50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, Second Edition: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice [Paperback]

Staff of the Harvard Crimson (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 28, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0312343760 | ISBN-13: 978-0312343767 | Edition: 2nd

You've been told a million times how selective and random the college process is, how the personal essay is your one chance to speak directly to admissions officers and sway them in your favor. You have to be entertaining, persuasive, and passionate, while effectively conveying your personality, character, and ideals. And you only have five hundred words to accomplish this.

50 Successful Harvard Application Essays showcases the kinds of conventional and creative approaches that helped their authors get into the nation's most prestigious college. From coping with family tragedy to seeing Vietnamese soup as a metaphor for one's identity, the variety of topics covered in these essays will help you think about how to write about yourself creatively and effectively.

Each essay is followed by a brief discussion written by a Harvard Crimson staff writer who analyzes its main strengths and weaknesses. Through this analysis and our Fifteen Steps to Success, you'll learn:

-How to pick a topic

-How to structure your essay

-How to keep the reader entertained

-How to avoid common pitfalls

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The second edition of 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays follows the same format as the first: Editors of the Harvard Crimson student newspaper present essays from successful Harvard applicants and offer insightful comments on the strengths, weaknesses, and missed opportunities in each piece. Grouped into loose categories, such as "Memorable Moments" and "Influences," the essays (new to this edition) reflect a wide range of writing styles and experiences, and the introduction includes more basic strategies for preparing a college-application essay. Students will glean new inspiration from the strong examples, even as they are the reminded to ignore formulas and find their own voice. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

The Harvard Crimson is the daily newspaper of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its staff consists of three hundred students, and it is the nation's oldest continually operating daily newspaper.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 2nd edition (July 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312343760
• ISBN-13: 978-0312343767
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #434,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The essays are very interesting to read even if you're not applying for college!, January 15, 2006

By 

Venus A. Rachal (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, Second Edition: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice (Paperback)

I bought this book because I tutor English off and on and I was thinking of expanding my tutoring to help high school students write their college essays. I saw this on sale at my local Borders and I thought, well why not? It would give me some samples to show students and help me to focus on certain essentials that make a good essay.

As I started reading the essays, I was so surprised at the depth and creative writing skills of these students. When I went to undergrad, the essay that I wrote was very standard. I talked about my goals and dreams and what kind of student I was, but I didn't turn it into a story (even though I am a writer and stories have been a crucial form of communication for me for years). At the time, I didn't know that it could be done. While I did get into all of the schools to which I applied, I wish I had known that creativity was encouraged in admissions essays.

Since then, I have seen fabulous winning essays to top schools (such as the ones included in this book) and I realize that focusing on a key event of your life and letting it tell a deeper story is part of what connects the admissions counselors to you as a person and reveals depth of character.

This book has really great essays. Some of the commentaries following the essays are better than others. I think, unfortunately, because the reviewers are professional writers, they are more critical than the actual admissions counselors might be because they want you to submit "A" quality work. I think telling your story from the heart is more important than tiny details that only a literary editor would pay strong attention to. Organization is important as is a basic understanding of grammar, but you don't need to get so caught up in the technical aspects of writing this essay that you loose your natural voice.

Other than that, I think this book is a great resource for students (or parents helping their children) who want to go to a university or private college. It is organized efficiently so that you can see the different approaches that various students have chosen and, in general, the commentaries can assist you in pinpointing why a particular essay was so effective. I wish you the best of luck!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, December 1, 2007

By 

Halcykon - See all my reviews

This review is from: 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, Second Edition: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice (Paperback)

This is a fantastic book. As a first-generation student, I had no clue what to expect from a college essay; I had no idea what made an essay good and what made it bad.
Although this book doesn't directly teach you what a good essay is, the amazing essays in here allow you to 'absorb' the good writing and use it to your advantage.

Vernon (poster before me) is correct here; you still need the grades, the scores, the extracurriculars.. or else the book does not help much.
However, if you KNOW you have a strong profile but do not know what to expect from a college essay (like me), then this book is right for you!

I can't thank this book enough. I learned good writing only paying $14 instead of something astronomical for those editing services.

Ironically, with the help of this book, I got accepted into Harvard's rival school :)

[Handsome Dan] out.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still the best, September 5, 2005

By 

Joshua P. Rogers (Bronxville, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, Second Edition: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice (Paperback)

The second edition is much better than the first. The new essays are more timely and the critiques are very insightful. Any high school student can benefit from reading this book and learning different writing techniques and tones for both College essays and school papers.