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本帖最后由 Laterlink雷特霖 于 2019-5-7 09:48 编辑
5楼“留学文书如何写”之个人例子篇
申请文书其实就是:讲自己的故事,让教授们看去。
所以,终极诉求是:让教授们(招生委员会)认识了解你,为你的理念或行为感动,从而在“万人丛中”相中你,毫不犹豫 “pick”了你。
因而,关键问题是:怎样写个人经历?怎样把它和大主题 —— 你申请的专业、你的人生规划相联系?如何突出你的独特?
一句话总结:以小见大,由具体细节引入宏大主题讨论。
下面我们用文书测评的方式来看两个例子,先来个反面示范:
My grasp in xx skills in my bachelor phase reinforces my desire for more specialized skills and insights in financial sectors.
My bachelor study in CPA at xx university involved me in taking a myriad of subjects from Finance Principles, Mathematics and Statistics to Investment, Economy and Law. In brief, my undergraduate studies resembled the rigorous Asian-style professional education, albeit with a more comprehensive focus on the global economic and financial topics.
I even had the opportunity to expand upon my academic interests by writing a research paper on the management-accounting Informationization of Internet-dependent Enterprises in the “Internet Plus” Era.
The diversified modules gave me a sound understanding of essential financial concepts that continue to shape economic, social, political and technological phenomena throughout the world.
这段是主人公在分享自己的求学经历。
主人公罗列了自己的专业内上的核心课程、强调自己接受的是 Asian-style 和 global focus 结合、写了一篇名儿长长牛逼哄哄的论文。
然后总结说自己获得了 a sound understanding of essential financial concepts。
然而,机械地罗列课程和论文并只能让教授“麻木不仁”。教授会问:“好了,我知道你学了这些,让然后呢?你的 a sound understanding 究竟有是什么具体论点?是有多 sound?泛泛而谈的结果就是只让人看到些 global economic & financial、Investment 等大词,但他们是脱节的毫无生气的......
其实教授们真正想要看到的是你学了这些课、写了这论文后具体有什么深邃思考和观点!
接下来我们再来看个范例,来自一位硅谷大牛 —— Peter Thiel,前 Paypal 的创始人,斯坦福毕业。我们来看这样一位在美国精英体制里被教育出来的科技界大佬是怎样讲故事的,正是剑指名校的同学所要借鉴学习的。
这篇文章叫,自由主义者的教育(The Education of a Libertarian),作者结合个人经历讲述对自由主义的理解 —— 其实可以作为一篇申请文书的完美范例。
沿用鬼佬那种典型的小故事手法切入,作者从具体的个人小故事讲起,宏大主题信手拈来、平易近人、一点都不“假、大、空”。
I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.
”
开门见山、直接点题——我是一枚 libertarian,伴以细节支撑:坚决反对 confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and 个人的死亡,有血有肉的具体。接下来开始讲述个人故事来引出“我”的具体理解。
But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. By tracing out the development of my thinking, I hope to frame some of the challenges faced by all classical liberals today.
提到了个人想法的 radically change —— 故事看点揭露给你!申请文书中,任何与目标专业相关的看法转变都可以成为完美故事的爆点,展示你的深邃思考,让教授们惊个呆。
As a Stanford undergraduate studying philosophy in the late 1980s, I naturally was drawn to the give-and-take of debate and the desire to bring about freedom through political means. I started a student newspaper to challenge the prevailing campus orthodoxies; we scored some limited victories, most notably in undoing speech codes instituted by the university. But in a broader sense we did not achieve all that much for all the effort expended…
从斯坦福大学读书时满腔热情办报纸以挑战传统权威,有因由、有行动,丰满得让那股理想主义情况跃然纸上,有血有肉X2。
As a young lawyer and trader in Manhattan in the 1990s, I began to understand why so many become disillusioned after college. The world appears too big a place. Rather than fight the relentless indifference of the universe, many of my saner peers retreated to tending their small gardens. The higher one’s IQ, the more pessimistic one became about free-market politics — capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd. Among the smartest conservatives, this pessimism often manifested in heroic drinking; the smartest libertarians, by contrast, had fewer hang-ups about positive law and escaped not only to alcohol but beyond it.
接下来讲到毕业后华尔街交易员和律师的工作经历让虚无的理想主义破灭。世界太丫大,改变谈何容易!大家还是洗洗睡吧——这个陈词滥调,作者却形容得形象而玩味:曾经抱负社会理想的高智商人群现在都只能回家种菜浇花、要么就把抱负倾诉在把盏间......
As one fast-forwards to 2009, the prospects for a libertarian politics appear grim indeed. Exhibit A is a financial crisis caused by too much debt and leverage, facilitated by a government that insured against all sorts of moral hazards — and we know that the response to this crisis involves way more debt and leverage, and way more government. Those who have argued for free markets have been screaming into a hurricane. The events of recent months shatter any remaining hopes of politically minded libertarians. For those of us who are libertarian in 2009, our education culminates with the knowledge that the broader education of the body politic has become a fool’s errand.
然后陡然联系到大时代大背景—— 2008 年金融危机,政府积极扩张、主导市场,自由经济前景由此更显黯淡。前面由个人故事铺垫好的基座让大时事批判讨论毫无违和感。
Indeed, even more pessimistically, the trend has been going the wrong way for a long time. To return to finance, the last economic depression in the United States that did not result in massive government intervention was the collapse of 1920–21. It was sharp but short, and entailed the sort of Schumpeterian “creative destruction” that could lead to a real boom. The decade that followed — the roaring 1920s — was so strong that historians have forgotten the depression that started it. The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics…
回顾历史,展示作者在该领域深厚的积累和深邃的思考。
In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.”
The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom. Let me briefly speak to three such technological frontiers:
(1) Cyberspace…
(2) Outer space…
(3) Sea steading…
回顾完历史,那接下来就是展望未来了。作者在总结完前人观点和历史后提出自己对未来应该怎么做的思考:政治救不出一个自由经济、大家安居乐业的美好社会!那就以科学为武器,看网络空间如何拓宽个人自由、看外太空和海洋探索。(所以,他的曾经联合创始人好伙伴、特斯拉老板马斯克已经开始造宇宙飞船。)
这算一篇结构严谨、观点深邃、有充分细节支撑的好文章,也是鬼佬讲故事方式的完美体现 —— 从个人经历和想法转变出来,以小见大,由具体细节引入进入宏大主题讨论,娓娓道来,这样的故事谁不爱听!
总结:
申请文书中,个人经历和体验是重点,但我们不是要机械地连珠炮式地罗列你干了什么,关键是你是怎样思考的,为什么这样干,又获得了什么体会,有啥观察!
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