“Nobody likes me! I don’t have any friends!” cried one of my second-grade science class students. I was about to give the empty consolation of “I’m sure somebody likes you,” but then I remembered how I felt when I was his age. And I remembered what happened at Bird Camp. The previous summer, when I was sixteen, I had spent a week learning the basics of birding alongside a handful of young, knowledgeable, and arrogant birders, and I...

Northwestern is my number one choice only partly because it has both mechanical engineering and biological sciences majors with a liberal arts focus. The McCormick School of Engineering’s whole-brain approach combining science and math with creativity stands out to me, along with the required Design, Thinking, and Communication courses teaching students how to solve problems in the real world. In my graduate studies, I can combine my knowledge of fluid dynamics and biology after completing a concentration in cell...