My supplemental essays for Duke.
read moreWhy Duke?
I have read that college is "what you make of it" and it doesn't matter very much which college one attends. Although I agree that one can get a great education at an average college or an average education at a great college, I know that I do best in an environment where I can readily discuss my ideas with peers and teachers. I believe that Duke, with its high standards for admissions and its renowned faculty and alumni, will provide an excellent environment for me to pursue my studies.
I want to be around students who are interested and engaged; students who question things as I do; students who are going to test a formula before using it. I'm looking for a collaborative environment in which other students inspire me and share their insights. I want to work with people like me, people who really care about the basis of the topic and not the superficial aspects such as formulae. I want to be with people who can explain a formula with words and diagrams. Based on Duke’s small class sizes and diverse student body, I believe that it will provide the best environment for this to occur.
Research Short Statement
As I mentioned in the Common Application, I interned at a Physical Chemistry lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this summer. The results of our research have been published in "The Journal of Physical Chemistry". I am a co-author on the paper. The complete paper is now available at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp207830h.
This experience further developed my interest in laboratory research and exposed me to some of the applications of advanced mathematics such as the Fourier series. In the future, I would like to work on the mathematics behind experiments in order to generate further predictions and analysis. I currently most enjoy creating mathematical models of physical phenomena and mathematically analyzing experimental data.