Don’t make your kids switch schools in the middle of high school. It’s too traumatic. —Possible proverb. When I started high school at Worthington Kilbourne, I was an excited slightly-nerdy freshman. I played tennis, joined the Science Olympiad and Mock Trial teams, and did homework. I spent my weekends watching TV and sleeping. But I also had a ton of friends. Tennis friends, lunch friends, club friends, class friends…I had more friends as a freshman than I...

I’ve learned a lot about human health and biology from the dinner table, since my mom is a scientist and she’s been so passionate about her work. By the time I was in sixth grade I’d heard a lot about the benefit of probiotics from her work as a food microbiologist, so when my first pets, a pair of hamsters, had a litter I decided to look at whether feeding yogurt to hamster babies could help with...

The Public Health Crisis in Africa- it was taught by a really cool professor...

Greek life (sorority) because I wanted a more tight-knit sense of community, Engineers without Borders...

I didn't use a private admissions counselor, but my school was pretty small so the counselors knew us each pretty well. The best advice I got was to be true to yourself; overly edited...

I interviewed with Northwestern, UPenn, Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Purdue. I had good experiences and bad ones, but overall I would say don't worry about it too much. Interviews really have very little weight; for Northwestern my...

Since Hopkins is such a research-oriented school, it's really good if you have prior experience. See if you can set up...