The weight plummeted to the ground, the arm flew, and the rock whistled through the sky before hitting the gravel with a distant thud. The first thing my family’s farm taught me was to learn by doing. Because of that, I built my trebuchet. Time for the second shot. I pulled the arm to the ground. A quick hand wave signaled my brother to load the rock. I released the arm. The weight plummeted, the arm swung, and the...

If you go look in a college’s information packet or on their wikipedia page, there’s usually a blurb about “significant alumni and faculty.” While it’s a nice novelty to say “I went to the same college as Madonna,” sharing the same alma mater as someone famous does little. When I visited Yale, there wasn’t a blurb; there was a wall. An entire room was filled with the achievements of Yale graduates and faculty, even of people...

Swarthmore told me a story, a story of intention and history. There was a level of subtle care at Swarthmore that I had never seen before. Every decision and facet of the college was one of beautiful, purposed efficiency. As I opened a door, it resisted me, just ever so slightly. My guide explained that the extra energy from my push was stored to power the handicapped door opener. In a courtyard, a seemingly ordinary wall became a chalkboard covered...

I get a lot of mail. Usually there’s four or five pieces of promotional mail for me scattered throughout the bills and junk. Most of my mail gets shredded straightaway without reading; it’s hard for anything to stand out among the mass of paper. However, one day, a bright blue book with “Vassar” emblazoned on it in bright orange letters glared at me from inside the mailbox. I’m a sucker for bright colors, so I read it...

If you could meet a character from a book or a historical figure who would it be and what would you ask them? I’m a senior, and at my school that means I get to take calculus. It’s full of “dy over dx’s,” and integrals. Almost all of the materials and terms in calculus were single-handedly invented by one person: Gottfried Leibniz. In the tenth grade, I was reading “Quicksilver,” historical fiction about, among other things, the...

Describe an experience which caused you to change your perspective and/or opinion. How did this affect you? I always knew I was an intelligent person. I’m good at reading, and I’m good at remembering what I read. I’m good at looking at things logically. Then, for three summers in a row, I was able to go to a summer camp run by Johns Hopkins’ Center for Talented Youth. I was 14 during my first summer at CTY....

(150-250 words) Yeager Scholars value intellectual curiosity. Give a recent example of a time when you embodied intellectual curiosity. 941,161. It’s not really a special number. It’s odd. Its prime factorization is 13x13x5569. It’s the hypotenuse of the right triangle with legs 315480 and 886711. It’s not a perfect square, and it’s not prime. It’s really not a significant number at all except for one thing. 941,161 is the number of points I’ve accrued over four...

Look at a tree. It twists in seemingly illogical patterns. However, trees always grow in the direction that’s best for them: towards the sun. A tree forced to grow a specific way will be stunted. I’m the same way; my mind moves towards what’s best for it. Forcing my mind to fit a specific pattern isn’t just annoying, it limits me. Brown doesn’t do that. Brown lets me explore the world around me, not forcing...

Six weeks ago, I’d never heard of Oberlin College. I knew nothing about it, knew no one that had gone there, didn’t even know where it was. In classic teenage fashion, I was excited to distance myself from my home in West Virginia as much as I possibly could. Following the same pattern, my mother strained to keep my sights as close to home as possible. My first sighting of Oberlin was as a Questbridge partner that I...

Olin is an extraordinary learning community bound together by a vibrant culture of innovation and a vision to change engineering education to make it a fun, engaging and meaningful experience. Students at Olin are deeply involved in creating and improving the Olin experience each year. As an Olin student, what do you hope to contribute to the College? (up to 300 words) Look at a map. There are two types of exploration. First, you can explore what is already charted. just...

3. “It seems to me incumbent upon this and other schools’ graduates to recognize their responsibility to the public interest...unless the graduates of this college…are willing to put back into our society those talents, the broad sympathy, the understanding, the compassion... then obviously the presuppositions upon which our democracy are based are bound to be fallible.” -JFK A community is a group of people who live and work together for the benefit of each other. The society I’m...