Undergraduate / "Engineering a Pokémon team" - Yale Supplement [9]

This is the required supplement for Yale. It's just an essay about something that I like, and I want to bring that to the Yale community.

Pokémon. The first thought that comes to mind is that childish game almost every kid loved. It was, and still is, a game that involves strategy and prediction, like online Risk. With 8-bit music and 150 critters, there was every reason to love it. As we learned calculus, built computers, and exhausted our bodies through sports, we forget those small trinkets our lives formerly revolved around. However, Pokémon has grown with us.

As the senior strategy analyst at Thunder Fusion, I construct teams for the sole purpose of competitive battling. The new damage formulas are available for a reason. To most players, it is nothing more than another math problem that shouldn't be in something fun. To me, it is the Holy Grail. That Holy Grail brought me to 11th in the International Pokémon Tournament.

Engineering a Pokémon team is like designing a computer, except with only six parts. The first step is to analyze the objectives. Pure offensive team. High speed, low power. The objectives then provide a goal for research, a strategy or theme to follow. High speed, attack, and special attack stats. Fast processor, efficient power supply. I run diagnostics on how effective it will be and predict the expected performance. Next, I identify synergy between different members of the team, creating the mainframe of the team. The remaining parts give added flexibility, to address common problems. Threats: Azelf, Infernape, Scizor. Hazards: humidity, dust, electric shock. Not only do major issues need to be recognized, I also have to take steps in addressing them. Like how good ventilation prevents a computer from overheating, a proper defensive wall suffices against several threats.

Before I release the team, it must run through a battery of tests. I check its performance, debug any obvious flaws, and examine its use in the long term. This is also when I fine-tune the stats values. This labor-intensive process utilizes my Holy Grail by calculating how many points Cresselia requires to switch in, take two attacks at maximum damage, and defeat it with Psychic. The same process takes place in making sure a computer has just enough resources to allow it to perform its job.

All of these steps are critical to engineering, whether it be something as trivial as a Pokémon team or something as significant as the next generation computer. Even after they are built, they require care and maintenance to stay fully operational. Pokémon teams need to adapt to strategy alterations, or they are dismantled easily. Computer users must similarly update their software protection to prevent viruses and other malware from infecting their computers.

Through Pokémon, I developed a natural methodology for project management. The more I played, the more I realized how many of the skills in becoming a good battler are nearly identical to those of an engineer. I love having challenges to overcome, discoveries to make, and friends to meet. I love to analyze others and myself. I love logical planning. I love Pokémon.

Please be harsh. Thank you. I'll try to return the favor :)

Undergraduate / "to find x as the lost function" Elusive - University of Chicago - Find x. [3]

This is my essay for the first option: Find x. It goes into some pretty deep stuff, tracing my journey trying to write this essay.

I began to find x as the lost function that would guide my rocket to the University of Chicago. After days of research and toiling through calculations, I arrived at two distinct pieces that would guide my projectile (after factoring in aerodynamic air resistance, mass changes, and fuel combustion force): Fy = sin() (vegm/t + pA) - (pv2CdA)/2 - mg, and Fx = cos() (vegm/t + pA) - (pv2CdA)/2 - mg. Then, as if I didn't have enough work, I researched the fuel RP-1 or Lox Kerosene. With a specific impulse of roughly 300s, I calculated that for one as non-aerodynamic as myself, and my given weight, I would stay in the air for 181.73s, or slightly over three minutes, with 1Mkg of fuel. Given air resistance and drag-induced lift, I, theoretically, launched myself about 460km, or one-half the distance from my house to UChicago. I attained only half of my goal.

Originally, the function was my masterpiece. I read it for days, marveling at the result. In my first draft of the essay, I even input a short joke saying, "Who said this wasn't rocket science?" As days passed, I lost interest in my work. I felt that I needed to rewrite it. And then came the solemn bye-bye to my dear calculated air density, my loving aerodynamic surface area, and my most precious force integrations.

I immediately switched to my next idea, myself. There must have been something in myself worth representation of something as enigmatic as x. "X is my desire for knowledge," I thought. It is something unsolvable because knowledge is boundless, as is my appetite for it. I could add to it when I studied, subtract from it when I forgot, and multiply it when I connected ideas. For a while, this too satisfied me. A quick read over my entire draft had me erasing the entire essay. My thought process went something like this, "Well, if I'm satisfied with this explanation for x, then I have just become part of a logical fallacy. Since I hunger for knowledge, I must never be fulfilled with something so rigid an answer." I was back to square one.

Once again, my idea of a wonderful insight gave way to perceived failure. Had I known that these two experiences would lead me closer to x, I might not have been as reluctant to proceed. At that moment, however, I felt that weeks had gone by without any progression. I was again, left without an essay to my dream school.

I still had ideas, no doubt, but they weren't of the same caliber. The turning point of history could have been x, but there were many turning points of history. There so many x's and therefore could not be the answer. X could be why we are able to think, to comprehend, and to express. Still, that would bring me back to the fact that x isn't a creation of humans alone, since animals too have the ability to think, comprehend, and express. Maybe x is the Monad. X in that sense was perfect. It builds everything we know today: the earth, the sky, water, and so much more. However, can something so simple as x define such complexity as a person? As Pythagoras described it, x would be numbers that construct our reality. No, it could not be! Again, I discarded the thought.

I slowly submerged myself in defeat. Not only had I wasted long days in laborious research, running through calculations, and thorough thought processes, I still had no essay! Drowned in misery, I picked up one of my favorite books: The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved by Mario Livio. However, as I read, the book gave me insight that it hadn't before. My first time through the book had taught me about the affinity we as people have towards anything that is symmetrical, whether it is a picture, music, or even life. This time, I understood more through my experiences with finding x.

That's why we use x after all, isn't it? It has four major lines of symmetry, more so than any other letter, except o. At its most basic level, x is simply two lines crossing each other, forming ninety-degree angles, the perfect right angle. If turned at forty-five degrees, it looks like the holy cross. We use it on maps to indicate the destination. X is more than just something we use for the aesthetic value. Almost every dead end I reached before seemed to point to the fact that x itself was infinite and perfect. Why not? Why do we have all of these uses for x, know it so well, but are still not able to find it? Then, it was the moment. I had a revelation, if you will. I realized x is perfect, something is impossible to attain. My journey for x will never end, but every moment I live, learn, and experience the world, I come a tiny bit closer to x. I don't need to find x, I just need to end up closer to x than where I was even a second ago. That's how I'll find x.

I feel that the last paragraph might have been a bit incohesive, but following my quest to find x, I actually came upon an epiphany and everything was just there. If it doesn't make sense, I'll try to edit it until it makes sense. As always, if you edit, I'll try to return the favor :)

Undergraduate / Influential Person - Father's Son [3]

This is a general common app essay.
"Tell us about a person who has influenced you in a significant way" or "Tell is about someone who influenced who you are today"

There is one man who is always there for me. When I'm swimming, I can hear his voice above the roar of the water. When I'm down, he cracks jokes to lighten the mood. When I'm sick, he concocts remedies. Whenever anything happens, my father is there.

I tried out for the football team in sixth grade. I didn't make it, but my father encouraged me to look somewhere else. "Why not wrestling?" he said. In preparation, we wrestled day and night, despite his sore body. He cared about me, but I hadn't matured enough to see the pains he embraced so that I may enjoy a single season on the wrestling team. Wrestling season started, and while I fought to pin my opponent, my father laid in bed, healing his wounds. He was too old to continue such strenuous activity, but he did, for my sake.

After wrestling ended, my father still had not fully healed. He took days off work to rest and he spent his evenings trying to relax in the shower. At that time, I was ignorant of my father's physical burdens. I tentatively asked, "Why can't Dad do anything? I'm bored." The more I asked, the more I understood what my father had always done for me. I was his first priority, even over himself.

A few years later, everything changed. He succumbed to Bells Palsy and gout, among other milder illnesses. Though not serious, both caused him pain, and I desperately searched for natural cures since his prescribed medicine did nothing to neither eliminate symptoms nor ease the pain. I told him about how a vegetarian diet may invigorate his nerves and blood flow, easing symptoms. I found herbs that supposedly would prevent gout and started cooking his lunches and dinners for him.

It started out with these minute but effective tasks. Soon, his condition began to worsen. He wouldn't go an hour with major pains in his feet. At this point, my mother and I attended him. Even against the doctor's and my recommendations, he went to work. He claimed it was to have money for me to go to college. "It's not worth your health," I said, now the parent. "I can find scholarships and loans. If you don't rest now, you might not even be able to work anymore."

Now, Dad still has gout, but he has few problems walking and working with it.

My time with my father showed me that sometimes the ones we most care about are more important than even ourselves. During this period, I became independent, no longer requiring Dad, but always thankful for how he was there for me. He taught me, albeit indirectly, how to be a father, to care for others. Looking back, I could have never taken care of my father if he hadn't taken care of me first. I sacrificed my time and my enjoyment to help my father. I am my father's son after all.

As always, please be harsh, and I'll try to return the favor. Thanks! :)