It is common knowledge among musicians that bananas will calm nerves. Evidence: The cafeteria's banana rack was empty the afternoon of orchestra chair auditions. You know something is going on if teenagers are voluntarily eating fruit when they are hundreds of miles away from their parents. That day, the lunchroom was emptier than usual. Half of the campers had opted to snag a banana and hit a practice hut rather than eat a full meal, taking advantage of every spare...

The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra is the leading professional orchestra in the state. They play titles from Mozart to Mahler, performing about fifty concerts each season. The ASO is how I feed my thirst for live classical music - I haven't missed a Masterworks concert ever since age thirteen. Imagine my surprise when the Principal Double Bassist - fresh from Juilliard - asked fifteen-year-old me for my email address. Within the hour, I received a message from the orchestra manager inviting...

The summer following my sophomore year, I took a plane to North Carolina to attend a Duke TIP Summer Camp. I studied law for three weeks - a field that I have no interest in pursuing. But how could I live - and I mean live, not survive - if I didn't have the drive to understand other disciples? Summers are also when I can really delve into my passion for music without distraction. Following TIP, I attended two camps...

In my household, we call him White Grandpa. He is my mother's uncle-in-law: the singular caucasian speck in a long lineage of pure Korean blood. Ron Winters was the cameraman of my younger years. Although most of my family is in Atlanta, my favorite part of the biannual trip to Georgia was seeing him. (This was probably because he was the only one who spoke adequate English; when you are a child, it seems useless to spend time with people...

I am a product of my own hard work. I know this because when I was ten I stayed up past my 9 o’clock bedtime trying to grasp the concept of exponents when, in the house next door, Sam’s mom explained it to him an hour ago and he had been asleep since then. After the third grade, there was this running theme in my educational career where my parents couldn’t help me academically. Not that they were...

If you're applying early to any school, you're going to want to ask an 11th grade teacher. It's too early in the 12th grade for any of your teachers to really get to know you. 10th grade teachers might be okay if you were particularly close with them and still keep in touch. If you're applying regular, go ahead and ask a 12th grade teacher if you want. You have a lot of options. Pick a teacher of a class you did well in, grade wise. A class where you think you stood out to the teacher - if you...

I was so worried that my application didn't stick out enough. I was rank 20 in my class - that meant there were 19 students at my school who were more qualified than I was, quantitatively. But I capitalized on what made me different. I'm Asian, which some may see as a hindrance in the application process....

All I can say is DO SOMETHING. Some schools specifically ask you to explain what you did during the summer, and you better have something to recount. I personally went to several different camps, most of which were related to music. I did go to one academic camp...

There were a few things I looked at when applying to schools: size, location, quality of education, resources, and extracurriculars. Personally, I wanted to attend a school with 2,000-6,000 undergraduate students. I didn't want a tiny school, but I didn't want to be overwhelmed by the population either. I'm from a small state, so I sort of...

I took on about six interviews, one of which was over Skype. I am personally a charismatic chick, so I felt that interviews were fairly easy. I kept up to date with local events, because usually your interviewer will be an alum who lives in the area. You can get to know what they do and ask them about how their undergraduate experience helped them. My Princeton interviewer was a lawyer, and...