<p>Are any students admitted into Harvard from previous years willing to share their supplemental essays?</p>
<p>Thanks
It would help a ton!</p>
<p>It would be very interesting if people who read this, have such essays, but choose not to share them would let us know why. It would be very instructive for everyone. There’s a huge selection bias here. It would also be nice if you post general information on any that are sent to you directly via private message. To increase the chances of getting them sent to you privately, you should tell us more about yourself. My guess is that no one will share publicly.</p>
<p>Some of my friends at harvard said that their essays were some of the best pieces of writing they have ever…written. lol.</p>
<p>They might be a little reluctant to share…I don’t know. </p>
<p>Just be passionate and organized in your supp essay…and be supplemental without being excessive. lol.</p>
<p>You don’t need to beg essays from strangers who may or may not be telling you the truth. The Harvard Crimson has published a book: “50 Successful Harvard Admissions Essays” or some title very similar to that.</p>
<p>My son sent in a supplemental essay, because he’d written more than one for EA applications. I’m not sharing them, because 1. I don’t have them, and 2. I don’t think they were that good!</p>
<p>He’s an engineering sort of kid and his essays were adequate. The first one started with the results of a program that put together a bunch of sample essays off the web and then went on to say, that while he’d much rather have a computer write his essay, obviously he needed to get a lot more sophisticated about programming to get away with it. It then went on to talk about how his family and school had supported him to become as a good a programmer as he is. I think the second essay was about how he liked to reread books.</p>
<p>On caution when looking at the book, or any other essay from an admitted student - don’t assume the essay helped them get in. Chuck Hughes, a former senior admissions officer at Harvard, wrote a book on admissions (you can buy it on amazon, etc) and said that, given the amount of help they know many students get on it, they don’t give it much weight. So while an essay that shows terrible judgment or immaturity etc might torpedo you, or one that is flat and lifeless may hurt you, don’t rely on an essay as more than just another relatively low-weight datapoint for your app.</p>
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<p>It’s true for pretty much any admissions factor viewed in isolation, be it GPA, test scores, ECs, essays, recs, etc. – a wonderful one by itself will not get you in, but a crummy one by itself can sure keep you out.</p>
<p>I agree that the essays of admitted students are not necessarily the ideal to aim for. We just don’t know if a student may have been admitted despite the essay, or if the essay was what made the difference. </p>
<p>One book I’ve seen is something like 100 Essays of Successful College Applicants (or at least that was the gist of the title). The essays weren’t just ones that successful applicants to Harvard used; they were ones used by applicants to a number of different schools. The book included some commentary from adcoms on each essay – pointing out what was good and what wasn’t so good. It was interesting to see how some of their opinions varied, too.</p>
<p>I thought some of the essays in 100 Essays (post #8) were awful, but some were great.</p>
<p>I agree, Mathmom. Some of those were the ones where I wondered whether the students were admitted despite their essays. Of course, the admitted applicants have had no way of knowing how the adcoms received their essays. They just know they were admitted. The authors of such essays may be happy to share their winning essays with some unsuspecting current applicants.</p>