I hated visiting Grandma Chiang’s apartment. There, all my flaws-from poor eating habits to cacophonic piano playing-were harshly evaluated. Most stays resulted in her lecturing to my strained, agonized silence. One snowy February visit, however, everything changed. As my father unlocked Grandma Chiang’s door, 5E, I shuffled inside, dreading the anticipated critique session. Immediately past the threshold, my legs halted as all oxygen rushed out of my body. There she was, lying on the ground next to an...

Although I have visited Columbia countless times, the trip down College Walk and lively atmosphere of students never cease to amaze me. Specifically, I am drawn to the engeneering opportunities in the renowned Fu Foundation. Its truncated form of the College’s Core encompasses all fields that genuinely interest me. I love the possibility of proceeding from a lecture about integrals directly to an invigorating discussion of Dante’s Inferno. The unconventional Gateway Lab requirement offers freshment the chance to...

What attracts you specifically to the study of engineering At a young age, I fell in love with fixing and improving items around the house, from a wobbly chair to my calendar-hanging contraption. In fact, I often adopted these projects as soon as my father began them, believing that I could do a better job. I enjoyed brainstorming and experimenting just as much as arriving at the effective conclusion. The process of discovery was never tedious or dull. By studying...

Books read for pleasure in the past year A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle, The Harry Potter Series, The Chronicles of Narnia Series, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, A Clockwork Orange, The Pact, For One More Day, The Giving Tree Required reading most enjoyed in last year Catch-22, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Beloved, 1984, The Great Gatsby, Death of a Salesman, Good as Gold, Pride and...