As my mom and dad tended to my baby brother in the room next door, not only didn’t I miss their attention, I considered myself the lucky one. While the baby’s cries were being tamed, my grandfather and I would begin our work. We constructed the most beautiful cities complete with intricate sidewalks, busy pedestrians and my favorite part, towering skyscrapers. My small hands grasped each Lego block as I balanced on my toes, trying to add another...

My family expressed high expectations of me even in my fetal days. It is a tradition that the oldest living male has the honor of naming the children. My great uncle selected the first name Ivy, to make my full name Ivy Lee. From the moment I was born, I was expected to succeed, and I am reminded of that every time I introduce myself, sign a document, and write my name on my college application. There is no greater...

I wrote several drafts of my Common App Essay before finally finding a topic that I liked. After that I used the discarded topics as my supplemental essays for other schools that I applied to. It is good to dump all of your ideas onto a piece of paper, word document or napkin and then just start pouring out your creative juices.

My love for Nashville was a huge part of why I applied to Vanderbilt. In fact, I fell in love with Nashville before I fell in love with the Vanderbilt, which is unlike my experience with other schools I toured. During my sophomore year of high school, my mom took me to the Country Music Awards in...

I spent 2 of my summers attending college programs at Georgetown and Yale. The program I attended at Georgetown was 3 weeks long, I lived in a dorm with a roommate and went to classes (english, math, SAT, and a lecture series). Programs like these are closest thing to a college experience you can get before actually going to college. You not only live on campus and experience the day to day life of an undergraduate student, but you also get to explore the city/town around it. This helped me decide what I was looking for in a campus and I...

I interviewed with Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and the University of Southern California. My experiences at each interview were completely different. My interview for Vanderbilt was conducted by an alumnus. I got to select the alumni interviewer I wanted to meet with; there is a database that sorts the interviewers by state. I did a little bit of research (quick Google search) on each interviewer so that I could find one that I had something in common with to talk about. I am from Connecticut, and I actually chose an alumni interviewer for the state of New York because none of...