I vividly remember walking into my first computer science class. I had decided to take it on a whim, not knowing the passion it would incite. With sweaty palms, and a fast heartbeat, I immediately noticed that there were barely any girls in the classroom, and I felt extremely intimidated. Throughout the semester, however, I gained confidence in my coding abilities and started to gain a love for the topic. Despite the irritating times when the coding did not work, it was almost a game to debug the error and improve the programming. While taking other classes in anthropology, environmental sciences, and human health, I saw the opportunities for software engineering within these fields. I realized that there is a lack of students who understand the areas for improvement in these areas while having a strong technical background. Growing up in a multicultural immigrant family, I saw healthcare disparities firsthand, with my parents facing common issues such as healthcare insurance and language barriers. I have heard from other people in my community that the government or other corporations have failed them with the lack of resources, and despite the sentiments that these people have, unfortunately, no change is enacted unless there is quantitative support for their claims. Thus, these experiences have motivated me to work in this area. I’ve realized that having someone with a strong software development background and an understanding of healthcare systems may just be what is needed to enact change for populations in these areas. As someone who is hoping to potentially major in Quantitative Science at Emory University, I am most excited about big data analysis and the development of large databases that support other industries. In particular, I am fascinated with creating more accessible ways to collect healthcare data from underserved communities that may not have methods of traditional collection such as online forms. I hope to work alongside different stakeholders and parties of interest such as researchers, clinicians, and policymakers to see the sustainable and accurate way of data collection. The data analysis aspect of this job also excites me. There is something so thrilling about being able to take each person’s story and quantify it into a concise image or statistical value that everyone can understand. Sometimes all a policymaker needs is a definite measure of impact that shows change is needed to support a specific population. Overall, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to apply to the McDuffie Software Engineering Scholarship to support the healthcare of underserved communities in the future through big data analysis. Thank you for your consideration!

My mother came to the United States when she was 18 years old. She dreamt of the “American Dream”, but soon learned that the American Dream is not some magical prize that is gifted, as it is always made out to be. Instead, it requires decades of hard work, and even so, there is no guarantee that the American Dream can be achieved. It is upon reflection on the course of my mother’s life that I have realized the true dream for her was not getting rich in the United States or having an established career with consistent income. Rather, it was allowing me to have a free public education and the resources to pursue whatever career I desired. I am eternally grateful for her sacrifice so I would have a more privileged life, and because of this I choose to Dream Big. Growing up in a multicultural and immigrant family, I saw the struggles that my parents and grandparents faced within the healthcare system. I viewed firsthand how flawed the insurance programs are and the difficulties with language barriers. From my own frustration with lack of accessibility, I hope to become a doctor and change these existing social structures. My goal is to support underserved communities and ensure that they have resources such as healthcare insurance, translation support, and advising for all aspects of their lives. I’ve especially been inspired by doctors who work at clinics that offer free medical care for low-income communities, and I hope to create or work in something similar in the future. I am extremely privileged to have the opportunity to attend Emory University, and I will use this education to its full potential. So far I have gone on two free volunteer trips through Volunteer Emory to Knoxville, Tennessee and Savannah, Georgia to learn about child healthcare inequity/maternal mortality and race/food inequity respectively. These trips were eye opening to physically be in the area where the crux of the issue occurs and listen to peoples’ stories. We only see a glimpse of their life but it frustrates me to know that they endure this everyday. I have heard stories of veterans and survivors of abuse in shelters explaining how the government and other resources repeatedly fail them. This fall break I am leading a trip on immigrant and refugee healthcare inequity, where we will be exploring this issue in depth in Atlanta, Georgia to reflect on how we can support these communities in our future career. The journey to become a doctor is long and quite expensive, which is why I greatly appreciate the opportunity to apply to the La Santana scholarship. I am currently working three jobs over the summer to save money to pay off my undergraduate fees while preparing for medical school. Overall, the La Santana scholarship provides the opportunity to fund my future to support healthcare equity for all underserved communities and develop personalized resources for them. Thank you for considering me for this scholarship.

Growing up, I was never a fan of math classes. In first grade, I was barred from entering the advanced class because of my math and logical reasoning score. In fifth grade, I was placed in the remedial program for students who were struggling with math. Before I learned to love math, I viewed it as my foe, something I dreaded completing. I did not enjoy the rigidity of it, how there would only be one answer and a mistake in calculations could lead to numerous points off on an exam or the completely wrong answer. In my mind, math was linear and having a mind that did not function in that manner meant that I was inherently never going to excel at this subject. However, this mindset changed once I entered late high school. I started to be interested in data analysis; logical thinking and mathematical equations were critical parts of statistical analysis. I realized that to pursue this passion I needed to give math a second chance. Upon studying calculus and learning about logical expressions and proofs through data science-math combination classes, I gained an appreciation and love for the subject. Although my initial impression was that math was linear, the method to receive a certain answer was extremely open-ended. Even if one did discover the correct answer, there could always be a faster way to reach it or a more statistically probable method to reach it. I became fascinated with the challenge of always having to improve upon these proofs and logic, understanding that math in the end would never lie and eventually the right answer would reveal itself. There are also practical applications to math such as life and death for engineers building machines, showing scientific results, and quantifying economic changes in our world. As I continue my academic studies in university, despite still having difficulty thinking logically through math problems, I view it as a challenge now rather than a setback. To have a mind that doesn’t think so linearly can also help me think of creative methods to reach the solution, and for that I am thankful.