Feeling the Rain 11:30 P.M., July 5, 2007: Four hundred teenagers stand in a courtyard at the Timothy Dwight dorms on the Yale campus in New Haven, shivering and attempting to ignore the cold raindrops pelting down on their shoulders and faces. They link arms, staring up at the curtained windows shielding the faces of authority. These teenagers are making a statement. They are standing up for their beliefs and fighting on behalf of someone else’s. They are proving the JSA ...

I have always been fascinated with biology: from third grade when I looked at bugs under my first microscope, to discussing the mysteries of genetics and DNA with my aunt, to this past year in my AP Biology class when I harvested Drosophila fruit flies and examined patterns of Mendelian inheritance. My interest in science has grown and evolved through the years. My aunt was a genetic researcher at a Harvard lab and she gave me my first lesson on...

“You should respect each other and refrain from disputes; you should not, like water and oil, repel each other, but should, like milk and water, mingle together.” – Buddha “*!&# you!” The teenaged driver yelled at our car as she rolled down the window of her Toyota and swung into the parking spot that we had been about to pull into. What had been a family outing to the mall quickly turned into a shouting match between my mother and the teenager: �...

Before I began writing essays etc., I started off by comparing my scores and GPA with school averages from US News (and other sources). Based on that, I made four categories: "Dream" (meaning my scores were below the averages), "Goal" (scores were just at/slightly below averages), "Target" (scores were just above the averages), and "Safety" ...