You know how a banyan tree works, right? A tree sprouts in Sri Lanka, let's say—in a dry city on the eastern coast. As it grows, vinelike growths wrap around the trunk, following it up, and then spread out into branches—and these branches, they could stretch to the dusty city on the northern tip of Sri Lanka, or they could span over to a boarding school in the capital, or to a university in the hills in the...

I've got no idea what I want to do after college, but I know exactly what I want to learn during it. There are subjects I love (history, English), subjects I like a lot (Spanish, math), and subjects which I don't really have the space to be invested in, even if I'm interested. I like freedom and I like collecting information, but I need the freedom to delve, in-depth, into the areas I really love — and the freedom to explore...

(In response to UChicago prompt: "Where's Waldo?"): Originally, when I played Where’s Waldo, I would, like a “big ol’ dumbo,”[1] only look for Waldo. If you weren’t wearing a striped shirt and electric blue pants, I just didn’t see you. It was my sister who first noticed the fullness of the Waldo universe: the quirks and jokes and sometimes mildly scandalous images hidden inside the picture, and she helped me realize that the point of Where’s...

("What is something you created that you are especially proud of, and why?") I said that, given my parents' poor musical taste, I was proud I'd created a diverse music collection.

("Why are you going to college?") I wrote because I need a collective environment in order to learn, and that's where the best ideas are made.

I tried very hard to be honest with my answers, but I definitely also considered what I thought might be unique responses to the college's questions. I didn't want to seem ambitious or selfish in any way, so I may have downplayed my own accomplishments too much. I think that also had to do with the fact that I knew I wasn't funny enough to write really clever essays, so I tried to lighten the mood of them with self-deprecation....

If you get off the Harvard or Brown waitlist, you have to take a gap year. This isn't super-common knowledge, but I found out that had...

I wasn't sure what size or type of school I wanted, so I applied to a range, from Swarthmore (about 400 kids a grade) to Harvard (1600). Visiting schools definitely helped me make decisions, although sometimes those...

I'm not really doing any! I did model congress in high school and I'm doing that now, but it's very different and not really that fun. It's a shock coming from doing so many extracurriculars to almost none, and I think I'm adding some this semester, but...

I should have been bolder about selling myself—although not too bold, because that definitely backfired on many of my friends, and I'm glad I emphasized community...

Harvard is sensitive about diversity, computer science (and generally...

I'm not sure. Writing was a big part of my application just based on the things I did in high school (newspaper, magazine, lit mag, poetry,...

My school college counselor's rule for everyone was "one humanities teacher, one math/science teacher." (For whatever reason, languages weren't included in humanities—they usually made people submit them as additional recommendations, which they anyway discouraged.) My...

Swarthmore I declined because I wanted a bigger school; I didn't pursue...

The choice was between Harvard and UChicago, and I ultimately chose Harvard because I thought I'd get more opportunities—not after graduation, although as a...