50 Successful Harvard Application Essays

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Summary: Great critiques and interesting college essays
Review: If you want to get into Harvard or any other top-tier school, this is the book for you. Reading these essays will open your mind to the infinite number of ideas from which you can write your own application essay. As you read through the book, your fears and anxiety about starting the college application proccess will fade away. The reviews are concise, insightful and informative, helping you craft your own essay. I have to commend the Harvard Crimson for putting together a fine piece of work. Go Crimson!

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Summary: Cambridge Is Not a Good Place to Live
Review: If you've never been there or only been there for a few hours, I should warn you that Cambridge and the entire Boston area are rotten. If you go to Harvard (an overrated school) then you will have to live in a city full of blue-haired goons, aging fruity "intellectuals," and very old people. You will also be in the most pretentious city on the planet and across the river from the second most. Save yourself some money and your soul and go to SUNY Binghamton.

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Summary: I Dig It Man
Review: Man, this is book is great. Once I started I can't put it down. Straight from the horse's mouth and it's helping me a lot in thiking what works and what doesn't. I might even get into Harvard...

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Summary: A Mother Knows Best
Review: My son is on the fast-track to Harvard because of this book. The essay synopsis is great, and knowing what works is really half the battle. I even spoke to one of the deans there last week, and a dean at Stanford, and they both said the book would help any student applying to their schools. 1 million thank yous.

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Summary: Helpful for All Applicants
Review: No book can teach you how to write an essay or how to find that essence of yourself that will appeal to colleges, but this book can provide a helpful guide. My son isn't applying to Harvard, but he's been struggling with his essay for weeks. A close reading of this book gave him several ideas he had never considered because he thought colleges wouldn't be interested. He also found the comments by Crimson staffers to be intelligent and helpful. He was so complimentary about the book that I took a look at it myself and found the essays to be a wacky and captivating read, even for someone not applying for anything!

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Summary: Ridiculous
Review: Once upon a time, The Harvard Crimson, or at least some of the students who worked there, knew something about good writing. But, as this book makes clear, crass commercialism is the favorite pasttime of today's undergraduates. Awful, awful, awful.

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Summary: Straight from the experts!
Review: The authors of this book didn't just get into Harvard: they are the people who make the university's only daily newspaper happen. Who else could give better advice on writing to impress your audience? The essays are inspiring, the reviews constructive. Lots of books try to help students write a good essay, but no one has done it better than the Harvard Crimson. What can I say? Thanks.

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Summary: Exactly what I expected
Review: The famous saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" can be applied to essays as well. I can understand other reviewers' low opinions of this book, but the book's title--50 Successful Harvard Application Essays--is spot on in terms of the book's content--what did you expect?! For those students applying to the elite level colleges, this book is a rare first hand glance at essays that gained approval from the admissions offices of the most selective college in the country, and can be very useful in determining the style, substance, and introspection expected in writing these incredibly important essays.

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Summary: Shameful
Review: The Harvard Crimson is not only a technically lacking newspaper, it is a shamefully greedy institution, as this book proves. The concept behing this book is clearly, "let's print out all our own application essays and sell them. Zero cost or work for us." The essays are nothing special, and high schoolers would be harming their own admissions chances by attempting to copy ideas or devices from this book. Technical advice is far more important than actual individualized examples, yet it is sorely lacking here. Go Lampoon.

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Summary: Interesting and Inspiring
Review: This book is a handguide to good writing, not only for college essays, but for all personal essays. It teaches by example, and the good and bad points of each essay are explained. Some of the essays are works of art in themselves, like Stolper's essay on chess. Wonderful.