约翰•霍普金斯大学招生老师的自白：我们喜欢什么样的Essay？附案例点评

文章标签：美国留学、留学文书、EssayEssay可以说是美国大学申请中最重要也是最困难的一环了。写Essa...

Essay可以说是美国大学申请中最重要也是最困难的一环了。写Essay的痛苦想必小伙伴们一说都是一把辛酸泪。写写改改，怎么样都不满意，分分钟能整出个神经衰弱。

“到底怎样才能写出好的Essay？”

美国著名大学约翰•霍普金斯大学（Johns Hopkins University, JHU）的招生老师，阅卷无数，经验丰富，眼看大家为Essay 憔悴，决定拯救大家于水深火热中，给小伙伴们支几招，另外还附赠三篇被JHU录取的学生的Essay，真正的干货啊，不容错过！

那么下面就是JHU招生老师的自白：我们喜欢什么样的Essay？

作为招生老师，我们最想通过essay看到的是：

What makes you tick?

What you are passionate about?

Why Hopkins is the perfect place for you to live and learn for the next four years of your life?

那么如何才能把这些信息准确的传达给招生老师呢？

写“你的”经历。

你可以在essay里写一写你的家庭，你的教练，你的老师。。。。但别忘了申请学校的人是你！！！不是你奶奶！不是你教练！不是你老师！不是你大爷！写“你的”经历！

不要试图面面俱到。

Focus on one topic！不需要把你高中每天那点儿鸡毛蒜皮都写进去。只要把对你影响最大的那部分精心呈现出来即可。

不要重复列出我们已经知道的信息。

如果你在essay里把我们已经在申请表里见过的课外活动再写一遍，那么很遗憾，你浪费了通过essay展现自己另一面的大好机会。

开头很重要。

一篇让人印象深刻的essay，往往有一个“抓人”的开头。录取老师每天都要读上千篇essay，开头写的好你才能脱颖而出。

文要对题。

有不少同学的essay洋洋洒洒写了一大篇，就是跟学校要求的题目相去甚远。搞siao吧你。

涉及时下热门话题和容易引起争议的话题，要格外小心。

例如政治、宗教、战争、悬而未决的案件、刚刚通过的法律等等，对于这些话题发表看法时要格外注意。如果这些观点和事件对勾勒你这个人非常重要的话，那么大胆的写出来就好了。但写作时要对各方的立场保持尊重，你可以表达个人观点，但要尽量的专业。

语言自然。

用你自己的语言讲述自己的故事，这样最打动人。文字生动流畅即可，不要过于华丽也不要让人觉得你在掉书袋。

做你自己。

如果你是个有趣的人，那么essay也可以写的有趣一些。如果你平常严肃正经，那又何必假装幽默呢？

仔细修改校对。

自己修改校对之后，最好再让别人帮你改改，如果能让老师帮你修改是最好的了。拼写错误，绝对不要出现。

说了这么多条条框框，你可能有点儿蒙圈了。

不着急，这里有几篇被JHU录取的学生的essay，每篇后面都附有一段点评，小伙伴们不妨阅读一下找找感觉。希望这些essay能给大家带来一些启发。

以下文章均来自 JHU Class of 2018 的学生。

Outgrowing the Garage — Elijah

The air is tainted with unnatural fumes of grease, wood, and burnt electrical tape. Oil slicks stain the floor. Thick wooden shelves sag unnervingly close to buckling under the weight of old house paint and power tools. A workbench lies buried beneath papers, rulers, cans, and metal shards. An uncomfortable growl pours from the water heater. Most people wouldn’t describe my grimy garage as pleasant, but I love spending my free time here. It’s where I built a 2 ft trebuchet in sixth grade, a 4 ft trebuchet in seventh grade, and plan to build an 8 ft trebuchet this winter break. It’s where I built a battlebot and slapped an Arduino microcontroller on top to give it intelligence. Ever since I sat watching jets shake the sky and explosions rock the screen in the movie Iron Man as a stunned sixth grader, I’ve spent weekends experimenting in my garage, trying to learn everything I can about engineering and robotics.

Sure, outside of my garage I love wildlife and hiking, history, and weird foods. I love classic rock, jazz, and maybe even secretly Katy Perry. Nevertheless, I’ve always had a life plan centered on robotics: go to a great college, learn robotics, build robots, get a Bernese mountain dog, and live happily ever after in a beautiful forest home. It seems strange that I’ve committed myself to robotics so easily despite my many interests, but in reality, robotics combines nearly all of them. Computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering are crucial to the robot, but combine them with biology, astronomy, music, or ecology, and that’s when robotics becomes amazing. I could help the sick with robots that give surgeons more dexterity while operating. I could help the poor with affordable, robot-made products. I could aid the elderly, replace the limbs of wounded warriors, and keep fire fighters from harm’s way, all with robots. Although these robots may not be the crimson and gold Iron Man suit that first got me interested, I love the realistic and heroic possibilities in the field of robotics.

Almost as exciting as imagining the robots I could build, is imagining where I could build them. I could become a professor and research cutting edge A.I. algorithms. I could become an entrepreneur and bring my creations to market. I could even become an employee for a tech company and devote myself to its latest innovations. Maybe next year around this time, I will even be studying on the Freshman Quad. With the LCSR robotics lab, the minor in robotics, a top-notch engineering program, a beautiful campus, incredible seafood, and what the visiting admissions counselor described as a “vibrant a cappella scene,” Johns Hopkins will both make college fun and satisfy my inner nerd. But for now, I will go on working in my garage, competing for space with the family car.

点评：我很喜欢Elijah写的这篇essay。通过这篇文章，我们感受到了他是怎样的一个人。作者用轻松愉的快笔触，重点描写了自己对机器人领域的浓厚兴趣，甚至还联系到了“钢铁侠”。作者还把自己的兴趣和JHU的相关研究联系在一起。在阅读这篇文章的过程中，我仿佛能想象出作者未来在JHU的生活将是丰富多彩的。这篇文章无疑是很有说服力的。

String Theory — Joanna

If string theory is really true, then the entire world is made up of strings, and I cannot tie a single one. This past summer, I applied for my very first job at a small, busy bakery and café in my neighborhood. I knew that if I were hired there, I would learn how to use a cash register, prepare sandwiches, and take cake orders. I imagined that my biggest struggle would be catering to demanding New Yorkers, but I never thought that it would be the benign act of tying a box that would become both my biggest obstacle and greatest teacher.

On my first day of work in late August, one of the bakery’s employees hastily explained the procedure. It seemed simple: wrap the string around your hand, then wrap it three times around the box both ways, and knot it. I recited the anthem in my head, “three times, turn it, three times, knot” until it became my mantra. After observing multiple employees, it was clear that anyone tying the box could complete it in a matter of seconds. For weeks, I labored endlessly, only to watch the strong and small pieces of my pride unravel each time I tried.

As I rushed to discreetly shove half-tied cake boxes into plastic bags, I could not help but wonder what was wrong with me. I have learned Mozart arias, memorized the functional groups in organic chemistry, and calculated the anti-derivatives of functions that I will probably never use in real life — all with a modest amount of energy. For some reason though, after a month’s effort, tying string around a cake box still left me in a quandary.

As the weeks progressed, my skills slowly began to improve. Of course there were days when I just wanted to throw all of the string in the trash and use Scotch tape; this sense of defeat was neither welcome nor wanted, but remarks like “Oh, you must be new” from snarky customers catapulted my determination to greater heights.

It should be more difficult to develop an internal pulse and sense of legato in a piece of music than it is to find the necessary rhythm required to tie a box, but this seemingly trivial task has clearly proven not to be trivial at all. The difficulties that I encountered trying to keep a single knot intact are proof of this. The lack of cooperation between my coordination and my understanding left me frazzled, but the satisfaction I felt when I successfully tied my first box was almost as great as any I had felt before.

Scientists developing string theory say that string can exist in a straight line, but it can also bend, oscillate, or break apart. I am thankful that the string I work with is not quite as temperamental, but I still cringe when someone asks for a chocolate mandel bread. Supposedly, the string suggested in string theory is responsible for unifying general relativity with quantum physics. The only thing I am responsible for when I use string is delivering someone’s pie to them without the box falling apart. Tying a cake box may not be quantum physics, but it is just as crucial to holding together what matters.

I am beginning to realize that I should not be ashamed if it takes me longer to learn. I persist, and I continue to tie boxes every weekend at work. Even though I occasionally backslide into feelings of exasperation, I always rewrap the string around my hand and start over because I have learned that the most gratifying victories come from tenacity. If the universe really is comprised of strings, I am confident that I will be able to tie them together, even if I do have to keep my fingers crossed that my knots hold up.

点评：Joanna的这篇文章从第一句就很抓人眼球。她把自己在面包店打包盒子的经历和弦理论（string theory）相类比，让人眼前一亮。通过这篇essay，我们对她的个性有了大概的了解，她是一个勇于自嘲，敢于承认失败的人。她通过自己的故事告诉我们，她承认自己有缺点，但不愿意放弃，而且她能从失败中吸取教训。我们有理由相信，她可以应对在JHU的各种挑战。在这篇文章中，她还告诉我们她对音乐和科学的热爱，她对兼职工作的用心，以及她处理问题的能力。她多才多艺，兴趣广泛，这些都是我们通过这篇文章了解到的。

Temper — Morley

I feel perfectly content at Woodrow Wilson Skateboard Park, a cement swell in the ground located just west of the easternmost point of the north side of Chicago and trapped perennially in the mental space inhabited by fourteen-year-old angry youths. Outside of home and school, it is the place where I have spent most of my life. Its terrain so familiar, I could navigate it blindfolded, towed on my board by a pack of feral dogs. Much of what I know of life, I learned there.

A sea of nods and handshakes and back pats welcomes my every arrival to this municipal oasis. Here, I am known. Called variously Mor, Bob Morley, Mordog, Mo, Mo Money, or (long story) Tom Pork. It is the only place on earth where (were an election ever to be held) I could almost certainly be mayor. Among the strange, sometimes downcast, and essentially good people here, I have found another family. I need them as much as they need me and as much as we all need skateboarding. This four-wheeled toy brings us inner peace. Skateboarding is a standing meditation, a time to put conscious thought aside and let primal impulse guide the body through various jumps and balancing acts. I turn to skating in times of joy and in times of strife, to celebrate a good day, escape writer’s block, social failures, or other minor tragedies.

It is at Wilson that I encountered once, and then again, a man called Temper. I was thirteen when I crashed into a beefy shadowy figure I had heard talked about only in whispers. This man, known by the word he had chosen to affix to hundreds of walls around Chicago, had earned a spot in the community as a respected graffiti artist and skateboarder. His improbably light feet and on-board grace were known to most of the city. I was barely inaugurated into the park scene when I plowed headlong into him, knocking both of us down, turtle-like and winded. I hadn’t been paying attention and apologized rapid-fire while trying to scrape my body off of his. When we both got to our feet, Temper knocked me down again and walked away without comment. It was the most frightening thing that ever happened to me at Wilson. He left the park that day, and I had seen him once, maybe twice, since.

The five years since the incident have been more or less good to me. In high school, I abandoned the dream of becoming a professional skateboarder and discovered a fuller gamut of life’s offerings. I learned to think about things other than skating and in turn discovered physics, girls, cooking, and writing — a pursuit I love as much as skateboarding. The same cannot be said for the passage of time in Temper’s life. I saw him recently and had lunch with him and my friend. He told us of overcoming a crippling drug addiction, spending time in jail, and contracting AIDS — a disease that every day reminds him that his time on earth is coming to an end. He is trying his best to make the most of it all. It was with the greatest trepidation that I told him about the Wilson incident. Over pizza and lemon soda, I explained how much he had scared me. I added that it was important that it had happened. I think it helped me grow up, I explained. An awkward silence followed. His head turned down and to the side for a moment. Then he just laughed. His eyes apologized, and I laughed too, collectively embracing that very Wilson mentality: life, like skateboarding and men named “Temper,” will knock you down. There is nothing else to do but forgive, forget, and stand back up.

点评：Morley这篇文章的结构特点是，每个自然段都介绍了一种自己的品质。作者重点描写了park的经历如何塑造了他的性格，从而把自己的个性完美的融合在Woodrow Wilson的经历中。通过这篇文章，我们可以了解到他是一个认真仔细的人。每个学生都会希望自己的实验室/写作小组里有这样一个人，JHU自然也不例外。

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