Although my father was hardly around, he impacted my life significantly. As a child, I recall asking my mother to let my sister and I see him more often, but she would always stand her ground and say no. For that, I am grateful because he was a negligent man who merely knew how to cause harm. My father was an alcoholic. He would make plans with his daughters only to cancel hours prior and on the rare occasion that...

On my first day of kindergarten, I entered the classroom feeling as if it were my castle. I was excited to finally be in school: a place where my questions would be answered not resented as they were by my family. After about an hour, I recall seeing my mother and an administrator walk into my kingdom and drag me out feet-first as I held on to the door frame for my dear life. I could not understand why they...

To my roommate: You and I will be living within the same four walls for the next twelve months and in that timespan I wish to become more than merely your friend; I wish to become your family. Thus, I find it necessary that I share with you one of the many things I am passionate about and how that passion has come to be. Financial instability has plagued my family my entire life. My mother, a Mexican immigrant, traveled...

Athletics is something I value and cherish simply because it has always been a part of my life. Watching my mother struggle to make ends meet has filled me with great guilt as I am, after all, just another mouth to feed. The stress-filled environment in which I have been raised has caused me to resent my own home and forced me to find warmth elsewhere. Participating in sports is my elsewhere. Whether I am on the court or on...

We all have a catalyst. We all have someone or something that drives us to do what we so deeply aspire to do. For some, that motivation is physical, for others, it is mental, but regardless of what form it takes, that force will set our souls on fire and ensure we achieve greatness. I aspire to not only attend college, but to graduate from it and my catalyst for doing so is the world from which I come. On...

It doesn't matter what you do. What matters is that you do something and that you do it...

It came down to three schools: Stanford, Harvard and UCB. Harvard had the name, UCB had the program, but Stanford had both. You need...

Apply to as many scholarships as you can. That is a given. Still, be prepared to take out loans. I assumed that I wouldn't have to pay a...