“This is a bishop. It moves diagonally.” The blank look on each child’s face was not a good sign. I looked to both sides of me, but nobody was there. I was alone in an unfamiliar place in the middle of Cambodia. As thoughts of failure started to fill my brain, I focused back to my chess coach, Bruce Pandolfini. “You will succeed,” he would tell me. From my first Nationals in third grade to my promotion to Captain...

My favorite attributes of UChicago are the core curriculum and the quarter system. I’m a STEM guy, but I want to expand my mind and challenge my comfort zone. The core curriculum requires everybody to receive a holistic education, and the quarter system allows for more courses at a faster pace, creating a school-wide air of intellectualism. At Chicago I would be able to pursue my passion. I’ve always been drawn toward the applied sciences because of my...

Maybe it started when I picked up chess in third grade, but as long as I can remember, I have always been a math and science guy. At school, I have continually taken the most difficult courses, but I have always found it hard to really challenge my passion. Everything just seemed too basic—too slow. In my junior year, my math teacher, knowing that I would soon run out of available courses, selected me as the only student from...

This is the way I see it. Penn Engineering is my dream, but M&T is my greatest fantasy. I have already described my fascination with Penn Engineering, so in an attempt to avoid redundancy, I will go into detail about the aspects of M&T that appeal to me outside of engineering. That being said, my favorite attribute of M&T is the business education I would receive to enhance my engineering education. This summer, I interned at a...

When I read your first question, I was intrigued. I mulled it over every so often for about a week, until one day I just burst into laughter. I realized that there was no answer. I found it hilarious that thousands of high school students were thinking as hard as they could to come up with some answer that just didn’t exist. I realized this because the inherent failure of the first question is prompted by the second question. ...