Real Harvard Essays That Got Accepted (Annotated + Analyzed)

I have seventeen spreadsheets on my computer. [Specific, surprising opening]

One tracks every book I've read since sixth grade, color-coded by genre. Another maps my sleep schedule against my mood, GPA, and caffeine intake (conclusion: I'm nicer after eight hours and two cups of coffee). [Humor + personality]

My mom calls it "obsessive." My therapist suggested it might be anxiety. I call it control. [Vulnerability + self-awareness]

But here's the thing about control: the more I tried to organize my life into neat columns, the more I realized how little actually fits. You can't spreadsheet your way through grief. Trust me, I tried.

When my dad died junior year, I made a spreadsheet for that too. Column A: Things to do. Column B: Things I was feeling. Column C: Things other people said that didn't help. [Specific details make grief concrete]

The spreadsheet didn't fix anything. But making it—organizing chaos into rows—somehow helped. It was my way of saying: this happened. It was real. And I'm still here. [Insight: tool for processing]

I still make spreadsheets. But now I know they're not about control—they're about understanding. Life is messy. But you can still find patterns. You just have to be willing to add new columns when reality doesn't fit your formulas.

I have edited 847 Wikipedia articles. [Specific number immediately establishes credibility]

It started sophomore year when I noticed the page for my hometown—population 2,400—was three sentences long. I added the history of our annual corn festival. Then I fixed the geography section. Then I realized the pages for all the towns nearby were equally sparse.

Nobody writes about places like mine. Our history isn't taught in textbooks. Our politicians never make national news. To the internet, we barely exist. [Stakes: why this matters beyond a hobby]

So I started researching. Library archives. Newspaper clippings. Interviews with longtime residents. I documented the 1923 flood that reshaped our downtown. The Black family who opened the first restaurant in 1947. The teacher who started our music program in a converted barn.

Wikipedia doesn't pay editors. There's no credit, no byline. Most people don't even know we exist. But that's exactly why I keep doing it. Knowledge shouldn't only exist for places and people deemed "important" by gatekeepers. [Values: equity in knowledge]

My proudest edit wasn't about my town at all. It was adding a biography for Dr. Rebecca Cole—the second Black woman to become a doctor in America—whose page didn't exist until 2023. Now it does. [Concrete impact]