A persuasive and inspiring essay for successful admission to Harvard - 2025

Challenging a Narrative: How has your unique story challenged a common perception or narrative about a particular group or experience?

They Said I’d Never Be One of Them

I’ve always found it odd—how the word “refugee” folds itself around the throat like a noose. As if it's a scarlet letter sewn into your skin, or a warning label: Handle with Pity. Or worse, With Caution.

When I was seven, I watched my mother barter with a grocer over bruised fruit in a language she hadn't yet mastered. Behind her, two teenage boys snickered. One of them whispered, Go back to your country, loud enough to make sure it landed. I remember the color rising in her face—not from shame, but restraint. I wanted to scream at them, to pull the sentence from their mouths like a rotten tooth. But instead, I stood very still. That’s what I thought survival looked like then: stillness.

I understand how this sounds. But the stereotype of the “grateful, quiet refugee child”—the one who works hard, doesn’t speak back, who becomes a model of assimilation—that story never fit me. Not really. I wasn’t grateful. I was furious.

The narrative they handed me was tidy: I was supposed to be proof of America’s generosity. I was expected to smile through the patronizing praise: You’re so articulate! You’re not like the others. I was meant to erase myself in the name of becoming “successful.” But the more I tried to fit, the more I frayed at the seams.

It wasn’t until high school debate that I finally tore the story open.

In practice, this looked like standing in front of rows of privileged, private-school debaters and declaring, without apology, that U.S. refugee policy isn’t charity—it’s obligation. It looked like citing the 1951 Refugee Convention and weaving it with my mother’s hands, cracked from dish soap and cold mornings. It looked like losing sometimes, when judges thought I sounded “too angry,” and winning despite it.

And one moment—that keeps replaying in my head—was at a regional final, where I argued against the common perception that refugee students “lower standards” in public schools. I used data, sure. But I also told a story: of my friend Amina, who translated legal forms for her parents at age 12 and still got straight A’s. Of how she built a science fair volcano using only baking soda and imagination. I remember watching one judge put down her pen and look up. That tiny pause? That was the crack in the narrative.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think people are more moved by contradictions than statistics.

And the contradiction is this: yes, I’ve known scarcity and fear. But I’ve also known deep joy. I’ve danced to Sudanese pop music in cramped living rooms, eaten mangoes in the dark during a blackout, helped my younger brother learn English by reading Captain Underpants out loud with ridiculous voices. There’s complexity in the refugee experience—and complexity deserves a voice.

So I started writing.

First, messy journal entries that spilled out like water through a cracked glass. Then op-eds in the school paper, where I challenged the school’s decision to eliminate ESL funding. Then a local youth column, where I wrote: Refugee kids don’t need your pity. We need your partnership.

What frustrates me is how rare that perspective is in mainstream media—how often stories about people like me are told about us, never by us.

But here’s the truth I’ve found: the power to tell your own story—raw, unfiltered, trembling—is radical. It’s a refusal. A protest. A kind of soft rebellion against a world that would rather define you than listen to you.

And so I’ve made a choice.

I will not be the “quiet refugee girl” you expected. I will be inconvenient. I will write things that make people shift in their seats. I will ask questions that have no easy answers.

I’m still learning how to speak without apology.

But now, when I speak, people listen.