Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you? Physical places are so last-century: everyone is on the move now, making their homes on their desktops and their phones, and—in my case—in my notebook and on my blog. The state where I’m perfectly content is more mental place than physical: it's wherever I’m writing and in flow. I love my writing...

"I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within." —Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings. I lead a beautifully sheltered life, and I have always written as a hobby, but I have not always been a writer because I have not always had cause to be seriously daring. At the start of tenth grade, I was Queen Bee, or close enough, but a...

I only applied to Princeton, and I really wanted to get my love of writing across in the essays (which were of course supplemented by the creative writing samples I provided). The Common App essay was intended to express my absolute joy and passion when it comes to writing, in a well-written and bouncy piece of prose. For the Princeton-specific essay, I selected the prompt about a quote, and I wrote a more serious and personal essay about how important...

My favorite course at Princeton so far (and even though I've only been there for a year, it's hard to choose!) has been the Humanities Sequence. HUM216-219 (it's four credits over two semesters) is a little notorious for the incredible amount of reading and writing its students are expected to do as they read all...

I think it probably matters less about whether the teacher has taught you in your 'best' subject/ future major, and...

My Princeton interview took place after I was accepted, so it didn't affect the committee's decision at all. That said, it would have been a...

Princeton is unbeatable when you take a few factors into consideration: the prestigious reputation, the sheer beauty of the campus, the quality of the professors, the...

Not too far from the cities, so perfectly possible to do day or weekend trips to New York, and easy access to several...

I chose schools largely based on the amount of financial aid that they were offering: the Ivies (and Stanford) offer great need-based aid, with Princeton being the cheapest option of all. Having a lower tuition was key...

I spent part of the summer before 12th grade visiting colleges in the USA, and I would really recommend it to any international student, or student who might have difficulty visiting East or West Coast schools in several trips from home (e.g. those living in the Midwest). Those who are planning on doing a college road trip of the sort should really plan ahead - it helps to have narrowed down a list of possible schools to about 8-10. After 10 admissions talks, you won't be able to tell any of the schools apart, which is why a notebook and...

I haven't really decided what I'll do after college - that part of my life, after all, is still three years away. I do have a couple of tentative ideas: I might go do a Masters Degree at Oxford, where my boyfriend will...

Many people seem to be in sports teams of all different kinds - women's club soccer seems to be big, as does football. I've been surprised by the number of dance groups on campus; they always seem to...