While my cousins in Mexico have always danced to the rhythm of soccer, I found my pace out on the hard green surface of the tennis courts. When I'm on the court, the thunderous sound of a tennis ball bouncing off my racquet always seems to allow me to calm the waves of anxiety that accompany high school life. It's one of the reasons I insisted on never competing in a tournament. For me, the purpose of playing tennis isn't...

For the past few years, I've been deeply convinced to major in aerospace engineering. Memories of breathlessly sitting in front of our TV, eyes glued to the miniature screen watching the space shuttle blast off into the stars, as I marveled at how the engineers at NASA achieved it all, have become my dream. Now I can finally have the opportunity to pursue that goal of obtaining a world-class aerospace engineering education at MIT from professors like Wesley Harris, learning...

Determination. If there existed a word that could define my personality, this would be its closest synonym. I'm not only speaking of the act of not giving in or refusing to give up. It symbolizes the fortitude to draw on every strained drop of willpower and reach beyond, surpassing all limitations. At MITES, it meant staying up to study and work long nights that turned into morning sunrises to finish a problem set for Physics 3, refusing to acknowledge defeat or...

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard the phrase "It's not rocket science," and thinking to myself, "If only it were." You could say that's the story of my life, but you could also say that it's a story that didn't take place in a day, and it didn't start out with the celebration I thought it would bring. I fell in love with aerospace engineering long before any of my friends had even considered plans in...

Growing up in another country, I could never rely on the support and encouragment of my grandparents, but as the eldest son in my family, my parents' goals put pressure on me at school. My grandfather helped me cope with the stress from my parents, and although he never attended high school, to me he was the most brilliant man in the entire world. He would patiently answer all of my questions on my rare visits to him in Mexico...

When it came time to make a decision, it wasn’t a hard decision in terms of the number of choices. I only applied to two schools, Georgia Tech, and MIT. And I was admitted to both of them. The problem came when it was time to discuss financial matters. Neither Georgia Tech nor MIT offered me a lot of financial aid, but at the time, I lived in Georgia, and so I would have been charged in state tuition. On top of that, Georgia’s Hope Scholarship program would have given me an additional boost to help cover most...