READING MY COMMON APP ESSAY THAT GOT ME INTO HARVARD!

a couple of you guys asked that I make a video reading my common FSA so I thought I would do that today a disclaimer before I read I personally don’t think that my essay was particularly strong I kind of procrastinated and just used a freshman essay that I really liked and tweaked it just a little bit and so when you’re listening to this essay don’t think that it’s like phenomenal and the thing that got me and I think it was just like original and not completely horrible that kept me from getting in I think it was just like there but as the title says this essay got me into Harvard and if you’ve seen my other videos you know that I’m attending Yale and the reason that I didn’t say this got me into Yale is because when I applied to Yale I used my quest for application and they didn’t have me send in my common app at all so they didn’t see this essay only Harvard did and so here it goes the title is chilled fingers on chain linked fences I believe in hanging on to chain link fences and the beautifully simple memories doing so creates it was exceptionally cold that fateful Friday it snowed — my friend Ali and I were taking a shortcut tours from practice that was a bit risky even without the snow we walked along a partially broken chain link fence that lay across the top of a steep slope which separated the town pools property from the high schools the foot high snow that topped the already tall grass was so slippery that we had to cling onto the fence in order to avoid falling down the side of the slope the weather ignorant teens that we were argh loveless hands were helpless victims to the merciless windchill as we slowly made our way to the pool other members of the swim team jokingly mocked us and took the longer but safer way around that day it also proved to be the faster route but Ali and I could not have cared less we clung to the fence for dear life cursing mother nature at the top of our lungs as a hysterical mr. Ryan filmed our ridiculous actions through the window of a third-floor classroom it never occurred to us to head back and take the safer path perhaps it was the fact that we had spent so much time already on the fence or just a principle to complete what we had started but we refused to turn back even though Frost but sorry even though Frost and our nearly frozen fingers we continued to venture forward once I had landed on solid concrete I looked back at Ali still slowly making her descent from the snow-covered hill to the pool and almost wanted to join her again despite it being cold scary and slippery our mini escapade was also exuberant and lively we refused to turn back because it was an adventure as much as we might have said we hated it at the same situation occurred we would do it all again people say it’s often not about the destination but the journey and on that Blizzard like Friday I learned that was quite true while the destination is important they sure need the journey chick sorry again the journey shapes how you treated had we taken the easy way that day we would have just gone to swim practice like usual but instead once we arrived we ran to thaw our fingers in the warm heated lobby of the building we high-fived each other at the fact that despite our snail-like pace we were still on time to practice we were able to create a small yet happy memory just by traveling to swim practice in an unconventional method that day I realized the true purpose that there’s a type of so I wrote that day I realized the true the purpose but I meant to say that day I realized the true purpose for highschool not to increase our telogen s’ that was just an add-on the real purpose for high schools for us students to go into our personalities through simple amazing memories my middle school self was a shy self-conscious preteen I worried about how others thought of me neglected to show my true colors since entering high school I’ve been able to shed my insecurities and blossom into the confident adventurous person I am today I can now lead conversations with friends conduct interesting debates with my peers be an active member of my town my newfound confidence has driven me so far as to measure fish out of town fishing derby lead a mock congress meeting as a Speaker of the House and star in a video about anti-smoking I’m going to set aside my inhibitions and just hang on to chain link fences so that was my essay and I didn’t know what prompt it would follow as I was writing it I was just going to do the UM there was an option to just put anything and then as I chose that essay I realized that it met the prompt the less isms we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success wreck out the time when you faced a challenge setback or failure did affect you and what you learned from the experience so that’s the essay that I chose as you could have seen I had like one typo in it and there probably a bunch of grammar mistakes and I think that just goes to show that your application really doesn’t need to be perfect it just needs to be human in a sense if you try to be perfect and try to come up with this perfect essay with this ridiculous story that doesn’t seem realistic and maybe the counselor the admissions officers won’t really believe it and I know some people will even like pay people in China to write their essays so I would if the one advice I have to give is to just try to be genuine choose an expiry a moment and not an experience and just try to be as true to yourself as you are a lot of people think that like Harvard is this crazy school that’s impossible to get into and you need to be a picture-perfect person with perfect SAT scores and perfect grades and perfect everything to get in and looking at my applications I found typos in my essay I think I accidentally put like community service as a varsity sport and so like you can make mistakes it all comes down to what type of person the counselors think you’re going to be on campus and whether you’re a hard-working genuine person they want to know whether what you take from going to college is going to benefit the world or benefit yourself you know so I just try to be as true to yourself as you can be on your application and don’t stress over getting perfect everything I know my application was not perfect at all some of the comments of my other videos have pointed that out my SAT scores weren’t in the fifteen hundreds my I wasn’t present in everything there were a lot of clubs that I ran for leadership in my senior year that I lost and while I thought that that would affect my application it didn’t and so in the end you just gotta trust that everything is gonna work out try your best and even if you don’t think your application is good enough that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to apply to an Ivy League or a top-tier school if that’s your dream school then go for it because you never know what’s gonna happen if I thought that I couldn’t get into Harvard because I didn’t have a 15-hundred on my SAT scores or because I was in class president or president of NHS then that would have kept me from applying and I never would have found out so even if you get rejected at least you have an answer instead of always thinking what if so I hope this video helps and I hope that it can kind of put you at ease because there’s a misconception that you really need to be like this perfect human being to get in when in reality you need luck hard work and pixie dust I don’t know it’s just a really random college process so you just want to try to be yourself to stick out like a sore thumb so thanks guys thanks for watching be sure to subscribe and I’m going to try to post more videos next week so leave a comment below what you want to see and thanks for watching