Student profile

Accepted into Loyola Marymount University

GPA: 3.1

ACT: 36 

Extracurricular activities: ID Tech, Soccer, Debate, Golf, Volunteer Engineering Camp at UC; Medical Camp at Rice



Please briefly state your reason for wishing to attend LMU and/or how you came to select your major. 


Research is vital for me, as such, I thoroughly researched Loyola Marymount University and found out that they offered the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, offering students vast research opportunities, which solidified my choice in Loyola Marymount. I first came upon Loyola Marymount by researching the best Liberal Art Colleges for students who hoped to pursue a medical degree and came across an article that stated the university offered national research opportunities, an option that I am excited for in college. I was thrilled to find out that the laboratories housed on campus not only performed cutting edge research in chemistry and biology, but also offered ample research opportunities for students. My research interest began during an 8th grade frog dissection in my middle school biology class, performed under the supervision of our instructor Mr. Tan, I became intrigued by the orthopedics and neurology which controlled the amphibian. My teacher lent me several books about biology and neurology to read. Those books piqued my interest and became the foundations for my interest in the sciences and what propelled me towards my interest in a biology degree. Learning from esteemed professors such as Professor Wendy Binder, whose work on developmental biology fascinated me, would be the surrealistic realization of ambitions fostered during that first frog dissection in middle school Biology. It is important for me to select a college that shared my belief on diversity and acceptance, and after much research, I knew Loyola Marymount was it. 




Much has been written about the environmental implications of climate change, but less about the distribution of goods or the social, economic, and political implications. Which one of these less studied aspects of climate change seems to you most worrisome for our “common home,” and why?


I spent part of my youth in Thailand, a country plagued by torrential rain and increasingly frequent, massive floods. The local kids happily treat the floods as a day off, allowing them to skip school and do as they wish. While the kids are oblivious to the calamity that has descended on them, the effects of these floods are disastrous to the farmers and others along the economic chain. As the rain wipes out crops, the prices of vegetables and meats are driven to an all time high. What's more, the flooding and high levels of excess water increases the presence of water-borne insects that thrive in such conditions. These insects, such as mosquitoes, introduce malaria and dengue into a poverty-stricken area, leading to illness among the community. What does this mean for the country’s economy? Intense pressure. The economic implications are worrisome for the farmers in rural Thailand who, according to the Thai Department of Agriculture, make $4 a day, a meager sum even by Thailand’s standard. The floods of 2011 alone brought immense damage to the rice farmlands of Thailand, destroying over 1.69 million hectares and causing over $2 billion worth of damage. Floods such as these cause sometimes irreversible economic disaster in a country where 40% of its workforce is in agriculture. If the torrential rain wiped out the rice paddies, these farmers’ main source of income would be wiped out as well. With the high percentage of Thailand’s population in the farming industry, floods meant massive economic depression for Thailand. Industrial zones such as Nava Nakorn, Bangkadi, and Bang Pa-in were submerged in the floods of 2011, causing over 10,000 factories to suspend production and lay off over 350,000 workers. The workers without jobs are then straining their families, compounding the economical stress. In addition to the impact on rural farms, the floods in Thailand have a ripple effect on the economy at large. Tourist arrivals dropped as much as 20 percent in 2011, at a cost of about 630-945 million dollars during the floods. These implications strained Thailand’s economy as decreased workers and tourists resulted in a greater budget deficit. What's more, Thailand is the world’s largest rice exporter, and due to the floods, the increased price of rice negatively impacts the buyers of the importing countries. Having lived in Thailand, it personally hurts me to see how the farmers’ plights are negatively impacted by floods as a result of global warming. The farmers are neglected in the media yet they are the driving force behind Thailand’s economy. Known as the Land of Smiles, it is disheartening to see such a happy populace struggle economically due to the floods. Global warming can come in many shapes, but the news tends to focus on the environmental implications of global warming. They hardly analyze the economic implications of it, and as such, miss the human effects that environmental change can have on people.