One month remained. Surveying the boiling faces around him, Sensei said, “You can never be truly ready for the Black Belt Test.” His words burned into my neurons like a branding iron, congealing them. I pondered with controlled panic. Whatever I willed, my muscles flatly denied that they could surge to mythical Test-readiness in a month. No, I could only keep kicking the whole way through, until Then, when I would have to unearth something unknown. And so I kicked...

I didn’t run off to EPGY to elope with bioscience, per se. Bioscience’s applications enthralled me, or so I thought, for young love lies not truly in the heart, but in the eyes. But soft – a light from yonder window broke. Stanford was the east, and molecular biology was the sun. Consummating my conceptual passions, EPGY turned me on to a micro-to-macro study of life. I ceased to accept the Central Dogma so dogmatically. Instead, I saw it...

Dear roommate, I write to inform you that, as my grandpa noted, “college is like war: you come out of it a different person.” It’s not a perfect comparison – I laughed when I heard it –but it definitely contains a great truth: college, (ironically) like war, is a time for absorbing new influences. Consider the Crusades. Knights returned to Europe from the Middle East with exciting new knowledge in math, medicine, and more. But they didn’t quest after �...

As a wee lad, I would putter about the kitchen whenever Mom was making mint brownies. One day, deducing that consuming mint extract must be as pleasurable as consuming the whole dessert, I asked, “Mom, can I drink the extract of mint?” It being 89 percent alcohol, she prohibited that I drink the extract. Mom left. I drank the extract. With a bottle of the “DO NOT POUR BY A FLAME”-labeled liquid in my bloodstream, I felt unbalanced. Suddenly, I...

I was bad at finding scholarships probably because I was too enamored with the hope of getting into Stanford. I seriously think that had I been...

Stanford: I went to a summer program at Stanford (EPGY) the summer before my senior year and loved it. I loved the campus and the Stanford students I met there. That pretty much made me super into the idea of getting into Stanford. And its high ranking...

Stanford Symphony Orchestra; casual music-making; Stanford Roundtable for...

Grad school, most likely. Depends on whether I want to teach school/go...

I mainly just chilled out during high school. Write about your life and read a lot! It helps with the essays. :) In college, I've worked as a research assistant both...

The campus's opulent beauty. THE WEATHER. The proximity to San Francisco. The Bay Area's cultural vibrancy and diversity. The chill culture. (I also dislike the chill culture...

I should've applied to more safety schools that offer good financial aid....

If you want to talk about the entrepreneurial vibrancy of Silicon Valley, make sure...

NOTE: It's COMBINATIONS of qualities that OVERLAP AND STAND APART from others' qualities IN YOUR APPLICANT POOL that make you ...

FINANCIAL...