留学申请文书的开头有如任何文章的开头，第一段的核心意义在于：它决定了别人是否愿意把这篇文章继续读下去。在谈什么是好的开头之前，我们先来一起看看几个典型的不好的开头。不好的开头有很多类型，但效果都是一样，就是看完开头我就不想再读下去了，下面你写了多精彩的内容也都无济于事。

✖失败开头第一类：追忆儿时

When I was a child….

When I was a child….

When I was a child….

当你还是个小屁孩……教授怎么可能关心你小屁孩时候的经历呢？？讲真，把小时候的一段经历用来开头，也没什么错误。但是！！真的是太平庸太平庸了！！

这种平庸的例子，小智见过太多，信手拈来，比如一个学化学或者化工的学生：

“小时候我爷爷给自行车补胎，能把橡胶粘上，但我用自己的胶水就粘不上，我就去问爷爷，爷爷语重心长地告诉我，这叫万能胶，这就是科学。啊，从此，我就立志将来要学习化工这个专业！”

还有还有，比如学数学的，When I was a child我就对数字敏感；学生物的，When I was a child我就天天观察地上的小蚂蚁；学金融的，When I was a child我就对钱感兴趣；申教育学的，我从小就立志当一名老师，恨不能把“蜡炬成灰泪始干”写到文书标题里……

小智很负责任的告诉大家，即使你小时候各种开挂，各类竞赛第一名，也千万不要写，没用！凡是大学之前的经历，就没用。

✖失败开头第二类：空泛+喊口号

✖失败开头第三类：强行引用名人名言

终于找到一句极富哲理的名言，写上去。但请问，这句话和你有什么关系？和你的文章下文又有什么关系？如果没有，请不要用。

Stop！

我们要看好开头！

小智节选一些智友学子的优秀文书，权当抛砖引玉，给大家开拓思路。我们要做的就是让你感受到，哇，原来文书还能这么开头？！

✔自我否定式开头

In my junior year, a conversation between me and a PhD candidate completely drew my petite complacency to a close. By that time, one of his paper had passed the first-round selection and proceeded to the second-round review by SCIENCE. On the contrary of speaking highly of my scientific research abilities like the fellows of my cohort did, he pointedly brought force many doubts and questioned lots of my achievements. Back then, I was ranked first in GPA and was elected as the President of Student Union of the Biology Department. This impressive conversation urged me to thoroughly reflect on myself.

身披着专业成绩第一和学生会主席的光环，却被别人彻底否定。这个开头吸引人的地方在于，你一定会有欲知后事如何，且听下文分解的感觉。

✔一段见微知著的经历

I started to learn piano in 2012 and passed the piano test level 9 three years later. I only knew some simple music notations and fingering at the beginning, but now I can play piano very fluently, and during this period I have made great efforts. Since I started to learn piano at 20, my arms and fingers were very stiff at the beginning, so for quite a while, I concentrated on practicing how to properly manipulate muscles on fingers and arms, and in this way I made obvious progress. This experience makes me more convinced of my definition of pursuing excellence, i.e. applying sustained actions, skillfully solving problems through thinking and never giving up on a dream.

事实上，这个开头也是对整篇文书的总起和概括，这段的最后一句谈了三点：持之以恒的行动力，通过思考来灵活解决问题，以及永不放弃对梦想的坚持，这就是对后续文书主体要谈论的内容的概括，也就是后文会紧扣这第一段。

✔通过一个转折来引起话题

Those who are in constant pursuit of excellence will strive to be outstanding in all circumstances. With a particular interest in mathematics and the curiosity for knowledge, I was among the top 5 in my Department, scoring over 90 on most major courses and even 99 for Ordinary Differential Equation.

Nevertheless, I kind of lost myself in simply striving for high scores. It downed on me that an outstanding undergraduate should also explore a clear plan for the future…

先陈述自己的兴趣和成绩好，但在第二段，峰回路转，意识到单纯的追求课程分数高是远远不够的，优秀的学生还应该对自己的未来探索出一条清晰的路线。同学们也可以多尝试一下这种在上一段做陈述，然后在下一段做转折的写作技巧。

✔一段有画面感的描述

In the future, perhaps you will find me in a remote village of China, talking to farmers, researching their demand for loans and meticulously collecting data. I shall work hard with the faith that I’m making my contribution to financial institutions in rural China in risk control as well as to Chinese farmers to solve their financial demands for development.

描述一个场景做为开头。同时，这篇文书也开门见山地点明了自己的career goal。相信很多商科的同学都知道要在文书当中阐述自己的career goal，但你是否尝试过用具象化、场景化的手法来进行描述呢？

✔画面感？直接上图怎么样！

什么？这是文章的开头！？ 没错，这是一个ME申PHD的学生，研究方向为机器人，而且内容上偏实操，所以我们在文章的最开头直接上的照片，照片中所有内容均为学生之前完成的机器人。智友团队老师总是这么认真+睿智的帮助每一位学子创作符合其特点的个性化文书~不过这个创新的方式更适合于偏实操类的理工科专业。

✔技术流

It had been three days since I started running the Matlab code for Barra model which was the first project I worked on as a full-time quant in the algorithmic trading hedge fund, called Stas Asset Management Corp., even though I had optimized the code by replacing for-loops with matrix operations. After all, it was a tremendous task analyzing 10-year daily data of all A shares in China. In the big-data era, the capability of processing large data set is vital for success. The massive amount of data analysis for modeling highly motivated me to learn more powerful languages, like C++, and to dig into unfamiliar concept of multi-threading. Hence, I completed the Quantnet C++ certificate with distinction, but it still cannot fully satisfy the demand of programming and modeling skills at work. Through these projects in workplace, I realized the importance of programming capability and gained great exposure to sophisticated concepts in modeling and strategy construction, which motivated me to pursue graduate level training in Financial Engineering. With the strong desire to be successful in the financial industry, I decided to apply for the world-class master program of Financial Engineering in Baruch College with a focus on computational skills.

扎扎实实的谈技术、讲事情~这其实是很不错的方法之一。说到底，内容还是最重要的，可以是你现阶段的经历、正在做的实验、目前的实习工作等等，放在开头，也顺带能使整篇文书的结构成为倒叙的方式。

✔大神学霸流，用数字说话

As an undergraduate student, I have issued more than 10 SCI papers, which makes IF exceeds 30. I am the first student that succeeded in designing the primer and testing the RNAi effects of its STAT3 gene in our lab. Currently, I am leading two doctoral students and three undergraduates to wok on the projects of ‘Inflammation on DNA Damage of the Distal Tissues’ and ‘Study of Fibroblast as Potential Cancer Cell Vaccine,’ which are promising research concentrations nowadays, and the upstream part has been completed.

如果你有在专业领域内世人所无法企及的成就，不要吝啬，绝对要放到第一段。而且一定要用数字说话，即使有些内容难以量化，也要尽力这样做，例如，“我发表的文章，应该已经够5个博士生毕业”。

✔一段小众经历

You might be surprised hearing that as a Top 10% student with a cumulative grade point average of almost 3.8, especially as a female, I am at the same time a game whiz at Dota. I enjoy studying every detail of the game and have reached a level of semi-professional already. In the past four years in my college life, I had a total of 200 games experience. For now, I’m even invited to participate in some professional tournaments. 

但是一定要个性化，文中独到的地方还是在于一个能打进职业联赛的游戏高手居然是一个女学霸，让人感受到确实你有某个与众不同的地方。

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