All I could hear was an eerie sound as my knee scraped against the school playground asphalt. When I tripped over my clumsy feet something far worse than my bruise had occurred. One of the brand new lightning blue velcro shoes my mom just bought me for my eleventh birthday was torn apart! The school nurse quickly bandaged me up and gave me a pair of old brown shoes to wear for the rest of the day. When I got...

When I was eleven I contracted severe diarrhea. Unlike the other times I had stomach issues, this time I was in Ghana. I was warned against drinking "pure" water during my trip. Despite the warnings, I chose to be stubborn and purchased "pure" water. "Pure" water, often sold in a plastic sachet, is a cheaper alternative to clean water. Due to the lack of running water in most homes, most locals can only afford pure water, leaving them susceptible to...

It was impossible to ignore the challenges that surrounded me growing up--a cramped apartment in the wrong part of town, a mother who struggled to help me in math after 5th grade, stereotypes that made me hesitant about my actions. What allowed me to dream bigger than the small bottle that tried to confine me was an insatiable hunger to be significant. The manifestations of this hunger has allowed me to go to national competitions for free, speak for underrepresented...

Dear roommate, My name is Andrew Bempah and it will not take you much time to figure out that I am from Chicago. I wear my Chicagoan badge with pride. My ability to interact with a wide spectrum of people from different cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds is a testament to my early upbringing. Every neighborhood I lived in my childhood was filled with people from places like Bosnia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Vietnam and many more. I tried some of the best...

Talk to your guidance counselor or the secretary in the guidance office to find out how the school handles teacher recommendations. At some schools, the guidance office will submit the teacher recommendations from your file to colleges directly, along with your transcripts and the school report. At other schools, teachers are requested to send LORs directly to the colleges. Some schools manage recommendations electronically through software packages like Naviance, while others are using functions...

When people talk about schools and where they are going to college it can often be overshadowed and overly influenced by the perceptions of other people. I remember when I got into princeton everybody around me was going nuts. People kept saying I had to commit because it was the number one school in the world because of certain rankings. Keep in mind that most of these...

The main reason I declined other school was because I did not...

Something that really focuses on what...

All of the interviews I had...