Stanford 2016 - Avi Edition.

Hey readers of this awesome blog - whoever you are! I'm a new contributor - a fellow member of the class of 2016 who wants to share with you my experience of getting to this point - being a part of the Cardinal family for four years!

  Who is this new guy? I just graduated from Whitney High in Southern California, ready to take on the world. I'm active in a lot - I love the water. I swim, play water polo, and dragon boat (a sport similar to crew but uses more of the upper body and abdominal muscles to pull the boat - there is also a dragon head at the front of the boat, making us that much cooler). I'm a drama techie, soundboards and cameras are second nature to me, and I like being behind the scenes. I love history, biology, and filmmaking - and I will talk to people about the most random things because I really like to talk about random things. Yeah, I just like talking :)

  What do you want to go into? I'm honestly not sure. I love biology, history, film - for the longest time I've wanted to become a filmmaker, but bio research looks extremely exciting. I want to be on the forefront of something cool I guess. I think I'll just take the next two years to figure out exactly what I want.

 Outside of the desk, I led my life by one philosophy - Do what I want to, and enjoy whatever it is. I liked doing many things, and I really like being busy, so these two parts of me went pretty well together. I've been a member of the High School broadcast team since I was a sophomore, became Executive Producer my junior year. I have been swimming since freshmen year, dragonboating since my sophomore year. Key Club was a small passion of mine until I realized that it was less about service and more about a resume for most people, so I left that. I did robotics for two years, went to world championships this year. I started the history bowl team at my school and helped send two teams to nationals. I was an All-State Sound Director, and went to DC for the congressional academy. I feel like I just wrote the activities part of my common app again :D

  Why did I choose Stanford? I didn't really have much difficulty choosing Stanford. By mid march, I had a college acceptance streak. I got into all the UCs, USC, and Northwestern. I was riding high, and was pretty happy. But then on March 28th, I faced my first outright rejection from Princeton, and was deferred to spring for Berkeley. I wasn't necessarily devastated, but I was saddened. I assumed I would be going to UCLA and let the next couple of days come. I got waitlisted for Brown and UChicago, so I wasn't even expecting Harvard or Stanford. Then, at a swim meet on March 30th, I heard a buzz. I checked my email and found out that there was an email from Stanford Admissions. I opened it with half of my team watching me, and... Well, you know. I got in. I was exhilarated. I broke my record for backstroke that day, and stayed on a high that lasted for a pretty long time. Stanford has been a dream school for me. I loved the campus, I love the faculty, and I loved the weather (THIS IS IMPORTANT). I'm a pretty avid biker as well, so the size of the campus never scared me. I actually chose Stanford right away - sent in my deposit the next day. I was a Cardinal as soon as I could be. I wrote a lot, and I would be surprised if you read all of this. But I do plan to write more about being a Class of 2016 member - hopefully we all can show you how great a place this will be. :) ~Avi