Another school day ended with a bike ride home. As I swerved up the pavement, turning right onto another path, the Forbidden City was just meters away. Covering half of the starry sky, the defensive walls stood flawless and mighty, hiding everything within. Dim streetlights cast shadows on the closely jointed grey bricks. Biking along the walls made me wonder what’s behind them. Perhaps the ancient architects planned this: the walls they designed are studded with guard turrets. These...

Another school day ended with a bike ride home. As I swerved up the pavement, turning right onto another path, the Forbidden City was just meters away. Covering half of the starry sky, the defensive walls stood flawless and mighty, hiding everything within. Dim streetlights cast shadows on the closely jointed grey bricks. Biking along the walls made me wonder what’s behind them. Perhaps the ancient architects planned this: the walls they designed are studded with guard turrets. These...

Explain your interest in the major you selected and describe how you have recently explored or developed this interest, inside and/or outside the classroom. You may also explain how this major relates to your future career goals. Limit your response to 300-400 words. Elegant, rigorous and thought-provoking, math is the “queen of sciences” I am pursuing. Math first attracted me with its strict web of logic. Basing on a few self-evident axioms, mathematicians like Euclid or Hilbert have built...

Accepting challenges and then struggling to address them cheer me up. Even if I'm not always ready for change, throughout my life I've still faced challenges that forced me out of my comfort zone, from starting my own science club, to teaching myself math modeling and deciding to apply to universities in America. Penn is the perfect place for me to continue my quest of confronting new challenges, unlocking new knowledge, and growing both as a person and as a...

At Rensselaer, I am interested in learning how to use mathematical modeling to solve real-world problems, a skill set that can be developed through experience and practical opportunities at RPI. I think classes like Numerical Computing will be the perfect way for me to learn practical data analysis and computer modeling skills. At the same time, the Rensselaer Union offers me the chance to join many extracurricular activities as well as start my own. One of the communities I hope...

Living in Beijing offers a brutal contrast between the rich and the poor. In my community there are many ancient courtyards. Every one of the courtyard was divided into a dozen small apartments, only several square meters for each, rented to immigrant workers. I had been to one of them. The apartment was dirty, cold and incredibly small. Food and clothes were all over the bed; a small TV blinked because of a bad connection; garbage was randomly thrown into...

I’ve always been a naturally curious person, looking to the world around me for problems and potential solutions. As I have grown older, my lens has changed and I have begun to see the world through numbers. My daily trip to school is 3,635 steps. 95% of Beijing’s population is Han Chinese. Numbers help me to specify and compare, so I can better understand my city and the world. Last summer I learned math modeling. Sitting in the airport on...