如何写好一篇Essay？

留学申请少不了写文书，无论何种申请文书，其目的只有一个：让招生官了解你是一个什么样的人。

很多人觉得难，面对看过成千上万文书的招生官，什么样文书才能入他们法眼呢？

下面有一些建议，可以帮助你了解招生人员在寻找什么。U.S. News 编辑了一些帮助学生进入学校的大学论文范例。他们说，招生办的工作人员也分享了这些文章，文章之所以脱颖而出，是因为学生们的声音发出了光芒，帮助学校了解了学生。

马萨诸塞州塔夫茨大学(Tufts University)招生管理主任Karen Richardson表示:“我们实际上是在倾听学生的声音，并试图弄清楚他们在我们的校园里会成为什么样的角色。这不仅仅是学生选择写的主题，而是他们如何写。我们鼓励学生展示而不是讲述，以帮助读者了解他们是谁。”

纽约汉密尔顿学院(Hamilton College)负责招生管理的副校长Monica Inzer说：“一篇好的Essay对我而言，能让我在看到学生在申请表格中看不到的那一面。”

对许多学生来说，因为他们的生活经验可能有限，所有找到自己的声音往往是一项挑战。此外，到目前为止，学生一直在按照高中老师的指示写作，而不是为自己。

在其招生页面上，汉密尔顿列出了该校录取学生撰写的多篇大学论文范例。尽管Inzer拒绝单独挑出一篇文章，但她表示，这些例子提供了学生们不同的声音和背景。

下面节选的这篇文章，学生通过对飞钓（fly-fishing）的热爱展现了自己的个性。

1

I kept a firm grip on the rainbow trout as I removed the lure from its lip. Then, my heart racing with excitement, I lowered the fish to the water and watched it flash away.

I remained hooked.

I caught that 10-inch fryling five years ago on Fall Creek using a $5 fly rod given to me by my neighbor Gil. The creek is spectacular as it cascades down the 150-foot drop of Ithaca Falls. Only 100-feet further, however, it runs past a decrepit gun factory and underneath a graffitied bridge before flowing adjacent to my high school and out to Cayuga Lake. Aside from the falls, the creek is largely overlooked. Nearly all of the high school students I know who cross that bridge daily do so with no thought of the creek below.

When I was a toddler, my moms say I used to point and ask, "What? What? What?" Even now my inquisitive nature is obvious. Unlike my friends, I had noticed people fly fishing in Fall Creek. Mesmerized by their graceful casts, I pestered Gil into teaching me. From that first thrilling encounter with a trout, I knew I needed to catch more. I had a new string of questions. I wanted to understand trout behavior, how to find them, and what they ate. There was research to do.

I devoted myself to fly fishing. I asked questions. I woke up at 4 a.m. to fish before school. I spent days not catching anything. Yet, I persisted. The Kid's Book of Fishing was replaced by Norman MacLean's A River Runs Through It. Soon Ernest Hemingway's essays found their place next to Trout Unlimitedmagazines by my bed.

I sought teachers. I continued to fish with Gil, and at his invitation joined the local Trout Unlimited Chapter. I enrolled in a fly-tying class.

There I met Ken, a soft-spoken molecular biologist, who taught me to start each fly I make by crimping the hook to reduce harm to fish, and Mike, a sarcastic Deadhead lawyer, who turns over rocks at all times of year to "match the hatch" and figure out which insects fish are eating. Thanks to my mentors, I can identify and create almost every type of Northeastern mayfly, caddisfly, and stonefly.

The more I learned, the more protective I felt of the creek and its inhabitants. My knowledge of mayflies and experience fishing in many New York streams led me to notice the lack of Blue-Winged Olive Mayflies in Fall Creek. I figured out why while discussing water quality in my AP Biology class; lead from the gun factory had contaminated the creek and ruined the mayfly habitat. Now, I participate in stream clean-up days, have documented the impact of invasive species on trout and other native fish, and have chosen to continue to explore the effects of pollutants on waterways in my AP Environmental Science class.

Last year, on a frigid October morning, I started a conversation with the man fishing next to me. Banks, I later learned, is a contemporary artist who nearly died struggling with a heroin addiction. When we meet on the creek these days we talk about casting techniques, aquatic insects, and fishing ethics. We also talk about the healing power of fly fishing. I know Banks would agree with Henry David Thoreau, who wrote "[Many men] lay so much stress on the fish which they catch or fail to catch, and on nothing else, as if there were nothing else to be caught."

Initially, my goal was to catch trout. What I landed was a passion. Thanks to that first morning on Fall Creek, I've found a calling that consumes my free time, compels me to teach fly fishing to others, and drives what I want to study in college.

I will be leaving Fall Creek soon. I am eager to step into new streams.

“这更多的是关于声音，而不是其他任何东西，”Inzer指出，一篇过于客观的文章可能会削弱学生的个性。

马里兰州约翰·霍普金斯大学本科生招生主任Ellen Kim说:“我们认识到，要想在高中生涯中申请到一所好大学需要多年的努力和奉献。但是帮助招生委员会在课堂、俱乐部和社区中描绘学生的形象，需要倾听学生的声音和观点。”

有些大学除了个人论文外，还需要一篇补充论文。招生专家指出，这些论文通常篇幅较短，重点是回答学院提出的一个具体问题。

不过，在某些情况下，学校可能会把补充作文作为首要任务。圣约翰学院(St. John's College)负责招生的副校长Benjamin Baum说，圣约翰学院的情况就是如此。

Baum说:“我们称之为补充，但实际上，这是学生们在申请时要写的最重要的一篇论文。这篇论文允许学校根据圣约翰学院的学术重点为申请者量身定制问题。”

专家表示，补充短文往往很短，但圣约翰学院(St. John’s College)却与这一趋势背道而驰，要求至少400字。这是因为学校对学生就选定的主题进行长篇写作很感兴趣。

Baum强调这篇关于学生对政治和法律哲学的热爱的补充文章是一个很好的例子:

2

Last year in my Constitutional Law class, I fell in love with political and legal philosophy. Sexy, right?

Maybe not, but I loved the rules, the structure, and the big questions that surrounded organizing a government. I thought about these things constantly—while brushing my teeth, doing chores, and driving to school. Unable to take this beloved course a second time, I chose my senior classes with more than a touch of melancholy. I was skeptical that even the most appealing humanities class, AP Literature, would be anything but anticlimactic by comparison. I'd become so accustomed to reading the function-focused writings of Locke, Rousseau, Madison, Thoreau, that I found it difficult to see "literature" as anything more than mere stories. I wanted substance that I could actually do something with, and I didn't expect to find it in AP Lit.

Settling down to read our first assigned book, Sophocles' Antigone, I was apathetic. We'd done a pre-reading exercise earlier in class and I'd gathered thatAntigone was just the sad story of a wannabe-martyr-descendant-of-Oedipus who crosses the wrong king, dies, breaks her fiance's heart with her death, leading him, and her would-be mother-in-law by extension, to suicide, blah, blah, blah. I fanned the pages with my thumb, checked the time (10:15 p.m.), and willed myself to make it through the first ten pages without falling asleep.

Rousseau's familiar skepticism of an unchecked ruler, Locke's notions of natural rights philosophy, and Thoreau's willingness to violate immoral laws. Wait—this was a literature class, and yet here was Sophocles articulating the same concerns of the Framers of the Constitution (hundreds of years before any of them were born).

Antigone has become my favorite book because it wraps political and legal theory around complex characters and a compelling narrative. Prior to reading Antigone , I assumed that if I hadn't read every book that pertained to the architecture of US government, I had at least heard of them.

But I was so mistaken. Antigone proved this assumption wrong because Antigone itself was a case study in the actual consequences of ideas discussed by political philosophers. In other words, Antigonehumanized the esoteric and function-driven debates I'd studied last year. Witnessing Haemon cradle his dead fiance in his arms, then subsequently kill himself before his father's eyes, allowed me to see all of the ideas I'd spent hours considering as not purely political questions, but as human ones. Finishing the play, I was ashamed that I'd harbored such skepticism at the outset of my reading. My experience with Antigone reminds me why I get excited each time I use calculus in physics or art in cooking, and I look forward to a lifetime of making these connections.

从引人注目的开场白到对主题的强调，Baum说这个例子之所以突出是因为学生的“知识热情”。学生对深入学术概念的接受向招生团队表明，她非常适合这所大学。

虽然圣约翰学院可能会要求学生给出更深入的答案，但其他学校看重简洁，要求学生写出简洁的答案。

塔夫茨大学分享的一个例子，用不到250个字就把读者从学生对折纸的热爱带到了对科学的热爱。

3

Using a flimsy piece of printer paper, I remember folding my first paper crane. Reading instructions off a dusty origami book from my basement, my fingers fumbled with the paper, folding, unfolding, refolding, and possibly some frustration-induced crumpling. Nearly an hour later, with little creases scattered across its body and a misaligned beak, it was clear that origami wasn't a natural talent of mine.

Despite its deformities, there was an endearing quality to the bird I couldn't quite explain. After sixteen folds, it resembled the paper only in color and material. I would fold countless other designs, until my room was covered with creations from simple paper boats to intricate seven part lotus flowers.

The joy I found in origami lied in the fact that I had the freedom to invent anything; with each fold, creativity flowed through my fingers, converting curiosity of the potential of each fold into an irrepressible desire to create more. It is what motivated me to read about 2D kinematics to win a projectile motion challenge, and understand the chemistry behind qualitative analysis of cations for a lab.

Everything I could ever want to know and more is right at my fingertips. From the change in weight I feel in a moving elevator, to the chemical reactions that cause the plastic stars in my room to glow, science is a field that permeates every single aspect of life. I know my curiosity to understand the world around me nurtures my love for science.

“折纸并不是大学论文的典型主题，但除此之外，她向我们展示的是她制作物品的过程，而不是告诉我们她制作的物品并不总是如她所期望或想要的那样。尽管如此，她还是继续努力。这有助于我们把她看作一个愿意在我们的校园里接受新体验的人。”

同样引人注目的是她用来表达观点的意象——我能想象出地板上那些皱巴巴的纸，以及她感到的沮丧。最终，她能够将折纸创作过程与自己的学术兴趣联系起来，”Richardson在一封电子邮件中写道。

当涉及到写一篇大学入学申请论文时——无论是个人的还是补充的——专家们建议学生们遵循同样的规则：找到他们的声音，写一个对他们来说重要的话题，分享他们的个性，表达自己，广泛校对。关于后一点，专家建议学生们在提交论文之前，先和熟悉自己的人分享。

老师、朋友和父母都可以帮助校对，但专家指出，学生的声音应该保持完整。

“这篇论文真的需要成为学生的作品。我鼓励学生让身边的人读这篇文章，并问“你知道这篇文章是关于我的吗?”如果答案是否定的，那么是时候修改文章了。但要确保这仍然是你的声音，”理查森说。

Inzer还鼓励学生不要在论文上过于强调，把不必要的重量放在申请大学的过程中。虽然一篇优秀的文章可能会在竞争激烈的领域提升申请者的水平，但她表示，这并不会决定一份申请能否成功。

“单凭这一点，他们是不能够被录取的；这是他们的成绩，努力工作和许多其他的事情共同决定的。但这可能会让他们得到额外的关注，尤其是在一个有很多优秀候选人的高度选择性的地方，”Inzer说。