I enter from stage right and feel the audience staring at me. My impulse is to just keep walking -- to leave the stage -- but my partner is there and I know I have to turn and start singing with her. We begin: “Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen ... Pour myself a cup of ambition!” It was opening night of 9 to 5: The Musical, and we’d been rehearsing for months. Once I got over my...

Learning is my passion. On top of the satisfaction that comes with gaining knowledge, I love the feeling of expanding my horizons and broadening my perspectives that accompanies exposure to different information, narratives, and perspectives. As such, I believe that the ideal educational setting for me is one that supports and emphasizes pursuit and development of self-realization through the accumulation of knowledge and experiences––an environment with enough academic freedom and emphasis on intellectual engagement with peers that I would...

When I set foot on Northwestern, I was first struck by the sheer size of the campus. Over the course of my two weeks in the dorms, on the campus, and in both Evanston and Chicago, I came to feel at home. I knew that Northwestern attracted passionate, quirky, and motivated students who would be open - open to collaboration, people of all backgrounds, and new ideas. At Northwestern, the large school environment--paired with the emphasis on collaboration, diversity, and...

Claremont is a unique school that offers many educational opportunities that can’t be found anywhere else. The innovative dual degree program in Engineering and Economics is perfect for me, and I crave the opportunity to explore how these seemingly distinct subjects can harmonize with each other. Claremont’s small class sizes and low student-faculty ratio also excite me, because I’ve learned that I function best in smaller environments and relish the intellectual discussions that can only be had...

For me, all paths lead back to design. I have a passion for learning what makes things tick: from the forces at play within the day-to-day operations of world economic markets, to the mathematical and scientific analyses behind biological processes, to the interpersonal powers that shape and mold the human experience, I love dissecting and learning about the world around me. I’m drawn to engineering and biology because I feel that they satisfy my intellectual thirst for material involving...

For every competition, the Robotics team builds a prototype to evaluate as a team. Based on this initial design, we then go to work to take everyone’s opinions into consideration before we craft a revised robot that we will replicate as a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) model. Once the build season has ended and we are no longer allowed to touch the robot, we use the CAD to create an identical replica of our finished product that we can use...

At my predominantly white high school, I’ve always stood out. Not only am I African American, but I’m also scientifically and mathematically intelligent, artistically gifted, and a leader among my peers. When I first enrolled in seventh grade, it wasn’t easy being so different from other students. Over the years, I grew frustrated that my friends didn’t always understand where I was coming from or what mattered to me, and eventually this prompted me to action....

When I think of Tufts, I think of a community of passionate, curious, and motivated students who are open—open to collaboration, people of all backgrounds, and new ideas. Tufts’ intimate environment—paired with its emphasis on collaboration, diversity, and inclusivity––would allow me to exchange ideas with people much different than myself. Furthermore, the ease with which Tufts students take courses between schools—fostering the cross-pollination of ideas between engineering and the liberal arts—strikes me as highly appealing,...

Of the seven billion inhabitants of the earth, how many do you think have dreamt of changing the world in large and groundbreaking ways? A tenth? A quarter? Half? Now, how many succeed? Only a handful. Some would find that prospect daunting. However, I find myself worrying less about whether or not I will be able to help change the world, and more about how best to do so while helping those in need and pursuing my career interests in...

When I set foot on Lehigh, I was first struck by the sheer size of the campus and the incline that it sat upon. Only later did I learn that there was an entirely separate campus hidden behind the crest of the hill: Mountaintop. What I saw within Mountaintop was an empty space for students to make their own quirky ideas or projects come to life. At Lehigh, I would be afforded the flexibility to explore a wide breadth of...

My favorite riddle is the age-old Riddle of the Sphinx: “What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening?” (The answer, of course, is man). The simplicity of the Riddle always amazes me, especially since there are riddles far more complicated and convoluted, but few that actually relate to ideas that are as central and universal as human life. It ingeniously implies that time--and Earth--will go on, long after individual people...

As a STEAM Scholar, my involvements in the arts and humanities have given me a nuanced perspective on STEM--and vice versa. Though I’ve cherished my exposure to biology and to robotics, I’ve also loved economics, acting, and playing the sax. While the overlap between and integration of the sciences and the arts are most physically evident in CAD modeling and 3D Design, my talents and enjoyment of writing and the humanities are an equally important and significant part...

In creating Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models for the Robotics team, I bolster the confidence of the team by providing the most precise measurements possible, which allows my team members to build the actual robot with the highest level of accuracy and reliability. While those building the robot are able to hold the metal in their hands, my fingertips do the keyboard construction that makes those pieces of metal fit together perfectly. After I pass the CAD model to my teammates,...

The first thing I ever knew about Rice was the honor code. My Spanish teacher’s son just graduated from Rice, and of all his experiences, the one he felt the most compelled to share with us was the honor code. The idea that students are able to self-regulate was something that I had never heard of at the university level, and seems to me a testament to a student body that I can admire, and one in which I...

With the spirit of Williams tutorials in mind, I would want the other student in the class with me to be the renowned French architect Le Corbusier. There are few fields of study that require as much rigorous attention to both detail and the bigger picture as architecture. Le Corbusier was very methodical in his approach to his work, and was well-known for developing and following 5 points of architecture--architectural elements and features that he incorporated within his buildings. With such...