Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Year: Junior

College: Pierson

Major: Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Extracurriculars: Voke Spoken Word; Bad Romantics of Yale

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During their senior year of high school, Bri Matusovsky—who uses they/them/their pronouns—received two life-changing surprises in just one day. On that fateful afternoon, Bri sat alone in their apartment when smoke began pouring out of  a wall. After exiting the building, Bri watched as fire crews arrived and their family’s home went up in flames.

But six hours later, they opened an online portal to find another surprise, this one much more pleasant: Their acceptance to Yale University. As a low-income student, Bri knew from early on in their high school career that acceptance to  a top-tier, need-blind institution would mean paying no tuition. That factor, along with Yale’s size, sense of community, strong STEM programs, and liberal arts-based structure made Yale Bri’s ideal college. And in that moment, attending Yale became a reality.

“I never thought I was going to get in,” Bri says. “Yale was just like a unicorn.”

Growing up in West Hollywood, which has a large Eastern European immigrant community, Bri spoke exclusively Russian at home and in the community they grew up in. They later attended a Russian preschool, and only moved to an English-speaking school for elementary school.

During high school, Bri volunteered at the nonprofit No Limits for Deaf Children; played water polo for two years, until they quit due to bullying; and participated in stu dent government, in which they—despite facing yet more bullying—eventually became student body president.

At Yale, Bri is majoring in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, works at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station conducting mosquito research and has found the strong community ties they sought when looking for a college. They helped found Voke Spoken Word—a poetry group for LGBTQ students and allies—in their sophomore year and joined the Bad Romantics of Yale, a drag troupe that was “formative” for Bri in their journey of self-acceptance and self-love.

“Yale has proven to me to be a place where, as a queer person, I have been able to find a really strong and loving community that has supported me in my self-growth, and that has given me the chance to explore who I am as a person and become comfortable with it,” Bri says. “And that wasn’t something that I necessarily felt I could do everywhere.”

Since coming to Yale, Bri has come out as both gay (to everyone, including their family) and gender-fluid.

And though Yale is far from the “perfect haven” Bri thought it would be, it has given them access to amazing opportunities, friends, and mentors, they explain. Bri advocates for better campus mental health resources through Project LETS “Eliminate the Stigma” and the elimination of the student income contribution with Students Unite Now, a community organization that advocates for lighter campus job requirements for students receiving financial aid. Through connections they made as a researcher at the School of Public Health and engaging with Yale fellowship funds, Bri spent ten weeks in Romania this summer conducting a research project about resilience among LGBT communities and individuals.

Now in their senior year of their undergraduate education, Bri serves as a first-year counselor in Pierson College. But they won’t be leaving Yale too soon—Bri is a part of the five-year joint BA-BS/Master of Public Health program offered by Yale College and the Yale School of Public Health.

Bri’s essays include one of their Yale supplemental essays.

ESSAY 1 (YALE SUPPLEMENT):
In this essay, 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.

I stood up at the bottom of my High School’s Greek Theater. I looked up to find 3,500 faces staring back down at me in silent expectation. The anticipation welled up in my stomach like an inner fire, fueled to become stronger with the air of each passing second.

The words began to stream out of my mouth. I couldn’t really hear myself, but I had practiced it so many times that I didn’t even need to. I then took a step back, and announced, “I am going to sing a parody of Lorde’s Royals, which I call Vikings. The roar of applause pushed me forward.

I began to sing, but the fire of my nervousness was unrelenting, and a few lines in, I felt myself beginning to falter. It was then that something I never could have expected in my wildest dreams happened: the crowd began to sing along. “And we’ll always be Vikings” I sang, and “Vikings” they echoed back to me. The crowd’s energy kept me going, and I somehow made it to the end. “Let me be your ruler” I sang, and together their voices echoed “Ruler.”

Three days later, students and teachers alike knew my name: I had won the ASB Presidency. It’s crazy how things have turned out this way, how different my life has become. I can still recall my first day of elementary school.

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you” I remember my teacher saying to me.

“Shto?” I responded. I had been suddenly launched into a school that functioned solely on English while only speaking Russian.

I was already a shy and quiet kid, so making friends would have been a leap out of my comfort zone that I wasn’t ready to take. I stayed quiet, and instead found joy in books. Reading was an escape down the rabbit hole, an adventure, a solace, a fountain of wisdom. Unfortunately, learning and making friends were separate skill-sets. It was not until high school that I found my voice. I had to learn to be loud, be proud, and carry myself like I meant it.

After joining our Associated Student Body (ASB), I was constantly frustrated by the flaws in our school’s leadership. When the time for election season came, I decided that I wanted to make a change, and chose to run for president.

I was the quieter candidate, the underdog, running against one of the most popular boys in school. From the start I knew that I had to give it my all. “We’ll vote for you, but you do know that you probably won’t win” was the response that I got from a majority of my friends. I knew that I had to prove them wrong, so I did. I campaigned to strangers and friends alike, and drew support from everyone I could. I finally came out of my comfort zone, and became the confident person I wanted to be.

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.