[Student Profile]
GPA: 4
SAT/ACT: 35
Academic focus/Extracurricular activities: singing, internships, research mentorship program
[Prompt & Essay]
Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts overtime.
I love making words dance on paper or through empowering speech, but I am not just a woman of words. I am a woman of action. Opportunities submerged beneath the isolating weight of the pandemic, but I knew that crises give rise to innovation and began envisioning ways three years of success competing in international DECA events could be wielded to forge something new. The team of 15 I led through the genesis of a four-day startup pitch competition providing high schoolers an avenue to stay rooted to their passion for business virtually. Called the National Youth Entrepreneurial Summit (NYES), our creation amassed corporate sponsorships, CEOs as speakers, money to support BLM, and participants across the country.
The defining moment of our success was an epiphany born from our first failure: the NYES website. Charged by a burning desire to equip hundreds with an immersive experience, I reworked my disillusionment into a vibrant design in one adrenaline-fueled night, exemplifying our potential for greatness when working with purpose.
A seemingly minute detail evolved into a game-changer. This rejuvenation cultivated a team that rallied behind me in a contagious surge of confidence. Weekly meetings I conducted were now flooded with brilliant ideas of companies to reach out to, prizes to seek, and event sessions to add, enabling me to optimize the strengths of each department assigning tasks ranging from advertisement campaigns to sponsorship decks and spearhead solutions to challenges like the spreadsheet I crafted of over 200 organizations to reach out to across major cities from coast to coast. I rose as a pillar of strength, and our project came alive with soul. I am a visionary who learned that the creation of something extraordinary is derived from
the leader's ability to elucidate the value of the mission. I will continue to be a trailblazer at the University of California, employing the ingenuity that made NYES an unforgettable endeavor, united high school students with seasoned industry business leaders nationwide, and established the legacy of a recurring event that I know will outlive these times.
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. Since I was two, I couldn't help but succumb to the beckoning temptation of rich melodies cascading with all-consuming sensation into a delta of solidarity. Music carried me into my choir's tender embrace and the insecurities in my life created by years of colorism were overpowered by music's radiating energy. As I sing solos in concert halls from Carnegie Hall to towering cathedrals in Rome and in events like AVoice4Peace, a world-wide peace awareness project, I enter a space where I derive strength from the voices behind me united as one. I'm enveloped in self-actualization.
Inspired by the way subtle vibrations of vocal cords embody healing, I began singing on Sundays at nursing homes as a way of sowing the seeds of acceptance that had invigorated me. I watched as music stripped my audience of their age, wheelchairs sinking into the background as their youthful vibrancy and twinkling eyes soared into the foreground.
This experience was a catalyst sending me traversing through several musical pursuits and I discovered a confluence that reined in technology to intermingle with my music via demos I coded for Santa Clara University's laptop orchestra using Supercollider, a platform for audio synthesis and algorithmic composition. For months, I researched intricate musical pieces, using them to stimulate my own compositions from every virtual instrument at my disposal. My coded creations flowed from my heart to my professor's and students' across the university.
Being witness to the hydrating power of music on so many occasions fostered my intellectual curiosity as I volunteered at an organization caring for people on the autism spectrum. I began singing to a five-year-old boy and as I had hoped, his tremors ceased momentarily when he chimed in with hearty laughs centered on the sound of my voice. I started designing an app to utilize music as a learning aid for people with disabilities, a project I want to continue pursuing at the University of California. Music awakens my heart, instilling in me an enduring sense of courage to transcend waves of race and ability to spread music's cadence all over the world.
What have you done to make your school or your community a better place? Community Service: Volunteering
In my impressionable years, the word preceding the colon evoked the word that followed. I believed that the only way to do good for a community was to volunteer. Experiences that have since molded me revealed that although volunteering is an incredible way to do my community a service, it is not the only one.
I helplessly watched the world collapse from the onset of challenges emanating from the pandemic but refused to give up hope. Although the pandemic stretched on, my helplessness did not.
Discerning my parents' struggle to uphold harmony in our home, juggling jobs and my restless six-year-old brother, led to an epiphany that parents across the community were in an analogous situation. Writing, illustrating, and publishing a children's book founded upon my knowledge of the inner workings of the youthful mind, I wove what was going on in the world into a captivating story filled with ideas for self-engagement. The book bestowed upon children the responsibility of rising to the occasion, not only providing entertainment but also enabling them to indirectly support their parents.
My work did not stop there. Alongside the pandemic came an overdue hypervisibility of racial inequities in our country and a global economic crisis. Declining offers of paid internships, I chose to work without pay for a startup robbed of its revenue due to a dependency on the airline industry. Taking this one step further and seeking to support Black lives, I envisioned an idea to empower Black-owned businesses to gain a foothold in the business sector and craftily pioneered a bridge between the founders of two organizations--a virtual platform for hosting events and a non-profit in New York. I created the NYC Black-owned Small Business Competition, delivering to these businesses in need brand awareness and sponsorships.
As the realms of my contrivance expanded, I recognized groundbreaking solutions to global challenges as an impactful service. At the University of California, I will be equipped with an influential network of people and resources to continue being an innovative problem-solver, extracting inspiration through hope I propagate among the community.
Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you stand out as a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?
Two pens just in case one ran out of ink, one pencil supposing the permanency of pens would suddenly intimidate me, and one 70-page notebook as a canvas to store everything I would learn about business development through my internship at Spotidol, a technology startup.
My first meeting came to a close, and my 70-page notebook remained absolutely empty. Nevertheless, this internship sparked my desire to delve deeper into business.
My intellectual vitality came alive not through notes of how others revolutionized businesses, but rather by engaging in the transformation myself. In each assignment, I proved I wasn't an ordinary high schooler completing trivial tasks. My exemplary performance reinforced that I was there to learn hands-on, catalyzing my ascent into a role alongside the CEO.
My new responsibility arose, unlike any that preceded it: I was to single-handedly spearhead market expansion via corporate partnerships. I was told that 200 cold emails were expected to yield one response. I didn't settle for that. After an arduous week studying the craft of writing to maximize response rate, my first 60 emails were sent off. Fourteen responses evolved into meetings I learned to conduct with international business moguls. Meetings unfolded into official contracts which I, a
signatory, learned to review. Contracts actualized events requiring fiscal sponsorship proposals--projected to generate six figures of revenue--which I eagerly learned to write and design. In just seven months, I expanded Spotidol's partnership reach to Make it Balance Foundation and Queens Underground in New York, Great Things are Here Studios in Texas, British Black Music in London, and Chateau de Pommard in France, with my plans getting buy-in from CEOs of Glide Church and Rakuten. The best part is, I am nowhere near finished. I am deconstructing the binary opposition of STEM and the humanities. Music, Writing, Business, and Technology forge a tight bond within me to nourish intertwining rings of creativity, innovation, and impact. I optimize the resources I'm presented with and follow through on what I do. What I do matters, and I am breaking the mold.