Hometown: Cambridge, MA

Year: Senior

College: Branford 

Major: Mathematics (intensive) 

Extracurriculars: Danceworks; Bad Romantics of Yale

Successful college application essay

Profile

As a high schooler, Elijah Gunther was the type of kid who loved math so much he quite literally dreamed about it. But math was not enough to take up all of Elijah’s time during the day.

Elijah spent much of his time on sports—namely sailing, soccer and gymnastics—along with pursuits in the arts that included drawing, painting, and dancing in his school’s modern dance company. Once the dust of college admissions had settled, Elijah had a choice between Yale or Harvard, and he chose to venture beyond his Cambridge roots.

As a Yale student, Elijah has not skipped a beat in following his passions and interests, no matter how disconnected they might seem. Throughout his time at Yale, Elijah completed a degree in mathematics, on an intensive track, while performing for Yale’s Danceworks troupe, participating in drag shows with the Bad Romantics of Yale, and reciting poetry with the Voke Spoken Word group, all while finding time to toss Frisbees with the Yale’s men’s Ultimate Frisbee team, Süperfly.

Although Elijah came to Yale with few expectations, he did hope to become part of a strong community, and he presumed to find that community in his residential college. But this did not turn out to be the case. Instead, Elijah forged his strongest community bonds with friends he made through extracurriculars and math classes.

These communities became some of his favorite pieces of his Yale experience. Many of his favorite places—like the Davenport College buttery, where his Frisbee team held regular team dinners—and his favorite traditions at Yale, such as the rituals and team-bonding on Süperfly spring break trips, centered around his experiences with his Frisbee teammates and the connections they’d formed with each other.

Aside from the great groups of people he found over his time in college, Elijah said one of the things he really likes about Yale were the customs and events that were “memorable and specific to Yale,” such as naked parties and their social dynamics.

“I remember going to [a naked party], and only one other friend was there, so I mainly chatted with him. I guess I didn’t have much to say, so I was talking about topology with him,” Elijah says. “Where other than Yale would I be standing around naked—in a room full of naked people—talking about topology?”

Now that his time at Yale has come to an end, Elijah will spend five years studying mathematics—which he still finds “just as fun and as cool and as magical” to study as when he first began rigorously studying mathematics in high school—in a doctorate program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Elijah’s essays include his Common App personal statement and three of his Yale supplemental essays.

ESSAY 1 (COMMON APP):

Personal statement

I carefully pull myself up between the pressure-treated joists and step onto the red oak floor. Encompassing me are verdant leaves sparkling in the sun. At this height, I see nothing but trees and my friends’ smiling faces. Gradually, the wind begins to stir the treetops. Their rustling accompanies the ever-present song of the brook far below. Although the forest surrounding me shimmers with the wind, I feel perfectly secure. I trust that the floor of this incipient treehouse can easily bear our weight.

Since childhood, I have always been making things: first Thomas the Tank Engine railways and watercolors on paper, then working my way up to Rube Goldberg machines, Lego clocks, and oils on canvas. I engage myself in creation, always aspiring to increasingly challenging projects. When my family bought land in the mountains of New Hampshire a few years ago, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to build a treehouse.

I began by scouting potential sites. Over the course of months, I trekked across acres of forest, carefully weighing the pros and cons of numerous locations. Finally, with the guidance of my father, I picked a set of four trees upon which to build the treehouse.

The planning alone would have made the whole project worthwhile. On many wonderful nights my father and I stayed up late, exchanging visions and sketches, slowly settling on a design. I love chatting with my father into the early morning about something we both enjoy. There’s nothing better than our minds churning together and producing incredible ideas.

The actual building of the treehouse was fun in a very different way. Whereas designing is cerebral, building is physical. It allows me to see my once-abstract plans come to fruition. Although my mind’s eye can imagine any sort of fantastical treehouse, it is what I see before me that provides a sense of accomplishment. While designing provides the pleasure of intellectual collaboration, I also relish the camaraderie which comes from the experience of shared physical labor. It is exhilarating to stand upon the structure which I built with my own two hands and erected with the help of my friends and family.

From the start, I had wanted a treehouse which would give me a sense of seclusion. I wanted to feel like I was floating, ten feet up, in the middle of the woods. I wanted to be like Emerson’s transparent eyeball, such that I could look all around and admire the trees, take in the tranquility. Consequently, before my father and I could put up the treehouse, we needed to carry its sections through brambles and over a stream in order to reach the site, deep in the woods. This step, along with putting the parts in the tree, we could not have done alone. One summer weekend, a few friends came up to New Hampshire with us. With their help, we schlepped the treehouse through the woods and up into the tree. We laughed and strained, taking breaks to joke around and play Frisbee. It was challenging work, but here we are now, standing in it for the first time.

I envision my friends sitting in the treehouse with me decades from now. Gray floorboards that once were red; the walls streaked with the orange of rusty old screws. Our children, maybe even grandchildren, are laughing and screaming with joy. Our communal experiences in this treehouse, the work and play shared with loved ones, have made the treehouse special to us. Occasionally people ask me when I expect to finish building the treehouse. I tell them that I don’t really know; it isn’t the date of completion that matters. It’s the process: the planning, the spending time with my father and friends, the hands-on building, and just being in the woods. This is what brings me joy.

ESSAY 2 (YALE SUPPLEMENT):
What in particular about Yale has influenced your decision to apply?

Yale appeals to me because I know without a doubt that I would receive a superb education there. In addition to its overall strength, Yale has renowned departments in the two fields in which I am most interested: math and art. Also, I feel that Yale is set apart from other high-caliber universities by its residential colleges. I have always been part of close communities that give me an important sense of belonging. I therefore believe that the intimate environment the residential colleges foster would be the perfect place for me to learn and grow.

ESSAY 3 (YALE SUPPLEMENT):
Short takes

You have been granted a free weekend next month. How will you spend it?

I would spend it with my friends and family. After a long day of sledding we would sit inside in front of a fire, sipping tea and playing board games.

What is something about which you have changed your mind in the last three years?

I believed that strict gun control would alleviate gun violence in the US. I now see that in the foreseeable future this could not be a panacea.

What is the best piece of advice you have received while in high school?

Don’t procrastinate. I have found that bad time management is the greatest factor preventing people from reaching their potential.

What do you wish you were better at being or doing?

Fluency in a second language would open up so much of the world to me. Lacking innate talent, I study that much harder to learn each new phrase.

What is a learning experience, in or out of the classroom, that has had a significant impact on you?

Joining the gymnastics team with no prior experience showed me that with great effort I can do incredible things that had been far beyond my ability.

ESSAY 4 (YALE SUPPLEMENT):
Please reflect on something you would like us to know about you that we might not learn from the rest of your application, or on something about which you would like to say more. You may write about anything—from personal experiences or interests to intellectual pursuits.

Iterate . . .

Iterate . . .

Iterate . . .

Iterate . . .

I could see the iterations of the function hop around the complex plane of the room. Some paths quickly whizzing off to infinity, others spiraling inwards, first to one sleeping body on the floor, inward to the next, and lastly inward to me to bounce around but never leave, me, the center of the fractal, dreaming, sprawled out on a fold-out couch.

Two summers ago, I attended Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSIM), a six-week residential program, to investigate higher-level math concepts. On our last night there, we knew that we probably would never see most of our newfound friends again, so we had no choice but to stay up all night and hang out for the last time. Not surprisingly, we eventually dozed off and turned into my fractal-line dream.

Math has fascinated me ever since I started studying it in kindergarten. After my sophomore year, I had the opportunity to go to HCSSIM to study a wide variety of topics, ranging from number theory, group theory, graph theory, and even the study of formal theories themselves along with countless (though technically a finite and countable number of) other subjects. Never before had I studied mathematics so intensively and with such purpose. I could feel my thought processes change as I adapted from the civilian life to one of a mathematician.

My main focus at HCSSIM was the study of fractals and the functions that make them. This was all very interesting, but I did not feel that I really understood why the functions would create such shapes. Toward the end of the program, I had a revelation and fractals finally made sense to me. I spent the rest  of my stay pondering the nature of this process and developing my thoughts on the formation of fractals. In thinking single-mindedly about fractals for days, they infiltrated my subconscious, and on my last night there, they manifested themselves in a dream.

Even before this revelation and this dream, math had been an important part of me, but only by the end of my time at HCSSIM did I realize how large a part. Although it is hard to say what the future holds, I intend to continue studying mathematics, so that I can reach those moments of sublime comprehension. I intend to go beyond simple proficiency and to truly appreciate the underlying concepts in all their depth. Only then will I be satisfied with my understanding.

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.