Sand castles - Yale - Example college personal statement
Hometown: Mexico City, Mexico
Year: First-Year
College: Pierson
Major: Ethics, Politics & Economics; Statistics & Data Science
Extracurriculars: Baker’s Dozen a cappella; Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union; Yale Mexican Student Organization; Students for Carbon Dividends; Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund
Example college personal statement
Profile
Fausto Hernandez says the best way he has ever spent his money was on his electric scooter. He uses it to zoom across campus, from his statistics office hours in the Watson Center on Science Hill to a cappella rehearsal in William L. Harkness Hall. He came to Yale hoping to major in a field like computer science, statistics, or economics, given the relationship between economics’ ability to describe macroscale behavior in human society and technology’s capacity to empower researchers to put together the puzzle pieces of their data. Upon coming to college, however, Fausto decided that he wanted to incorporate a more normative focus into his studies, and he is now pursuing a double major in Ethics, Politics, & Economics—his first interdisciplinary major—and Statistics & Data Science, his second.
This diversity in interests is one of the many factors that drew Fausto to Yale. Students at Yale can wait until the end of their fourth semester at the university to declare a major, unlike in many international universities where students must choose their course of study right off the bat. After short stints living in London and Miami, Fausto spent most of his childhood in Mexico City, where he attended a fifteen-hundred- student K-12 British international school. At school, he says he often felt that it was easier for him to connect with his teachers than with his classmates. In the summer of 2015, he traveled to Yale’s campus to attend the two-week Yale Young Global Scholars program on Politics, Law, and Economics, where he was amazed by the intellectual stimulus and social vibrancy of the environment. He immediately felt at home, which inspired him to apply to Yale and similar schools.
Once on campus, Fausto felt that all his expectations had been satisfied or exceeded. Having spent his teenage years singing in the shower, he joined the Baker’s Dozen—one of Yale’s many undergraduate a cappella groups—and has toured with the group across the United States. He is also a Yale College Council representative for Pierson College, as well as a member of the Conservative Party in the Yale Political Union. But he says that the definitive experience of his time at Yale so far has been participating in the Directed Studies (DS) program, an annual year-long selective program for around one hundred first-years, which introduces them to some of the seminal texts of the Western world.
In stark contrast to his high school experience, Fausto says he was shocked by how easily he connected with other students at Yale, especially within the tight-knit international, residential college, and DS communities. When he strides through the Pierson College gates as Harkness Tower plays “Jingle Bells” on a snowy day, he feels just as struck by Yale’s beauty and sense of home as he did when he first set foot on campus.
Fausto’s essays include his Common App personal statement.
ESSAY 1 (COMMON APP):
Personal Statement
Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
I was walking alone on the beach for the first time.
This beach and I were old acquaintances—I had tumbled and scurried through its sands since I was five years old. It had always been a place for indulgence in simple comforts, to relax, soak in sun and water, and reflect. But as I began to walk away from the loungers, I saw children patting sand castles together and, despite feeling a pang of nostalgia, did not feel inclined to join them, and instead kept walking. Something was off. I had a new perspective.
I sauntered over to the surf, and a flashback drifted in with it, of that time when I was swimming at a competition in Acapulco Bay: I was eleven and struggled to get my bearing amidst the thrash of limbs and looming waves. I bobbed up and down, tasting salt and gasping for breath while I clawed at the sea. But then, I realized I wasn’t sure of where I was going. I stopped, treaded water and stared at the finish line, in the distance amidst the wave crests.
What froze me for an instant that time wasn’t the disorientation, it was my realization that I was alone in the sea, that it was up to me where I went and how I got there. I recognized how similar this walk was to then: I was the captain of my one-body ship. I wasn’t following my parents across the sand, or even within their sight—they had taught me how to swim. Now, how far did I want to walk?
As I reminisced, I saw my classroom take shape around me like never before: in the vaguely sinusoidal imprint of the waves upon the shore; in the billowing breeze born from convective currents. Suddenly I overheard tourists, and it wasn’t just physics. Surely the exceptionally weak Mexican peso attracted many a foreigner. I saw the humble conch and cigar vendors of Mayan descent trying desperately to sell their wares, and it saddened me to see this symbol of the inequality that pervades Mexico.
An acute pain needled my foot. Looking down, instead of a regal shell like those I would scour the beach for before, I was disappointed to find a bent straw protruding from the sand. Indeed, there were very few shells left on this beach, and very few fish in its shores. Going deeper, none swam about my legs like they used to, or thrashed how my father told us they had in his childhood. Would my children get to chase fish on this beach?
Everything, from our societies to our environment, was interconnected. Identifying a problem was easier than solving it, and on this beach, it dawned on me that one cannot tackle present and future complex challenges effectively without an understanding of the bigger picture, where science, economics/sociology and effective policy come together. My knowledge is incipient—but a grain of sand on this beach. At that moment I felt a purpose: to be an agent of change for the good, to not sit by idly. And to achieve that, I must learn. This convergence of independence, perspective and determination gave new meaning to this place. For me, that is what it means to grow up: to look beyond your immediate surroundings and expand your conscience, to recognize one’s ignorance and strive to make a positive impact, tracks that shan’t fade with water. It was only here on this beach that I contrasted my past and present self, and saw a change.
Perhaps adults are not those who know everything, for no one would be an adult. They are those who recognize that they must learn and act with a conscience, aware of the brevity of their lives.
By now my back was seared lobster red. It was time to go back, but it was a different me who did so.
From 50 Yale Admission Success Stories: And the Essay That Made Them Happen, edited by the Yale Daily News Staff. Copyright © 2020 by the authors
and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group.