You wouldn’t believe it—it turns out Shangri-La is just off the McBean Parkway exit on the I-5, near Valencia, California. The California State Summer School for the Arts, known as “CSSSA” (pronounced see-suh), is admittedly a strange place to find paradise. Temperatures can top 100°, and the CalArts campus, where the program is held, was originally designed to be converted into a hospital if the school failed, resulting in a maze of eerie, fluorescent-lit corridors. So—why there? The...

(Prompt was about 'intellectual vitality') My sophomore year, I fell in love with math. See, I’ve always been a strong student in mathematics, but until Precalculus with Mrs. Forbes, it was always my least favorite class. In second grade, I remember scribbling down numbers from the Fibonacci sequence while the teacher explained negative numbers for the hundredth time, which illustrates a trend: teachers saw an empty bucket, while I wanted an intellectual adventure. This is why my first love...

(Prompt was 'What matters to you and why?') Giving what I love to others and watching them run with it. When I was in fourth grade, I took a youth fiction writing class at the library. Our mentor was Tommy Frank, a local author with a white beard, a flat cap, and an amazing way of kindling a kid’s love of writing. Every week, we’d gather, receive a prompt, write, and then present. It was heavenly. Classes...

I wrote my personal essay about a summer arts program I completed during the summer after my sophomore year. It was for creative writing, a lifelong love of mine, and it was a month-long residential program with a competitive application process. It was the best month of my life, and I don't say that in the spirit of exaggeration that usually goes with college app topics. It really was, which was why I wrote my essay about it. I tried...

From what I've heard and what I've experienced, people have a lot more fun at Stanford compared to Ivy...

Having spoken to the woman who read my app and got me in, the difference is that I found a passion, pursued it, achieved something, and was able to present what I'd accomplished in a compelling way. I didn't cure cancer or anything—all...

At the last minute, I turned down a Yale offer I was sure I was going to accept. I visited both schools during their respective admit weekends and for some reason felt at home with the atmosphere at Stanford much more than that of Yale—which has traditional strengths in more of...

I spent way too much time agonizing about where to apply, and took a disastrous tour of some New England schools, the result of which was that I didn't end up applying to any of the schools I toured, and none of the schools I applied to were ones I'd toured. The way I did it—browsing websites for hours and talking to every college representative I met—probably isn't the best way to go about it. What ended up being most helpful to me was probably looking at schools with mean SAT scores similar to mine, and looking at...

Silicon Valley is pretty overrated, at least from my point of view as someone not particularly interested in the business or technology world. What I do love about Stanford's area is the trees and the open space. My freshman dorm was on the edge of an open space—still referred to "Lake Lagunita" though the artificial lake hasn't been filled by the university in several years thanks to some endangered salamanders that live in...

As I said elsewhere, it really just came down to the fact that I felt at home at Stanford like nowhere else, and that overpowered my fears that there wasn't enough meat in the humanities departments to keep...