1) Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it.

I’m honored to be a part of the hacker(not the malicious meaning of “hacker”) community. Going to hackathons has fostered and furthered my passion for computer science, and the hacker community has helped me along my way. I remember going to my first hackathon at Facebook’s headquarters. All I knew was basic HTML, so I could barely contribute to my team, and I felt horrible. When we did a live demo on stage, we forgot to validate our input, and someone injected JavaScript in our code and crashed our website. But after we presented, a guy from one of the startups at the event came over and started talking to us. He told us how it didn’t really matter whether or not we won, but what we learned, and even offered us internships at his company (I couldn’t accept because I was in school). Despite my subpar performance, the hacker community encouraged and inspired me. So I went home and learned by reading books, watching Harvard computer science lectures, and by consulting countless Internet forums. All this work was finally validated when I won the 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, the biggest hackathon I’ve ever been to, with over 200 teams. Although the monetary prize was great, what really made me feel good was seeing that my hard work paid off and the respect of the hacker community.



2) Describe the unique qualities that attract you to the specific undergraduate College or School (including preferred admission and dual degree programs) to which you are applying at the University of Michigan. How would that curriculum support your interests? (max 500 words)

Michigan has an excellent computer science and computer engineering division, and I want to be a part of it. First, Michigan has countless research opportunities. Since it’s such a large and diverse school, there are many possible research topics that intrigue me, such as cryptography and artificial intelligence. Another benefit of Michigan’s size is the extensive alumni network, the number one in the world. Going to the same college allows you to instantly form a bond with someone, and that bond can strongly benefit you if that person is in a position of power, as many Michigan alumni are. The football-centric culture is another element of Michigan that I love. I’m an avid San Francisco 49er’s fan right now, and love watching and discussing football. Going to a school that has a great football team and culture would be a dream come true. The other element of Michigan Engineering culture I like is the hacker community. I was invited to go to MHacks this year because of my winning the 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, but couldn’t go because I had eagle project obligations that weekend. Michigan has the largest hacker community of any university in the nation, and that’s definitely compelling to me. I was strongly influenced by the hacker community in the Bay Area, and want to have the same type of people around me in college as well. I’m also applying to the Ross School of Business for preferred admission because I want to have the option of starting my own company someday or have a strong business background as well as engineering so that I can advance in a corporate structure.