Harvard Admitted Students Weekend = free?!

Passionfruit11
Mon, 07 Feb 2011 18:19:40 +0000

@homer314–while it pains me to deny your challenge, I’m sorry to say that I don’t feel comfortable revealing many more details over the internet. What I’ve provided is a nice summary, but I will share a bit more about my essays. (The people at Yale said they were excellent, so if that’s not justification then I don’t know what is.)

For the main commonapp one, I wrote about my experiences in Germany. I stayed in a really small town over the summer, and adored it, so that’s why I wrote about it. I didn’t write about German-American relations or anything remotely erudite in order to sound intelligent. Rather, I wrote around 500 words about my host-brothers and I playing games. Sure, I added some stylistic details and made it pretty profound towards the end by generalizing how my relationship to them was hindered and aided by our cultural differences, but it was largely not designed to “impress” smart people.

My supplement was my favorite. I wrote about my family’s farm and what that means to me. About how I used to hate it, but now appreciate it for the roots it gave me (sense an analogy… )

So, I think my essays worked so well because they were 1). extremely sincere 2). not trying to impress anyone 3). not common topics 4). quite literally, not one other person could have written them.