Undergraduate / "In Cairo the communities live close together" - MIT: The Community [4]

I come from Cairo where the communities live close together; where "personal space" and privacy aren't clear. In this community, I learned compassion. I've learned that I have to sacrifice personal desires in the face of bigger priorities, such as a family meeting. My family has always encouraged me to be better, challenging me to exceed my capabilities.

As a kid, I often spent the summer with my grandparents, who used to give me mathematical riddles and the reward for getting them right would be more pocket money. The next summer, I started to enjoy the riddles for their own sake, asking for more even if I didn't get any reward for them. Although that might not seem significant, I believe that this simple summer activity at a young age "pushed" me to not only like Math, but to like anything that allowed me to think. Unlike students in more developed countries, here in Egypt, we don't have Science fairs; therefore as a kid, I was never encouraged to build my own volcano or even a circuit. When I was 15, a friend told me that he could arrange for me to work as an intern in a computer company and asked me which department I'd like to join; I chose maintenance. There, I was finally able to actually mess around with the parts and practically understand how computers work. While others were partying or working in summer camps, I got to spend all day dismantling computers and reassembling them.

Undergraduate / "Changing my education system" - MIT: Significant Challenge [8]

5. Tell us about the most significant challenge you've faced or something important that didn't go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?(*) (200-250 words)

I dont like my essay, i didnt have a lot of challenges during my school life that are relevant to MIT and my university application. Please tell me what you think, Thanks a lot

In grade 8, I moved from the Egyptian education system to the British system. There was a huge difference between both systems. Other than the usual problems of being the "new kid", the curriculum was also different, which made the transition a lot harder.

In the national system, the grade that I got in the end was entirely dependent on what I did on my final exam; No coursework or projects were included into my grade. The exams were fairly straight forward and mainly depended on memory with some understanding of the material. However, in the British system, I was required to work at a steady level throughout the year as the coursework contributed to my final grade. The new system also put emphasis on understanding and elaborating on the topics covered.

In order to achieve the top grades, I worked hard throughout the year, changing some of my habits and becoming more committed to my studies, I made sure that I understood all the topics that I was given and I usually read more about the topics I found interesting, therefore having a much broader understanding of the topics I was studying. I liked the wider variety of topics in the British system, and I enjoyed the science projects and experiments which I rarely did in the old system. Within the first three months of moving, I had already adapted to the new system and in the mid-year report, I got the top grades in most of the subjects.

Word Count: 250

Undergraduate / Archery, Swimming, Reading, building - Stuff you do for the pleasure of it - MIT [12]

Hi everyone,

I still can't figure out what to write about, but i have 5 ideas. Can u please tell me which one would make me look better for MIT ?? (i love doing all of those)

Archery, Swimming, Reading, building stuff & tearing them apart , figuring stuff out (you know, like Richard Feynman)

Thanks a lot

Undergraduate / "wanted to be an inventor" - Common App - My Childhood [3]

This is my essay for Common application. I thought that this topic would allow me to show my own character and voice. Tell me what you think and please be as honest as you can. I am applying for Electrical Engineering in Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, uPenn, Stanford and CalTech

I've always wanted to be an inventor. Since I was a young child, invention always fascinated me. Cartoon characters such as Dexter and "numbah 2" always fascinated me. Those characters built their own robots, planes and computers and used them to fight evil, which I personally found more amazing than superman's brute power or the Flash's super speed.

Yet, as I grew older, I became more interested in real scientists and inventors. My first role model was Ahmed Zewail. He was the first Egyptian to win the Nobel Prize in the field of science and at the time, seemed to be the only scientist who shared my culture. This encouraged me to read more about his research, which in the end, meant I was reading more about science in general due to the advanced level of his research which required me to enhance my scientific knowledge. This helped me a lot as I developed the habit of reading, and as time went, I started to become interested in any new idea I heard about, and usually went to the library or went online to read about that idea and learn more about it. This contributed to m general knowledge and allowed me to know about a lot of different topics and to be able to talk about them easily.

I spent some of my summer time with my grandfather; A civil engineer who loved Math and found pleasure in solving difficult math equations and figuring out riddles. He used to talk to me about his work and how much pleasure he found in it and explained that this is why he was a very successful engineer. Yet, he never encouraged me to do the same work as him; he always told me to do what I like and encouraged me to read more about science and inventions. However, he couldn't stop himself from "pushing" me to love Math. Every day, I would be given a riddle (usually with some math involved), and the reward for this riddle would be extra pocket money. His riddles were always simple yet never easy. They required me to think outside of the box and find different ways to interpret his question. Ironically, when I was only 10, I was able to solve riddles that my parents couldn't solve. I believe that thanks to those summer talks with my grandfather, I grew up to be very good in Math and Science.

My mother allowed me to do things that other mothers viewed as strange and a bit dangerous. While most other kids liked to play with their toys, I liked to dissemble mine. I used to take apart my toys and understand how they worked, and then I would reassemble them and make them do something slightly different. Doing this activity at a young age made me resourceful and creative.

Last year, while I was searching the internet for physics videos, I came across Prof. Richard Feynman. He truly inspired me. Not only was he a great physicist, he was also a great educator and he was truly passionate about what he did. As I read through the first few chapters of "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" I started to realize what true inventors and scientists were like. I understood the importance of passion towards what you're doing and how critical it was for someone to succeed. I also understood the importance of reading and knowing about more than what you're studying. Finally, I became very thankful for those riddles and short talks that I had with my grandfather. I was also very thankful for having a mother who allowed me to take toys apart, see how they work and reconstruct them so they do something different.

Undergraduate / "the Council of Foreign Arab Ministers" - MUN - Extra curricular Essay [2]

My first MUN was one of the best weeks of my life. For the first time in my life, I was able to properly debate. I have always like debating as it allowed me to think logically and come up with as many points as possible that would prove my point which requires me to be creative and think about the issue from more than one perspective.

In JCIMUN 2009, I was in the Council of Foreign Arab Ministers and was given the delegation of Egypt. My partner and I thought it would be easy. However, we discovered that the Egyptian foreign policy wasn't as simple as we thought. The crisis was the Middle East crisis and I truly had fun debating it with my friends and we came up with a resolution that satisfied all parties. I loved that MUN and the friendships I made there are forever.

Undergraduate / California Tech - Ethical Dilemma (Cheating on a test) [2]

During the summer of grade 11, I found out I had to take the SAT exam to apply to universities in the United States of American and I was scared. All I knew about the SAT was that my friends who were in the American education system were terrified of it and only very few got scores above 1700, yet, the average for the universities I am applying to was over 2000. I started working as hard as I can. Two thirds of the exam was English. English wasn't only my second language; it was also the lowest grade I got in my GCSEs. Even with a B in GCSE English, my vocabulary wasn't that good. I spent a lot of hours studying for the SAT and tried as hard as I could to improve my vocabulary.

During the test, I was a bit nervous after skipping a lot of questions in my 3rd section (reading). The 4th section was Math, and I finished it in half the time required. After checking my results, I started thinking about how I did on the 3rd section. I looked around me to see how everyone was doing, only to find people where shuffling pages to previous sections and answering questions. The examiner didn't seem to notice it and half of the people in the exam room were doing it. During the Break, the moderator left the room, and everyone was cheating from each other. One of the students even went on to open the exam and answer questions. As I thought of how I did on the 3rd section, and how I could improve myself, especially as one of the people who was saying their answers got over 700 in her reading and writing. I decided to leave the room and focus on how I did. I realized that not only would it be wrong to cheat, it would also prevent me from enjoying my results. When I found out I got 1900 in my SAT exam, I was happy I achieved that result and proud that I achieved it honestly.

I dont like the ending and i am also 500 characters over the limit (around 100 words). Any ideas on how to improve it ??

Undergraduate / CalTech - Passion for Maths/science and engineering [4]

Prompt: Interest in math, science, or engineering manifests itself in many forms. Caltech professor and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman (1918-1988) explained, 'I'd make a motor, I'd make a gadget that would go off when something passed a photocell, I'd play around with selenium'; he was exploring his interest in science, as he put it, by 'piddling around all the time.' In a page, more or less, tell the Admissions Committee how you express your interest, curiosity, or excitement about math, science or engineering.

Before answering this question, you might ask those around you - family, friends, or teachers - how they see you as a mathematician, scientist or engineer. They may offer insightful observations!

Prof Richard Feynman is a role model when it comes to being extremely passionate about what you do. Anybody can learn a lot from this brilliant professor, not only academically, but also from his attitude towards what he truly loved.

I have always loved math and science. In my free time, I would think about different things, looking for anything that doesn't have an obvious explanation and contemplating for why and how it happens. Whenever I find that oddity, I usually go into a phase of hyper-focus and I am deep-in-thought about that oddity, thinking why it happens. This has particularly proved helpful during my bus ride between school and home, which is a 40 minute drive that I can't use since I am the only senior in my bus and I have motion sickness.

Last year, a friend called me and asked me help with a math problem. While telling me that equation, she accidentally added an extra X in the power of another X. The actual question would have taken me 5 seconds to solve, however, with the new X, it became much more interesting. I spent 30 minutes on the question before she told me that she did a mistake. After giving her the answer and explaining how I answered it, I looked back on the 3 pages of attempts to answer the equation and I tried to answer the question again. Over the next day, I spent most of my free time on the question, finally, I asked my math teacher about it. He told me that he wasn't free, however, that I could go to the Math's department where there were 3 free teachers. I went there, and after spending 20 minutes on the question, they told me that they didn't have an "immediate" answer for it, and gave me the 2 other concepts that I had to know in order to answer the equation. After I returned home, I opened the computer and learned about those two concepts, I returned to the equation. I made some progress; however, I was still stuck. Finally, I decided to graph it, as I was simply anxious to know the answer. As I waited for the computer to graph the question, waiting for the answer that I've been trying to achieve over the past two days, I found none. The equation didn't have an answer. At first, I was disappointed. However, as I thought about the whole thing, I realized how much fun it was working on that equation for all that time and I remembered when I used to spend a lot of time thinking about riddles when I was younger.

When I was 12, my school sponsored a competition that was created by a cartoon channel to support their most popular cartoon "Sabek wa Lahek". This was a show about two 12 year old boys who created their own toy cars and raced with them. All my friends bought these cars and we all anticipated this competition. Inspired by the show, I choose to take the car I bought from the store and edit it. My first idea was to remove the 3 volt motor and replace it with a 9 volt motor. This should have tripled my car's speed and guaranteed my victory. However, I couldn't buy a 9 volt motor which had the same size as the already existing 3 volt motor. Although these motors were made, they weren't sold in Egypt. I was discouraged by this, but I still had to improve my car somehow. I removed the car's frame, which existed only for show, and made my car lower, which make it more streamlined. This worked and as I was racing my friends for fun before the contest, I beat them easily. I didn't believe the difference that was caused by this little modification. Unfortunately, since the cars aren't remote controlled, on one of the races before the competition, my car had an "accident" where one of the wires got cut and the entire car was surrounded by dust. I did my best to fix it. During the actual race, my car had a good start, it was leading the race, yet, during one of the turns, the wire got cut and the car stopped. I watched as all the other cars went past mine. Although I lost the race, I knew that if not for that accident, I would have won, and ever since, I always believed in my ideas and learned that if I want to be successful, I have to take the road less traveled.

Please tell me what you think and be as harsh as u can .. thanks a lot

Undergraduate / (becoming an inventor / Walking into Tahrir) - MIT Transfer Essays 1 and 3 [2]

1. Provide your reasons for wanting to attend MIT (250 words)

As a child, I dreamed of growing up to become an inventor. As I grew older, I discovered that invention was actually research and development and that the best place to do that was MIT. During middle and high school, I developed many interests and excelled in all the subjects related to them. These interests included aeronautics, robotics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science and pure math. Although I am currently studying mechanical engineering (which covers aeronautics and robotics), I would still like to explore these other fields. MIT offers very strong programs in all these fields and considering the interdisciplinary courses and projects, I believe that I can find my true passion at MIT.

MIT's research programs are known worldwide and its discoveries and inventions have truly changed the world. As a student who's interested in R&D, I believe that there's no place better for me than MIT. MIT offers courses, like 2.009, that allow me to design and build new machines. There are even clubs like MITERS where I could just go and invent whatever I can imagine, or I can take it to the next level and join cutting-edge research through the UROP. I dream to join a project like 6th sense in Media Lab where I would be realizing a fictional object. I want to go to MIT because I believe that only there would I be able to fulfill my potential and realize my dream.

3.B. Tell us about the most interesting experience you've ever had. (500 words)

this essay, I only wrote 380 words, im kinda stuck and dont know what exactly to say and i feel that i drifted away from the actual question. Can u please tell me what u think of the essay and suggest what i should change or add ?

The most interesting experience that I can recall having was walking into Tahrir on the 15th of February 2011. I went to Tahrir a lot of times before the 11th of February and first joined the protests on the 28th of January, "Friday of anger". On the 15th, the people were happy, ecstatic that the revolution has succeeded. The elderly were praising the youth for making the revolution succeed and everyone was optimistic about the bright future that awaited Egypt. Citizens united to clean after the revolution, to rebuild whatever was destroyed and everyone did it with a smile on their faces. People treated each other with respect and kindness, and all the sectors of the people were working together in harmony. Tahrir on that day resembled a utopian view of Egypt. Since I was young, I rarely saw Egyptians smiling in the street, this was understandable considering the number of social ills that existed as well as the extremely tough life conditions that they had to go through, but after the 11th of February, everyone believed that those days were the past and they were ready to build a bright new future. Since that point, I was determined to build that future, now it was in my hand and I became the master of my destiny. I've been pessimistic in the past about the future of the field of research and development in Egypt, but now I believed that this could change, and I decided to make sure I was ready when Egyptian research became a reality.

During the past few months, a lot have changed. The military rule is being opposed by a majority of Egyptians especially after the past acts of violence in Port Said and the crime spree that went through Egypt. I am still optimistic about the future as I maintain my belief that the higher the value of something, the harder you have to fight for it. And regardless of how bad things can get, I will always keep that view of Tahrir on the 15th of February in my mind, that there's a possibility of a better Egypt. When I first walked into Tahrir square that day, I saw a glimpse of what Egypt could be and I intend to make it real.