今天是2017年高考天，对于选择留学道路的同学来说，自然可以跳过“高考”这个独木桥，但申请美国留学的小伙伴其实是选择了一个更加拥挤的“独木桥”，且不论GPA，SAT等标化成绩，但就是一个申请文书就是一个非常大的挑战，接下来和大家分享几篇美国“高考状元”的申请文书。

　　被8所藤校+Stanford+MIT+Caltech+Chicago录取的学霸的申请文书

　　来自美国中部北达科他州一个名叫Fargo小镇的Martin Altenburg同学近日霸占了美国各大媒体的版面。这位17岁的高三学生日前拿到了美国8所藤校外加斯坦福、麻省理工、加州理工和芝加哥大学的录取通知书，当之无愧成为今年美国的“高考状元”!

　　Martin就读于当地 Fargo North High School，是学校有名的学霸。ACT(相当于美国高考)成绩为35分(满分为36分)。他参加过很多数学竞赛，是Fargo Youth Initiative项目的创始人和共同主席。Martin同时多才多艺，喜欢并参与田径、游泳、小提琴、合唱等活动。

　　Martin的背景堪称完美，不过在接受CNN采访的时候，他显得很低调：“我想上好的大学啊，但是竞争很激烈啊，所以我申请了那么多学校啊，希望录取的概率大一点啊。”但是没想到全部都录取了!

　　日前Martin通过美国媒体公布了他美国大学申请Common App中的主文书，全文如下，供小伙伴们参考!

　　My favorite time to run is at night.

　　This particular run in early August brought a break to the humid, muggy weather I left on the East Coast. I used my body as a human psychrometer, knowing that the cold feeling of evaporating sweat signaled much needed dry air.

　　I cross over the bridge into Minnesota. Out of my three sports, cross country is definitely my worst — but I continue to be hooked on it. Unlike swimming and track, my motivation to run is heavily intrinsic. I live for the long runs I take on by myself. While they rarely happen during our season, we were assigned a long run to complete over our first weekend of cross country. In reality, I was supposed to go six miles, but felt eight gave me more time to explore the home I had just returned to. My mind begins to wander as I once again find my rhythm.

　　My train of thought while running is similar to the way one thinks in the minutes before sleep — except one has more control over how these thoughts progress and what tangents they move off of. While special relativity would be the "proper" thing to think about, especially at MITES, I revive the violin repertoire I had turned away from for so long and begin playing it in my head. I'm now at the edge of town in between the cornfields. The streaming floodlights on the open road give me a sense of lonely curiosity, reminiscent of the opening lines of Wieniawski's first violin concerto. I come up with adaptations of the melody in my head, experimenting with an atonality similar to Stravinsky's.

　　I turn south onto a highway heading towards downtown. The dark night sky is broken by the oncoming light pollution. While I've longed for a road trip across the country, the neon lights from Sunset Lanes will have to do for Las Vegas. Turning west, I see a man and perk up as I try to look more menacing than I really am. But I relinquish. I realize that I did such an act simply because of the color of his skin. I kick myself for reverting to passive racism — something I spent much of the summer trying to overcome.

　　The bridge over Main Avenue leads me back into North Dakota and downtown Fargo. My city is on the eve of its annual pride week — the largest in North Dakota. Beyond the rainbow flags lining downtown, I see the Catholic cathedral I attend every Sunday outside of the summer. The juxtaposition brings back memories of trying to come to terms with my own beliefs. The conservatism on my mom's side of the family often clashes with the more liberal views of my dad's family. Fargo is known for its "nice" attitude, but the discussion of controversial issues is often set aside in favor of maintaining peace. On the surface this can be good, but it makes change a long and cumbersome process, and has caused me to become very independent in finding my own belief system — something especially difficult when these beliefs may have to do with your future identity.

　　The remaining part of my run is short and uneventful. The fact that the traffic lights have switched to blinking yellow and red means that I have been out later than usual. When I get home, I find that my run took somewhere around an hour — I honestly don't care about time during my distance runs. Longs runs are often seen as a runner battling the distance rather than time. But for me, long runs are a journey — both physically and mentally. Each time I run a route, I understand my surroundings and city more and more, and couldn't be more excited and sad to know that I'm leaving this place in a year's time.

　　被8所藤校录取的亚裔学生的大学申请essay全文

　　Cassadra是典型的华人移民，父亲是台湾人，母亲是马来西亚人。5岁的时候，Cassadra全家从马来西亚移民到美国。和许多华人移民一样，Cassandra全家在去了美国之后，首先面对的是语言和文化的障碍。而Cassandra申请的主文书就是围绕其如何学习英语展开。

　　Cassadra目前是加州橙县The Orange County School of the Arts的12年级学生。在高中的生涯中，她的GPA为4.67，冠居全校之首;SAT分数为1540。她热爱写作，从2年级开始就开始短篇小说的写作。从7年级开始，她就读于The Orange County School of the Arts，虽然学校离家很远，但是这所学校的课程能够满足她对写作和创意的兴趣。在学校里，Cassadra担任学校校刊的主编，并在一些电影节等场合采访过好莱坞的明星。同时，她也为一些儿童文学网站撰写书评和影评。

　　Cassadra被美国8所藤校录取，引起了不少轰动，她是他们学校历史上个拿到藤校大满贯录取的学生。连其马来西亚老家的媒体也对此大幅报道，顺便还狠狠批判了一下马来西亚本国的教育，为什么马来西亚本国培养不出这样的学生?

　　在谈及成功的秘诀的时候，Cassadra说：“成绩是一方面因素，但这没有固定公式——我们学校很多同学AP考的科目比我多，成绩比我好。如果一定有秘诀，我想可能是我对写作的热情打动了招生官。”除了8所藤校之外，Cassadra还被斯坦福、约翰霍普金斯、西北、加州伯克利、南加大等学校录取。

　　以下是Cassadra在Common App中的主文书全文：

　　In our house, English is not English. Not in the phonetic sense, like short a is for apple, but rather in the pronunciation – in our house, snake is snack. Words do not roll off our tongues correctly – yet I, who was pulled out of class to meet with language specialists, and my mother from Malaysia, who pronounces film as flim, understand each other perfectly. In our house, there is no difference between cast and cash, which was why at a church retreat, people made fun of me for “cashing out demons.” I did not realize the glaring difference between the two Englishes until my teacher corrected my pronunciations of hammock, ladle, and siphon. Classmates laughed because I pronounce accept as except, success as sussess. I was in the Creative Writing conservatory, and yet words failed me when I needed them most.

　　Suddenly, understanding flower is flour wasn’t enough. I rejected the English that had never seemed broken before, a language that had raised me and taught me everything I knew. Everybody else’s parents spoke with accents smarting of Ph.D.s and university teaching positions. So why couldn’t mine?

　　My mother spread her sunbaked hands and said, “This is where I came from,” spinning a tale with the English she had taught herself. When my mother moved from her village to a town in Malaysia, she had to learn a brand new language in middle school: English. In a time when humiliation was encouraged, my mother was defenseless against the cruel words spewing from the teacher, who criticized her paper in front of the class. When she began to cry, the class president stood up and said, “That’s enough.”

　　“Be like that class president,” my mother said with tears in her eyes. The class president took her under her wing and patiently mended my mother’s strands of language. “She stood up for the weak and used her words to fight back.” We were both crying now. My mother asked me to teach her proper English so old white ladies at Target wouldn’t laugh at her pronunciation. It has not been easy. There is a measure of guilt when I sew her letters together. Long vowels, double consonants — I am still learning myself. Sometimes I let the brokenness slide to spare her pride but perhaps I have hurt her more to spare mine.

　　As my mother’s vocabulary began to grow, I mended my own English. Through performing poetry in front of 3000 at my school’s Season Finale event, interviewing people from all walks of life, and writing stories for the stage, I stand against ignorance and become a voice for the homeless, the refugees, the ignored. With my words I fight against jeers pelted at an old Asian street performer on a New York subway. My mother’s eyes are reflected in underprivileged ESL children who have so many stories to tell but do not know how. I fill them with words as they take needle and thread to make a tapestry.

　　In our house, there is beauty in the way we speak to each other. In our house, language is not broken but rather bursting with emotion. We have built a house out of words. There are friendly snakes in the cupboard and snacks in the tank. It is a crooked house. It is a little messy. But this is where we have made our home.

　　被哈佛、普林斯顿等7所藤校录取的申请文书全文

　　来自西雅图Mercer Island High School的17岁学生Luke Kenworthy在上周被哈佛、普林斯顿、哥伦比亚、宾大、康奈尔、布朗、达特茅斯等7所藤校录取，同时耶鲁大学把他放在Waitlist上。

　　Luke是学校有名的学霸。他选修了学校开设的每一门AP课程，其中他最喜欢的是物理和比较政治学。同时他是学校学生会(Associated Student Body)的主席。他曾发起一项Level Life Up的项目，成功邀请社会名人和成功人士向青少年分享成功的经历和体验。对于他自己的喜欢的国际政治和时事问题，他曾去叙利亚、土耳其和关塔纳摩进行实地调研。

　　在收到7所藤校的录取offer之后，Luke Kenworthy在接受采访时，向当地媒体公开了他Common App的主文书。

　　"The soft thumping of my dad's heart provided a small degree of solace as I cried with my head on his chest. I was in fifth grade. He had just told me that my mom, having been attacked by her boyfriend, was in the hospital. I remember being surprised with myself, surprised that I would be sad after all she had done. This was the same person who, when I was eight, threw a drunken party at our house for teens younger than I am now. This was the same person who would disappear after spending nights at the bar, the person who went to jail for trying to strangle my dad in an inebriated stupor. She had not been a part of my life for over a year since my dad received sole custody; I thought I had closure, that I was ready to move on. Yet, hot tears still ran down my cheek as I imagined her swollen face and the bruises on her arms.

　　"I had always been shy as a kid and the absence of my mom exacerbated this problem as I tried to unhealthily suppress my insecurities and fill her absence with others' approval. In sixth grade, I constantly sought the attention of a group of kids who, in turn, bullied me. Consequently, when I switched schools going into seventh grade, I was shy and timid, afraid to engage with new people. I pictured myself near the bottom of a rigid social hierarchy. The next year, I started to branch out more, but inside, I remained obsessed with how others perceived me.

　　"Entering high school, I would spend hours at a time thinking about my insecurity and talking through memories of my mom with my dad. During this time, I would always remember how I had stared numbly into the ripples of my dad's shirt as a fifth grader. I could never forget that feeling of helplessness, but with repeated reflection, I began to understand this moment in a different way. Given her circumstances — raised by an abusive, alcoholic father and a neglectful mother; involved in several dysfunctional relationships with controlling men; drinking to numb the injustices of life, but then realizing it was too late to stop — I have no way of knowing if my life would be any different from hers.

　　"For the first time, I began to understand an idea that has since granted me freedom: I cannot walk in my mom's shoes, and thus, no one else can truly walk in mine. The way others perceive me is inherently inaccurate, so I do not need to concern myself with what others think. This realization provided me the freedom to become untethered from the approval of others, finally at ease with myself.

　　"I started to open up. Throughout high school, I began talking to others about ideas that fascinated me, like space travel and philosophy, rather than frantically searching for common ground. I quit football, realizing that I largely participated for the status it brought me, and joined cross country, because I genuinely enjoy running. I started holding the door open for my classmates almost every morning, greeting them as they arrived at school, hoping to brighten their day. I became engaged in my role on student council, which paid off when I was elected student body president. Even then, it wasn't the role itself that I found meaningful, but the way I could use it to help others. The basis of my friendships shifted from validation seeking to mutual, genuine respect.

　　"As I listened to my dad's heartbeat that night, my mind filled with anger and sorrow. However, in hindsight, I am thankful for the lessons I learned from my mother; the pain I felt was a necessary step in the process of becoming the person I am today, someone who is unafraid to express himself."

　　看了“别人家的文书”，大家有什么感受?

　　如果想要写出好的文书，不是临时一两个月突击就可以“杜撰”出来的，而是对过往的生活经历提炼出来的，所以小伙伴们既然选择了留学这条路，就要把课外活动“精彩”起来。

　　出国留学，选新航道不纠结

　　都是一样的高分，却是不一样的高能

　　就来上海新航道 !