Hometown: Milwaukee, WI

Year: Junior

College: Berkeley 

Major: Applied Mathematics 

Extracurriculars: Berkeley College Orchestra; QuestBridge chapter

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Neche is a junior in Berkeley College majoring in applied mathematics. Her favorite book is Firegirl by Tony Abbott, she listens to a lot of EDM music, and she’s never seen the end of a movie because she always falls asleep in the middle.

In high school, Neche was the smart girl who played the viola. While she considered double majoring in math and music, she ultimately decided to major only in math. She liked her math classes better than her music classes, and even when she was taking non-math classes, she found herself thinking about the science behind them, so she decided to pursue her interests in STEM.

Neche’s favorite classes include Data Analysis, Turkish, and a first-year seminar called Literature, Media, and Weather. In fact, meteorology is one of her biggest interests, and she is considering attending graduate school to study the climate sciences.

Outside the classroom, Neche plays the viola in the Berkeley College Orchestra and numerous pit orchestras. She loves that, through music, she can express herself without words. Her favorite piece is Fantasie by Johann Hummel.

Other than playing the viola, Neche is also a member of Yale’s QuestBridge Chapter—she’s an expert at explaining to others what it’s like to be a first-generation, low-income college student. She has helped start an organization named FGLI (First-Generation/Low-Income Students at Yale) to further these efforts.

In addition, Neche is a member of the Yale Bulgarian Society. Her goals at Yale include learning Turkish and Bulgarian, her ancestral language, in order to be able to better communicate with her family members. She has achieved the former, and is in the process of achieving the latter.

Neche likes to explore New Haven; she enjoys taking the bus and discovering new streets, having conversations with locals, and people-watching. Her favorite spot in the city   is the Ella B. Scantlebury Playground, located just north of campus.

Neche also likes to spend time with her friends. Together, they go to different restaurants, dance at parties, hang out in each other’s suites talking for hours, go for nighttime walks, and sit on the swing, looking up at the sky.

And her favorite thing about Yale? Feeling like she belongs there, being able to find a really close group of friends, having a sense of support and community, and knowing that everyone wants her to have a good college experience.

Neche’s essays include her Common App personal statement.

ESSAY 1 (COMMON APP):

Personal statement

Waiting at the mailbox. Waiting at the library inside whatever school I am at that day. Waiting for the first rehearsal to begin. All of these places have one thing in common, which is they all show what improvements I have made in performing on my lovely Annabelle and now Victor, my viola.

I have a fear of performing in front of people, whether it  be on giving a class presentation to competing for a solo at a concert. Actually, scratch that—I have a fear of disappointing people. From this, I get nervous when it comes to presenting anything in front of people. I didn’t grow up with the typical large family; I grew up with my parents, brother, and a computer providing a portal to where I had apparently immigrated from and where my large family lived. My parents came with my four-month-old self to the United States with our visas and a distant relative’s apartment to live at. I grew up with one foreign friend and my small family, so showing off my talents to others wasn’t a strong suit.

My strong suit was (and still is) learning/teaching. I taught a couple of cousins how to speak English to help rid the language barrier a little bit, and I was learning every spare moment I had, since there were no luxuries of expensive toys or family vacations. In elementary school, I was focused on the weather and medicine. I strived to learn so that I could provide my family with the luxuries they deserved, and to prove my dad wrong in his sayings of our futures were gas store clerks/grocery store baggers. That all changed in sixth grade, though, when I had finally convinced my mom to let me learn an instrument: the viola.

She was convinced it was going to be like everything else; I’d be interested for a couple of weeks and then ditch it from fear. She was wrong; seven years later the viola is still going strong and has grown to be a key characteristic of my life. It used to be just a class and something I could show to my distant family without the need to translation to understand. However, in eighth grade my teacher suggested I go audition for  the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra (MYSO). I thought it was a long stretch; there was no way that after three years I’d be good enough to get into the program, but I agreed to try anyways. She gave me a couple of lessons to prepare, and said that I should be able to get into Sinfonia, the third-highest string group overall (at the time) and the highest string-only group. I remember entering the warm-up room, following all of the advice given before, and praying I wouldn’t disappoint. I completed my audition, thought I did alright, and waited in agony the next two months for the letter determining my fate.

Finally, it arrived, and with my palms sweaty with excitement, I open the letter and bam. Not only had I gotten in, but I had gotten into Philharmonia, the second-highest group and one of two symphony orchestras (at the time). Everyone was blown away, and has been with every audition/performance since. While it took a while to start getting over my fear, I had managed to be a part of Wisconsin State Honors Orchestra twice, attend state solo/ensemble every year in multiple events with good scores resulting, and recently go with MYSO’s Senior Symphony (highest group) to a tour in Europe with four sold-out concerts.

Through music, I had achieved the reason that my parents moved to the United States: to build a better future and provide endless opportunities. I hope to continue on with music education and math in college to be able to teach students in fundamental skills both intellectually and artistically.

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.