Going away was the easy part. An eighteen-hour jaunt spanning three intimidatingly massive airports, 5,472 miles of the Pacific Ocean, and the dreaded customs and immigration line now seems insignificant compared to the 45-minute car ride back home from my familiar Detroit airport. As the expression goes, hindsight is 20/20. And in hindsight, coming back from Japan was what finally opened my eyes. In the traditional sense, I was an adult long before my six-week tenure in Nagoya as an exchange student....

Why Northwestern? Any school, but especially Northwestern, is difficult to summarize. Balanced, spirited, laidback, ambitious; although true, each word generalizes the depth of the overall university experience. Two descriptors stand out above the rest, however: flexible and magnetic. For me, the major draw of Northwestern is the unparalleled flexibility afforded by the quarter system. As someone who is passionately interested in multiple subjects ranging from statistics and chemistry to international relations, I’ll need academic flexibility in order to pursue...

I’ve always had a penchant for numbers and a strong “business sense,” but until recently, I never seriously considered pursuing business. While the potential rewards for commonly envied business careers, such as investment banking or corporate entrepreneurship, are undoubtedly enormous, nothing about the business world seemed particularly glamorous to me. Specifically, compared to scientific or medical fields where groundbreaking research is the norm, business initially appeared to be little more than a life of institutionalized hoodwinking and professional moneymaking. ...

Take upper level humanities, political science and history courses, even if intro courses are recommended. As long as you can handle...

As you're applying and trying to game the system (loading up on AP's, upping test scores, doing everything in your power to make your app likable), keep in mind that universities are doing the exact same thing. In other words, they are trying just as hard to protect their yield, lower admissions rates, up graduation rates, increase the percentage of...

At the end of the day, I went with my heart and with Northwestern because it felt the most like home. Once you...

Honestly, I applied to any school that I thought I might actually go to that sounded interesting, and money aside, I suggest you do the same because you never...

First, make sure the story is compelling, and make sure you are actually telling a story. That being said, don't lie and don't be trite, and for the love...