Offer: University of Chicago

From: Bilingual School in China

Activities:

• President of the Student Council
• Youth mentor
• NYT Students Editorial Contest Award

Application Journey

From the beginning, I participated in activities for the Economics program, such as the Business Competition and the Economics Challenge. However, after discussing the difficulty of the economics program at the University of Chicago with Wilson, my FGE college advisor, I decided not to apply for economics and chose to apply for the psychology program instead. Without any prior knowledge of psychology, I began to explore the subject from scratch through various online classes, systematic study of AP Psychology, and summer school in Chicago.

My connection with UChicago actually started in 10th grade when the FGE team guided me to attend summer school there. Through this experience, I knew it was somewhere I wanted to be. Even though UChicago would be challenging, I still wanted to give it a try.

I realized that even though I had decided on a major that I loved, my activities and competitions were just things my advisors and parents asked me to do. I began to reflect on my initiatives. In the end, I used the last summer to transform what I was asked to do into what I wanted to do.

For the supplemental essay, I chose the short and abstract prompt “What’s so easy about pie?” I spent the entire day brainstorming and eating pies. In the end, my advisor Hua and my essay teacher Ray helped me combine my academic activities with what UChicago is looking for to create an outline for the essay, which successfully got me into UChicago.