This collection gives 50 great examples of effective and diverse ways to express individuality in that most dreaded of all tasks for high school seniors--writing the college application essay. Each was used by a Harvard student on his or her application and is followed with analysis by the staff of the Harvard Crimson, who help give perspective on what works well, what is a necessary evil, and what detracts from an otherwise compelling essay. With pointers on avoiding common essay pitfalls and stepping back to evaluate strengths applicants never realized they had, Fifty Successful Harvard Application Essays is an inspiration for every student trying to find the one thing that sets him or her apart from the crowd.
Marcelline Block (BA, Harvard; MA, Princeton; PhD candidate, Princeton) is Lecturer in History at Princeton. She edited Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema (Cambridge Scholars, 2008; 2010) and World Film Locations: Paris (Intellect, 2011); co-edited "Collaboration," a special issue of Critical Matrix (vol. 18, 2009), and co-edited Gender Scripts in Medicine and Narrative (Cambridge Scholars, 2010). She contributed chapters to anthologies including The Many Ways We Talk about Death in Contemporary Society: Interdisciplinary Studies in Portrayal and Classification (2009) and Vendetta: Essays on Honor and Revenge (2010). Her articles have appeared in the journals Excavatio, vol. XXII: Realism and Naturalism in Film Studies (2007); The Harvard French Review (2007), and Women in French Studies (2009, 2010). Her writing has been published in French in Vingtième Siècle: revue d'histoire (vol. 96, 2007) and in Russian in Русское арт-зарубежье: Вторая половина ХХ века - начало ХХI века/Russian Art Beyond Borders: Late 20th Century-Early 21st Century (2010).
