I’m from the UK so I’m not sure if the answer below will be good enough for Harvard. If anyone could tell me what they think I would be very grateful!
The sweet smell of cake baking in the oven is one of my favourite elements of baking. Watching the dough rise into an scrupulous cake, to me, is like watching your child become an adept adult. This child is your pride and enjoy, just like my cake. I may be exaggerating slightly, but my passion for baking has been made clear. This is why I decided to volunteer for ‘Free Cakes For Kids’. I bake birthday cakes for children whose parents can’t afford the cake. I know this cake will bring joy to the child because, let’s face it, who doesn’t love cake. Even if the cake isn’t perfect, the child still adores it. He or she doesn’t care about perfection, but about the thought. This experience has taught me not to always aim for perfection but to simply try my best because that is all I can do.
Did you mean to say scrumptious (tasty; flavorful) rather than scrupulous (diligent; thorough)? A cake can be made by a scrupulous person, but not be scrupulous.
Can you quantify at all? Have you done this 20 times or 200? Do you have anyone else involved? Remember this is Harvard – extra “pop” in ECs is important. General comment - it is not a good idea to post your essays on the Internet. Someone else could take it and use it, and you could be accused of plagiarism.
Your essay is generic, meaning that a thousand or ten thousand other students could have written this exact same essay. The key to good essay writing is specificity – descriptive details that only **YOU ** could write about. For example, here is my son’s extracurricular activity essay that he submitted to HYP and about 10 other colleges five years ago. Keep in mind that many admissions offices have been scanning essays into turnitin.com to gauge a student’s originality, so copying a phrase, a sentence or even the complete essay would probably raise red flags in your application.
Notice the details, the specificity. How many other students could have written this particular essay with these specific details. Probably very few, certainly not as many as your essay. That’s what you need to do improve your essay – supply details and specificity that only YOU could write about!
Good essay writing isn’t always about being grammatically correct. That non sequitur seemed to ring true for many Admissions Committee’s, helping him gain admission to Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Williams, Middlebury, Pomona, Georgetown, Boston College, Vanderbilt and a bunch of other selective colleges.
FWIW: My son attended Stuyvesant High School, a public high school where 29,000 eighth grade students compete in an SAT-like test for one of high school’s 900 spots. Once admitted, the high school becomes a pressure-cooker to see which best-of-the best student comes out on top – a fact widely known by college admissions officers. So, in the context of the high school he was applying from, I think Admissions Officers understood the non sequiter.
That would be something to take up with your writing instructor. What I would recommend is that you get a book of essays written by successful applicants to top universities. That way, you can see for yourself what the standard is.
Unfortunately there are numerous typographical and grammatical mistakes, and the style is too slang-like. Further, it doesn’t show leadership. There are plenty of 40 year old stay-at-home parents who volunteer to bake things; that by itself isn’t enough for Harvard.
Perhaps if you founded an organization and drove it to produce 5,000 cakes per year for underserved youth and received Her Majesty’s Volunteerism Award for 2014, then you’d have something.
Wait, is this “essay” supposed to be really creative like the commonapp and supplement?? I was just going to be super straightforward and say what I did because with a 150 word limit, I feel like I don’t have any wiggle room to play around. Thoughts? (Sorry for hijacking your thread, I can’t comment on your essay because I’m confused myself)
@lilypippili I’m confused too, I’ve never done this before! I’m guessing it has to be creative. All others I have seen have been but I’m not 100% sure. I hope that helps
Given only 150 words are allowed, I don’t think it has to be overly creative. However a simple description probably won’t reveal much about how that extra-curricular has affected you as a person, and what it means to you. Just my thoughts x
