爺爺 奶奶 populated college essays

我們父母那一代人正在老去。

他們留給我們的記憶，也許你我還沒有抽出時間來整理。

但，你我有所不知的是，他們的事跡現在是優秀文書題材，換來我們下一代的一封封錄取通知。

下麵三篇文書是來自2021-22申請年度的優秀文書。

三篇的主題都是自己的爺爺奶奶，作者也都是亞裔 Gen-Z。

讀完，你會更喜歡哪一篇呢？等讀完各位的留言，我的評論會繼續！

 

第一篇：爺爺

Red, orange, purple, gold...I was caught in a riot of shifting colors. I pranced up and down the hill, my palms extended to the moving collage of butterflies that surrounded me. “Would you like to learn how to catch one?” Grandfather asked, holding out a glass jar. “Yes!” I cheered, his huge calloused fingers closing my chubby five-year-old hands around it carefully.

Grandfather put his finger to his lips, and I obliged as I watched him deftly maneuver his net. He caught one marvelous butterfly perched on a flower, and I clutched the open jar in anticipation as he slid the butterfly inside. It quivered and fell to the bottom of the jar, and I gasped. It struggled until its wings, ablaze in a glory of orange and red, quivered to a stop. I watched, wide-eyed, as it stopped moving. “Grandpa! What’s happening?”

My grandfather had always had a collection of butterflies, but that was the first time I saw him catch one. After witnessing the first butterfly die, I begged him to keep them alive; I even secretly let some of them go. Therefore, to compromise, he began carrying a special jar for the days I accompanied him on his outings, a jar to keep the living butterflies. But the creatures we caught always weakened and died after a few days in captivity, no matter how tenderly I fed and cared for them. Grandfather took me aside and explained that the lifespan of an adult butterfly was very short. They were not meant to live forever: their purpose was to flame brilliantly and then fade away. Thus, his art serves as a memory of their beauty, an acknowledgement of nature’s ephemeral splendor.

But nothing could stay the same. I moved to America and as the weekly excursions to the mountainside ended, so did our lessons in nature and science. Although six thousand miles away, I would never forget how my grandpa’s wrinkles creased when he smiled or how he always smelled like mountain flowers.

As I grew older and slowly understood how Grandfather lived his life, I began to follow in his footsteps. He protected nature’s beauty from decay with his art, and in the same way, I tried to protect my relationships, my artwork, and my memories. I surrounded myself with the journals we wrote together, but this time I recorded my own accomplishments, hoping to one day show him what I had done. I recorded everything, from the first time I spent a week away from home to the time I received a gold medal at the top of the podium at the California Tae Kwon Do Competition. I filled my new home in America with the photographs from my childhood and began to create art of my own. Instead of catching butterflies like my grandpa, I began experimenting with butterfly wing art as my way of preserving nature’s beauty. Soon my home in America became a replica of my home in China, filled from wall to wall with pictures and memories.

Nine long years passed before I was reunited with him. The robust man who once chased me up the hillside had developed arthritis, and his thick black hair had turned white. The grandfather I saw now was not the one I knew; we had no hobby and no history in common, and he became another adult, distant and unapproachable. With this, I forgot all about the journals and photos that I had kept and wanted to share with him.

After weeks of avoidance, I gathered my courage and sat with him once again. This time, I carried a large, leather-bound book with me. “Grandfather,” I began, and held out the first of my many journals. These were my early days in America, chronicled through pictures, art, and neatly-printed English. On the last page was a photograph of me and my grandfather, a net in his hand and a jar in mine. As I saw our faces, shining with proud smiles, I began to remember our days on the mountainside, catching butterflies and halting nature’s eventual decay.

My grandfather has weakened over the years, but he is still the wise man who raised me and taught me the value of capturing the beauty of life. Although he has grown old, I have grown up. His legs are weak, but his hands are still as gentle as ever. Therefore, this time, it will be different. This time, I will no longer recollect memories, but create new ones.

 

第二篇：奶奶

“Don’t do ordinary things with me.”

My grandmother says she is the ordinary one in our family and does all the ordinary things: sewing quilts, making tofu, and growing an expansive vegetable garden in our backyard. When I take an interest in what she does, she shoos me away.

“I cannot teach you anything,” she tells me. “Go to study.”

Despite her attempts to keep me from her “ordinary”, I became fascinated with her forbidden garden. I would peek out the window at her, wishing I could be out there with her. Because she refused to teach me, I had to teach myself. In school, I became zealous in science, learning how flowers were more than just delicate petals, with pistils, stamens, and sepals. When that wasn’t enough, I checked out florist books and made my locker into a miniature library. I thought of one day proving to her that I could be extraordinary while being just like her.

It was the penetration of pests in my grandmother’s garden that let me the chance. The summer in tenth grade, her garden was overrun by slugs, snails, and Japanese beetles. When I sprayed her plants with soapy water and drowned the pests, she looked at me inquisitively, “Where’d you learn that?” I told her all of my botanic hunt. The rest of the summer she would see me waking up early in the morning, checking pests in the garden, and re-spray the plants once every week.

While sharing with my grandmother invoked more joy, my learning in school on plants expands in multitudes. At the environmental rally, I read about increasing soil salinity and heavy metal pollution. In biology class, I learnt the transports of ions in plants. These ideas spurred me to organize a team of young botanists in researching halophytes (salt-tolerant plants) and their potential for bioremediation.

When I explained my grandmother what we just uncovered about halophyte, she blinked at me and asked her question as ordinary, “can I eat them?” Since then, as an edible halophyte, quinoa makes frequent appearances in our kitchen.

My grandmother and I have begun to learn together. She sits by me while I pour over Greek philosophers, Euclidean geometry, and lines of indecipherable code, interspersing my breaks with lessons on a new stitching method. Nights are spent hiding from my mother, reading in flashlight under the covers. Mornings are comical, waking up to my face mashed into a Latin botanical encyclopedia and a vocabulary book under my grandmother’s pillow.

Not only she admits me in her ordinary times, but also it has become our best common ground. At the grocery store, she points excitedly at all the produce and asks me to read the ingredients of every type of dessert we spot. Our favorite are strawberry shortcake and mango pudding.

This summer, we hiked to Point Pelee. It was the first time she had spoken about her family. Her father had died and left her to take care of her younger siblings when she was ten. She never had an education, so she made a living selling shoes on the street to send my mother and aunt to school. “I will never let them do ordinary things with me,” she avowed to herself.

Still, there was so much for me to learn. I wanted for my grandmother to teach me to fold dumplings, to show filial piety, to respect my parents while remaining myself, and to be more Chinese.

“I wish I could give you more than these ordinary things,” she confessed.

Yet, it is these ordinary things that has led me into my learning path, and is now inspiring me to find fulfillment in my life — much like hers, it is in learning.

 

第三篇：還是爺爺 

My Ye-Ye always wears a red baseball cap. I think he likes the vivid color—bright and sanguine, like himself. When Ye-Ye came from China to visit us seven years ago, he brought his red cap with him and every night for six months, it sat on the stairway railing post of my house, waiting to be loyally placed back on Ye-Ye’s head the next morning. He wore the cap everywhere: around the house, where he performed magic tricks with it to make my little brother laugh; to the corner store, where he bought me popsicles before using his hat to wipe the beads of summer sweat off my neck. Today whenever I see a red hat, I think of my Ye-Ye and his baseball cap, and I smile.

Ye-Ye is the Mandarin word for “grandfather.” My Ye-Ye is a simple, ordinary person—not rich, not “successful”—but he is my greatest source of inspiration and I idolize him. Of all the people I know, Ye-Ye has encountered the most hardship and of all the people I know, Ye-Ye is the most joyful. That these two aspects can coexist in one individual is, in my mind, truly remarkable.

Ye-Ye was an orphan. Both his parents died before he was six years old, leaving him and his older brother with no home and no family. When other children gathered to read around stoves at school, Ye-Ye and his brother walked in the bitter cold along railroad tracks, looking for used coal to sell. When other children ran home to loving parents, Ye-Ye and his brother walked along the streets looking for somewhere to sleep. 

Eight years later, Ye-Ye walked alone—his brother was dead.

Ye-Ye managed to survive, and in the meanwhile taught himself to read, write, and do arithmetic. Life was a blessing, he told those around him with a smile.

Years later, Ye-Ye’s job sent him to the Gobi Desert, where he and his fellow workers labored for twelve hours a day. The desert wind was merciless; it would snatch their tent in the middle of the night and leave them without supply the next morning. Every year, harsh weather took the lives of some fellow workers.

After eight years, Ye-Ye was transferred back to the city where his wife lay sick in bed. At the end of a twelve-hour workday, Ye-Ye took care of his sick wife and three young children. He sat with the children and told them about the wide, starry desert sky and mysterious desert lives. Life was a blessing, he told them with a smile.

But life was not easy; there was barely enough money to keep the family from starving. Yet, my dad and his sisters loved going with Ye-Ye to the market. He would buy them little luxuries that their mother would never indulge them in: a small bag of sunflower seeds for two cents, a candy each for three cents. Luxuries as they were, Ye-Ye bought them without hesitation. Anything that could put a smile on the children’s faces and a skip in their steps was priceless.

Ye-Ye still goes to the market today. At the age of seventy-eight, he bikes several kilometers each week to buy bags of fresh fruits and vegetables, and then bikes home to share them with his neighbors. He keeps a small patch of strawberries and an apricot tree. When the fruit is ripe, he opens his gate and invites all the children in to pick and eat. He is Ye-Ye to every child in the neighborhood.

I had always thought that I was sensible and self-aware. But nothing has made me stare as hard in the mirror as I did after learning about the cruel past that Ye-Ye had suffered and the cheerful attitude he had kept throughout those years. I thought back to all the times when I had gotten upset. My mom forgot to pick me up from the bus station. My computer crashed the day before an assignment was due. They seemed so trivial and childish, and I felt deeply ashamed of myself.

Now, whenever I encounter an obstacle that seems overwhelming, I think of Ye-Ye; I see him in his red baseball cap, smiling at me. Like a splash of cool water, his smile rouses me from grief, and reminds me how trivial my worries are and how generous life has been. Today I keep a red baseball cap at the railing post at home where Ye-Ye used to put his every night. Whenever I see the cap, I think of my Ye-Ye, smiling in his red baseball cap, and I smile. Yes, Ye-Ye. Life is a blessing.

朋友，我在等著收看您的評論。

• 你這個軟廣告比較差，你隻說了“一封封錄取通知。。。”，都是差州大錄取嗎？亞裔這種文章太多了，不是說寫的不好，而是這種題材過度泛濫。AO要看吐了 -ZeroSumGame-  09/15/2022 postreply 06:59:55

• 仔細看看，這都不是州大的 -賈平凸- 09/15/2022 postreply 08:21:48

• 你這樣軟廣告，占便宜，沒人敢找你，怕被你這麽會算計坑了。光明正大的花錢做廣告吧 -ZeroSumGame-  09/15/2022 postreply 08:42:03

• 這話說得有道理 我需要做廣告的，可不是文書服務。你想想會是啥。-賈平凸-  09/15/2022 postreply 08:48:05

• 是出國中介啦：） -sept.-  09/15/2022 postreply 10:36:57

• 這類essay是寫得很好。不過不太可能加分的。essay不需要寫得漂亮。 -avw-  09/15/2022 postreply 07:24:50

• 您說的是麻麻吧 -賈平凸-  09/15/2022 postreply 08:22:26

• 是的，需要表現你自己是個什麽樣的人。不是作文比賽。 -bobpainting-  09/15/2022 postreply 09:10:46

• 看後感覺1和2不錯。3一般。 -bobpainting-  09/15/2022 postreply 09:23:51

• 第二篇寫得最好，第三篇不行，而且太長 -avw-  09/15/2022 postreply 07:43:56

• 眼光不錯 -賈平凸- 09/15/2022 postreply 08:22:52

• 飛看一下，記得第一篇進了哈佛啊。其實看範文看再多也白搭。文書的主題 是寫自己。要真實。要不同-圓西瓜-  09/15/2022 postreply 07:55:26

• 很多人以為進了名校的essays一定好其實未必 -fantasticdream- 09/15/2022 postreply 08:19:29

• 嘿嘿。UCB女孩橫掃7所旗艦，她的文書寫了人生如做菜 -圓西瓜-  09/15/2022 postreply 08:24:25

• 橫掃藤校了嗎？ -violinpiano-  09/15/2022 postreply 08:28:21

• 隻申了一所Y ：） -圓西瓜- 09/15/2022 postreply 08:38:51

• 麻煩您把這篇貼出來欣賞下？ -賈平凸- 09/15/2022 postreply 08:44:14

• 應該不行，我隻看過一段。她輔導我家老大寫文書來著 -圓西瓜-  09/15/2022 postreply 08:48:02

• 原來是您家私藏啊 -賈平凸-  09/15/2022 postreply 08:50:39

• essay要這麽有用 那早就橫掃了 -violinpiano-  09/15/2022 postreply 08:27:44

• 文書不一定讓你橫掃，但可以提高你橫掃的概率 -賈平凸-  09/15/2022 postreply 08:32:00

• 能提高0.1% -fantasticdream-  09/15/2022 postreply 09:08:24

• 對，一共隻有0.1%的橫掃概率。給你從0%提高0.1%，你要不要 -賈平凸-  09/16/2022 postreply 06:52:55

• 對，60%的藤生隻拿到一藤 他們的Essay就是你說的這樣。這樣的申請者大約15萬人，普通文書質量的錄取率，不到8%。拿到2+藤offer的人，文書的質量就不一樣了。每年這類文書大約2000-3000左右。這類文書中的錄取率，高達50%。拿下滿貫的小百人，個個都是好筆頭。這類文書的錄取率是100%。說到寫自己，後兩類文書都在閃光地寫自己。第一類文書，是在寫閃光的自己-賈平凸-  09/15/2022 postreply 08:30:47

• AO 好像要了解申請人是否適合該校，不是要錄取祖父母或者評作文比賽。文章像沙拉醬，錄取看裏麵的菜，然後是混和均勻的味道。綜合考察，缺一不可，不能光吃醬沒有硬通貨 -Cambridge617- 09/15/2022 postreply 09:45:21

• 對，stats, ecs 和rec，缺一不可，不過現在這三個都不是稀缺貨了，隻有essay還是 多數essay好的人，會缺少stats和ecs 中的一兩項，就像是Joan Didion這樣的好筆頭。而stats和ecs好的人，大多又不是好筆頭，就是我們身邊多數的小中男、女娃們。-賈平凸-  09/16/2022 postreply 06:50:24

• 感人 -品酒-   09/15/2022 postreply 10:30:17

• 不知道，別人的essay怎麽會有第三者知道。 -avw-09/15/2022 postreply 10:48:53

• 我老二自己謝絕給父母看因為我們沒有申請過大學，隻和康嫂討論修改定稿，同學朋友之間也沒有互相看。老大隻是在提交的時候讓我們坐在旁邊看著他按鼠標，沒有時間看他和康嫂一起準備的。 -Cambridge617- 09/15/2022 postreply 11:02:43

• 這就是娃們在申請上的通病 不是他們都不聽自己父母的，而是大多數的父母真的不大懂申請。大家能懂的，就是人人都很容易懂得的硬通貨-賈平凸-  09/16/2022 postreply 06:55:38

• 第二篇的theme很好。但是是不是有點兒牽強？Because she refused to teach me, I had to teach myself. In school, I became zealous in science, learning how flowers were more than just delicate petals, with pistils, stamens, and sepals.  -朱珠兒-  09/15/2022 postreply 10:59:54

• 文筆很好 -zeno- 09/15/2022 postreply 11:29:08

• 你這個點提的好！ -賈平凸- 09/16/2022 postreply 06:51:14