If, by some quirk of circumstance, you ever find yourself telling a bedtime story to ten-year-olds at a summer sleep-away camp, you quickly learn the meaning of in-depth study. I found myself in this situation, as a camp counselor telling a perfectly innocuous tale in which whoever was ready for bed first inevitably became the hero. I told a group of campers a story about a girl who lost her student ID and had to battle dragons to get it...

When I was very small, I would go, every Sunday to Hebrew school, and learn the Hebrew alphabet. There are 27 letters the Hebrew alphabet and when we finished, the teacher would start again at the beginning. That is where I discovered the difference between school and learning. I learned that classes themselves are not the goal. I want to learn research, analysis, and argument. Where everyday I feel as though I learned something new. I want to be challenged to...

When I was in ninth grade, my Spanish teacher sent us home with a seemingly strange assignment: To read “Jabberwocky” and summarize it. Her point was that it is possible to understand something without knowing what all the individual words mean. I learned a different lesson. What I got out of it was that there was a kid who was told all kinds of stories about a monster, and when he grew up he set out to kill the aforementioned...

I transferred into NYU this fall. Both the common application essay and the supplemental essay are basically saying the same thing. I have to say why I don't want to be at my old school anymore, without outright insulting it, and why I want to go to NYU.

Two things that I did that really helped with transferring were figuring out my major and forming actual relationships with professors. Most colleges want you to have your major already figured out and possibly...

My favorite course so far has been an introductory anthropology course called Human Origins. I liked it because...

I took out loans and also applied for scholarships. Basically don't take out loans if you can...