In third grade, I had a crush on a boy named Jack. He was the up and coming quarterback character, and I was the odd girl that wore almost exclusively gauchos and clogs. While his natural charm was enough to make any girl swoon, he really stole my heart when he told the class that his favorite color was hot pink. My crush on Jack taught me one thing: To be extra cautious and stick to social norms when going...

Pasta is the hardest thing to eat. One day in my AP Physics C class, my teacher had us split into groups and come up with a new eating utensil. My group designed an ingenious spaghetti fork which eliminated manual twisting and the annoyance of dangling noodles. We had an awful initial design, but we kept fixing it over and over and making it less dangerous and more practical. It was hard to find a way to cut the noodles....

Dear Future Roommate, Greetings and salutations. So I think the first thing you should know about me is that I really like chocolate. If you ever give me chocolate, I will be eternally grateful. Second, I am in love with acting. I’m not a musical theatre person (so you won’t have to listen to me sing every single song from Spring Awakening). I hope you will come see me in whatever show I’m acting in on campus....

The summer before my senior year, I took a computer coding class at UCSD and discovered that coding incorporates everything I love about math: problem solving, discovering patterns, and finding a simpler way to reach a goal. I learned ALICE, which is an object-oriented program designed to make learning code easier and more natural. We didn’t type out “real” code, but instead dragged and dropped pre-written code that created our desired result. I remember my teacher saying that you...

Math has been my favorite subject. But it wasn’t until this past summer that I discovered that computer coding incorporates everything I love about math. I’ve always loved problem solving, discovering patterns, and finding a simpler way to reach a goal. I am planning to major in Computer Science and then to apply for the Progressive Degree Program. I love that at USC you can take an engineering course your first semester freshman year. This excites me because...

With my computer science degree, I want to make life more efficient. One idea that’s an example of the type of work I’d like to do is to make finding and returning lost pets a shorter, more successful process. I imagine a database like we have for missing people where you can report information when you lose a pet. Then, if you find a lost animal, you can search by breed, color, approximate location, name, and other factors. ...

By my personal definitions, I am a huge nerd, and a little bit of a geek. A nerd is someone who gets excited when she finally understands Gauss’s Law, or giggles as he successfully proves the quadratic formula years after he first memorized it, or throws a fist in the air when she discovers a juicy rhetorical device being implemented in a letter from the 18th century. That’s me. A geek is someone who obsesses over a TV...

There is something magical about walking onto stage with a purpose, whether during opening night or just a rehearsal. Any worries about my life disappear as soon as I feel the lights in the house dim and the audience’s conversations turn into a whisper, and then stop altogether. When acting you are stepping into another person, but at the same time you are discovering who you are. When I play a role in a show, I am not just...

At Canyon Crest Academy (CCA), we paint our trash cans. Those trash cans are the ugliest things on campus, but we’re making them cool and interesting. For me, it’s about potential. You don’t think that this metal can could actually draw someone’s eye, but anything can be made beautiful. One of them is painted like a hamburger, another is covered in brightly colored fruit, and there are always a couple that are some sort of animal...

There is something magical about walking onto stage with a purpose, whether during opening night or just a rehearsal. Any worries about my life disappear as soon as I feel the lights in the house dim and the audience’s conversations turn into a whisper, and then stop altogether. When acting you are stepping into another person, but at the same time you are discovering who you are. When I play a role in a show, I am not just...

I wrote a lot of essays, and many of them have long and short versions. The ones that got me into Stanford are my personal statement, the "Pasta is the hardest thing to eat" one, the one about ALICE, the roommate essay, and the activity essay. The USC ones were the personal statement, the activity essay, the nerd or geek one, the career one, the why USC one, and the shorter acting one. For my UC application I used my...

I used a private college counselor and it was probably one of the best decisions I made during this process. They helped me brainstorm and...

Ask early! At the beginning of the year. My teachers filled up so I was glad I asked right...

I did not receive any financial aid which was sad but expected. I applied to dozens of scholarships but did not receive any ...

Do things that you like. Really. It may seem like a good idea to join a million community service organizations and join all these diverse clubs but if you are just doing it...

I applied to 8 schools and was accepted into 7 of them, my two top choices being Stanford and USC. USC offered me half tuition and I also won an additional $10,000 scholarship from the USC Town and Gown organization. Stanford offered me no money...

Stanford has an almost overwhelming number of extracurriculars to join. Some are common to a lot of colleges: SWE (Society of Women Engineers), Mock Trial, Debate, Club Sports, A Capella groups, and so on. But there is probably a club for any activity you want to do, and some you've never heard...

I only interviewed with one school: USC. Stanford does not interview California residents. USC offers a limited number of interviews and if you have the opportunity to get one, take it only if you believe your interpersonal skills can help your application....

This is a toughie. I really did not expect to get into Stanford because I did no community service before senior year and had few leadership roles. I was not part of any academic clubs and I never entered science fairs or hackathons. However, of all...

Before senior year, I was set on moving across the country for college. But after touring schools on the East coast and in California, I realized how amazing California is. I ended up only applying to schools in my state for...

Stanford really appealed to me because of how they encouraged cooperation and exploration. Many other top-tier schools I looked at seemed to foster competition between students. Stanford, on the other hand, has no grade deflation, meaning if everyone does well, everyone gets good grades! So there is no...