Cornell University

When I was just five months old, my father was transferred to the USA to represent Bangladesh as a diplomat. My cousin came along with us, and in the first three years of my life, I became extremely attached to him. When my father was…

I love English. I love its little quirks and idiosyncrasies, I love the etymology, I love the language. It all started back in the second grade when I checked Robinson Crusoe out of the school library. Every day, I would read a few pages on…

While my classmates were eagerly participating in a discussion of The Grapes of Wrath, their hands constantly raised, I looked down, avoiding eye contact with Mr. Colgate, and pretended to jot down notes. I wanted to say something, but my mouth would not open. Trembling,…

My first love was food—a love I hold in common with all the women in my family. When my mom started a catering company, I discovered that not only was I obsessed with the preparation and transformation of ingredients, I was freakishly good at it….

On my eighth birthday, my parents forcefully stripped me from my native China, forsaking the familiar, overcrowded landscape of towering skyscrapers and chaotic traffic in order to venture into a peculiar and alien territory known as Vancouver. There, the streets lay devoid of people. The…

“And that,” said my allergist, pricking my back before moving a couple inches, selecting a new vial of food particle and repeating, “is why you react to nuts so strongly. We’re trying to see now if you’re allergic to anything else.” My back itched incessantly,…

Riding the elevator down into the aquarium, with the azure shadows refracting off my body, I had never been so alive. Immersed in the aura of the thousands upon millions species of fish, I felt like I was staring right into my own soul and…

At the perfect time for a girl fresh into high school to receive a cringe-inducing nickname destined to stick, I acquired the moniker “potato.” When I picked up a picture of myself as a five-year-old and nonchalantly commented that I looked like a potato, friends…

As a young child, I was always fascinated by how things worked, and my curiosity led me down the path of science and math. However, it was a few key individuals who truly inspired me to pursue a career in engineering. The first was my…

“Relate a clever anecdote from your life in which you make veiled references to your academic abilities, talents, and personality in the fashion of a college essay. Be neat.” Last summer, I was accepted to attend Brown University for a four-week creative writing program. However,…