50 Successful Harvard Application Essays

II. IDENTITY

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The way you identify yourself is a powerful part of who you are, and if you have strong feelings
about your identity, those can be described in an impactful, descriptive essay. In addition to creating
an easy platform from which you can talk about yourself, an essay on your identity is a good way to
demonstrate that you give careful consideration to who you are. While identity is intrinsic, it can also
be taken for granted; putting real thought into your identity and expressing it in a personal essay is
indicative of the way you approach the rest of your life—thoughtfully and insightfully.
But essays on identity can easily become overly cerebral. Most people have a complex identity
inspired by many different things. Attempting to explain all of these will almost certainly prevent you
from adequately explaining any of it sufficiently. The essays that are most effective take a direct view
of identity—maybe just attempting to explain one part of an identity—and focus on that. In a five-
hundred-word personal statement no reader expects you to fully explain the whole of you. When
writing essays about identity, choose one part of who you are and focus on that.

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C
ADEN
B
.
I have blond hair and pale skin. On the color wheel, my father is a rich mocha, my sister is a warm
copper, and my mother is a perfectly tanned caramel; I am somewhere between cream and eggshell
on the opposite end of the spectrum. Being stereotypically white can be difficult when you’re African
American.
The beginning of high school was when I first began to feel that my fair complexion hid my true
identity. When I entered ninth grade, I was delighted to find myself in the company of an entirely new
group of friends. Upon meeting my parents for the first time, my friends smiled warmly at my
mother and gaped at my father, their eyes widening as they flitted between him and myself. However, I
was pleased to find that all of them were accepting of my family’s ethnic composition. As our group
became closer, we often discussed our futures. During one conversation, we outlined our weddings,
collapsing into fits of giggles upon hearing each other ’s extravagant dreams. Once our laughter had
subsided, one girl said more seriously, “One thing’s for sure, I could never marry a black guy. It
would just be too difficult with the race thing.” I blinked, waiting for a reaction. None came. Why had
no one jumped to my defense? Did people not see my white mother and my black father when they
looked at me? It was then that I realized to my friends, I wasn’t black.
Incidents like this made me recognize that being biracial has inherently given me perspective that
many people lack. When a friend told me that her parents would never allow her to date someone of a
different race, I couldn’t understand why. When I revealed my biracial heritage to a black friend, she
became noticeably warmer toward me and happily shared the news with her friends as we walked by
them in the hall. My much darker sister does not share these experiences. We draw from the exact
same gene pool, but my sister ’s complexion allows her complete racial inheritance to shine while
mine cloaks half of it.
My sister knows her race because her appearance reflects it. But do I? Is a girl still black if nobody
sees it? Should it matter? Growing up pale, blond, and black has influenced me. I feel obligated to
immediately tell people about my race because my looks do not convey it. Nevertheless, I know who I
am. Though my friends joke about me skipping the “black gene,” I am just as connected to my
father ’s Louisiana roots as I am to my mother ’s Alabaman ancestors. Racial identity is marked by
more than arbitrary features like skin tone, and while we are unable to choose our exact coloring, we
do choose who we are. My appearance and the responses it elicits have shaped me but do not control
me. Beneath fair hair and light skin, I see a girl who is both black and white. I see me.
REVIEW

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At first glance, Caden’s essay seems like a generic essay about “diversity”—a hot college-acceptance
buzzword. Wrong. Caden takes the important topic of identity and weaves it into a beautifully
composed coming-of-age tale, showing how her self-confidence and ability to overcome challenges
grew. She writes in a playful tone that makes reading her essay an entertaining experience rather than
a chore. By incorporating memories of conversations with friends in her freshman year in high
school, she lets readers into her personal life, taking the edge off the serious undertones of her
conflicts with “extravagant dreams [of weddings].” This combination of her racial identity issues and
her youthful memories shows a maturity of thought and understanding of others as well as herself.
However, she does not forget to draw the attention back to the key point of her story—her firm
acceptance of her character. After her first two sprightly paragraphs, her tone shifts and becomes
authoritative. She employs short and straightforward sentences as the essay progresses, such as the
declaration: “I know who I am” in the final paragraph. Caden writes with a powerful voice that
distinctly proves she accepts her biracial identity, despite her appearance that leads others to make
false assumptions. Although the final line, “I see me,” can be seen as a reach, it works for Caden. By
that point in the essay, she has earned it. It caps off the confident tone of the last few paragraphs that
express her comfort with her racial identity. All in all, Caden created a well-written story that displays
both her writing prowess through smooth transitions between different voices and her ability to
overcome the greatest challenge of being comfortable in one’s skin.
—Jiho Kang

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