Writing: College Application Essays #9 (University of California 1)

Note: So, these are the essays that got me into all of the UCs I applied to and with some nice scholarships to boot. This year of applications required 4 essays of 350 words each, so I'll be splitting them into 2 separate posts. I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I got sidetracked, so here it is now.

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. 

For me, creativity comes as unorthodox solutions to real-life problems.

Generally, the issue of designing public transportation falls under the category of civil engineering. When planning, officials must ask: how can groups of people, going to different destinations, take similar routes? How can we minimize damage to the environment? What technologies will we use?

For these questions, engineers refer to mathematics and the physical sciences. However, one field that they do not refer to is biology. How could the study of life be used to figure out how to move people on a large scale?

After studying this problem, the solution came in the form of the modest slime mold. A simple organism with a primitive intelligence, physarum polycephalum lacks a nervous system but has been proved to recreate the designs of railways around the world. I thought that if this slime mold can recreate transit systems, then it should be able to design one.

For six months, my room was littered with petri dishes, containing oat flakes and yellowish webs of physarum polycephalum. In the end, the experiments recreated the layouts of BART and Alameda County’s roadways, validating the efficiency of what exists.

The reason for this is simple; for many organisms, survival comes from equality of energy input and output. Therefore, in real life, the roads and trains we use everyday are the perfect balance of fuel usage and distance traveled. The networks the physarum polycephalum created are a living representation of that.

When I presented this project at the Alameda County Science and Engineering Fair, the judges praised it as a creative approach to a common problem. I was awarded first place in my category and a scholarship from Chevron for the work.

My way of expressing creativity is by connecting the dots in a new way. The parts were already in place. In biology, slime mold has been studied for its design capabilities. In civil engineering, transit designs are weighed for costs and benefits. The only piece the puzzle needed was for someone to take these two separate ideas and fit them together.  

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

Being from a Filipino family with a rural background, the most significant challenge I have faced was finding a place in an economically homogeneous community. In 2014, Pleasanton, California had a median household income of $123,608– 230% above the national median. In this affluent suburb, there is decent racial diversity, with sixty percent white, twenty percent Asian, ten percent Hispanic, followed by African Americans and others.

The same racial diversity exists in Amador Valley High School. However, in contrast, there is a glaring lack of economic diversity, which becomes apparent in upper-level AP and honors classes. Because students can afford high-end college counselors and SAT prep programs, Amador has an ultra-competitive academic environment at the cost of students’ mental health.

Pleasanton is interesting in that way; race, on its own, is not the problem. Classism and elitism, on the other hand, are what plague the community. Students are judged on their academics, but in the end, their success is solely determined by money or family connections.

With my background, I face challenges that my classmates do not. Being academically, but not economically competitive, I’ve had to take risks to succeed, participating in as many free science and volunteer programs as possible across the Bay Area.

By overcoming this challenge, I’ve realized that while this lack of economic diversity is damaging to most students, it has helped me grow as an individual. Without the same advantages as my peers, I’ve accepted that I’m not going to participate in summer college programs across the country, learn how to game the system of standardized tests, or have an internship at a local laboratory. But that doesn’t stop me; rather, it’s pushed me to work even harder. If anything, my achievement is a small symbol against Pleasanton’s powerful class system.

You just need to pick your battles and find a niche. If you can’t match academic success with money, you match it with a genuine love for learning. If you can’t buy opportunities, you find them, no matter how far you have to go. There’s always a way.