Sometimes, my name has an accent over the ‘a,’ but there’s never an ‘h’ after the ‘c.’ Nicolas or Nicolás. As a nickname, Nico, never Nick. It’s bilingual, and that’s why my parents chose it. Both of them, and my mother’s parents, speak Spanish fluently. My mother’s mother - my Abi - was born in Mexico. When I was a year old, my parents and I moved to Spain for a year so that...

The residential college system first caught my interest. It's important that I be part of a community to be comfortable in a new environment, and that's why the microcosms of the colleges appeal to me. Also, Yale's students have made clear to me that Yale's atmosphere is collaborative, not competitive, which adds to the community feeling. There are smaller things, too, which showed me that I would fit in at Yale. For example, Yale's political magazine, The Politic, is the...

I most enjoy learning about language. Since a young age, I’ve had a native knowledge of Spanish due to living in Spain for a year, but in seventh grade, I started taking German class, which awakened me to language’s wonders. From the moment I started, I found the new language fascinating. Though others in my class dreaded grammar days, those days were the ones I looked most forward to; new cases, tenses, and moods meant new ways for...

I belong to the youth community of my hometown. Through my time as a teenager, I’ve tried to leave a positive impact on the town through a couple avenues. The first is civic engagement through the Mayor’s Youth Council (MYC), which is an advisory board to the city council. My peers on the MYC and I try to make the youth voice heard by the local government as well as make the youth more informed about local issues....