“Pantomime!” And that was an order. We were a human puzzle tasked with unscrambling ourselves in silence. Being quiet would be easier for me than for others. After being assigned numbers and placed randomly in a 4x4 grid defined by duct tape, we realized that we were a life-size Mystic Square game. In this plastic toy, there are fifteen numbered squares and one empty space; the goal is to order the squares numerically by sliding them successively into the blank...

The rigidity of block scheduling at my high school is limiting and inhibits exploration of learning. Brown’s New Curriculum inherently attracts open-minded and self-motivated individuals. I want these people to be my peers. Brown’s undergraduate focus is important to me. At Brown, I would have the ability to be an integral part of university research. I value that I would be learning directly from professors, not teaching assistants, and would be in more intimate class sizes, allowing for...

I had no idea where I wanted to go or what i wanted to do. I did not know if I wanted a big school, a small school, a city school, a country school...the list goes on. There was no cohesiveness to my college list. No one person could be happy at all of the school I applied to. If I could go back I would not apply to so many schools. I would do more introspection on where would make me happy. I think when it comes to applying to top schools, comparing the stellar academics against each...