her new book, “The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of Law.”  Published by The New Press and released in June, the book consists of 14 chapters, or essays, both new and partially published previously in Williams’ opinion column in The Nation magazine. As an expert in contract law and a descendant of enslaved people, Williams continues to explore and expose the contradictions between the U.S. Constitution, a political ideal, and the jurisprudence of contract, an agreement between one side that makes the offer and another that accepts it. “That’s something I revisit in everything I do,” Williams says. “At a moment when we’ve become more and more suspicious of any kind of regulation, even constitutional norms, my great concern is that when we enter the domain of pure contract, when everything is governed by contract, it is a very narrow moral universe of responsibility. … We really lose something in terms of responsibility to anybody other than ourselves, and this collective sense of responsibility has a role in the core values of respect, of regard for one another, of dignity.” Featured Stories  ‘AI will transform every aspect of our life,’ Gov. Healey says at artificial intelligence task force meeting at Northeastern Looking for cheese plate inspiration and recipes? This food stylist, connoisseur and influencer built a global community Donald Trump ‘has a new lease on life.’ Can a traumatic event like surviving a shooting change a person’s personality? Why the Boston Celtics’ sale that could top $4.7 billion signals a booming market for sports franchises The book opens with a chapter that has given the volume its puzzling and powerful title and front cover. It was inspired by a reproduction of a religious painting that a student brought to Williams several years ago, knowing it would be of interest to her.  The image depicted a sick white person laying on a bed with two men standing over him, one checking his pulse. The men have golden halos around their heads, while the sick man’s left leg looks black and the bedsheet is sprinkled with blood. Depending on how one’s eye wanders around the detail-filled painting, a dead body on the floor beside the bed comes last into focus. It is the body of an unconscious dark-skinned man, missing his left leg. The image made a strong impression on Williams. It took her some time to find what exactly was depicted in the painting, she says, but it evoked a number of hypotheses and associations and even penetrated Williams’ dreams. “It was more than just a puzzle or something that I didn’t know the history of. It had an emotional valence for me that I had to work out,” she says. The essay touches upon objectification of human beings, one’s autonomy and ownership over one’s organs and extremities, social status of people, and contracts that protect interests of private parties versus constitutional rights. Williams says the book accounts for those who don’t fit in, critiques the jurisprudence of contract and, implicitly, questions some recent Supreme Court decisions.  “What’s happened in the last few years … is so different from any of our past jurisprudence that I’m really worried. I really am worried because I think there’s been an abandon of the concept of precedent,” Williams says. “In the last five to seven years, there has been an inability to rely on the Supreme Court having a certain sense of continuity, and that’s worrisome.” The book will be interesting to people who studied law, Williams says, but also to people who are concerned about such topics as bioethics, ethics of artificial intelligence, critical race theory, eugenic ideas in current political debates, issues of public good versus private concern, and putting a price on everything, including beauty.  The last chapter, titled “Gathering the Ghosts,” Williams says, is her favorite part of the book.  “It is a reflection on the thing that always inspires me,” she says. As she prepares to donate her family’s archive to a library, Williams mulls over how future generations will see her forefathers and foremothers, what family stories she should censor and how she can “render into existence” those whose photos she doesn’t have. Williams will be discussing her book with Régine Michelle Jean-Charles, director of Africana Studies at Northeastern, at the Frugal Bookstore in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston at 5:30 p.m. on July 18. On July 29, Williams will be discussing “The Miracle of the Black Leg” at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge at 7 p.m. Arts & Entertainment Recent Stories Meg's Essay AccessPrep specializes in LSAT preparation and law school admissions consulting, boasting a 97% success rate in getting students into their top two choice law schools. We help students secure substantial scholarships by providing expert strategies and guidance throughout the application process. Our creative writing experts craft unique personal statements and essays, ensuring applications stand out to admissions committees. We also offer personalized career guidance through connections with top lawyers, helping students navigate their career paths effectively. Successful Harvard Law School Essay: Statement of Perspective I moved to Graz, Austria as a foreign exchange student in January 2022. Two weeks after my arrival, I sat in a train compartment with a Ukrainian family fleeing the Russian invasion. The family’s travel itinerary was written in German, a language foreign to them.Familiar with the overwhelming nature of Austrian transportation, I offered to help. I translated the German instructions into English, explained the route, and wrote down important German words to know when traveling. After we clarified the itinerary, the family showed me photos of their home in Ukraine, and I told them about my life in Oklahoma. They informed me of their plans to relocate, and we compared the reception of refugees in Austria to that of the United States. We established an immediate connection as we all navigated a new country quite different from home. I was a student at the University of Graz, where I enrolled in courses within the Department of Law. In International Law, I analyzed the global response to the Russian invasion and studied the available legal remedies for human rights abuses. For my semester project, I presented on the role of international institutions in promoting human rights during times of conflict. Studying the relief provided by legal institutions solidified my choice to pursue a career in law. After returning home, I worked at an immigration law firm in Oklahoma City. I maintained the firm’s physical and digital files, assisted the staff attorneys, and wrote asylum, citizenship, and legal residency briefs. The first time I filed an asylum application, I had just started my position at the firm. My boss called while I was driving home to explain that a family of five was seeking asylum. They entered the country fifty-one weeks before contacting the firm, and to apply for asylum without proving extraordinary or changed circumstances, we needed to file the application in one week. With two of our staff attorneys on leave to study for the bar exam, I was responsible for the case. I met the family, recorded their story, and explained what the process entailed. I asked them to write affidavits, and we contacted their family members for letters of support. Over the next week, I completed the asylum application. USCIS will return a petition for any discrepancy, so I rigorously checked that the information was correct. I researched country conditions, communicated with a translator, and sifted through affidavits to write the brief detailing their credible fear of persecution. After giving it to my boss for review, the application was successfully filed before the one-year deadline. While at the firm, I managed several petitions under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). I filed the VAWA application for a client seeking legal residency in the United States independent of her husband. The client reported physical violence and emotional abuse, which was confirmed by medical records and a psychological evaluation. The client also disclosed her survival of an attempted kidnapping in her country of birth. I developed an understanding of the law as an instrument for justice and protection of human rights.' Returning to the country was not an option, and neither was remaining with her abusive partner in the U.S. I asked her to provide evidence of abuse, and in the following weeks, I analyzed text messages, phone bills, and medical records to write the VAWA brief. I filed the petition, and I am hopeful that it will be approved within the year. The cases I handled at the firm were sensitive, but assisting clients as they found safety in the United States was rewarding. I developed an understanding of the law as an instrument for justice and protection of human rights. I seek a formal legal education so that I may better serve survivors of gender-based violence. Professional Review by Access Prep This essay stands out because of its compelling story and clear demonstration of the applicant's dedication to law and human rights. Here are the key elements that make it successful: Engaging Anecdote: The essay starts with a vivid scene where the applicant helps a Ukrainian family fleeing the Russian invasion. This grabs your attention and showcases the applicant's empathy and resourcefulness. Cultural and Linguistic Adaptability: The applicant's ability to navigate a foreign country and language highlights their adaptability and quick thinking. Academic and Practical Integration: The essay skillfully combines academic pursuits with practical experiences. Studying international law and human rights at the University of Graz provided a solid foundation, which was then applied in real-world scenarios at an immigration law firm. Responsibility and Impact: Handling a critical asylum case under tight deadlines, especially as a newcomer to the firm, illustrates the applicant's ability to take responsibility and achieve results under pressure. Detailed Case Work: Managing petitions under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) provides concrete examples of the applicant's hands-on experience. Personal and Professional Growth: The essay shows personal growth and a clear path towards a legal career focused on human rights. Assisting clients as they found safety in the United States was rewarding and helped the applicant develop an understanding of the law as an instrument for justice and protection of human rights. By combining personal anecdotes with professional achievements, the essay effectively conveys the applicant's passion for law, commitment to human rights, and readiness for a rigorous legal education. The Crimson's news and opinion teams—including writers, editors, photographers, and designers—were not involved in the production of this article. 470 COMMENTS 10 Successful Harvard Application Essays Successful Harvard 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. 10 Successful Harvard Application Essays Successful Harvard Essay by Abigail Mack Abigail gained national attention after reading her application essay on TikTok earlier this year, with over 19.9 million views on the first video. 10 Successful Harvard Application Essays Successful Harvard Essay: 'When Life Doesn't Gives You Lemons' ... 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The Largest Collection of Successful College Application Essays Available in One Volume These are the essays that helped their authors gain admission to Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Wellesley, Pomona, and other outstanding schools—followed by invaluable comments by experts in admissions, placement, and ... What We Did and Did Not Argue in United States v. Trump Download PDF What We Did and Did Not Argue in United States v.Trump Seth Barrett Tillman* Josh Blackman**. Editor's Note: This essay had already been submitted to the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy before United States v.Trump was decided by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida on July 15, 2024. The authors have decided to publish this essay without ... New Book "The Miracle of the Black Leg" Explores Race & Law Why the Boston Celtics' sale that could top $4.7 billion signals a booming market for sports franchises July 12, 2024 ... or essays, both new and partially published previously in Williams' opinion column in The Nation magazine. ... Williams will be discussing "The Miracle of the Black Leg" at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge at 7 p.m. Meg's Essay We also offer personalized career guidance through connections with top lawyers, helping students navigate their career paths effectively. ... Successful Harvard Law School Essay: Statement of ... assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review speech thesis