My story begins even before I was born. My father lived in a world of oppression and persecution. As a child in Czechoslovakia ravaged by Communism, he was compelled to escape to the United States.

“Not everything is black and white.” My mother tells me this almost every day. But my piano begs to differ.

Eleventh grade. This is a combat zone. The American Studies classroom is adorned with shiny gold stars, glimmering like military medallions.

I am African-American, Caucasian, Jewish, and gay, and narrowly escaping the degradation of my ancestors: my great-great-great grand- father’s slavery, my grandmother’s persecution in the Holocaust, and the denial of gay identity.

Clear, hopeful melodies break the silence of the night. Playing a crudely fashioned bamboo pipe, in the midst of sullen inmates—this is how I envision my grandfather.

Rosa Vargas is an Ethics, Politics, & Economics major from San Diego, California, who recently graduated from Yale. Her college essays highlight a long-lived interest in immigration and policy, which she continued to pursue at Yale.

Katherine Oh knew when she began the college application process that she wanted to find a place where students were supportive of each other. She found that place at Yale, where she graduated in 2018 as a psychology major.

Angus Mossman says his hometown of Leland, Wisconsin, had thirty-five people, two bars, and a church.

Marianne Konikoff came to Yale from an all-girls Catholic high school of roughly eleven hundred students in her hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

As a high schooler, Elijah Gunther was the type of kid who loved math so much he quite literally dreamed about it. But math was not enough to take up all of Elijah’s time during the day.

When Edgar Aviña first arrived at Yale, he had an unconventional goal for his next four years. Edgar’s interest in architecture and urban planning drew him to Yale’s campus as a senior in high school, and as a student he was determined to live in a different building each year.

Yvonne Ye graduated from high school in Shanghai and lived there for three years, so on most official records, she’s an international student because she applied from abroad.

Neche is a junior in Berkeley College majoring in applied mathematics. Her favorite book is Firegirl by Tony Abbott, she listens to a lot of EDM music, and she’s never seen the end of a movie because she always falls asleep in the middle.

While Kendrick Umstattd was thinking of where to apply to college, an alum from her high school who attended Yale came to give a talk about her time at the university. The alum brought along a copy of Yale Scientific Magazine.

“Ut Italiam laeti Latiumque petamus”

“Beth, would you mind reading the next few lines and translating them for us?”

Rachel Okun is no stranger to ivory towers juxtaposed with cityscapes—the striking architecture of Yale College, which impresses many upon their arrival, did not faze Rachel one bit.

You can say a lot about Paris, and you can say a lot about New Haven, but only one of the two cities has Yale. And for Yannis Messaoui—a Paris native, born and raised—Yale was enough.

During their senior year of high school, Bri Matusovsky—who uses they/them/their pronouns—received two life-changing surprises in just one day. On that fateful afternoon, Bri sat alone in their apartment when smoke began pouring out of a wall.

“I was definitely not considering Yale in high school,” says Jacob Hillman, who transferred to Yale in 2017 from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Jacob grew up in Plano, Texas, and attended a “massive public school” with a graduating class of about fifteen hundred students. Most of his classmates elected to stay in Texas for college.

Tony Grant applied to Yale understanding that his application showed an unconventional path to New Haven. Tony—a Massachusetts native whose father served in the navy throughout his childhood—matriculated at Yale through the Eli Whitney Students Program.