UC Prompts

The transition between middle school and high school is often challenging. To combat the difficulties of this transition El Segundo High School enacted a program called Link Crew that pairs incoming freshmen with upperclassmen mentors. Unfortunately, as a freshman my Link Crew Leaders were not very helpful and, to my surprise and dismay, I was met with next to no assistance. I put this behind me and continued on through high school until the end of sophomore year when my soccer coach recommended that I apply to be a Link Crew Leader. I was reminded of my disappointing experience and decided that I would not let the same situation befall the incoming freshman. After hours of training, orientation day finally came and I was given my group. In front of me was the most diverse collection of students that I had ever seen willingly sit together. There were cheerleaders, football players, band members and drama students and I was tasked with leading them all into the foreboding world of high school. I had no idea what to expect that first morning but nothing could have prepared me for the tidal wave of questions and problems that occurred. Locker combinations were forgotten, backpacks were lost, iPads were broken and somehow a small team of upperclassmen had to fix everything. I was tasked with iPad repair and faced what became a unique challenge. Only twenty percent of all freshman had working iPads and my job was to determine why. After watching the successful freshman, I realized that the only working iPads belonged to those who chose "0000" as their secure password. As it turned out, this was also the default password set by the school which was required for initial set up. With this knowledge, everyone was able to fix their iPads and a crisis was averted. While frantic, this first day is a fun memory that I share with my group of freshman. When the applications for this year's Link Crew were released, I was the first to sign up and I now realize that I enjoy the whole "leadership" thing.

Question number 2 (creativity): Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

Starting at a young age, children are often prompted to express their imaginations through visual art. While this stimulates creativity in some, others such as myself discover little to no artistic talent. My first masterpiece was a framed blank sheet of paper hanging on the wall of my preschool. However, what I lacked in visual artistry I made up for in music. Little did I know that the headache inducing plastic whistle known as the recorder would set me on a path to musicianship. After years of torturing my parents with poorly played squeaky melodies, I decided it was time to move on to bigger and better things: the alto saxophone. This new instrument led to a world of possibilities and it did not take long for my heart, mind, and steadily quickening fingers to become set on jazz. Jazz gave me what visual art never could, creative guidance without total restriction. The flowing chords of Coltrane and Davis offered more structure than a blank piece of paper and allowed me a wider range of artistic freedom than the rigid lines of a coloring book. As years passed, I improved. My development as a musician led me to join The Fabulous Esquires Big Band, a professional jazz band consisting of both experts and high school students like myself. I began as a timid second alto alternate desperately trying to keep up with a new level of play. As time passed I switched to the increased power of a tenor. This boosted my confidence which in turn boosted my creativity and quality. In the span of a few months I vaulted from a quiet background alto to a booming lead tenor. I no longer hid from solos but instead eagerly volunteered for them. Soloing became the peak of my creative ability and remains so to this day. In fact, there are few activities I look forward to more than standing up and soloing in front of a crowd of people. My creativity empowered me to become the musician that I am today and is always inspiring me to new musical heights.

Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

On my first day of kindergarten I was asked the typical question of what I wanted to be when I grew up. Why anyone thinks that a five year old can answer this question baffles me. As I advanced in school I excelled in math and science making careers in physics, chemistry, and engineering obvious choices. While I knew that my kindergarten response of cement truck driver was not my calling, I did not know how to narrow down which science I wanted to pursue. To explore engineering, I applied to a summer internship at Boeing for incoming high school seniors. I was accepted to the program and on the first day each intern was paired with a mentor. My mentor was a systems engineer who clearly understood what I meant when I said that “I have no idea what type of engineering I am interested in.” Consequently, he arranged for me to meet with several of his colleagues including mechanical, electrical, aerospace and computer engineers. So with an open mind, I had numerous discussions with engineers of different disciplines. During these meetings I learned more about engineering than I ever could have in a classroom. Mechanical engineering appealed to me the most as I saw it used to design, build, and test hardware for satellites. The mechanical engineer that I met had to build a cone shaped structure that would support the fuel tank of a satellite while being easily attached to the satellite's walls. The amount of external factors that both affected his design, and were affected by his design, were immense. I had expected the design to be described in one simple blueprint but instead, the engineer had pages of complex mathematics and many sketches to detailing his work. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with this mechanical engineer and help him with some of the necessary mathematics used to design the fuel tank support. Mechanical engineering demonstrated a real application of what I have learned in school and led me to choose it as my major.

Describe your favorite academic subject and explain how it has influenced you.

I have always loved numbers. Numbers provide a perfect sense of detail as a number can only be itself and never something else. The precision of numbers and mathematics allow the laws of our universe to be defined in a logical way. Mathematics defines everything from the way objects move to the way elements react with each other. Math plays an important role in two of my favorite extracurricular activities, music and soccer. Rhythm and note length are defined by simple math and I use this to improve my musicianship. Songs can be broken down into parts which can be further broken into phrases, measures, and beats. By using math to add and multiply measures and phrases, I keep track of my position without having to count every beat in each song. Math also plays an important role in soccer. As a goalkeeper, angles influence every step that I take. From a young age I have been told to make myself big in the goal in order to narrow the opposing player's scoring angle. While multiple coaches have yelled "narrow the angle," none have said which angle or how to narrow it; instead they just told me to either move forward or backward. Initially I learned to play keeper by simply memorizing where to stand in relation to certain marks on the field. However, when I started high school soccer I wanted to both understand and optimize my positioning. So with a whiteboard, a marker, and a protractor I decided to do the math by marking where I was supposed to stand relative to the ball. I made two important observations, first, the angle between the shooter, keeper, and near post should measure about 130 degrees and second, the angle formed by the ball, keeper, and center of the goal should be close to 180 degrees. For me, math explains major aspects of everyday life and helps me perform better in both competitive and non-competitive activities. It is these applications of mathematics that make it my favorite subject and have led me to pursue engineering in college.