杜克大学AO谈Essay写作要点 附Essay范文.

虽然有些不合时宜，处于1不尴不尬的等offer阶段，in which 15er们还没真正开始准备些essay。但15er以及以后一定会用的着的,可收藏着先~

14er不妨也看看,顺带回忆下“当年”我们写essay绞尽脑汁的艰辛。其实现在回想起还颇有感慨的~偶是俺一个一个字打出来的 没有辛劳也有苦劳啊~

首先是Important to remember:

1 You need to be very present in your essay. (主要指那些写significant person 的童鞋，会犯强调别人而忽略自己的错误)

2 admissions officer will read every word. So make sure YOU read every word bore hitting SEND. Also, it is best to let 2 OTHER PEOPEL read every word as well bore you submit a final essay.

3 creativity counts-- but not at the expense of an essay that carries your message. Is it memorable?

4 Respect the 250 word minimum requirement- but be mindful of the length.

5 Write for your audience! Admissions professionals, university faculty member, student readers and scholarship officers may all be reaeding your essay. (她想说的是 不要offence anyone)

6 Get to the point! don&apos&apost just meander for 300 words showing off nice prose.

ao对例文的点评（根据当时记的笔记）：

能看出该作者有个huge dream goal。 虽然只写了很simple的事，但深入挖掘了作者，很感人。你不必非写你的了全州xx比赛第一名的故事。

以下是例文：

Since I make decisions slowly, I probably spend more time in the Blockbuster in my hometown than the average patron. I usually pace the rows a few times, reading the synopses on the movies that sound vaguely interesting. I have an unfavorable tendency to stray towards movies I haven’t heard of, a move that is nearly always a mistake because these were usually poorly marketed for a reason.

And these unknown motion pictures, lining the shelves around the nation, all read the same from the cover (and in my dense, it does sound interesting): “Julie is a girl living an ordinary life.” this sentence is mirrored by exactly ten minutes in the film, never more. It’s unimportant enough, even, that credits can appear over it.

Usually, Julie enters the scene for the audience to glimpse her living ordinarily for a little while, a song playing in the background. You might watch her cook, meet her friends, or see her city. It’s only her life. Then, and here is the kicker, comes the all-important sentence on the back of that DVD case… “Until…one day…”

Everything changes. Hold onto your hat, Julie. You’re about to meet your fate. Whether it comes as a freaky fortune cookie or a man with a chainsaw, it has arrived. Don’t worry too much, though. I can tell what’s coming from the picture on the sample DVD case placed conveniently in front of Blockbuster’s standard blue-on-white take-home cases. Julie embarks on her new life now, never to return the same.

In my sophomore year of high school, the year of Shakespeare and George Orwell, my teacher gave us a formula. “For life and great literature!” She chirped. It had all the types of characters you could have (fourteen to choose from!), all the archetypical climax scenarios and ways for the plot to resolve itself via falling action. It is a formula, and these movies seem to follow it. Your life is mundane and insignificant until… (insert drama). A character is good, bad, bad until they become good, or good until they become bad. Plots are either resolved o prepped for the sequel.

Unlike film characters, however, I endure an entire solitary silent car tide home after I’ve rented my selections. It’s where I wonder—would my life fit the formula? Would I? I answer myself pathetically: my entire life thus far would merit a flashback at most.

I haven’t had my “one day” yet. The only seventeen-year-olds capable of carrying movies were either selected to attend a magical school at eleven or became heroin-addicted at fourteen. I am neither. I would have to shoot up nearly vertically to reach any kind of climax by eighteen (Metaphorically speaking, sine I’ve never done heroin). I begin to think about my future as my legacy. So hat will set off the line of events that I will remember as my story? An opportunity, a guy, a radioactive spider? Everyone with a real story emerged from the woodwork somehow.

I’ll probably trip, to be perfectly honest. It happens even in critically acclaimed movies. Erin Brockovich wouldn’t have been important if the water in Hinkley, California, hadn’t been toxic, and Woodward and Bernstein would have died “ordinary” if there was no Watergate. They didn’t have sure-fire ways to rock the world either, but they lived their ordinary lives passionately and never let opportunity pass.

I will remain passionate about my anonymous life, even bore I figure out if I’ supposed to cure cancer or rule Spain. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to speak French with the French or learn how to meditate from a Tibetan monk, but I can learn a lot from a trip to Bluckbuster.

I can’t write my own future, not with any amount of hard work or radioactive spider repellent. I can’ t choose to meet the right people, or declare somewhere the right place at that right time. I don’t get a hint from the picture on my box. I can’t buck the life formula. So, I’ve compromised by writing my own character—and “Rachel” is no Julie. I didn’t pick from a list of fourteen options, and if I had to choose to be good or bad in a black and white world, I would remain a diant shade of gray, if only to be interesting. Who knows? Maybe my life will even be in “technicolor”.

The most import thing I have learned about modeling my character from movies is that no matter how many people watch then or how much time goes by, they never change. Just as character should be steadfast, movies are always themselves. If you watch one on a certain day and then see it ten years later, it will be the same. It never compromises; people can only like it for what it is.

I can content myself with not knowing what book (or film) I’m going to be remembered in, as long as I know how I will be described. As long as I know I will leave behind more than overdue notices.