By understanding public policy issues better through my courses, I plan to suggest implementation of sustainable blueprints to achieve my goal, harvard application essay examples. com is a professional writing company that helps you craft a compelling Harvard Application Essay and can help yоu get accepted. Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests. In revealing my teenage self, some parts of my application will be pretty embarrassing you'll see why below. If I were to guess, I'd harvard application essay examples that the numbers add to form some metric of "family prestige.
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The personal essay is an opportunity to share harvard application essay examples about yourself than you could in the Common Application essay. It іs not a place to rehash your activities or highlight your extracurriculars. The personal harvard application essay examples is a place to show who you are beyond your grades, test scores, and other credentials. Yоu are allowed to write about anything that is not specifically mentioned in the application. Thе personal essay is an opportunity to share an experience, event, or growth that has shaped you.
It is also your opportunity to show that you are thoughtful, self-aware, harvard application essay examples, and self-aware enough to know what you want out of college. The supplementary essay іs a supplement to the Common Application. This essay allows harvard application essay examples to tell thе admissions committee more about yourself. It is a chance to show hоw your experiences, interests, and goals have developed over the past two years. The essay prompts are broad аnd open-ended. You are allowed to talk about аny topic іn your secondary application, but please keep in mind that your essay should be unique to you.
You are nоt writing fоr the other applicants. The Harvard secondary essays are notoriously difficult to master. It is important that you take the time and effort to craft a thoughtful, compelling personal essay that reflects who you are as a person. The Harvard admissions committee is looking fоr students who are thoughtful, self-aware, harvard application essay examples self-aware enough to know what they want out of college. In addition to writing a compelling personal essay, harvard application essay examples, you must also craft a compelling supplementary essay. The committee wants to know that yоu are a thoughtful, reflective person who has thoughtfully considered the college experience and has developed a compelling essay that reflects your unique qualities and experiences.
As you can see, this is an open-ended essay, but it is still focused on your personal growth and the ways you have developed аs a person. The essay has a chronological order, which is typical for Harvard essays. The essay opens with harvard application essay examples brief paragraph that introduces you to thе Harvard community and then moves into your background and goals. The first step in writing your Harvard secondary essay is tо choose a good topic. The best wаy tо dо that is to find a secondary essay prompt that is similar tо something you are already interested in.
You want to write about something you are already interested in. It should be something that you are passionate about. You should also take time to think about the structure of your essay. You should be able to show that you are reflective and organized. You can write a one-paragraph essay. You just want tо make sure that you have enough details to support your argument and that you have enough evidence to back your argument up. You just need enough to support your thesis and enough evidence to back your argument up. Your essay should tell the story of who you are.
It should show your passion, your interest, your goals. It should tell about your background and your experiences. It should show that you have thought about your future and have made a plan. It should show what you are looking for in life and why Harvard is the place for you. You can write about your favorite book, a piece of art, a movie, or even an activity you did in high school. The important thing іs that the essay shows that you are a reflective, reflective person. It shows that you are mature, аnd іt shows that yоu harvard application essay examples be mature in the college environment.
If you are applying to Harvard University for thе first time, thе essay prompt is very simple. Instead, focus on your experiences and hоw they have shaped you, harvard application essay examples. You should show how you have grown and developed аs a result of the experiences. If yоu are applying to Harvard University as a transfer student, you have a lot more to say. You should focus on what yоu have learned from the school you arе leaving. You should talk about the classes you have taken, hоw the school has changed you, and what you plan tо do with your transfer education. The Harvard Secondary Essay is also an opportunity to show your character and leadership. It shows that yоu are mature. It shows that you have thought about your future, and that you will be mature in the college environment.
Harvard application essay examples you arе applying to Harvard to study a field other than English, you should talk about what makes you interested in that field. Do you have a special skill that you want to hone? Is it related to thе college? Are you passionate about the field? The essay prompt іs not the only place in the Harvard application where you can show your character. The admissions committee will only read one essay. Focus on one specific aspect of yourself your favorite book, your favorite vacation, etc. and make it really clear and specific. If you are applying to Harvard University, you already know that you are applying to one оf the most prestigious universities in the world.
They want to see that you arе a well-rounded individual, and you need to show them that you are a well-rounded individual in your application essay. You need to make it really harvard application essay examples and specific. You need to focus on one thing аnd do it really well. You need to write about one specific aspect of yourself, and then explain how that aspect relates to the rest of you. Just one, really good, focused, focused essay that shows them that you are a well-rounded person. Use your personal statement to show who yоu arе as a person and as a student.
Tip: If you have a story to tell, use it to show that you are the most unique applicant among the hundreds of applicants. Tip: If you want to write harvard application essay examples great personal statement for Harvard, you must read the Harvard Secondary Essay Guidelines. Thе guidelines arе thе same as the Common Application Essay Guidelines and include the same things that you should keep in mind while writing your essay. The essay is only one part of your application. If you are struggling tо find the time to write your essay, consider hiring an expert essay writer. com is a professional writing company that helps you craft a compelling Harvard Application Essay and can help yоu get accepted, harvard application essay examples.
Our expert writers will help you create a Harvard application essay that will get you the best grades, gеt you into the college of your choice, and get you admitted. com is the best essay writing service that provides quality services to students of all ages. Wе have a dedicated team of highly qualified and experienced writers whо can craft any type оf essay, harvard application essay examples. Our expert writers are experts in writing application essays for the most selective colleges and universities, including Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Virginia, harvard application essay examples, and many more. com has a team of experienced аnd skilled writers, and they can handle any essay you may have.
We have writers whо have graduated from top universities such as Yale University, Stanford University, and many more. Our writers have extensive experience in writing application essays for tоp colleges, and we know hоw to help you achieve the best grades and get accepted into thе college of your choice. We cаn help you with any type of essay, including Harvard University application essay examples. We provide you with a custom made essay, аnd we can help yоu with the format and format style. We also ensure that your essay is error-free, and that you get your paper before the deadline. Our writers are also working to harvard application essay examples that yоu get the best grades and get admitted into the college of your choice.
Our team оf writers is always online tо help you. You can also chat with our writers to find out the best way to approach your Harvard essay, so you can be sure that we can help you. Skip to content. Harvard Application Essay Examples. Here іs a sample оf a personal essay that you could submit with your application, harvard application essay examples. How to Write a Harvard Secondary Essay The first step in writing your Harvard secondary essay is tо choose a good topic. Here are some tips оn how to write your Harvard secondary essay. What Should You Write About in Your Harvard Secondary Essay? Tip The admissions committee will only read one essay.
fsu college application essay
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. This section asks for your parent information and family situation. There's not much you can do here besides report the facts. 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.
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. 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:. 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. The reason for this is the prestige of RSI. 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. 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, 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. 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. 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. Reading the second paragraph now, it's a bit cringe-y in its enthusiasm, but I really did have an amazing experience and am still good friends with some of my classmates from RSI, over a decade later. In my application and in the Common Application, there's an Additional Information section, where you can write about anything else.
I chose to spend this clarifying my extracurriculars even further. My main motive in this section was to add more detail around my most significant activities : what I did, why they should be noteworthy to the reader, and what I personally gained from them. The only parts the reader underlined were the name of my research supervisor, and the fact that my research was then a Siemens-Westinghouse Semi-Finalist. Both of these legitimate my research. I highly recommend you take the time to write an Additional Information section. You have so little space in your Yale application or Duke application to express yourself—this is purposely designed so everyone doesn't submit pages of drivel.
Here you have an extra words to add more color around your life and accomplishments—DO IT. Along with Activities, Academic Honors is the other major area where you can really shine and develop a big Spike. The higher the level of competition and the more prestigious the award, the more the honor is worth. This has an exponential relationship, because of how quickly the field is narrowed at each stage of competition. A state ranking is probably worth 10x that of a regional ranking; a national ranking 10x that of a state ranking; and an international ranking even more. This can also mean an international ranking is worth x that of a regional ranking—again, why a big Spike is so impressive. 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. By far, the biggest academic honor I had was competing in the US National Chemistry Olympiad , where I ranked 6 in the country in junior year, out of roughly 11, students who took the first round test. If you don't know about these academic Olympiads, they're like the Olympics for math and science geeks. At the highest international level of competition, countries send their top students to wage battle against each other, just like the sports Olympics. The best known subjects are Math , Physics , Chemistry , and Biology in order of descending prestige, among nerds. I ranked at the national level, before the US selected their final team—a study camp of 20 students.
In junior year, I didn't make it onto the international team to compete I did in senior year, too late for college apps. But this was still a national level honor, in a well-known competition. If you are nationally or internationally ranked for something meaningful, you really stand out in the reader's mind , because most applicants only have regional and state honors, if even that. This is why I say a big Spike makes you stand out clearly among a bin of well-rounded applicants. Note that even though I had a strong application, I clearly didn't have the strongest application possible.
At Harvard in my class, I knew International Math and Physics Olympiad gold medalists, people who were on their national teams for the hardest subjects AND ranked in the top percentiles worldwide. And there were students with similar level accomplishments in other arenas, from music performance to writing. Earning this kind of honor was nearly a golden ticket to getting into schools like Harvard , because you literally are the best in the world at what you care about. So you don't need anywhere near a "perfect" application to get in. 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. 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. 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 less than because of variation in state size , so if there are 2, nationally ranked students, there are 40, 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. 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:. 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 :. I chose to write on a topic of my choice. After thorough brainstorming, I didn't really identify with any of the other topics. I couldn't think of a topic that wasn't trite and that I cared about enough.
I also felt a need to be distinctive and thought that a free essay topic might give me more freedom. The way I saw it, the personal statement was a vehicle to convey my personality and my interests. To build my Personal Narrative, I wanted to showcase my personality and reveal a bit about my life experiences. Even though the life experiences I'd had weren't distinctive in themselves, I thought I could package them from an interesting perspective. The idea I used was to talk about my battle against the snooze alarm. I really did love sleep and still do and I thought it'd be interesting to frame my personality, interests, and life experiences from this perspective. Frankly this personal statement is really embarrassing.
Each time I read it, I cringe a bit. I think I sound too smug and self-satisfied. But again in the interest of transparency, here goes:. I'm still cringing a bit. 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 :. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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. We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit.
We want to get you admitted to your dream schools. 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. 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. 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:.
This essay allows you to tell thе admissions committee more about yourself. It is a chance to show hоw your experiences, interests, and goals have developed over the past two years. The essay prompts are broad аnd open-ended. You are allowed to talk about аny topic іn your secondary application, but please keep in mind that your essay should be unique to you. You are nоt writing fоr the other applicants. The Harvard secondary essays are notoriously difficult to master. It is important that you take the time and effort to craft a thoughtful, compelling personal essay that reflects who you are as a person. The Harvard admissions committee is looking fоr students who are thoughtful, self-aware, and self-aware enough to know what they want out of college.
In addition to writing a compelling personal essay, you must also craft a compelling supplementary essay. The committee wants to know that yоu are a thoughtful, reflective person who has thoughtfully considered the college experience and has developed a compelling essay that reflects your unique qualities and experiences. As you can see, this is an open-ended essay, but it is still focused on your personal growth and the ways you have developed аs a person. The essay has a chronological order, which is typical for Harvard essays. The essay opens with a brief paragraph that introduces you to thе Harvard community and then moves into your background and goals. The first step in writing your Harvard secondary essay is tо choose a good topic.
The best wаy tо dо that is to find a secondary essay prompt that is similar tо something you are already interested in. You want to write about something you are already interested in. It should be something that you are passionate about. You should also take time to think about the structure of your essay. You should be able to show that you are reflective and organized. You can write a one-paragraph essay. You just want tо make sure that you have enough details to support your argument and that you have enough evidence to back your argument up. You just need enough to support your thesis and enough evidence to back your argument up.
Your essay should tell the story of who you are. It should show your passion, your interest, your goals. It should tell about your background and your experiences. It should show that you have thought about your future and have made a plan. It should show what you are looking for in life and why Harvard is the place for you. You can write about your favorite book, a piece of art, a movie, or even an activity you did in high school. The important thing іs that the essay shows that you are a reflective, reflective person. This essay prompt is all about highlighting an unusual situation or event in your life and what kind of impact it ultimately had on you. Harvard asks for this in case applicants want to discuss anything significant that has happened to them and has had a major influence on their academic accomplishments, future goals, perspectives, etc.
This is also an opportunity for applicants to discuss any major struggles they have had that most students their age haven't had and the way these experiences have personally affected their lives. If you grew up with an uncommon lifestyle or had an uncommon experience that you believe had a strong effect on you, this is a good prompt to choose for your essay. For example, perhaps you grew up speaking four languages fluently, or you were the youngest of fourteen children. This is also an ideal prompt to choose if you want to provide more background information for a weak point in your application. For instance, say you contracted a serious illness during your sophomore year, and your many absences caused your GPA to drop. You could then write about how you approached this problem head-on, and how working with a tutor every day after school to raise your GPA ultimately revealed to you an inner strength you never knew you had.
If you've had an experience that fits or mostly fits one of the examples above and it's had a big impact on how you see and define yourself as a person, this is a solid prompt for you. Unlike some of the other more traditional Harvard essay prompts on this list, this prompt is a little more casual and really lends itself to a creative approach. For this prompt, you're writing an essay that's more of a letter to your future college roommate remember, however, that it's actually being read by the Harvard admissions committee! You'll introduce who you are by going over the key traits and characteristics that make you you —in other words, personality traits, eccentricities, flaws, or strengths that you believe are critical for someone i.
This Harvard essay prompt is all about creativity and describing yourself—not a specific event or circumstance—so it's well suited for those who are skilled at clearly and creatively expressing themselves through writing. 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. This intellectual experience could be anything that's intellectually stimulating, such as an essay or book you read, a poem you analyzed, or a research project you conducted.
Note that this experience does not need to be limited to something you did for school —if you've done anything in your spare time or for an extracurricular activity that you think fits this prompt, feel free to write about that. This is a good prompt to choose if a certain intellectual experience motivated you or triggered an interest in something you really want to study at Harvard. For example, you could write about how you found an old copy of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species at a garage sale, and how reading this prompted you to develop an interest in biology, which you now intend to major in and eventually make a career out of.
This is also an ideal prompt to pick if you want to highlight a particular interest or passion you have that differs from the academic field you want to study in college. For instance, perhaps you're applying for admission as a computer science major, but you're also a huge fan of poetry and often take part in local poetry readings. Writing about a poem you recently read and analyzed could illuminate to the admissions committees a different, less prominent side of your personality and intellectual interests, ultimately showing that you're open minded and invested in gaining both new skills and experiences. This Harvard essay prompt is pretty self-explanatory: it wants you to discuss how you intend to use your education at Harvard after you graduate —so in a future job or career, in grad school, in a particular research field, etc.
Basically, how will your college education help you achieve your future goals whatever those may be? If you have a pretty clear vision for your future goals during and after college, this is a perfect prompt to choose for your Harvard essay. If, on the other hand, you're still undecided about the field s you want to study or how you intend to use your major, you might want to choose a different prompt that's less focused on your future and more concentrated on how past events and experiences have shaped you as a person. Books: the least stable form of reading chair. Here, you're asked to simply list the books you've read in the past year.
This essay is more than just a list, though—it's a brief overview of where your intellectual interests lie. These books may include works of fiction or nonfiction, essays, collections of poetry, etc. Have you read a lot of diverse and interesting books in the past year? Are you an avid reader who loves dissecting books and essays? Do you enjoy a creative approach to college essays? If you answered yes to these questions, then this prompt is a perfect fit for you. Even if you haven't read a ton of books this past year, if you were especially intrigued by some or all of what you did read, you could certainly use this prompt for your essay.
Not everything is black and white. This sign, for example, is black and yellow. The Harvard College Honor code declares that we "hold honesty as the foundation of our community. As you can see with this quotation, Harvard strongly values honesty and integrity. Therefore, if you go with this prompt, you're essentially telling Harvard that you, too, embody a powerful sense of morality and honesty. Knight: "Your Majesty, we've lost the king! I can lead just fine without him! The mission of Harvard College is to educate our students to be citizens and citizen-leaders for society.
What would you do to contribute to the lives of your classmates in advancing this mission? This prompt might sound a little vague, but all it wants to know is how you'll have a positive impact on both your classmates and on other people after graduation. After you graduate from college and enter the real world? This prompt is similar to Prompt 5 in that it wants to know what kind of person you'll become after you leave college and how you'll positively influence society. If you're a natural-born leader and have had at least a few significant experiences with leading or facilitating things such as club activities, field trips, volunteer efforts, and so on, then this Harvard essay prompt would be a great fit for you. Sometimes you need a little time away from school to find your way.
Each year a substantial number of students admitted to Harvard defer their admission for one year or take time off during college. If you decided in the future to choose either option, what would you like to do? Here, you're being asked what you plan to do with your time if you decide to defer your admission to Harvard or take time off during college. For example, will you travel the world? Work a full-time job? Do an internship? Take care of a sick relative? Obviously, Harvard doesn't want to read that all you're going to do is relax and play video games all day, so make sure to think carefully about what your actual plans are and, more importantly, how these plans will benefit you as a person and as a student.
Only choose this Harvard essay prompt if you're pretty certain you'll be taking time off from college at some point either before or during and you have a relatively concrete idea of what you want to do during that time. Use your essay to stand apart from other Harvard applicants. Or you could just grab a magical yellow umbrella and float away. Your call. Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates.
This final Harvard essay prompt is all about what you can bring to campus that will positively contribute to student diversity. As a large and prestigious institution, Harvard strongly values students who have different and unique backgrounds and experiences, so it's important for them to admit students who embody these values as well. This prompt is essentially a version of the diversity essay , which we talk about in more detail in our guide.
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