<p>This is strictly for Stanford University</p>
<p>I am going to tell you a story, my story. There once was a boy, born just 17 years ago. Born into a loving family, the boy flourished. He lived in a single parent home with his mother. All his life he knew there was something missing, then one day when he was five, he began to cry, for the lack of the one thing he realized he didnt have, companionship. One rainy day, his mother saw his sorrow and took him in the family's Subaru and drove down the lane to a wonderful building, Borders.</p>
<p>The boy walked around and saw one piece of polished, published paper that caught his eye. It was light blue and black. He took the cover and attached book to his mother and she read it aloud for him. "Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone", she intoned and from that day the boy read.</p>
<p>The book he held within his hands for everyday for he wasnt even sure how long became his best friend and over the years so did it's supplements. He began to crave books and knowledge. He began to crave things that would make him like his favorite character and began to take some of their characteristics. Those characteristics helped him advance from a small bookish boy, into a sociable youth. He had become a living Protagonist, and eventually a bibliophile at the age of 9.
The boy, by the age of ten, had been to school and knew what fate was expected of him as a young black male in America. The boy was very attentive. When at school he heard what the older boys said about their brothers, and about their fathers. Drug dealers? Prison Inmates? Were these the things people who looked like him were expected to become? Murder and thievery, Lies and Good for Nothings? Were these the things he was expected to do? He couldn't, no, he wouldn't become like them. So he did the only thing he knew how to, he read. He did all he could to escape the stereotype he knew would try to engulf him.</p>
<p>He didn't want to be as those before him, he would survive, he would persevere. The boy read and he read, desperate for a way out, a way to an imaginary land he had only heard about, a place of hope. His friend's older brother had one told him that it was the best place to learn anything, a place where anything is possible, a place where one could be successful. It was a place called Stanford University.</p>
<p>Soon the boy was no longer, and in his place was a well learned, sharp tongued, young man. The youth came from a very loving family, but as he soon learned, many of the best people are underappreciated and poor. Soon his mother was laid off from her job, as a single mother, she couldn't, she knew support her family, so she did the only thing she could, she went to school for a new job. The man knew his mother wouldn't be able to pay for his way out, and he knew she wouldn't be able to worry about him for much longer with two young daughters to care for. So he worked.</p>
<p>The man was too young to work professionally so he made his own money. He bought an iPhone with his birthday money and in a spirit of inspiration sold it online. Then he repeated the process buying iPhones and sold them online for a higher profit. Then one day he was scammed of his whole micro-fortune online by a hacker and he fell into terrible depression. He knew there would be no way out, and then when all hope was lost he heard of scholarships. A way for him to go to the impossible kingdom of knowledge, without having to sell his life or his family home away and be engulfed with debt. So once again the boy did the only thing he knew how to, thanks to his mother, he read. He studied harder and harder. He tried as hard as he could to become the ideal person, the ideal candidate. He worked, knowing that the only way for him to achieve his dream was by working for himself. So he began to work harder and make himself more appealing and down the line he applied for the one place he could make a difference at.</p>
<p>That young man is me, and He is not going to give up until he achieves his goal, and his dream. He will escape and he will persevere.</p>