Hello! In beginning my common application, I’ve reached the Harvard supplemental essay.
I’m interested in doing the one that states " A list of books you have read during the past twelve months" but would appreciate advice on how to approach it. I’m interested in this one as I read a large amount of books in the past year. How is this list?
Tentative naturally, but it’s a start!
Some of the books on your list were assigned reading in my son and daughter’s high school literature classes – so that’s the way I’m tending to look at them. Not sure if an Admissions Director would feel the same way. I think Harvard is interested in books you’ve read on your own, rather than a recitation of books you’ve been assigned at your high school. (Not sure if this is the case with your list, but FWIW: These books include)
This blog may help you think about your list: http://collegeappjungle.com/2011/10/10/the-harvard-supplement-or-how-to-write-about-books-part-1/
Thank you for the help! I’ll be sure to edit the list.
It’s NOT that you need to edit your list, it’s that you need to toss it in the garbage, as most of your list includes ONE TYPE OF BOOK – books that seem to have been assigned for English literature classes at your high school. Where are the books you read for pleasure? Where are the books that show your interest in activities outside of the classroom, be it baseball, basketball, theater, math, politics, computer science, religion? Where are the books of different genres – non-fiction, fantasy, biography, autobiography, plays, movies, poetry etc? Your book list tells an Admissions Director absolutely nothing about you – and truthfully, I think you need to reconsider if choosing this supplemental essay is the right approach for your application to Harvard.
Oh no, I meant that some of those books were assigned to my English literature classes. I hadn’t added them until the last second as I wasn’t sure regarding which books.
That’s an excised and extended list.
I feel I have an apt representation of genres. There is science fiction and satire in Vonnegut. Non-fiction in Larson and Zinn. Historical fiction in Jailbird, War and Peace, For Whom The Bell Tolls, and The Road Back. Philosophical fiction in The Brothers Karamazov and Fathers and Sons. Much of my literature is influenced by my appreciation for history.
However, don’t take my aforementioned comments as me not accepting your criticism. I’m not anywhere near set in stone with this supplemental essay yet. And I don’t intend to use every one of these books if there is a way to relay a certain facet of myself in a list.
Here’s the problem with your list. ANY student could submit it.And in fact, now that you’ve published it on the internet for anyone to see – they can! Which is why you should NEVER post your book list or an essay on College Confidential, as it just invites plagiarism. Honestly, you list is too generic, hundreds both other students could submit the identical list, It says nothing about what you love and who you are as a person. It tells me (and Admissions Director) that you like to read the kind of books that are assigned in high school . . . but beyond that I get nothing.
I really think you would be better served by writing an essay about something that Admissions couldn’t glean from the rest of your essay. Best of luck!
Wait a second, gibby. Are you really telling me that at Stuyvesant your children had both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov as assigned reading? Along with Moby Dick and War and Peace? That’s . . . a little hard to believe. Especially since there are some other pretty massive 19th Century novels that I thought it was difficult to get out of high school (as an ambitious student) without reading.
My daughter read The Brothers Karamazov for a high school course, but it was part of an elective minicourse that ran for a whole trimester and read two books (the other one being Anna Karenina), and maybe six kids signed up for the course. It was a great course, but the reading load was more than twice what the school’s English department had as its standard. And this was a school with a platinum-level academic reputation.
My mother taught a really rigorous high school American Lit course for 20 years, and she never assigned Moby Dick. It would have taken too much space in her curriculum.
What I liked about the OP’s list was that I thought it showed that the OP followed up on books he or she liked by reading more of the same author. What I didn’t like was that they were all pretty standard, and that you couldn’t tell anything about what the OP got out of the books just by looking at the list, other than that the OP likes reading books that lots and lots of other people love reading, too.
^^ @JHS. My daughter started Stuyvesant 10 years ago, so the reading lists have changed since then, but between both my son and daughter, I believe they took
See: http://stuy.enschool.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=128041&type=d&termREC_ID=&pREC_ID=253629
Look at the reading lists for each course – Moby Dick is still there, so is Crime and Punishment. My daughter also read Anna Karenina because I remember her complaining how depressing it was. My point: many books on the OP’s list look pretty similar to courses at a rigorous high school like Stuyvesant, which doesn’t serve the OP well IMHO, because they are seem like assigned reading.
I greatly appreciate both of your criticisms! And most likely I will choose another topic.
For future advice, which of the books listed would appear the most “original” in a sense if I were to write an essay regarding it.
My personal choice would be A People’s History of The United States – Howard Zinn because long ago, when I went to Boston University I took a course from Howard Zinn and loved it!
Factoid: I went to Boston University from 1973 to 1977. During my sophomore year, the Vietnam War was still raging and one requirement of Howard’s class was to go out and protest – either for, or against, the Vietnam War. Any student that failed to protest and have their voice heard would be given an incomplete.
Thank you. And wow you met him, amazing! That’s a neat anecdote.
I hadn’t seen the revised list when I wrote my post above.
Zinn’s book is very, very popular. I’m sure you can write a good essay about it, but I’m not sure that will make you stand out.
Three things strike me very strongly about your book list: (1) As I said before, you like doing deep dives when an author interests you. You have read a lot of Melville. It looks like you were assigned Bartleby for school, and then you read Moby Dick and a bunch of much less well-known works. Why did you do that? What did you get out of it? (2) You clearly have a thing for big fat Russian novels. Why? What do you get out of it? (3) Same with historical fiction (which could include Larson, who writes history as if it were fiction, and of course Zinn, who many believe is making it up – j/k).
How does what you learn from Zinn affect how you read the very different ideas of history in all of those 19th Century novels? How does reading Zinn affect how you read texts that are both historical artifacts and part of a vibrant canon that teaches people today what to expect from literature?
Your pointed introspective questions are very helpful. Especially those last few. I think I have a better idea on how to write a more focused essay regarding history with a few of those books. Thank you!