50 Successful Harvard Application Essays

W
ILL 
S
HIH
I suppose there are some trade-offs when you dedicate yourself to becoming the best debater you can
be. The first weekend of Spring Break is always the IHSA State Debate Tournament. After
progressing from not placing as a freshman to being a semifinalist as a sophomore, my partner Jeff
and I were hungry for a state championship. It was also our last chance. Jeff was a year older and he
was graduating.
The whole night, we stayed up preparing, honing the wording of our speeches, looking for new
evidence to refute others, and coming up with creative arguments that would hopefully surprise our
opponents. Our ace in the hole was an argument that we had written based on the Arab Spring
destabilizing Bahrain and threatening our Navy’s 5th Fleet there. As we were monitoring the situation
using Google News to ensure the situation didn’t change too much, our teammate John burst into the
room, iPad in hand, with the news that the French had just green-lighted air strikes on Libya. After
Jeff and John stopped their research to debate the merits of NATO action in Libya, I tried in vain to
refocus them, urging them to help me finish our work so we could go to bed. Eventually I succumbed
to my own desire to join the debate and we all huddled around John’s iPad to watch the CNN report
on the Libyan bombings.
After about three hours of sleep, we put on our suits and ties and checked one final time on the
situation in Bahrain. We ended up at the same round in which we had lost the previous year, the
semifinal round, with the Bahrain argument still in our back pocket. It worked to perfection and we
moved on to the final. Despite losing there to a nationally ranked New Trier team, we came home
with a towering trophy and we noticed that despite the fact that it said 
RUNNER-UP
, our trophy was just
as big as the first-place trophy. As we sat at Panera, finally relaxing after a stretch of three days when
I slept about ten hours total, I began to realize how much debate has changed me.
Debate has taught me how to tie a tie and which buttons to button on a suit. I’ve been motivated to
open my eyes and find research like Professor Devah Pager ’s study that says a white felon has an
equal or better chance at getting a job as a black man with no criminal record. I’ve been exposed to
the ideas of Malthus and Sun Tzu. I know more about the threat of a nuclear electromagnetic pulse
(EMP) attack than any sane seventeen-year-old should know. I can’t even watch an advertisement
without thinking about all the fallacies in their argumentation.
I thought then about what my friends and classmates had probably done that first weekend of
Spring Break. I looked around at my teammates, leaned over to Jeff and said, “There’s no other place
I’d rather be right now.”
And he replied, “Yeah, me neither.”

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REVIEW
In this essay, Will writes about his experience in high school debate—specifically, he addresses the
many lessons and knowledge he has gained, as well as the sacrifices he had to make.
Although the topic of the essay is rather standard, the strength lies in the way he frames and
structures the story. With a very clear beginning, middle, and end, the essay is easy to follow and
shows the author ’s dedication and passion for debate. A lot of applicants are discouraged from
writing about common topics, such as high school debate or sports, but as long as the essay itself is
able to illuminate something new and insightful, the topic of the essay matters far less than the content
and the way the story is depicted.
Will’s essay has its shortfalls as well. First, while the description of the Arab Spring in the second
paragraph is helpful in building context, it is unnecessarily detailed and therefore distracting to the
whole flow of the essay.
But when he isn’t lost in detail, Will presents a complete picture of how debate has changed him as
a person, and his deep interest in this activity speaks positively to his character, and his use of subtle
humor ties his essay together cleanly and elegantly.
—Jane Seo

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