College Essay系列（五十六）：2025哈佛成功文书

2025哈佛成功文书（1）

 

最早从2017-18申请季，在每季结束的7-8月份，哈佛校报Crimson都会PO出十篇当年的成功文书，这个网页的URL，https://www.thecrimson.com/topic/sponsored-successful-harvard-essays-20xx/ ，把年号换上即可访问到这些网址。到了2025年，校报编辑部做了reorg了，《成功文书》划在经营团队Business Board版面之下，网址换为https://www.business.thecrimson.com/10-successful-harvard-essays-2025。

Business Board？不了解的同学看这里>>>

Business Board是哈佛校报的业务经营团队，不是编辑内容团队。这里有14名Board Members，均为二年级以上的本科生。团队以校报的“50万美元年度预算”，“创新并经心”地“运营并生长着百万美元业务”。可以看出，Crimson净利润达50万美元以上，净利润率超过50%。这是一个经营水平超过绝大多数商业、营利性企业的非营利性机构。

 

书归正题。

写过《2023》和《2024》的二十篇成功哈佛文书，我们已经看出哈佛当前的招生心态，即公平价值观。202324两年选出的文书，文字质量比2022以前明显走弱，但仍是顶级质量，值得一读。每篇文书故事中都清晰可见equality和social justice痕迹。另外，我们也看出了Crimson的偷工减料。《2024成功文书》发出的时候只有九篇，第十篇Michael则是过了一个月后才给加上的。《2023成功文书》首发的时候更少，只有七篇，后三篇则是近两个月后才补充进来的。说偷工减料并非冤枉，因为这个系列发布的Title从来都是“10 Successful”而不是9 Successful或 7 Successful。

现在，2025新文书又来了。Crimson这次不再偷工减料，满额十篇。工作这是进步了，先给本届的Business Board点赞。但内容质量如何呢？请大家跟着朽石君仔细品看。

2025的故事背景统计，2篇亚裔新移民，1篇东欧移民， 2篇正公社活，2篇领导力，1篇弃儿，1篇URM，只有1篇没有Hook的城市生活主题。Equality和Social Justice比例，似乎在趋同了2024和2023。不过，细看8篇Hook文书主题，Queerness主题含量继续减少，而移民主题含量较2024年增加，领导力和社会活动主题大增并且内含Equality 和Social Justice的主题。这变化，很显然与当前美国社会的主流意识形态和动态相吻合。

这些年里哈佛招生的主诉价值就是Equality和Social Justice。大量申请都主诉着申请者的Equality和Social Justice价值观，那么被录取的比例也就自然偏向它们。我见过的申请中，普遍都带有这一价值观。从客观上看，申请中含有这一价值主文书（无论是否主诉该价值）的比例可能高于80%了。

品评2025的这十篇，我仍然采用去年的方法，抛开哈佛的主诉价值观，仅仅对比同样主题的2023/2024年的二十篇。这样的比较品评，对今年申请人更加有好处。

第一篇，Claire的Waigong Basketball

In my vision I focus on a lone front tooth backdropped by a black abyss; thin lips dance around it in motions forming words, yet I can’t seem to hear them.

In the kitchen behind my grandfather sits his definition of luxury — a now stale and cold Filet-o-Fish from the Beijing McDonald’s. American basketball plays on the television across from where we’re sitting on the sofa; players’ shoes squeak and balls bounce louder in my ears than those words. In this moment, his Mandarin goes in one ear and out the other. I don’t listen the way I do when he’s screaming at my mother, a bitter, blind rage fueled by undercurrents of fear and “I miss you.”

My focus blurs, and the tooth disappears. Basketball fades to silence, and I’m on the airplane home to America. We’re separated once more by an ocean and three thousand unspoken miles. It’s a whirlwind; five years pass, and my few apathetic summers in China are over before I can blink twice.

The last clear memory I have is waking up on my thirteenth birthday to my dad handing me the landline kept for international phone calls: “Waigong has something he wants to read to you.”

 

It is a poem that he had written about me. Through the phone, I could do nothing but hear his voice, static worsening the Mandarin already slurred by missing teeth. The poem says everything he loved about his granddaughter, everything he saw in her, despite barely knowing her. It is a reflection of last dreams, visions, and hopes of his own.

He was gone not long after that, once more turned to forever.

It wasn’t until I found myself chancely entrenched in poetry because of a mandatory school competition that I began to think deeply about this disconnected relationship. Poetry Out Loud’s anthology introduced me to hundreds and hundreds of poems, and I felt like a hungry child at a buffet. When I discovered “Old Men Playing Basketball” by B.H. Fairchild, I saw tired arms and shaky hands as a pure geometry of curves, hobbling slippers as the adamant remains of that old soft shoe of desire. In words, I was safe to miss my grandfather for all the things that made him human. For the first time in my life, I began to realize that I might have a love for beautiful words that ran deep in my blood, a love that couldn’t be lost in translation.

On that makeshift podium in the school cafeteria my sophomore year, “Old Men Playing Basketball” becomes “Waigong Playing Basketball.” I’m taken back to that sofa in Beijing one more time, where he takes my small hand into his tremoring one covered by gray-brown patches of melasma, where he tells me, “You are a gift, a wonder. You are a hu die.” Butterfly: my Chinese name. Born to one day fly.

But it is no longer his voice I hear. It is my own— crisp and clear, raw and strong. The poem becomes the glass wand of autumn light breaking over the backboard, where boys rise up in old men. I see the whole scene this time, not just tooth and abyss. I hear every word.

Perhaps I will never be able to know my grandfather beyond his love of basketball and poetry, or hear his voice read me another poem. But when I am stirred by beautiful lines or liberated by my pen on paper, I know I am one of two same hearts, forever bound together by the permanence and power of language.

I am a vessel in flight, listening, writing, speaking to remember histories, to feel emotion, to carry forth dreams and visions and hopes of my own. My grandfather becomes an elegant mirage of a basketball player, carried by a quiet grace along my trail of spoken words floating upwards toward heaven.

 

这是一篇诗歌一般的文书，文字上乘。我的给分A。注意，这一篇的关于外公过的故事，结构和内容设计并非上乘，爷爷-篮球与Old Men Playing Basketball之间的关联很mechanical，篮球和诗歌之间的关联也不顺滑，所以比不过Crassandra Hsiao的English in Our House的A+。

说这是诗一般文字，我有至少三个根据。第一，我读的时候，口感流畅利落，情绪饱满且波动。这是个人主观感受，不一定这样的感觉人人都有。

还有第二点。那就是这里的很多句子，分开段就能成诗，无需雕琢。比如：

I am a vessel in flight,

listening, writing, speaking

to remember histories,

to feel emotion,

to carry forth dreams and visions and hopes of my own.

第二点如果你也不同意，那我还有第三点，那这就是这篇文字里潜藏的很多rhyme之处。比如：开篇段的vision和emotion，abyss 和 words都是在远距离和韵（虽然没有诗一样严格的位置），结尾句的seem和them则是在句内的近距离和韵，这种感觉与中文诗歌的平仄感相当。

我还有第四点、第五点，就不多说了。这篇虽好，但瑜不掩瑕。

对，我说的就是瑜不掩瑕。因为，这篇后面跟出来的官方评论，是出自某顾问机构的评语（因为这是一个纯属广告性的版面）。该评语却把这篇作者说成”Clara“，而文章内容说成《Fish Out of Water》。不要以为这是个简单的笔误。《Fish Out Of Water》是另一篇成功文书，它刊登在《2024 Successful》中，当时的作者名为”Michelle”，并且是由另一个顾问机构出具的评语。

看到这里，聪明的读者应该有三个疑问：

1. 这些Successful Essays作者，跟Harvard 当年录取是什么关系？被标记为2025的文书，是否真正出自2024-25申请季的申请中？这些文书被冠以20XX年度的合理性，是哈佛校报Crimson的内容原则所管辖的范畴。
2. 每篇Successful Essays作者是谁，哈佛校报都确定吗？那个去年还叫Michelle的《Fish Out Of Water》作者，今年就改名叫Clara了。或许这是她的Middle Name?
3. Successful Essays作者，为他们出具评语的顾问机构，两者之间有没有过服务关系？这种服务关系又是否存续到他们获得哈佛录取的时刻？如果不是，由某机构来写某篇评语再放在Crimson的网页上，不会误导读者吗？

去年七月，首发文书不足数、或者作者临时换名，我都当是小瑕疵了。直到今年看到机构给这篇好文书出具的牛头不对马嘴、但牵出我三个疑问的评语。其实，问题提完，答案我就清楚了。

接下来，我带上了“有色眼镜”品读剩下的九篇。

此处允许我做个广告，学会归化模型的五维阅读，就能很自然地对文字信息中的inconsistence非常敏感，从而直接识别出选项中的错误逻辑，排除错误选项，得出答案，根本不用去读原文。就像现在，我已经不用再拿到哈佛校报的解释，就知道它是在纯广告运营，用一些并非当年的文书，请一些并非出处的顾问机构，写几篇尽善尽美的评语放在这个长得像本校出版物的版面上，用哈佛品牌，做商业机构的广告。

甚至，这些文书都不是“哈佛成功”的文书呢？不要多想，这里的很多文书（尽管不是所有）也都算好文书的。我们接着品读就是了。