No one in my family has completed a college degree. My father tried to complete a 4 year degree, but ultimately dropped out. My mother never had the sufficient funds to enter higher education. My brother, who is on the autism spectrum, will not be attending college. To me, being a first-generation student means that I will have access to opportunities that no one else in my family had. This was no easy feat, considering the challenges that I, along with my family, had to face over the past four years. In 2021, I lost my mother to liver failure. In 2022, I was diagnosed with clinical depression. Yet, in 2024, against all odds, I managed to get in and commit to Stevens Institute Of Technology. While I am glad that I will be attending this great college, I know it will be an uphill battle. This school is out of my family’s budget, and I am aware that I am taking a big risk by completing a degree here. My dream is to work in the field of computer science, with a particular focus on a machine learning and app development. Since my childhood, it has been my passion to work with computers and programming, and I aspire to be able to profit from this passion so I can support my family. My long term goal once I complete my degree is to get a job at a leading company in AI, such as NVIDIA. I am going to do this by pursuing and creating new projects on my own time so that I can deepen my understanding of this industry. My vision for the future is to be able to create products that are accessible to everyone and can improve people’s quality of life. So far, I have already made decent progress on this goal by winning the Congressional App Challenge. I created an app, called Circadian, that is a sleep tracker and is made of cheap, easy to obtain, 3D printed parts. In the same year, I also was the first high school cybersecurity intern at a major local company. Ultimately, I want to break the chain of my family remaining uneducated and secure my future with a high-paying job that aligns with my passion for computer science and AI. By achieving these goals, I hope to honor my family’s sacrifices and inspire others to overcome their own challenges, showing them that it is possible to turn dreams into reality, even against the greatest of odds.