<p>Congratulations to everybody who got accepted. Knowing the caliber of the kids who got rejected from my school, i can only guess at how excellent you guys are. Myself, I got deferred from UPenn and am now setting my sights on other schools including Harvard…my questions…what was your common app essay like? Did you take a funny approach or a serious one?</p>
<p>My question really stems from the fact that i don’t know what is better. For Upenn, i wrote a serious essay about why i wanted to go there and what strengths i had. People told me that the essay should be more lighthearted. So, today, for my common app essay, i wrote a funny and very creative essay about my cat (incorporating my life of course)…now im thinking that for schools like Harvard, this is not serious enough. What did you do? Thanks a lot for any responses.</p>
<p>not a harv acceptee, but:
you can include both essays.</p>
<p>Harvard does allow for an extra essay if you would like to show both sides of you (which could be cool). I got into harvard and my common app essay was pretty serious. But rather than focus on my strengths it focused on my weakness and what i did to improve it. I did decide to send an additional essay, but I sent that one just to make sure that they knew that i was half black and half white (not just black....its wierd but that just really bothers the crap out of me). But hey im no expert on this kinda thing but thats what i did</p>
<p>I got into Harvard EA--I submitted 2 essays.</p>
<p>Hey, there.</p>
<p>I got in, also, and sent two essays. Neither was particularly serious or lighthearted; rather, they were introspective and really different from one another. One focused on my sexual health activism and why I felt it was really needed in our country right now. The other focused on my life as a musician and how that, in turn, made me develop into a writer. </p>
<p>My theory is that admissions officers, in their evaluations of you, want to grind you down to two words. "Artistic Gymnast." "Chemist Bassoonist." "Rapper Entrepreneur." (These are how I'd describe people that I know who've gotten in over the past years). </p>
<p>I wanted to be the "Poet Activist", and thus, let these qualities shine through in my essays. The key, for me, was compensating for what may have been average scores and a 3.8 by making myself seem as unusual and interesting as possible. I just tried to put myself in the heads of the members of that Harvard adcom, and though I don't know what exactly got me in, /shrug, something must have worked.</p>
<p>Personally, I think a light-hearted, humorous personal statement is best. I was under the impression that the additional essay was for special circumstances only.</p>