Perhaps oddly, it was a surprisingly successful project in engineering that

ulti-mately inspired me to study physical sciences. A colleague and I built

a portable net-worked meteorological station, winning a national
electronics and program-ming competition. On the way I learned python,
which trained me to organise my thoughts more clearly and learn to tackle
tasks from different angles, and I also broadened my knowledge of
electronics, however I realised that the closer the issues were to science,
the more engaging they were. My favourite part was designing, carrying
out and evaluating experiments to test and calibrate the gas sensors; the
experience made me appreciate the complexity of practical investigations:
the meticulous planning required beforehand cou-pled with the ability to
think on ones feet when things do not quite go as expected; see-ing the
station working with the equation I derived from the results was highly
satisfying. I also immensely enjoyed my taste of a science symposium in
attending and presenting a poster and demonstration at an international
school STEM conference. Science, the pursuit of the knowledge upon
which engineering and so much else depends, is what fills me with wonder.

Reading and attending science lectures at school has opened my eyes to the
in-creasing interdisciplinarity of modern science, as scientists have realised
over the past century that many phenomena, from cognition to the weather,
can neither be reduced to fundamental physical principles nor pigeon-holed
into a single field. I believe the cutting edge of science today is at the
intersection of different disciplines, for instance the use of computational
and statistical models in systems biology; in researching Brownian motion
for my physics AS coursework I was impressed by the use of maths to
describe diffusion but also its ability to capture a wealth of critical
biological phenomena. This is why I wish to take a course which crosses
these traditional boundaries, so as to gain the breadth of knowledge with
which to understand and appreciate more fully the beauty of the natural
world.

To become a competent scientist, a strong mathematical ability is vital.

How-ever, beyond acknowledging its necessity, I love the combination of
logic and creative thinking involved in problem solving: in the past two
years I have received distinctions in the Maclaurin and the British Math
Olympiad and attended the selective UK Math Trust summer school. In
last years national cipher challenge my team placed highly in the UK- in
the tricky final round I spotted that with the addition of an underscore, the
27 different characters could be encoded with a transposition cipher
fractionated with a cube rather than the conventional square grid, thus
mapping each letter to a unique trigram. In uni-versity I look forward to
solving yet more complex problems and taking full advantage of
mathematics unreasonable effectiveness in providing insights into the
workings of the universe.
Although science is my focus, I continually strive to better myself through
engagement in other activities. Through participation in interschool
debating and model United Nations competi-tions, at which I have won
multiple best speaker awards, I greatly increased my confidence and
communication skills, as well as my ability to structure coherent and
persuasive arguments. I im-proved my time management studying Chinese
in my own time last year. I enjoy drawing as a hobby, and to share and
enjoy art with others I founded an online art group; over three years it grew
to over 2000 members and I gained leadership skills managing a staff team
of volunteers. I continue to use these abilities as the head of house at my
school, coordinating charity fairs, concerts and helping new students.
Volunteering at a youth centre mentoring children from one of the most
deprived areas of London has kept me grounded and aware of my
responsibility to society.