I was riding in a white van rumbling along a dirt road in the Arizona desert. It was spring break of my sophomore year of high school, and my church’s youth group was excited about the prospects of our service trip. Before taking the plane from Boston to Tucson, we had planned a variety of community service activities and educational talks for the upcoming week. Now that we’d finally arrived in Arizona, I couldn’t wait to learn...

I was excited to watch the second Romney-Obama debate because of its main focus: the nation's current economic situation. I had learned a great deal about this topic in an economics course the year before, so I prepared myself for an interesting debate about complex economic issues. However, my excitement dwindled as the debate progressed. Both of the candidates explained the complexities of the national economy with the completely incorrect metaphor of household finance. This misinformation removed the possibility for...

Academically, I value the strength of Columbia's departments in the fields that I'm currently most interested in: economics and the natural sciences. With regards to the Computer Science Department--the other field in which I'm very interested--the abundance of interdisciplinary programs that incorporate computer science into other fields is very appealing. For example, courses such as Scientific Computation and Introduction to Quantum Computing exemplify the type of academics that I'm currently most excited about. I love learning about such connections between...

I’m the type of person who moves. However, it doesn’t seem that way when I’m sitting at my desk, focused intently. Whether I’m focusing on homework, a video, or an online chat with friends, my attention seems immoveable—my brain is connected directly to what I’m focusing on and there isn’t room for anything else. Suddenly, I hear someone calling my name … It’s my mom, calling me to do the dishes. I break...

Whenever I learn, my goal is to understand every part and every connection between the parts, the sum of which makes up the whole of what I’m learning. Knowing that an equation gives me the right answer isn’t enough—I need to know why. The notion of understanding the flow and transformation of numbers in such an equation, or of data in an algorithm, never fails to spark my interest in what I’m working on. Because I...

It’s 2021, and I’ve just finished testing the first part of my algorithm. It’s only a beginning, but it’s a step down the right path. The algorithm is a little bit like a human because what it does is summarize. However, it’s unlike a human because it summarizes things a million times faster than could the average human being. If given an economic paper on a fiscal stimulus package, the algorithm will produce a summarized version...

I value many things, and one of them is exploration. My parents have always helped me design my own dreams, even if it’s creating a ridiculously huge pair of paper wings as a child. I love my brother’s music and art that contrast so much with my academic world, because they open up paths that I would never have otherwise considered. I love waking up every day and knowing that there are a thousand different ways I can...

Hey future roommate, I'm Jeff. Believe it or not, I've had a roommate for 18 years. Actually, more than that--for nine months before I was born. Although at this point, you can't really call my twin Chris a roommate because we're a hallway apart. Anyways, I think that the best way for me to explain myself as your future roommate is to explain myself as a twin. What kind of alarm do you use to wake up in the morning? I...

Four years ago, while I was still in middle school, I watched one or two of the McCain-Obama debates, and I was hardly capable of relating them to my life as I didn’t understand any of the issues discussed. Tonight, it’s the evening of October 16, only minutes before the start of the second presidential debate between Romney and Obama. I missed the first one, so the only memories in my mind are indistinct, emotionally charged moments from the...

My dad grew up as the son of an electrician in Chicago who struggled to make ends meet; my mom grew up as the daughter of a successful corporate executive in Manhattan. In childhood, both of them experienced a stress on hard work. While raising my brother and me, my parents taught us the value of hard work—but also encouraged independence, and gave us infinite opportunities for exploration. For example, during elementary school, I had the crazy idea that...

My parents chose to get my a private admissions counselor. Although she helped a little bit by really...

I interviewed with a lot of schools (7 or 8) and they were for the most part the same...

I resarched schools that had strong departments which I was interested in (math, computer science, physics, etc.),...

Learn how to do computer programming! It makes getting any...

NYC is seriously amazing, and taking advantange of it is seriously fun. The school itself...

I decided to take myself off Harvard even though I probably could have gotten...

Just choose two teachers who you talked...