During her childhood, Serena Ly would hear stories from her father about living under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Jackson Lindley credits the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps for giving him his best friendships and his favorite memories at Yale.

Alex Hoganson calculates that he probably spends more hours in the Yale Center for Engineering Innovation and Design (CEID) than in his own room. “I enjoy designing and creating things,” he says, shrugging good-naturedly.

For most high school students, their daily worries include school, family, friends and extracurriculars. But, in 2014, Drew Gupta’s hometown—Charleston, West Virginia—suffered one of the largest chemical contaminations in U.S. history.

Growing up in Hong Kong, Hana Davis wore the same oversized Yale sweater to sleep every night—the sweater her father had bought thirty years ago as a law student at Yale. She knew she wanted to be a Yalie since she was a child, in part because of her Gossip Girl obsession at age thirteen (the show’s main character, Blair Waldorf, had a similar infatuation with the school of Yale’s bulldog mascot, Handsome Dan).

The summer before his senior year, Bryce Crawford filed into a classroom at the U.S. Naval Academy—complete with a model nuclear reactor—for a course on nuclear engineering.

Maddie Bender, a New York City native, describes her high school self as a “jack of all trades.”

Emma, who hails from a small town in the American South, followed a very different path from most of her high school classmates. In fact, about a fifth of her class dropped out before their graduation—and many of those who did graduate did not go on to college.

Alec is a rising sophomore in Ezra Stiles College, originally hailing from Los Angeles. Although Alec is majoring in humanities, he also has taken a keen interest in East Asian languages and literature while at Yale, an interest that prompted him to spend his summer in Beijing, China, after his first year of college, participating in an immersive language program in Chinese language and culture.

Lillian Yuan is a sophomore in Pierson College from Naperville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Back home, she and her twin sister, Vivian, were affectionately known as “the power twins” because of their involvement with school activities.

From a young age, Mia Arias Tsang knew she wanted to be a scientist and dreamed of attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A musician from Brooklyn, New York, Sarah Sotomayor traveled the world performing with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Music not only shaped most of Sarah’s high school experience, but it also shaped her goals for the future.

A strikingly articulate electrical engineering & computer science major, Kaitlynn Sierra hails from sunny San Jose, California. What sets her apart, in her own eyes, is her bright personality and positive attitude.

As a four-year clarinetist in a state championship-winning marching band, a set designer for shows and musicals, a member of the mock trial team, and an active player in student government and the environmental action club, Katie Schlick had an extremely rewarding time at Mark T. Sheehan High School, a public high school in Wallingford, Connecticut.

“I never expected to feel so welcomed at Yale,” says Serena Riddle. “But when I went to the first meeting for Yale Students for Christ, I felt like I had an immediate family.”

Yale’s student athletes strike a balance between sport and schoolwork that most would find difficult to keep. But Samantha Martinelli has been wearing the hats of the classroom and the court for some time now.

For Kevin Li, Yale is all about exploration. He is a biology major whose original plans were to major in computer science. His favorite class was an English seminar about love.

Jake Kalodner’s first Yale connection developed during his sophomore year at high school, when he started doing research with William Honeychurch—a professor in Yale’s archaeology department.

Grace Jin has what she called “one of those fairy-tale college stories.” She became enamored with Yale early on in her teenage years. During her sophomore year of high school, Grace attended a debate tournament at Yale.

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.