每年美国大学申请季结束之后，哈佛大学的校报The Crimson都会选择公布被哈佛大学录取的10名学生的文书。
日前，The Crimson公布2022年度被哈佛大学录取的10篇优秀文书。这些新鲜出炉的文书，对于今后的申请学生都有极大的参考意义！
其中一篇署名为Yueming的中国学生（也可能是华裔）文书，讲诉了自己爷爷在经历各种苦难生活之后，仍旧能保持微笑和乐观，给了自己很大的激励。
以下是Yueming同学的文书
 2022年哈佛大学入学申请文书选 
作者：Yueming

▎中文版
我的爷爷（Ye-Ye）总是戴着一顶红色棒球帽。我想他喜欢鲜艳的颜色，就像他自己一样。
七年前，爷爷从中国来看望我们时，他带着他的红帽子，在那六个月来每天晚上，它都挂在我家楼梯栏杆上，等待第二天早上忠实地戴在爷爷的头上。
他到处戴着帽子：在房子周围，他用帽子表演魔术，逗我弟弟笑；去街角的商店，他给我买了冰棒，然后用帽子擦去我脖子上的夏日汗珠。今天，每当我看到一顶红帽子，我就会想起我的爷爷和他的棒球帽，我笑了。
Ye Ye在中文里是“祖父”的意思。我的爷爷是一个简单、普通的人，不富有，也不“成功”——但他是我最大的灵感来源，我崇拜他。
在我认识的所有人中，爷爷经历苦难最多的人；而在我认识的所有人中，爷爷也是最快乐的。在我看来，这两个方面可以在一个人身上共存真是了不起。
爷爷是个孤儿。他的父母在他六岁之前就去世了，这使他和他的弟弟无家可归。
当其他孩子聚集在学校的炉灶旁看书时，爷爷和他的兄弟冒着严寒沿着铁轨行走，捡拾煤渣出售。
当其他孩子跑回家找慈爱的父母时，爷爷和他的兄弟在街上寻找睡觉的地方。八年后，爷爷开始独自行动，因为他的弟弟死了。 
爷爷设法活了下来，同时自学了读、写和算术。“生活是一种福分（blessing），”他微笑着告诉身边的人。 
几年后，爷爷去戈壁沙漠工作，他和他的同事们在那里每天工作12小时。沙漠大风无情；它会在半夜吹走走他们的帐篷，让他们第二天早上一无所有。每年，恶劣的天气都夺去了一些同事的生命。
八年后，爷爷被调回他的妻子卧病在床的城市。在每天12小时的工作日结束时，爷爷回家照顾了生病的妻子和三个年幼的孩子。他和孩子们坐在一起，告诉他们广阔的、星光灿烂的沙漠天空和神秘的沙漠生活。“生活是一种福分，”他微笑着告诉他们。
但生活并不容易；当时家里几乎没有足够的钱让这个家庭免于挨饿。然而，我父亲和他的姐妹们喜欢和爷爷一起去市场。他会给他们买一些他们母亲永远不会让他们沉迷其中的小奢侈品：两分钱一小袋的瓜子，三分钱一块的糖。尽管是奢侈品，爷爷还是毫不犹豫地买下了。任何能让孩子们脸上带着微笑、脚步轻快的东西都是无价的。 
爷爷今天仍然去市场。在78岁的时候，他每周骑几公里的自行车去买几袋新鲜的水果和蔬菜，然后骑车回家与邻居分享。他种了一小块草莓和一棵杏树。
当水果成熟时，他打开门，邀请所有的孩子进来采摘和吃。他对附近的每个孩子都很友好。我一直认为我很理智，很有自知之明。但是，没有什么能让我像在了解了爷爷所遭受的苦难过去和他这些年来一直保持的乐观态度后那样震惊。
我回想起我心烦意乱的时候。我妈妈忘了去汽车站接我；在作业到期前一天，我的电脑死机了。这些事情看起来如此琐碎和幼稚，我为自己深感羞愧。 
现在，每当我遇到一个看似无法逾越的困难时，我就会想起爷爷；我看到他戴着红色棒球帽，朝我微笑。他的微笑像一股清水，把我从悲伤中唤醒，让我想起我的烦恼是多么微不足道，生活是多么慷慨。
今天我把一顶红色棒球帽放在家里的栏杆柱上，爷爷曾每天晚上都把它放在那里。每当我看到帽子，我都会想起我的爷爷，他戴着红色棒球帽微笑着，我也微笑着。是的，是的。生活是一种福分。
▎英文原文
My Ye-Ye always wears a red baseball cap. I think he likes the vivid color—bright and sanguine, like himself. When Ye-Ye came from China to visit us seven years ago, he brought his red cap with him and every night for six months, it sat on the stairway railing post of my house, waiting to be loyally placed back on Ye-Ye’s head the next morning. He wore the cap everywhere: around the house, where he performed magic tricks with it to make my little brother laugh; to the corner store, where he bought me popsicles before using his hat to wipe the beads of summer sweat off my neck. Today whenever I see a red hat, I think of my Ye-Ye and his baseball cap, and I smile.
Ye-Ye is the Mandarin word for “grandfather.” My Ye-Ye is a simple, ordinary person—not rich, not “successful”—but he is my greatest source of inspiration and I idolize him. Of all the people I know, Ye-Ye has encountered the most hardship and of all the people I know, Ye-Ye is the most joyful. That these two aspects can coexist in one individual is, in my mind, truly remarkable.
Ye-Ye was an orphan. Both his parents died before he was six years old, leaving him and his older brother with no home and no family. When other children gathered to read around stoves at school, Ye-Ye and his brother walked in the bitter cold along railroad tracks, looking for used coal to sell. When other children ran home to loving parents, Ye-Ye and his brother walked along the streets looking for somewhere to sleep. Eight years later, Ye-Ye walked alone—his brother was dead.
Ye-Ye managed to survive, and in the meanwhile taught himself to read, write, and do arithmetic. Life was a blessing, he told those around him with a smile.
Years later, Ye-Ye’s job sent him to the Gobi Desert, where he and his fellow workers labored for twelve hours a day. The desert wind was merciless; it would snatch their tent in the middle of the night and leave them without supply the next morning. Every year, harsh weather took the lives of some fellow workers.
After eight years, Ye-Ye was transferred back to the city where his wife lay sick in bed. At the end of a twelve-hour workday, Ye-Ye took care of his sick wife and three young children. He sat with the children and told them about the wide, starry desert sky and mysterious desert lives. Life was a blessing, he told them with a smile.
But life was not easy; there was barely enough money to keep the family from starving. Yet, my dad and his sisters loved going with Ye-Ye to the market. He would buy them little luxuries that their mother would never indulge them in: a small bag of sunflower seeds for two cents, a candy each for three cents. Luxuries as they were, Ye-Ye bought them without hesitation. Anything that could put a smile on the children’s faces and a skip in their steps was priceless.
Ye-Ye still goes to the market today. At the age of seventy-eight, he bikes several kilometers each week to buy bags of fresh fruits and vegetables, and then bikes home to share them with his neighbors. He keeps a small patch of strawberries and an apricot tree. When the fruit is ripe, he opens his gate and invites all the children in to pick and eat. He is Ye-Ye to every child in the neighborhood.
I had always thought that I was sensible and self-aware. But nothing has made me stare as hard in the mirror as I did after learning about the cruel past that Ye-Ye had suffered and the cheerful attitude he had kept throughout those years. I thought back to all the times when I had gotten upset. My mom forgot to pick me up from the bus station. My computer crashed the day before an assignment was due. They seemed so trivial and childish, and I felt deeply ashamed of myself.
Now, whenever I encounter an obstacle that seems overwhelming, I think of Ye-Ye; I see him in his red baseball cap, smiling at me. Like a splash of cool water, his smile rouses me from grief, and reminds me how trivial my worries are and how generous life has been. Today I keep a red baseball cap at the railing post at home where Ye-Ye used to put his every night. Whenever I see the cap, I think of my Ye-Ye, smiling in his red baseball cap, and I smile. Yes, Ye-Ye. Life is a blessing.
哈佛范文2: Homeless for Thirteen Years
I sat on my parents’ bed weeping with my head resting on my knees. “Why did you have to do that to me? Why did you have to show me the house and then take it away from me?” Hopelessly, I found myself praying to God realizing it was my last resort.
For years, my family and I found ourselves moving from country to country in hopes of a better future. Factors, such as war and lack of academic opportunities, led my parents to pack their bags and embark on a new journey for our family around the world. Our arduous journey first began in Kuçovë, Albania, then Athens, Greece, and then eventually, Boston, Massachusetts. Throughout those years, although my family always had a roof over our heads, I never had a place I could call “home.”
That night that I prayed to God, my mind raced back to the night I was clicking the delete button on my e-mails, but suddenly stopped when I came upon a listing of the house. It was September 22, 2007 —eight years exactly to the day that my family and I had moved to the United States. Instantly, I knew that it was fate that was bringing this house to me. I remembered visiting that yellow house the next day with my parents and falling in love with it. However, I also remembered the heartbreaking phone call I received later on that week saying that the owners had chosen another family’s offer.
A week after I had prayed to God, I had given up any hopes of my family buying the house. One day after school, I unlocked the door to our one-bedroom apartment and walked over to the telephone only to see it flashing a red light. I clicked PLAY and unexpectedly heard the voice of our real estate agent. “Eda!” she said joyfully. “The deal fell through with the other family—the house is yours! Call me back immediately to get started on the papers.” For a moment, I stood agape and kept replaying the words in my head. Was this really happening to me? Was my dream of owning a home finally coming true?
Over the month of November, I spent my days going to school and immediately rushing home to make phone calls. Although my parents were not fluent enough in English to communicate with the bank and real estate agent, I knew that I was not going to allow this obstacle to hinder my dream of helping to purchase a home for my family. Thus, unlike a typical thirteen-year-old girl’s conversations, my phone calls did not involve the mention of makeup, shoes, or boys. Instead, my conversations were composed of terms, such as “fixed-rate mortgages,” “preapprovals,” and “down payments.” Nevertheless, I was determined to help purchase this home after thirteen years of feeling embarrassed from living in a one-bedroom apartment. No longer was I going to experience feelings of humiliation from not being able to host sleepovers with my friends or from not being able to gossip with girls in school about who had the prettiest room color.
I had been homeless for the first thirteen years of my life. Although I will never be able to fully repay my parents for all of their sacrifices, the least I could do was to help find them a home that they could call their own—and that year, I did. To me, a home means more than the general conception of “four walls and a roof.” A home is a place filled with memories and laughter from my family. No matter where my future may lead me, I know that if at times I feel alone, I will always have a yellow home with my family inside waiting for me.
专家点评：
诚实、动人、有力。
这是阅读 Eda 的文章后首先想到的三个词。
通过诚实的表达方式，埃达展示了她随着时间的推移而真正的成长和成熟。我们喜欢 Eda 的文章的地方在于它把个人脆弱性表达得令人耳目一新。 例如，她以她在父母床上哭泣的场景开始整篇文章，并将自己的不幸归咎于他们。通过这种发自内心的诚实，埃达展示了她随着时间的推移而真正的成长和成熟。
在整篇文章中，她的个人声音也很强烈。当她谈到爱上“那栋黄色的房子”时，我们脑海中会自动浮现出这栋房子的形象。当她谈到得知“黄色房子”被卖给另一个家庭时所经历的心碎时，我们也感到心痛。她有意描写“播放”她收到的语音邮件，以及她随后的内心想法，进一步促使我们与她一起重温她的心路历程。
然而，作者不仅仅是告诉我们她的历程。她强调了她的历程是多么不一样。她没有享受关于化妆品或鞋子的电话交谈，而是与代理商谈论固定利率抵押贷款和首付……所有这些都是在 13 岁时她要做的。尽管她没有明确说明这一点，但很明显，她必须尽快成长，成为一个更强大的人。
作者对“家”这个词的理解从普通的屋顶演变为更抽象的屋顶。家就是她的“回忆和欢笑”所在的地方。最后，她接受了父母做出的牺牲，并学会为自己的成长感到自豪。
-----------------------------------

  哈佛范文3: Yukta
Garishly lined with a pearlescent lavender, my eyes idly scanned the haphazard desk in front of me, settling on a small kohl. I packed the ebony powder into my waterline with a shaky hand, wincing at the fine specks making their way into my eyes.
The girl in the mirror seemed sharper, older, somehow. At only 12, I was relatively new to the powders and blushes that lined my birthday makeup kit, but I was determined to decipher the deep splashes of color that had for so long been an enigma to me.
After school involved self-inflicted solitary confinement, as I shut myself in my bedroom to hone my skills. The palette’s colors bore in, the breadth of my imagination interwoven into now-brittle brushes. Much to my chagrin, my mom walked in one day, amused at my smudged lipstick, which congealed on the wispy hairs that lined my upper lip.
“Halloween already?” she asked playfully.
I flushed in embarrassment as she got to work, smoothing my skin with a brush and filling the gaps in my squiggly liner. Becoming a makeup aficionado was going to take some help.
“What’s this even made of?” I asked, transfixed by the bright powder she was smattering on my cheeks.
“You know, I’m not sure,” she murmured. “Maybe you should find out.”
I did.
Hours down the internet rabbit hole, I learned that the shimmery powder was made of mica, a mineral commonly used in cosmetics. While the substance was dazzling, its production process was steeped in humanitarian violations and environmental damage. Determined to reconcile my burgeoning love for makeup with my core values, I flung the kit into the corner of my drawer, vowing to find a more sustainable alternative. Yes, I was every bit as dramatic as you imagine it.
Now 17, I approach ethical makeup with assured deliberation. As I glance at my dusty kit, which still sits where I left it, I harken back on the journey it has taken me on. Without the reckoning that it spurred, makeup would still simply be a tool of physical transformation, rather than a catalyst of personal growth.
Now, each swipe of eyeliner is a stroke of my pen across paper as I write a children’s book about conscious consumerism. My flitting fingers programmatically place sparkles, mattes, and tints across my face in the same way that they feverishly move across a keyboard, watching algorithms and graphs integrate into models of supply chain transparency. Makeup has taught me to be unflinching, both in self expression and my expectations for the future. I coat my lips with a bold sheen, preparing them to form words of unequivocal urgency at global conferences and casual discussions. I see my passion take flight, emboldening others to approach their own reckonings, uncomfortable as they may be. I embark on a two-year journey of not buying new clothes in a statement against mass consumption and rally youth into a unified organization. We stand together, picking at the gritty knots of makeup, corporate accountability, and sustainability as they slowly unravel.
I’m not sure why makeup transfixes me. Perhaps it’s because I enjoy seeing my reveries take shape. Yukta, the wannabe Wicked Witch of the West, has lids coated with emerald luster and lips of coal. Yukta, the Indian classical dancer, wields thick eyeliner and bright crimson lipstick that allow her expressions to be amplified across a stage. Deep rooted journeys of triumph and tribulation are plastered across the surface of my skin — this paradox excites me.
Perhaps I am also drawn to makeup because as I peel back the layers, I am still wholly me. I am still the young girl staring wide-eyed at her reflection, earnestly questioning in an attempt to learn more about the world. Most importantly, I still carry an unflagging vigor to coalesce creativity and activism into palpable change, one brushstroke at a time.
专家点评：
这位学生使用常见的化妆品来构建一个既普遍又独特的故事。
这个对象反映了她个人和文化背景的各方面，使读者可以直接接触到学生的个性。她通过自己对周围世界的观察开始了一个成年故事。作者成功地在叙事和创造性写作元素之间取得平衡。作者通过化妆作为自我反省和发现的媒介，让我们得以一窥她多年来的个人发展。她巧妙地利用她的化妆品的颜色和元素来进行生动的描述，这种“既视感”是本文成功的重要基础。化妆品本来很容易与消费主义以及“肤浅”联系在一起，但作者很好地利用它来支持她所倡导的社会和道德准则。
本文的写作风格有活力、引人入胜、有节奏感。通过这篇文章的每处描述，我们了解到作者关心的是什么：有意识的消费主义、创造力和行动主义；我们还了解她的想法：好奇、无私和带有女权主义色彩。这篇文章的开头句子采用了成功的个人陈述写作策略，丰富的形容词详细描述了一个小场景，然后扩大到对作者和她在社会中的地位作用做出更全面的阐述。
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