50 Successful Harvard Application Essays

Y
UEMING
C
.
My Ye-Ye always wears a red baseball cap. I think he likes the vivid color—bright and sanguine, like
himself. When Ye-Ye came from China to visit us seven years ago, he brought his red cap with him
and every night for six months, it sat on the stairway railing post of my house, waiting to be loyally
placed back on Ye-Ye’s head the next morning. He wore the cap everywhere: around the house, where
he performed magic tricks with it to make my little brother laugh; to the corner store, where he
bought me popsicles before using his hat to wipe the beads of summer sweat off my neck. Today
whenever I see a red hat, I think of my Ye-Ye and his baseball cap, and I smile.
Ye-Ye is the Mandarin word for “grandfather.” My Ye-Ye is a simple, ordinary person—not rich, not
“successful”—but he is my greatest source of inspiration and I idolize him. Of all the people I know,
Ye-Ye has encountered the most hardship and of all the people I know, Ye-Ye is the most joyful. That
these two aspects can coexist in one individual is, in my mind, truly remarkable.
Ye-Ye was an orphan. Both his parents died before he was six years old, leaving him and his older
brother with no home and no family. When other children gathered to read around stoves at school,
Ye-Ye and his brother walked in the bitter cold along railroad tracks, looking for used coal to sell.
When other children ran home to loving parents, Ye-Ye and his brother walked along the streets
looking for somewhere to sleep. Eight years later, Ye-Ye walked alone—his brother was dead.
Ye-Ye managed to survive, and in the meanwhile taught himself to read, write, and do arithmetic.
Life was a blessing, he told those around him with a smile.
Years later, Ye-Ye’s job sent him to the Gobi Desert, where he and his fellow workers labored for
twelve hours a day. The desert wind was merciless; it would snatch their tent in the middle of the night
and leave them without supply the next morning. Every year, harsh weather took the lives of some
fellow workers.
After eight years, Ye-Ye was transferred back to the city where his wife lay sick in bed. At the end
of a twelve-hour workday, Ye-Ye took care of his sick wife and three young children. He sat with the
children and told them about the wide, starry desert sky and mysterious desert lives. Life was a
blessing, he told them with a smile.
But life was not easy; there was barely enough money to keep the family from starving. Yet, my
dad and his sisters loved going with Ye-Ye to the market. He would buy them little luxuries that their
mother would never indulge them in: a small bag of sunflower seeds for two cents, a candy each for
three cents. Luxuries as they were, Ye-Ye bought them without hesitation. Anything that could put a
smile on the children’s faces and a skip in their steps was priceless.
Ye-Ye still goes to the market today. At the age of seventy-eight, he bikes several kilometers each

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week to buy bags of fresh fruits and vegetables, and then bikes home to share them with his
neighbors. He keeps a small patch of strawberries and an apricot tree. When the fruit is ripe, he opens
his gate and invites all the children in to pick and eat. He is Ye-Ye to every child in the neighborhood.
I had always thought that I was sensible and self-aware. But nothing has made me stare as hard in
the mirror as I did after learning about the cruel past that Ye-Ye had suffered and the cheerful attitude
he had kept throughout those years. I thought back to all the times when I had gotten upset. My mom
forgot to pick me up from the bus station. My computer crashed the day before an assignment was
due. They seemed so trivial and childish, and I felt deeply ashamed of myself.
Now, whenever I encounter an obstacle that seems overwhelming, I think of Ye-Ye; I see him in his
red baseball cap, smiling at me. Like a splash of cool water, his smile rouses me from grief, and
reminds me how trivial my worries are and how generous life has been. Today I keep a red baseball
cap at the railing post at home where Ye-Ye used to put his every night. Whenever I see the cap, I think
of my Ye-Ye, smiling in his red baseball cap, and I smile. Yes, Ye-Ye. Life is a blessing.
REVIEW
Yueming quickly distinguishes herself with her refreshingly crisp writing. Avoiding a common pitfall
in college application essays, Yueming uses the appropriate amount of descriptive language needed to
illustrate her thoughts while keeping her prose clean and readable. She doesn’t just use big words for
the sake of using big words—a pitfall that many are aware of yet many still succumb.
In fact, her succinctness helps her essay shine. For example, the stark simplicity of the line “Eight
years later, Ye-Ye walked alone—his brother was dead” makes it especially powerful. The sentence’s
abruptness hits the reader with the full force of the situation, unmitigated by secondary details. The
terse, in-passing reference to Ye-Ye’s brother ’s death in itself is haunting, conveying a sense of
coldness in the world that suits Yueming’s intent perfectly.
Fundamentally, this reflects the underlying strength of this essay: Yueming’s remarkable ability to
tell a story. Her concise writing style lends itself well to this art, crafting a narrative that is evocative
but easy to follow. Like many good storytellers, Yueming weaves recurring themes into her work,
giving it a sense of unity. In particular, there is a persistent spark of optimism that her grandfather
retains in the face of tremendous hardship, captured in the refrain, “Life was a blessing.” It echoes
throughout the piece, embodying the larger perspective of gratitude that Yueming credits to her
grandfather. Inevitably, though, the heavy focus on her grandfather does come at the expense of her
own story, as her role as an individual in the essay feels rather minor. As such, the reader doesn’t
learn enough about Yueming herself. Though she tells a compelling story, the reader comes away
with a better understanding of Ye-Ye as a person than of Yueming.
But in spite of this flaw, the essay works. Yueming comes across as a compassionate individual
with a talent for storytelling.
—Victor C. Wu

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