<p>Johns Hopkins offers 50 majors across the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering. On this application, we ask you to identify one or two that you might like to pursue here. Why did you choose the way you did? If you are undecided, why didn't you choose? (If any past courses or academic experiences influenced your decision, you may include them in your essay.)</p>
<p>I plan to apply to the School of Engineering undecided. Fascinated by how specific machines operate, I am particularly interested in the science of robotics, but I am also intrigued by the structure of buildings, how they are constructed and why they stand up. Mathematics, science, and general problem solving are my strong areas. Because I enjoyed physics in eleventh grade, I decided to take AP Physics in senior year, hoping to get an understanding of how the universe works mathematically and structurally.
When I was young, Legos absorbed my attention. Early on, I merely experimented with Lego pieces, but I moved on to programming a Lego robot, making a car that detects its surroundings and avoids crashes, and creating a claw that could grab objects. By eleventh grade math, I had moved on to derivatives. When friends complained about the subject matter in Pre-Calculus, I found myself totally taken in by it and relating it to the work we were doing in Physics. We spent a half-year studying mechanics, solving the problems of velocity, acceleration, distance, and time. As a New Yorker, I have watched with great interest the construction of the Freedom Tower. Along with the strong sentiment the Tower evokes, I cannot help but wonder how this structure was envisioned, tested, and constructed to withstand the environment.
And so, mathematics and physics are areas I want to continue to focus on in college, but I am still uncertain exactly where that interest will lead me. </p>
<p>Tell us something about yourself or your interests that we wouldn't learn by looking at the rest of your application materials. (While you should still pay attention to sentence structure and grammar, your response is meant as a way for us to get to know you, rather than a formal essay.)</p>
<p>I love to sing and not only in the shower. I think I have always sung, but in the last ten years I have taken piano lessons and have begun to sing in the last six years. Music has become a passion. As a child, I listened to a song and played it by ear. Later, Broadway show music, music theory, and sight-reading intrigued me, and before I knew it, music became a part of me.
At age ten, Michael Jackson, Kanye West and Rihanna were my mentors, but as I graduated to show music and opera, my piano teacher and voice coach encouraged me to participate in NYSSMA, New York State School Music Associations rating system for musicians. I have achieved excellent levels for six years in piano and in voice and earned the All-County designation every year of high school for voice.
Two of my favorite performances for NYSSMA are The Vagabond from Songs of Travel and O Del Mio Dolce Ardor from Parid Ed Elena. I enjoy the range of seventeenth century to twentieth century songs, and recently I have become a fan of Bruno Marss music. I not only sing for myself, but also participated in a choir formed by the Hebrew Department at my school. Our high school has no formal music program, but for the commemoration of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Day, a group of us performed for the general school community.
I hope that at Johns Hopkins I will be able to continue music.</p>