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JFK's "application to Harvard, including mediocre test scores and a refreshingly banal personal essay."

Found in the JFK Library's digital archives. You know, there really was a time when you filled out the application form in handwriting, dashing off a few sentences in the space provided to answer the question "Why do you wish to come to Harvard?" (or whatever school you were applying to). These separate pages of ultra-tweaked writing that people attached to the form in later decades are really just as banal. I mean, seriously, "Why do you wish to come to Harvard?" is a stupid question that deserves an answer like the one JFK scrawled in 1935: "To be a 'Harvard Man' is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain."

Also refreshing is the letter from JFK's father:

Jack has a very brilliant mind for the things in which he is interested, but is careless and lacks application in those in which he is not interested. This is, of course, a bad fault.

Full post as published by Althouse on January 17, 2011 (boomark / email).