50 Successful Harvard Application Essays

R
ORY 
O
’
R
EILLY
Each tick pierced the cold November night; time was still moving—I could hear it—but the
clock was surely destroyed.
Warped; slightly charred; hands stopped in perpetual stillness.
I looked away.
As glass slowly pierced the soles of my shoes, I stepped over our hardly recognizable delicacies:
A Doritos bag—hot and spicy; a Fruit of the Loom T-shirt—once red, now black; a tear—slowly
seeping into the carpet.
I looked at my mother, who was crying her heart out, and attempted to fathom what had just
happened; the smoke had come out of nowhere. I didn’t remember walking out of the house. I didn’t
remember pulling my brother out from his bed. I didn’t remember grabbing our two cats and
bringing them to the car. All I remembered was my father thrusting a jacket at me, and my mother
placing shoes in my hands.
I looked back toward the clock. The hands were still stuck on 11:53.
Although the hands are stopped, the plastic is melted, and the numbers are disintegrating, the clock
—at least to me—represents my own life. Time may have appeared to stop, but it didn’t. It was the
start of something better; it was the start of something brighter.
I realized that night that my time was just beginning. I needed to live every second to the fullest. I
needed to live every minute like it was my last. Every month I needed to accomplish one of my goals;
every year I needed to create new ones.
A fire was truly raging that night. The one in the house was bad, but it was nothing compared to the
untamed one in my heart. No firefighter could ever put out my intensity. No extinguisher could stop
me.
I snapped out of my trance, as wind brushed up against my bare legs; I did not have time to put on
pants.
But I did have time. I had time to look at all of the little things I had lost in my life; but better yet, I
had time to look at all of the little things I had kept. I glared at the burnt clock, and realized my life
had changed.
It wasn’t changed because I lost all my clothes.
It wasn’t changed because I lost all my school books.
It wasn’t changed because I lost my house.

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It was changed because I had not lost myself.
REVIEW
In this succinct and memorable essay the author manages to communicate the passion for living life
to the fullest.
The structure of the essay is particularly noteworthy. The small paragraphs separated by full line
breaks and the use of poetic spacing emphasizing important lines make for a more dramatic read.
What some might call a trivial choice, the unique spacing of the essay distinguishes it from the
masses that admissions officers read and leaves a favorable impression.
Cohesion is another strength of this author. The seamless transitions between details of the fire and
greater meaning taken from the event clearly conveying the author ’s ideas. The motif of the clock is a
good example of this. A thread that appears throughout the essay, the clock gives a masterful sense of
unity to the work. It first appears with melted hands as a detail of the aftermath of the fire but is then
used to draw greater meaning when the author notes that time is continuing on despite the clock’s
stillness.
But even tragic events can be overdone, and Rory should have looked out for that. References to
“the untamed [fire] in my heart” are too strong, and through hyperbole diminish the power of the
story.
Overall, the essay is strong and clearly communicates the author ’s new intensity for life after the
fire. The closing of the essay is particularly strong with its use of repetition. The author ’s
juxtaposition of the items lost in the fire with the sense of purpose he now feels in the last lines of the
essay emphasizes to readers what “things” he thinks are truly important.
—Juliet Nelson

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