50 Successful Harvard Application Essays

L
ETITIA 
L
I
The Very Essence of Fifth Grade
Blub. Piggypie. Pebbles.
It’s nearly impossible to recognize the above words as names. And not just any names, but the
names of the three most influential people of my life—my fifth-grade math team members and best
friends.
For just their passing presence in my life, I consider myself eternally lucky. Our mutual love of
experiencing life through our silly ways forged a friendship that has sustained and nurtured my
individuality for all these years.
* * *
Welcome to my fifth-grade year.
Math competitions were exciting.
We had secret identities. On competition days, Melissa transformed into Blub, Joy morphed into
Piggypie, Livvie reverted to Pebbles, and I embraced my alter ego, Yolanda. Despite being our
elaborate attempt to intimidate all the other fifth-grade teams, we usually just ended up confusing
ourselves.
We were fastidious in our traditions as a result of our combined idiosyncrasies. Our job
responsibilities in the team rounds were even delineated down to specific problem numbers. Livvie
cracked the tough even-evens (4, 8), Joy delved within the mysteries of the odd-evens (2, 6, and 10),
Melissa outfoxed the tricky even-odds (3, 7), and I wrestled with the treacherous odd-odds (1, 5, and
9).
We made friends with our proctors. There was one in particular, “Princess Stone,” who we
thoroughly enjoyed. He proctored our very first competition, the “Math Is Cool” Invitational held at
Mount Rainier High School, and we saw him year after year until our last, when we sadly learned he
had graduated.
Outside of math, we were crazy.
We unofficially started the nature club. It didn’t matter that it was just the four of us—it was
awesome. One day at recess, we tasted purple flowers simply because Melissa was convinced they
were edible. We didn’t try that again. Edible they were; tasty they were not.
We started a class paper, filled with random occurrences, jokes, and useless anecdotes containing
articles, such as, “How the Jaguar Got Its Spots,” and distributed it to all our classmates and previous
teachers.
We supported each other. When I was cast as Helena in our school play of 
A Midsummer Night’s

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Dream
, Melissa, Livvie, and Joy all showed up opening night to watch me interact awkwardly with my
costar and onstage love interest, Demetrius.
We performed at our school’s talent show. I had written a song in class called “Where Is Your
Papa, Yolanda?” and choreographed a dance during recess. So while our classmates displayed their
fine instrumental talents and sang Top 40 hits such as “Beautiful” and “Ain’t No Mountain High
Enough,” we performed an interpretative dance to an original composition. We even recorded a
background musical accompaniment on a cassette tape.
* * *
Fast-forward seven years.
My math trophies and ribbons are gathering dust in a closet I no longer visit. The tape recording
of our interpretative dance has long disappeared and five editions of our newspaper sit in a dusty box
with all my old classwork from my elementary days in Washington State. But the memories still
linger, preserved pristinely in a capsule, ensconced within an atmosphere of lingering nostalgia.
I wish I could say we are still the closest of friends, but we’re not. Distance and time are very real
obstacles; however I’m convinced the feelings of acceptance and the lessons I’ve taken with me
transcend those boundaries. Since then, I’ve heard Joy has gone on to excel in math at Exeter; Livvie
has entered the University of Washington, skipping most of high school; and Melissa is following her
ice-skating dreams.
And then there is me. Where am I and where will I go?
The inevitable passage of time is a great reminder that with all the change in the world, the
exciting, smart, motivated person, whose friends helped her discover the courage to be different, is,
amazingly enough, the person I am and still want to be.
Hence, I have continued embracing life and cherishing my unique personality in Indiana as a
fulfillment of a past legacy of friendship and in honor of an incredible fifth-grade experience. So
even though childhood is more forgiving of silliness, I am not ashamed of sharing those memories
as a testament of where I came from and who I still am today.
So, yes, I am cocaptain of an internationally ranked color guard, and a glider pilot, and a tutor.
But I am also the same person who wrote a rap for a high school English performance; the person,
who just last week, remarked that our drill formation looked like a phospholipid to a torrent of
spastic laughter from fellow band geeks in my AP Biology class, and the person, who not long ago,
loved performing interpretative dances, eating flowers, writing imaginative stories, and making math
entertaining. (I still do.)
As for my future, I hope to carry on with my exuberance for life and learning. I aspire to meet
wonderful people—the new Blubs, Piggypies, and Pebbles—to inspire and be inspired from. But most
of all, I will strive to bring laughter and joy with me no matter where I go.
REVIEW

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Letitia does a commendable job conveying her confidence in embracing a unique and quirky
personality in this essay. The use of bizarre nicknames in the introduction is catchy, and the
nicknames are only the first of many well-chosen details about the oddities of her and her math
teammates’ friendship. These details about the rituals and traditions of their group of friends do a
brilliant job showing the eccentricities the essay is based upon.
The transitions through such large gaps in time and activities could present a challenge for a
personal essay, given the limitations in length. However, Letitia orients readers nicely with framing
sentences that divide the essay’s sections. The best example of this is, “Fast-forward seven years,”
which concisely informs readers that time is moving. This is accompanied nicely with references to
the trophies and other elements of the previous stories and where they are now, further orienting the
reader.
Although the framing within the body of the essay is stellar, this author could continue to improve
by setting up the essay’s takeaway earlier on. Currently, readers aren’t aware of what is at stake in the
essay until the end thus making the essay slightly less satisfying as it could be.
Regardless, the essay illustrates a clear personality and confidence that would endear the author to
any admissions officer.
—Juliet Nelson

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