文书是留学申请中非常重要的一环，哈佛大学每年会在官网公布一些优秀文书的范例，并附上招生官的点评。本文中整理了一篇标题为Perfecting Cookies文书的原文和点评，供大家参考～
文书原文
Each time I bake cookies, they come out differently. Butter, sugar, eggs, flour — I measure with precision, stir with vigor, then set the oven to 375°F. The recipe is routine, yet hardly redundant.
每次我烤饼干，出来的都不一样。黄油、糖、鸡蛋、面粉——我精确地量好，使劲搅拌，然后把烤箱调到375华氏度。食谱是常规的，但并不多余。
After a blizzard left me stranded indoors with nothing but a whisk and a pantry full of the fundamentals, I made my first batch: a tray of piping hot chocolate chunkers whose melt-in-the-mouth morsels comforted my snowed-in soul. Such a flawless description, however, belies my messy process. In reality, my method was haphazard and carefree, the cookies a delicious fortuity that has since been impossible to replicate.
一场暴风雪把我困在室内，除了一个打蛋器和一个装满基本配料的食品柜，我做了第一批:一盘滚烫的巧克力块，入口即化的小块抚慰了我被雪困住的灵魂。然而，如此完美的描述掩盖了我混乱的过程。实际上，我的方法是随意而随意的，饼干是一种美味的偶然，从此无法复制。
Each subsequent batch I make is a gamble. Will the cookies flatten and come out crispy? Stay bulbous and gooey? Am I a bad baker, or are they inherently capricious? Even with a recipe book full of suggestions, I can never place a finger on my mistake. The cookies are fickle and short-tempered. Baking them is like walking on eggshells — and I have an empty egg carton to prove it. Perhaps beginner’s luck had been the secret ingredient all along.
接下来我做的每一批都是一场赌博。饼干会变平，出来后酥脆吗?保持球状和粘稠?是我不擅长烘焙，还是他们天生反复无常?即使有一本充满建议的食谱书，我也不能指出我的错误。饼干是善变的，脾气暴躁的。烤它们就像在蛋壳上行走——我有一个空的鸡蛋盒来证明这一点。也许初学者的运气一直是秘诀。
Yet, curiosity keeps me flipping to the same page in my recipe book. I became engrossed in perfecting the cookies not by the mechanical satisfaction of watching ingredients combine into batter, but by the chance to wonder at simplicity. The inconsistency is captivating. It is, after all, a strict recipe, identical ingredients combined in the same permutation. How can such orthodox steps yield such radical, unpredictable results? Even with the most formulaic tasks, I am questioning the universe.
然而，好奇心让我不断翻着食谱书的同一页。我全神贯注于完善饼干，不是因为看着配料混合成面糊的机械满足感，而是因为有机会对简单感到惊奇。这种不一致令人着迷。毕竟，这是一个严格的配方，相同的成分以相同的排列组合在一起。如此正统的步骤怎么会产生如此激进、不可预测的结果?即使是最公式化的任务，我也在质疑宇宙。
Chemistry explains some of the anomaly. For instance, just a half-pinch extra of baking soda can have astounding ramifications on how the dough bubbles. The kitchen became my laboratory: I diaried each trial like a scientist; I bought a scale for more accurate measurements; I borrowed “On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen” from the library. But all to no avail — the variables refused to come together in any sort of equilibrium.
化学解释了一些异常现象。例如，只要再加半撮小苏打，就会对面团起泡的方式产生惊人的影响。厨房成了我的实验室:我像科学家一样记录每一次尝试;为了更精确的测量，我买了一个秤;我从图书馆借了《食物与烹饪:厨房的科学与热爱》。但一切都无济于事——变量拒绝以任何形式的平衡聚集在一起。
I then approached the problem like a pianist, taking the advice my teacher wrote in the margins of my sheet music and pouring it into the mixing bowl. There are 88 pitches on a keyboard, and there are a dozen ingredients in the recipe. To create a rhapsodic dessert, I needed to understand all of the melodic and harmonic lines and how they complemented one another. I imagined the recipe in Italian script, the chocolate chips as quick staccatos suspended in a thick adagio medium. But my fingers always stumbled at the coda of each performance, the details of the cookies turning to a hodgepodge of sound.
然后，我像钢琴家一样处理这个问题，听取老师在乐谱空白处写的建议，把乐谱倒进搅拌碗里。键盘上有88个音高，配方中有12种成分。为了创造一个狂想曲般的甜点，我需要理解所有的旋律和和声线，以及它们如何相互补充。我想象着用意大利语写的食谱，巧克力片就像悬浮在厚厚的慢板上的快速断奏。但每次演出结束时，我的手指总是磕磕绊绊，饼干的细节变成了声音的大杂烩。
I whisk, I sift, I stir, I pre-heat the oven again, but each batch has its flaws, either too sweet, burnt edges, grainy, or underdone. Though the cookies were born of boredom, their erratic nature continues to fascinate me. Each time my efforts yield an imperfect result, I develop resilience to return the following week with a fresh apron, ready to try again. I am mesmerized by the quirks of each trial. It isn’t enough to just mix and eat — I must understand.
我搅拌、过筛、搅拌，再次预热烤箱，但每一批都有自己的缺点，要么太甜，要么焦边，要么颗粒状，要么熟透。虽然饼干是无聊的产物，但它们古怪的特性一直让我着迷。每次我的努力没有得到完美的结果时，我都会培养自己的适应力，在接下来的一周带着新围裙回来，准备再试一次。每次审判的怪癖都让我着迷。仅仅混合和吃是不够的——我必须理解。
My creative outlook has kept the task engaging. Despite the repetition in my process, I find new angles that liven the recipe. In college and beyond, there will be things like baking cookies, endeavors that seem so unvaried they risk spoiling themselves to a housewife’s drudgery. But from my time in the kitchen, I have learned how to probe deeper into the mechanics of my tasks, to bring music into monotony, and to turn work into play. However the cookie crumbles in my future, I will approach my work with curiosity, creativity, and earnestness.
我的创造力使这项工作保持了吸引力。尽管我的制作过程中有重复，但我还是找到了新的角度，使食谱充满活力。在大学及以后，会有像烤饼干这样的事情，这些看似一成不变的努力可能会让他们被家庭主妇的苦差事宠坏。但从我在厨房的时间里，我学会了如何更深入地探索我的任务的机制，把音乐带入单调，把工作变成娱乐。无论未来如何，我都将以好奇心、创造力和认真的态度来对待我的工作。
文章整理自哈佛官网，作者为Danielle
https://www.thecrimson.com/topic/sponsored-successful-harvard-essays-2024/
专业文书点评
Daniella’s essay is lovely, fun and effective. It genuinely and naturally showcases different sides of her, how she approaches problems, what she values. The mundaneness of the topic fits her conclusion and insights beautifully. She employs humor, shows resilience, creativity, intellectual curiosity and an authentic propensity for philosophical thought. Her “voice” is confident, the word choice creative, and the vocabulary in each paragraph poignantly reflects different sides of her (the scientist “diared each trial”; the musician tries to create a “rhapsodic dessert”). The several paragraphs detailing Daniella’s cookie making process are also very strong. She lingers with sensual details that resonate (you can smell, taste and feel those chocolate chunkers) rather than overstuffing the essay with mentions of her various credentials or experiences. This structure is bold, and humble. It allows Daniella to show rather than tell the reader how she thinks, how she solves problems, how she perseveres. This is very powerful.
丹妮拉的文章可爱、有趣、有效。它真实而自然地展示了她不同的一面，她如何处理问题，她看重什么。这个平凡的话题非常符合她的结论和见解。她运用幽默，表现出韧性、创造力、求知欲和对哲学思考的真实倾向。她的“声音”是自信的，用词是创造性的，每一段的词汇都深刻地反映了她的不同方面(科学家“记录了每一次试验”;音乐家试图创造一种“狂想曲甜点”)。这几段详细描述了Daniella制作饼干的过程，也非常有力。她停留在能引起共鸣的感官细节上(你可以闻到、尝到和感觉到那些巧克力块)，而不是在文章中过多地提到她的各种证书或经历。这个结构大胆而简陋。它让丹妮拉展示而不是告诉读者她是如何思考的，她是如何解决问题的，她是如何坚持的。这是非常强大的。
This essay measures 618 words (standard limit is 650). Daniella could have used the additional words to add to paragraph 3: when else did she experienced that similar processes lead to different results – perhaps in music performance? And/or in the next paragraph(s) she might have added a sentence to consider the potential impact of atmospheric conditions on baking, as well as more broadly/metaphorically.
本文字数为618字(标准字数650字)。Daniella本可以在第3段中添加额外的单词:她什么时候经历过类似的过程导致不同的结果——也许是在音乐表演中?并且/或者在下一段中，她可能会添加一句话来考虑大气条件对烘焙的潜在影响，以及更广泛/隐喻性的影响。
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