Prompt: What Matters to you and why? In the same way that oil preserves food, olive trees preserve my unique culture. Growing up in a different country with completely different lifestyles and customs, I struggled to recognize the importance my culture has in defining me as a person. At school, I tried to fit in with the other students, dressing, talking, and acting like the others. But whenever I came back to my home that is surrounded by olive trees,...

Prompt: Describe your intellectual vitality Tears filled my eyes as I said goodbye to the farmers whom I spent the last six weeks with. It was time to leave, time to go back home to the United States after a summer spent on farms, learning traditional and sustainable agricultural methods. Goosebumps covered my body and as I came to terms with the wealth of knowledge still to be learned and discovered in the agricultural field. As the car drove me...

Prompt: Write a letter to your future Roommate! For this essay, I did not think it would be beneficial to share it. Rather, I would like to take this section to explain what Stanford (and other schools) like to see in this essay. In my essay, I talked about my Instagram. I talked about five specific pictures on my Instagram account that I feel reveal a lot about me and my passion, and that relate and strengthen the rest of...

In writing the essays, my best advice is to be genuine and let your voice come through. Be as clear and figurative at the same times as possible. DO NOT be repetitive and do not choose a cliche topic like failure unless you add your unique twist to it. HAVE FUN with these essays, do not take them too seriously or you will miss the point. I have a lot of experience editing and writing these essays. If you need...

Throughout my high school years, my favorite course has been AP biology. I really enjoyed this...

Quirky - Everyone has a unique attribute - and that is what makes them special and amazing people Intellectual - Everyone here loves to learn almost ANYTHING. That is how...

I did not use a private admission counselor, and I would not really recommend using one. You can do pretty much anything...

Definitely DO NOT waste your summers. I would argue summers are the most important time for you to do things that will help you get into a great...

In my honest opinion, I think what set me apart of the other 41,000 applicants to Stanford was my dedication to my nonprofit organization and agriculture in general....

Okay this is reeeaaaallllly important so read it! Many colleges, like Stanford, value recommendations a lot. Letters of rec are a huge part of your application, almost as big as your transcript, for these colleges. They like letters of rec a lot because it is the only part of the application which you have no say in. It gives them a teacher's perspective of how you are as a student and as a person. Also, it gives the college a (hopefully) honest perspective of how you are as a person, in and out of class. My best advice is getting...

I declined 4 UCs - UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, and UC San Diego. I actually declined them before they even accepted me. That is, I accepted Stanford's offer before I even heard back from the UCs. This was because I applied restrictive early action to Stanford, so I heard back in mid-December. UCs did not come out until the end of March. I finally accepted Stanford's offer towards the middle of February. I chose not to wait until the UCs came...

This is a really hard question to answer. Out of the billions of schools there are, how do you narrow it down to like 10 or 15? Another question is what is the perfect number of schools to apply to. Let me start with my story. I only applied to 5 since I was accepted early. I was planning on applying to about 11, but when I got in to Stanford, I could not find the motivation to finish my other apps. The other four I applied to were UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, and UC Davis. I applied to these schools before the Stanford...

Stanford has been voted America's dream school for the past three years. 'Nuff said, ;) But really, Stanford is just the perfect school for me. The environment is ideal, and the weather is even better. For me, its location was great since it was about an hour from my house. Far enough so that I can get away from my family, but close enough that if I ever need them,...

Extracurriculars are extremely important in college applications, especially if you have aspirations to apply to top schools such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale Princeton, or any other Ivy League. In most cases, the extracurricular you do is of minimal importance, as long as you have an extracurricular that you are very passionate about and take seriously...

Currently, I m just going with the flow. I still not have not declared a major, and there is really no rush. At Stanford, the deadline to declare a major is anytime before junior year. They even tell us to take our time, experiment with different classes, and relax since there is no rush. However, I think about the future a lot, and I do have an idea of what it will look like. If i do major in computer science, I hope to work for a...