The ball plummeted to the court, stopped for a passing moment as if to taunt me, then rocketed into the air, narrowly escaping the edge of my racquet. I let out a sigh, pursed my lips, and chalked up another loss to Rory Samuels. By now, one would expect that I would be used to it, this being my fourth straight loss to the guy. Even if it weren’t, nobody in his or her sane mind would think I...

Please tell us what you find most appealing about Columbia and why.

Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 on a spirit of exploration and discovery. As a result, students can pursue a multi-dimensional undergraduate experience both in and outside of the classroom. Given the opportunities at Hopkins, please discuss your current interests—academic or extracurricular pursuits, personal passions, summer experiences, etc.—and how you will build upon them here.

Midnight on an unsurprisingly warm, Texas-winter Wednesday of my junior year, and I was cooped up a hundred feet below ground in a laboratory basement, anxiously waiting for the IR spectrum to form and see if my reaction had worked. I knew exactly how a successful spectrum should look, since it had slipped my grasp at least a dozen times before. I also knew that if it eluded me this time, I wouldn’t have the resources to try again,...

Seek mentorship in whatever it is you enjoy: if you want to get into research or medicine, work in...

I was accepted to and declined Johns Hopkins (Biomedical Engineering), UC Berkeley/UCLA, and UT Austin. Personally, these...

I chose to attend Columbia University due to its mix of diversity, strong core education, open-arms attitude toward undergraduate research,...