How To: Common App Essay Admitted to Harvard with Analysis Sarah O’Neill Chester County Supreme Editing

 

Sarah O’Neill Chester County Supreme Editing

Common Application Essay Admitted by Harvard University

Clear, hopeful melodies break the silence of the night.

Playing a crudely fashioned bamboo pipe, in the midst of sullen inmates-this is how I envision my grandfather. Never giving up hope, he played every evening to replace images of bloodshed with memories of loved ones at home. While my grandfather described the horrors of his experience in a forced labor camp during the Cultural Revolution, I could only grasp at fragments to comprehend the story of his struggle. I floundered in this gulf of cultural disparity.

As a child, visiting China each summer was a time of happiness, but it was also a time of frustration and alienation. Running up to my grandpa, I racked my brain to recall phrases supposedly ingrained from Saturday morning Chinese classes. Other than my initial greeting of “Ni hao, ye ye!” (“Hello, grandpa”), however, I struggled to form coherent sentences. Unsatisfied, I would scamper away to find his battered bamboo flute, and this time, with my eyes, silently beg him to play.

Although I struggled to communicate clearly through Chinese, in these moments, no words were necessary. I cherished this connection-a relationship built upon flowing melodies rather than broken phrases. After each impromptu concert, he carefully guided my fingers along the smooth, worn body of the flute, clapping after I successfully played my first tentative note. At the time, however, I was unaware that through sharing music, we created a language of emotion, a language that spanned the gulf of cultural differences. Through these lessons, I discovered an inherent inclination toward music and a drive to understand this universal language of expression.

Years later, staring at sheets of music in front of me at the end of a long rehearsal, I saw a jumbled mess of black dots. After playing through “An American Elegy” several times, unable to infuse emotion into its reverent melodies that celebrated the lives lost at Columbine, we-the All State Band-were stopped yet again by our conductor Dr. Nicholson. He directed us to focus solely on the climax of the piece, the Columbine Alma Mater. He urged us to think of home, to think of hope, to think of what it meant to be American, and to fill the measures with these memories. When we played the song again, this time imbued with recollections of times when hope was necessary, “An American Elegy” became more than notes on a page; it evolved into a tapestry woven from the threads of our life stories.

The night of the concert, in the lyrical harmonies of the climax, I envisioned my grandfather, exhausted after a long day of labor, instilling hope in the hearts of others through his bamboo flute. He played his own “elegy” to celebrate the lives of those who had passed. At home that night, no words were necessary when I played the alma mater for my grandfather through video call. As I saw him wiping tears, I smiled in relief as I realized through music I could finally express the previously inexpressible. Reminded of warm summer nights, the roles now reversed, I understood the lingual barrier as a blessing in disguise, allowing us to discover our own language.

Music became a bridge, spanning the gulf between my grandfather and me, and it taught me that communication could extend beyond spoken language. Through our relationship, I learned that to understand someone is not only to hear the words that they say, but also to empathize and feel as they do. With this realization, I search for methods of communication not only through spoken interaction, but also through shared experiences, whether they might involve the creation of music, the heat of competition, or simply laughter and joy, to cultivate stronger, more fulfilling relationships. Through this approach, I strive to become a more empathetic friend, student, and granddaughter as finding a common language has become, for me, a challenge-an invitation-to discover deeper connections.

College Counselor’s Analysis

The writer of the Harvard admission essay above clearly demonstrates three strengths: engaging language, effective flow, and a well-rounded personal story.

First, the writer’s use of engaging and descriptive language immediately draws the reader into her story through an attention-grabbing introduction. Just take a look at her use of adjectives such as “sullen” and then other words such as “horrors” which establish the tone (writer’s attitude) towards the subject. The writer succeeded in telling an anecdotal memory of her grandfather with bamboo pipes (introduction to music) and then forces readers to immediately connect with her own feelings of “cultural disparity” based on her grandfather’s former circumstances. In this way, the readers are able to visualize the tumult of her grandfather’s experience and are introduced to the aspect of “culture” which is a tremendous topic for admission’s essays.

Second, the events of the story flow very well through proper use of transitional phrases and chronological timelines. Although the story begins in the distant past when the writer was not even alive, she has obviously heard stories about her grandfather during the Cultural Revolution so she is able to visualize his experience. Then, if the reader notices, the writer switches to her childhood through a use of a very effective transitional phrase of “As a child.” A transitional word or phrase is a word or group of words used to take a reader from one idea to the next. In this way, the story will flow and the reader can easily follow the timelines presented by the writer and the different topics threaded throughout. This student writer uses “Years later” as well as inside paragraph transitions to keep the stories flowing well and separated from one another. The magic of transitions is to keep the cohesiveness of the entire piece but to also be able to introduce new ideas smoothly. This writer does this very well. The reader is aware of the timelines from distant past to childhood to young adulthood to present day messages.

Third, the essay itself is a well-developed and well-rounded personal story of this author and her grandfather. It begins with a distant memory of hard times, then it evolves into the writer’s childhood and trying to understand her grandfather which she does eventually through music (a common language) and eventually through her own musical experience. The most integral message, though, comes at the end in which the writer asserts all she had learned about cultural inclusion and intimate connections garnered through the power of music. This is, in fact, one way to organize an admission’s essay. You might begin with a full story, perhaps some flashbacks, and then at the end assert a blatant message as this writer does. Or, you could assert this message in the form of a thesis statement situated in the introductory paragraph — -the choice is yours. In this essay, the organization works well for well-roundedness because the final message brings the entire story full circle so the reader can see how every detail and every event was interconnected for a greater purpose. This is a prominent feature of writing that universities, and in this case Harvard, seeks in their applicants: writing a well-rounded piece with a forceful message about topics that matter such as human connections.

Sarah O’Neill Chester County Supreme Editing