A row of worn-down cement shacks populated one side, and straw houses sparsely filled the other with green rice paddies. I was playing games on my dad’s new iPhone 4. I didn’t want to get out of the van, but I had no choice. Before my uncle even stopped the engine, all my father’s relatives flooded around the car welcoming our arrival, knee-deep in mud, even those I had never seen before. My relatives saw this visit as...

When I entered high school, all freshmen were mandated to partake in a daily twenty-minute seminar called the Freshman Mentor Program (FMP), where upperclassmen led us in social and academic activities to smoothen the transition from middle school. This was one of the most enriching experiences of my freshman year, as my mentors shaped my academic endeavors. Seeing how much FMP had shaped me, I wanted to do the same for others. On the first day of junior year, I,...

Capturing the glimmering stars under the Mars-like American southwest or San Francisco’s skyline silhouette, landscape photography has allowed me to see the eloquence in nature. Mindfully capturing nature’s bounties, mountains and rivers come to life dancing in their raw forms. Even everyday experiences become wonders as they highlight the small things we often take for granted or overlook. But what I love the most about landscape photography is the artistic memorabilia they create for me; hanging around my...

After having taken Principles of Engineering, a Project Lead the Way engineering and computer science course at my high school in sophomore year, I became captivated by the fields of electrical engineering and computer science. Seeing the following summer as an opportunity to enrich my understanding of these fields, I participated in Carnegie Mellon’s Pre-College Program, where I took two intensive courses: Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Principles of Computing. Introduction to ECE offered me a...

“It’s lit! The microprocessor’s light is blinking! But why? Microprocessors are pieces of metal and clearly can’t understand English!”. Though a minor comical celebration, this sparked my curiosity in computer science. I soon became entangled with code to understand why these chips worked the way they did, and how we tricked semiconductors into machines. My interests quickly ravaged from hardware components to applets to machine learning, where I became faced with a new challenge: understanding the mathematical...

The synergy Columbia promotes amongst different schools cultivates a rich inclusive learning environment that would allow me to ensure my work will directly impact science, technology, and society. At Columbia, I know I won’t be surrounded just by those like me, but also philosophers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs. It is Columbia’s intellectual diversity that manifests a place to spark creativity and ignite innovation. Growing up in the bane of a STEM-oriented environment - Silicon Valley - I often feel...

Spontaneous Urban Accessible Antiquity and modernity Humanities and STEM Interdisciplinary liberal arts education Research opportunities directly impacting science, technology, and society State-of-the-art research laboratories Variety of dining options Leisure opportunities Balance between social and academic life Orchestra and theater Networking Entrepreneurship Diversity Opportunities

From spending countless nights building a robust healthcare monitoring and diagnosis system to spending weekends helping fictional cows organize themselves in labyrinth pastures (USA Computing Olympiad), to now using machine learning to enhance existing diagnosis tools, I hope my works one day will have a lasting impact on our society. It all started freshman year when I visited my grandparents and saw blood drip from their pricked finger three times a day on top of spending an hour measuring other...