"Vic! It's about the people." It took me five essays about my passion for traveling and about being a 17-year-old Brazilian girl who ended up in a boarding school in Maine to realize this. I mentioned classic authors, notable historical figures, philosophical quotes, and anything that made me sound smart. But I'm not trying to sound smart this time. Even though my traveling experiences and my Brazilian background compose who am I, the only way I can tell my story...

NYU - I was on an exchange program in Boston when I decided to take a six-hour bus drive to visit NYU's campus. I had heard about the school and decided to give it a try, "I mean, it's in New York City!" I remember thinking. Once I got to the university I immediately realized that NYU was different from all the schools I had visited. As I looked over the buildings, dormitories and libraries, I couldn't find that large...

BU - The first time I ever heard of BU was January of this year, when my exchange program in MAS began. I had gone to New England to get the best possible education and to get myself ready for college, and I remember a friend of mine talking about this “wicked good school” in Boston called Boston University. To be honest, I didn’t want to apply to a school in Boston because I imagined I would be tired...

USC - My ultimate goal regarding my academic life is to study the most that I can. Although I cannot predict where I’m gonna get, I know for sure that learning is what I know how to do best. I certainly expect that my hard work will make me a global scholar and a renaissance person, but I know that I cannot achieve that on my own. I believe that with the study abroad opportunities USC offers, my development...

YALE - Why Yale? I heard that Meryl Streep had studied at Yale. And that was enough to convince me, when I was 14, that Yale was the place to go. Where was Yale? What was Yale? For longer than I'd like to admit, my knowledge on Yale was Meryl Streep. But when I spent a summer at Yale on the YYGS PLE program, my reasons changed. I want to attend Yale because it's where I learned that my voice is...

I think it all began when I was 12 and decided to spend the summer in the US improving my English. But I’m not sure. It might have been when I gave up on a traditional 15-year-old party to study at Yale during the summer of 2013. Or maybe this summer, when I chose boarding school over a typical Brazilian education, being the first in my family ever to seek for an education beyond borders. Regardless of the principal, for a...

I applied to Yale, NYU, BU, Princeton, Dartmouth, Pace, Wheaton and USC - so I have all the required essays.

1- I would have spent more time on selecting the teachers to write my recommendations. Because my favorite teachers were Brazilians and couldn't speak english, I was super confused about that. I...