The drone hit the tree at full speed, sending a cascade of shimmering leaves dancing downward. A moment later, the leaves were joined by falling rotors and engines, which hit the ground with a deafening thump. I stared at the carnage, stunned by what I’d just done. A piercing crack broke my daze as the drone, camera, and a tree limb came crashing down. This was not the first tree I’d trimmed today. I learned from my grandfather...

Optional Harvard Essay: The phone clicked on the fourth ring and a gruff voice answered. “Speaking?” I swallowed, trying to dispel the dryness in my throat. Today was as good a day as any to conquer my fear of speaking to strangers on the phone. When I spoke, each word was slow and measured to keep myself calm. “Hello Sir. I’m calling for Congresswoman Annie Kuster. We just wanted to—” “I’m not giving more money to any goddamn...

Harvard, elaborate on extracurricular experience: When my school announced a new grant program to fund a community service project, I returned to the church I had worked at the before and asked “How can I help?” The students, all refugees from Africa, told me how they struggled to type papers and how emails perplexed them. I won the grant and updated all of their technology. The rest of the funds allowed me and a group of friends to drive to...

Columbia: It is a current student at Columbia who first taught me what it’s like to be continually curious about how things work. Julia was the prefect in my dorm, a dancer, and the captain of the debate team. Most importantly, she was incredibly kind. She encouraged me to try debate and inspired me to eventually become a prefect. She also questioned the status quo. When her pointe shoes were uncomfortable and made with archaic materials, she decided to...

Why Engineering at Columbia: Asking questions about the world around me then investigating them has appealed to me since I was small. My craving for problem solving led me into the Engineering Lab in eleventh grade. I joined Java Programming to learn more about how creativity can crack puzzles. This is when I fell in love with engineering. My fascination with engineering led me to a summer engineering internship. I was thrilled to find a position with a senior scientist...

U Michigan, Describe a community and your place in it: What is art? This was the question that my AP Art teacher asked on our first day of class. The inquiry proved surprisingly complex. For me, art has always just been a part of my life. I loved crafts and coloring when I was small. This passion turned into a zeal for pottery, painting, drawing and photography as I grew. What I love about art is not just the finished...

U Michigan: In a class of twelve, only two of us were girls. I walked into my first Engineering Honors class filled with apprehension. I knew of engineering’s reputation for male dominance and I worried that I might have to prove my competence to earn my peers’ respect. One of the many goals of the course was to prepare for engineering internships this summer, and I figured that learning to work in a masculine environment was one of the...

In my freshman year of high school, my Humanities class was assigned a speech to write and read before the school. I wrote mine filled with quotes from a funny website that my friends and I regularly read and laughed over. I introduced the quotes with a story about how they could be applied to my own life, then included “taken from [website title]” at the end. I was proud of the speech and performed well before the class. They...

I really had a lot of fun writing my personal statement! Pick something you're passionate about and try to make it a bit creative. Really explore your inner stream of conscious.

I had an interviewer come to my high school for Georgetown, Harvard, Columbia, MIT, and Princeton. The conversations were really casual, and for the most part I don't know if the quality of the interview really affected the outcome of my application. For instance,...

I didn't use a private counselor, as my school had college counselors available. With only 500 kids, my school is small enough that I got...

One of the most fulfilling activities I ever did was an internship at an oceanographic research institute. It really combined all of my interests, namely the ocean, research, and...

To be honest, being a female engineer was probably a plus for my application. However, I also think that having well rounded interests was helpful. I participated in hard science research, but I also spent plenty...

I was initially apprehensive about choosing Harvard because I was worried that I would be swayed simply by the name. However, the more I investigated it, the more I realized that the balance of...

The best way to increase stress is to spend too much time talking about the process with friends. Family members can be even worse! So the best decision I made was to...