Welch arrived at Charles Wright Academy in the sixth grade. It did not take long for her to fall in love with history. In Middle School, Jenise Petrich was her greatest influence. “She assigned us all of these great projects and I discovered how exciting it is to study history,” Welch recalls. English and French are among her other favorite subject areas and both complement her interest in history. “Learning French was really difficult for me but I’ve become more confident the further I’ve gone with it,” she says.

As a freshman, her inspiration was renewed by Nick Coddington’s 20th Century History course and she developed a strong interest in World War II and human rights issues. “What I like about history is that by studying what happened before – what worked and what didn’t – we can make better decisions going forward. People think of current events and history as separate things, but it’s just a continuation,” says Welch. “Mr. Coddington is just so into everything he teaches and passion that it’s hard not to get sucked in.”

“Of all the periods in history, I’m particularly fond of studying World War II because those events are recent enough that we have photographs, films and survivor testimonies to study, but they also long enough ago that we can analyze the impact of those events from a historical perspective. It was also a key emergence period for human rights. Before World War II, there was no established sense of international human rights at all. Everything we believe and do today about human rights was set in motion by World War II.”

Welch took Advanced Placement European and U.S. History courses, then enrolled in John Lemma’s Advanced Topics in U.S. History course her senior year. “Advanced Topics has really helped to learn more about the areas of history I don’t usually focus on,” she says. “I’ve discovered that the labor movements in the 1880s and 1890s are really very interesting, and normally those are the sorts of topics I would skip over.” She is also taking Criminology this year, double dipping on social sciences electives.

Going far beyond the depth of her textbooks and class discussions, Welch conducted extensive primary and secondary research and constructed a series of websites for the National History Day competition examining Oskar Schindler, the word “genocide,” and The London Charter of the International Military Tribunal. As a junior she won first place at the state contest and traveled to Washington, DC, to compete against the top young historians in the country.

Welch’s National History Day projects attracted the attention of the Washington Holocaust Education Resource Center. Her websites are now used by teachers in classrooms around the state. Welch interned with the Center the summer before her senior year.

Welch also traveled to Poland to participate in a Holocaust remembrance conference with teens from across Europe and to the U.A.E. to debate human rights issues at a Model UN conference. She hosted three girls from U.A.E. who were visiting CWA for the school’s annual Global Teen Summit and made lifelong friends in each case. “My host sister from Poland came to visit me and spent several weeks here over the summer. The first girl I hosted from the U.A.E. was followed by her best friend and later her friend’s sister. We’ve all become really close and we’re all listed as sisters and brothers on Facebook. It’s cheesy, but it’s fun,” says Welch.

Playing soccer for four years, doing tech for several theater productions, and writing a One Act her junior year has also kept Welch pretty busy, but she insists with characteristic self deprecating humor that “sleeping, eating and watching TV” really consume most of her life.

Welch began her college search the summer before her junior year when she and her mother spent several months in Boston. She took two summer courses at Harvard studying War Crimes, Genocide and Justice in the Dawning of the Age of the International Accountability and Writing on Social and Ethical Issues in which students watched films like The Brandon Teena Story and Boys Don’t Cry and talked about how society views the issues raised by these films.

“I absolutely loved spending the summer in Boston and I knew right away that wherever I went to college, it had to be in the middle a gigantic city,” says Welch. “I love how people are always out and doing stuff at all hours. I don’t want to be on a well-defined campus. I want to walk out of my dorm and be right in the middle of downtown.”

The following spring, she took a trip with her parents to California. She liked a lot of schools she saw, but she wasn’t blown away by any of them.

By last summer she had a list of schools in major cities she wanted to consider and was busy researching them on the internet. One was George Washington University. She happened to be in DC for the National History Day competition but did not expect the contest schedule would allow her to visit. To her surprise, one of the chaperones said she’d be more than happy to take her down to the campus for an afternoon. They went on an admission tour and Welch fell head over heels in love with the place.

George Washington’s campus blends so seamlessly into the city that it is hard to know when you are on the university’s campus. It is exactly the sort of urban environment Welch was looking for. “I did not know much about it going in so I didn’t have a lot of expectations,” Welch says. “I just got there and thought ‘Oh my God, this is it!’ Location location location. The campus touches the FBI headquarters on one side and the World Bank on the other. The White House is four blocks away.”

As she learned more about the school’s academic programs, Welch only became more convinced this was the school for her. “They offer a lot of opportunities to study the things I like with people who really know what they are talking about,” She says.

Government, policy and law are some of the school’s strongest programs. The school’s 14,000 graduate students outnumber its 10,000 undergraduates, promoting an institutional culture that values research and professional experience as well as the standard courses. A big selling point for Welch was that many of the school’s professors are practitioners, members of Congress and other leaders, who bring unique expertise to the classroom. “I really have no idea what I want to major in, except that it will undoubtedly be something in the humanities or social sciences,” says Welch. “As a result, I wasn’t looking for a particularly strong program in any one area, just overall strength and a lot of opportunities for the sort of research, internships and study abroad programs I know I’m going to love.”

Confident that GW was her first choice, Welch applied early decision in November. She thought for sure she had blown her chances when she interviewed with an admissions officer. He asked her what she would say if she had one opportunity to speak to the admissions committee. Without hesitation she said, “I’m awesome.”

“I walked out of the interview and I just thought ‘I am such an idiot. They are never going to accept me,’” recalls Welch. “Here Charles Wright teaches me all these ways to be articulate and interesting in two languages and then I just go and say: ‘I’m awesome.’ ”

Apparently she is awesome, because GW accepted her. She received the congratulatory email during finals week while she was at school, but she was too nervous to open it. She waited until she got home and celebrated with her parents. Then came the tough part: considering just how much a George Washington education would cost.

“I really had to consider whether it will be worth all the loans,” she says. “My parents helped me look at all possibilities, but ultimately they said it was my decision. I had to consider how much my loan payments will be and for how long I will making them. A lot of people told me not to do it, but CWA is expensive and it’s been so worth it that I have a lot of faith George Washington will be too. I’m just going to be poor for a really long time.”

Her advice for future applicants: “Take risks; choosing George Washington is an extremely expensive risk, but I know that I would hate to look back and think, ‘What if that had been the perfect fit for me?’”

Fortunately, Greene doesn’t dwell on impossibilities. He kept looking. He kept talking to his teachers about what he hoped to find. He applied to a long list of schools all over the map geographically and in their approach to education. In the end, he did not find a school he would describe as perfect, but he found a place with the challenges and opportunities to tie those interests together: Rhode Island School of Design, better known as RISD.

Greene grew up in Gig Harbor with his parents, Mark and Jill, and his older sister Paige, a 2007 graduate of CWA. After attending Harbor Montessori, he came to Charles Wright in sixth grade. Thanks in part to the influence of his architect grandfather, his father’s interest in simplistic design, and the Montessori approach to self-directed learning, Greene found ample opportunities to explore art and design at an early age.

In Middle School, Charles Wright’s visual arts program exposed him to many new mediums – weaving, woodworking, glasswork, sculpture and more. It also helped an opportunity to get involved in journalism and student government.

In the Upper School, Greene’s interest in art deepened. “I really didn’t start Upper School thinking of myself as an artist,” he says. Nonetheless, he took courses in sculpting, printmaking and two years of advanced studio art. His senior art show featured work in several mediums. “Art is not an easy A at Charles Wright. The way Mr. H (art teacher Brian Hutcheson) and the other art teachers give you assignments and grade your work, it’s the same level of difficulty as English or math.”

During his freshmen Winterim he built an Adirondack chair. It did not turn out as well as he hoped and he kept thinking about the chair’s design. “I’ve designed hundreds of chairs since then,” he says. “I tend to sit on chairs in really odd ways, so I’m always thinking about how they could be more comfortable or ergonomic. What I design winds up looking more like sculpture than furniture. I’ve never had the chance to fabricate any of those designs, but someday I’d really like to do that.”

Meanwhile, his other interests continued to broaden. English became his favorite core academic class. “I guess you could say that English is my favorite subject and art my passion,” Greene explains. “I really love analyzing complicated literature and I really loved the JRP (Junior Research Project), which almost no one else will say. Mark Twain was my author. The focus of my paper was how Twain writes about absurdity to emphasize that life itself is absurd. Gathering all perspectives make you see things differently. It develops your sense of empathy and interest in people. By analyzing characters we can see that we’re all totally different people with different needs.”

A 2012 track team captain, Greene ran the 200m and 400m races and legs of the 4x100m and 4x400m relays. He wrote and produced two one-acts for Charles Wright’s One-Act festival. He played the part of Charlie Gordon in Flowers for Algernon. He served as the president of the Make the Dash Count Foundation, awarding $5,000 each year to nonprofit community groups to help troubled youth and learned a lot about the intricacies of grant making philanthropy in the process. He was elected by his peers to serve on the Honor Board his senior year, and he became deeply involved in several student clubs with special devotion to the Global Outreach Team.

The Global Outreach Team formed Greene’s junior year when the nonprofit advocacy and aid organization Invisible Children visited Charles Wright, looking for student support to rebuild schools in war-torn Uganda. Inspired by the needs of children of their own age, Greene and others raised $1,200 for the Anaka Secondary School, a boarding school with 77 students for each classroom on campus.

As with many initiatives that inspire students at the start, Greene saw that enthusiasm for the project seemed to fade. “I realized, if I didn’t stay involved and make things happen, who would?” he said.

That same year, CWA’s Global Teen Summit brought another aid organization to campus: World Bicycle Relief. The Global Outreach Team embraced that cause, too. In just over one year they raised $8,500 to buy specially designed bicycles for children, mostly girls, in Zambia. The bikes will help get them to school safely and make it easier for their families to transport goods to market and bring home food and water.

Greene was selected by club members to represent Charles Wright at Invisible Children’s 4th Estate student conference and then to travel to Africa with four other students to present the bikes they funded. “We learned a lot about poverty before we went, so a lot of what we saw on the trip was both expected and eye opening at the same time. Everything we had done to provide the bikes just felt really practical and necessary, so it was incredibly rewarding. People were also very friendly and interested in learning who we were and why we had come.”

Greene was in the audience when World Bicycle Relief made its first presentation at Charles Wright. From the beginning, the organization appealed to his concern for social justice and equality, but the bike itself also fascinated him. “Bikes in the U.S. are designed for paved roads,” he explains. “They’re really light so you can ride fast and they are agile so you can weave around cars. I loved how this bike was designed for the roads in Africa – no gears, thick tires, heavy frame. The design wouldn’t make any sense here, but it made perfect sense to a designer working in Africa. For the first time, it made sense to me how industrial design clicks with social justice. I thought if I was to do something for an organization like this, I would like to be the person behind the drawing board creating that bike.”

Creating artwork to hang in museums and galleries holds little appeal for Greene. It’s the idea of taking the objects people need – chairs and bikes, for example – and making them more comfortable, intuitive, ergonomic and efficient that appeals to him. “I’m just always thinking about how things are designed and how we use them,” he says.

Still, when Greene began his college search in earnest at the beginning of his senior year, he did not have a strong sense of professional or academic direction. Without criteria by which to evaluate schools he had trouble determining if any particular school would be a good fit. “I suddenly realized that I was a senior and at the end of the year I was going to have to decide on a school. I had visited a few universities, but I had not seriously considered actually going to any of them. I knew I had to start doing that right away, so I went to talk to Mr. H and he told me about the school he went to – the Rhode Island School of Design. I did some research and realized it was the very best design school in the country. If I was going to pursue design it would have to be there.”

Greene wasn’t sure he could get into RISD. “When I applied I didn’t really expect to get in, and I didn’t really expect to go there if I did get in,” says Greene. “I was completely shocked by their decision and mine to attend, but the more I thought about my passion for design, the more I realized it really was the only place I would be able to pursue industrial design in this manner as an undergrad.”

RISD is located in Providence, Rhode Island, right next door to Brown University. Students are encouraged to take courses on both campuses. There are fewer than 2,000 RISD students, but more than 8,000 at Brown and the schools coordinate many social opportunities and resources.
“I guess you could say RISD is a ‘a thinking man’s art school,’” says Greene. “They have a very strong emphasis on the liberal arts and require a lot more foundational work in art and design than other schools. It’s very intense. They offer 22 different programs – everything from apparel design and architecture to furniture design, painting and sculpture. I’m planning to focus on industrial design, but they’ll still want me to be able to work in any medium, including painting and drawing, as well as taking all the liberal arts courses that colleges usually offer.”

Industrial designers are the people who shape how every mass-produced product looks, feels and operates. Greene’s dream job would be designing the first car produced by Apple. “That would be insane,” he says. He has little interest in life as a struggling artist. “I wanted to be sure that out of college I would have a job and this is one of those jobs that can never really be outsourced. When Boeing designs a new plane, for example, they can make the parts all over the world but they’ve got to have their own engineers and they’ve got to have a trained person on hand who can work out things like the most efficient seating.” (He assures us he’s much more interested in efficiency in terms of passenger comfort than packing more people on the plane in smaller seats.)

Greene would also like to spend some of his time, energy and talent designing products like World Bicycle Relief’s bike. Perhaps it was no coincidence that RISD requires all applicants to submit as part of their portfolio of work an original drawing that references a bicycle.

Because his criteria for selecting a college was evolving as the application process proceeded, Greene wound up applying to a lot of schools, many of which he now believes would have been a poor fit. He sent 15 applications and got nine acceptance letters. “I had no idea what I wanted in the beginning. I could easily have cut six schools. I thought a lot of those schools would not accept me and then I wouldn’t have to make a tough decision myself. Instead I wound up having to choose between nine. It was hard. Very hard.”

The final decision might have been easier if Greene had visited all those schools, but putting his list together in the fall meant he saw very few campuses. He has, in fact, never been to the state of Rhode Island. “It’s definitely scary,” he says, “but I know that the program is the right one for me.”

His advice to future college applicants: “Don’t look for a perfect school. You keep thinking ‘There are so many that there must be one school where everything is perfect and that’s where I need to be.’ That’s just not true. It sounds cliché, but, in the end, it really is the best fit that is the most important.”

“All through high school, New York University was my dream school. I never really even considered any place else until September of my senior year,” says Skokin. “Then I went to visit Colgate, NYU and Syracuse. Colgate felt way too small. NYU was too crowded and surprisingly left me really disenchanted. Syracuse was the happy medium. As soon as I set foot on campus, I knew it was my perfect school. I fell in love right away.”

Skokin grew up in Steilacoom. Her parents both emigrated from Romania, so she and her brother Jack, now a freshman at Charles Wright, learned to speak Romanian before they learned English. She attended Steilacoom Public Schools and came to Charles Wright in seventh grade. Perhaps because she was already bilingual, she felt immediately comfortable in CWA’s world languages program. She blazed through the entire French curriculum, completing Advanced Placement French as a junior, and then took up Japanese.

Always fascinated with people and their motivations, aspirations and anxieties, Skokin especially loved her English and history classes. She is taking AP English this year from Tony Chursky. “I’ve always been pretty good at English but he really makes you work hard,” she says. “He’s really motivating, so I enjoy that this year I have to work harder than ever before and push my own standards to succeed in his class. I think a lot of kids at Charles Wright have experiences like that. We may excel in a field of particular interest but we’re also constantly being driven to achieve more than we thought we could.”

Psychology is another of her favorite classes. “I just love Mr. Dempsey,” she says. “He explains everything so well and class never feels like it’s coming from a textbook. He’s introduced a lot of thought-provoking subjects and I just want to leave class every day and sit for a half-hour to think about everything we’ve discussed.”

Skokin hopes to eventually earn a PhD. in clinical psychology and work as a therapist, a career she believes will allow her to help people deal with their most personal struggles. She is particularly interested in working with teenagers. “Teens can better describe than young children how they feel, but self-censor less than adults,” she explains. “I think that really creates an opening for therapy to be effective. I might consider working at a school or opening my own practice some day.”

Although her academic interests are well defined, Skokin wanted to be sure her college experience would also be well-rounded both inside and outside the classroom. At CWA she has engaged in visual and performing arts, producing an art show, writing a One Act and building sets for several school theater productions. She has also played volleyball, tutored 5th graders and served on the yearbook staff while working outside of school as a babysitter and lifeguard.

“I wanted a Charles Wright-type school,” she says. “I own more Tarrier apparel than I know what to do with and I wanted to be sure to find a school with that sort of spirit, but also a community that valued individuality and diversity. Basically, I want to…for example, be able to both cheer for sports teams and join a book club.”

When she visited Syracuse with her mom, they took a campus tour and met with a group of students. They also drove around the town that surrounds the school and Skokin interviewed with an admissions officer. Her gut feeling that this was the right school was confirmed by everything she learned. Syracuse had solid psychology programs; both clinical and school psychology programs are offered at the graduate level. The school strongly encourages students to study abroad their junior year and offers psychology programs in Madrid, London, Florence, Santiago and Istanbul. Skokin loved their Lit Mag, book clubs, season ticket packages and the eclectic scope of concerts on campus.

“It’s just not your typical school,” she says. “It’s academic programs are highly acclaimed so it’s not necessarily a big jock school even though it has a very successful Division I sports program. There are a lot of quirky eccentrics who are Syracuse alums and I feel like the students are people I’ll really relate to well.”

Skokin applied in December and in mid-March she learned that she was accepted and chosen to receive a $50,000 scholarship. She immediately decided to become an Orange.

With that major decision behind her, Skokin settled back to enjoy the rest of her senior year. “I’m really sentimental, so I want to get in my last good-bye with all my friends who are going off on their own adventures,” she says. She is also looking for a summer job so she can be self-sufficient in college. “I’m ready to be a grown up,” she says.

Her advice to future college applicants: “Try to find a good balance for everything. It’s possible to have your hobbies, maintain a social life, and do well in school if you try hard enough. It’s possible to succeed in all those areas without working yourself too hard, either. Colleges like well-rounded students, and being able to juggle a whole bunch of different interests while not losing your head will show a school that you’re a student worth accepting.”

Yamamoto grew up in Lakewood with her parents, Kaz and Phoebe, and her older brother Michael, a 2007 graduate of CWA. Sarah became a Lifer at Charles Wright, entering the school in Kindergarten. She excelled in every academic discipline and many of her teachers found themselves discussing the subtleties of scholarship with her more as a colleague than as a student. Yamamoto, however, consistently valued depth over breath. Rather than joining every activity she was good at, she chose to really commit her time and energy to a select group of interests.

Music became one of her first passions and soon a major commitment. She began studying the piano then switched to the cello. “The piano is too often a solo instrument and I like how playing the cello generally involves more group work,” she says. “It’s very interactive.” She particularly enjoys playing chamber music in a small ensemble. She played with the school orchestra for five years before a scheduling conflict prompted her to move to the band her senior year. There isn’t much music written for band and cello, so she often improvises by playing the tuba or baritone score.

“I love how playing music allows me to connect with my classmates on a different level than in the classroom,” says Yamamoto. “It’s the same philosophy as school athletics or outdoor ed. You see a different dimension of people playing music together. You establish camaraderie. It becomes much easier to come to common ground in any other discussion.”

She has performed at Carnegie Hall with the American High School Honors Orchestra and is the co-principal cellist of the Tacoma Youth Symphony. She’s been part of the pit orchestra for several plays at Charles Wright and plays in a string quartet with classmates Anthony Wohns, Tim Chang and Jay Um. Outside of Charles Wright, she’s also a member of a quartet composed of friends from the Tacoma Youth Symphony. She has competed in the Solo and Ensemble competition and has been selected to play with several all-state orchestras.

Yamamoto completed Charles Wright’s most rigorous course offerings in math and science, but her real passion is the study of human languages, a field called linguistics. The groundwork for that study is laid in high school through such courses as English, world languages (Yamamoto studied Japanese and went to Japan on a Winterim trip), and history. Yamamoto has taken them all.

“I’m very fond of English class. In both writing and studying literature, there is always something more to do. English has always been a place where there’s been an opportunity for me to go further and challenge myself,” says Yamamoto. As a sophomore and junior, the English faculty honored her work ethic and achievement with awards for writing, research and scholarship.

“I’m really interested in the underlying structures of languages. I’m interested in how computer science can be used to study grammar and to develop translation technologies. I also think invented languages are fascinating,” says Yamamoto. “The idea of developing a universal language that would unite the world is both philosophically and technically interesting.”

Yamamoto has found opportunities to explore her interest in linguistics by founding a Linguistics Society on campus and introducing her peers to the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad. She also joined the Linguistic Society of America and celebrated her 18th birthday by driving to Portland to attend the LSA’s annual meeting. “It’s incredibly nerdy, but I absolutely loved it,” she says.

Community service has also been an important part of her high school experience. She joined Wohns to raise money for Japanese tsunami relief, worked with the Boys and Girls Club, helped run Middle School Knowledge Bowl competitions, and sorted donations for the Toy Rescue Mission. This year, the Tacoma Youth Symphony Association recognized Yamamoto as their Student Volunteer of Note. She particularly enjoyed her Winterim experience working with World Relief Seattle, a nonprofit that provides English as a Second Language classes and other social services. It was a service project that matched up beautifully with her interest in linguistics.

Yamamoto began going on college tours in fifth grade, tagging along with her older brother as he researched schools. “I was intrigued, but it all felt really distant,” she recalls. “When it came time to start my own search, however, I felt like I had a head start. I did not go on too many tours myself, which I sort of regret.”

One school she did make sure to visit was Columbia. For years it was her dream school. Both of her parents studied there and she visited with Michael and again her junior year. “I loved it there, but Columbia doesn’t offer a major in linguistics. I thought about studying something else and returning to linguistics in graduate school. It was really hard for me to step back and see that it just doesn’t make sense for what I’m interested in, as much as I loved the campus and the idea of living in New York.”

Yamamoto decided what was really important to her was to study at a research university with ample funding for undergraduate research and to live in an urban area where she could participate in and attend a lot of arts events.

As she explored schools with linguistics majors, Yamamoto kept finding that the best sources of information on the field and the most exciting new research are all coming from Stanford.

“Ms. Ryan told me about Stanford’s Symbolic Systems Program. It’s an interdisciplinary project blending computer science, neuroscience, psychology, humanities and the sciences. The more I researched programs, the more I realized that Stanford is where most of the groundbreaking work in computational linguistics is really happening. The programs on the East Coast are rooted in history and anthropology and that’s not my real area of interest.”

Life in California, however, would be very different than the life Yamamoto imagined for herself in New York. No Broadway. No Carnegie Hall. It was something she really needed to think about before she was ready to commit.

“I wasn’t particularly looking for summer school options last summer, but when I came across an opportunity to study at Stanford for the summer, it felt like a great match,” she says. “I was really hesitant to give up the chance to participate in the Tacoma Youth Symphony’s summer camp, but I discovered that I could take college courses alongside undergrads, live on campus, and play in the Stanford orchestra. Being on campus helped me decide that Stanford would be my top choice. It was by far my longest college tour.”

During her eight-week stay, Yamamoto took courses in literature and cognitive psychology. She also played with the orchestra and took a tennis class. On the tennis courts she met Jieun Oh, a 2004 Charles Wright graduate who is now a PhD candidate at Stanford working in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, a multi-disciplinary facility where composers and researchers work together using computer-based technology both as an artistic medium and as a research tool. Oh’s PhD research is on the sound of human laughter.

With shared interests in music and interdisciplinary research, not to mention their shared history at Charles Wright, the two found much to discuss. “Jieun gave me a tour of her lab and also told me about the laptop computer and cell phone orchestras she’s a member of at Stanford. The more I learned, the more I got excited about Stanford.”

As she finalized her list of schools, Stanford made its way to the top. Her interest in the school proved far more than academic. “Stanford is building a new concert hall that will open in January 2013 and Yo-Yo Ma is scheduled to perform in the opening season. I’ve never seen him play, so I’m really looking forward to that. I also hope to play there myself with the orchestra and chamber ensembles. I did some fencing in middle school and I was excited to find they have a club program there. They also have a Japanese Taiko drumming ensemble that I plan to join.”

Yamamoto decided to submit her application in the fall. “After the summer, I knew I would be happy there, but I was also sure that it’s not the one and only school where I could be happy. Since the decision is non-binding, there didn’t seem to be any reason not to apply early action. And if I was accepted, I could save myself the trouble of applying to other schools.”

Stanford posted its decisions online the Friday before finals at Charles Wright. “I went outside to check on my phone and I totally panicked when I turned on my phone and didn’t immediately have an email. Then I realized it was just going to take a few minutes for my phone to load emails so I raced up to the computer lab. I knew there wouldn’t be many people there after school and I really wanted to find out as soon as possible. I was so excited when I saw I was accepted that I came running down the stairs and through the Upper School yelling about it. Mr. Dempsey called back, “Congratulations! You still can’t run in the halls, though.”

For Yamamoto, one of the best parts of the experience was sharing the news with teachers in the Lower and Middle Schools whom she has known for years. “There’s something really special about having attended this school for 13 years,” she says. “I’m so glad I’ve stayed close with many of my teachers.”

Gone are the days when students waited anxiously between the day they were accepted and the day they moved onto campus, wondering who their classmates would be and whether they would make friends. Stanford, like most schools, has a Facebook Group for the Class of 2016 and Yamamoto is already getting to know her future classmates.

“People are very active on there, which can be really distracting,” she admits. “It’s exciting to see their energy and how quickly they make things happen. For example, a group of students not only took it upon themselves to design a t-shirt for the Class of 2016, but also had the thoroughness to organize online ordering and convenient distribution. It’s certainly a community of doers.” She’s also looking forward to signing up for Stanford’s pre-orientation outdoor ed program and is grateful that beach hike and sophomore outdoor ed have prepared her for that experience.

Of course, she still has a few months left of high school and wants to get the most out of that experience too. “I went to Italy for Winterim and I’ve been talking to our hosts and the other people on that trip about setting up a return trip,” she says.

Her advice to future applicants: “Don’t change who you are to mold yourself to a particular college. As you’re looking at schools, go deeper than the “quick facts” on the website. Look at course catalogues and map out what classes you might take. Read the student newspaper and find out what issues the students are talking about. That’s going to give you a better idea of what it’s going to be like once you’re actually there.”

For Tim Chang, choosing a college was less about making a choice and more about letting go of the decision altogether and following where God was leading. It turns out that was just the sort of unconventional wisdom Rice University looks for in students and Chang is now a proud member of the Owls’ Class of 2016.

“At Rice there is no ‘what if’ that cannot become ‘what is.’ It just takes radical thinking to get there – and a community of brilliant, passionate dreamers and doers to lead the way. It takes unconventional wisdom,” brags the school’s website.

That commitment to intellect, integrity and work ethic resonates for Chang. It embodies the life he’s tried to lead up until this point and the type of person he hopes to continue to be as an adult. Embracing a school that values that sort of thinking made perfect sense. Embracing a school in Texas was an idea that took a little more getting used to.

Chang spent his early years in California, moving to Washington and entering Charles Wright in seventh grade. He fell in love with the school community and soon excelled as a scholar, leader, musician and athlete.

“I love the fact that Charles Wright offered me the opportunity to take a wide breadth of classes,” says Chang. “My first loves are political science and history, but I love the sciences too.” By the time he graduates, he plans to have 11 Advanced Placement exams under his belt – computer science, European and U.S. history, psychology, calculus AB and BC, Spanish literature, statistics, chemistry, physics, and English. His breadth of knowledge has allowed him to play a key role in the school’s Knowledge Bowl team success for four years.

“Rice is like a bigger Charles Wright,” Chang explains. “Students excel across the board and they don’t make you specialize early on. I think it’s a little ridiculous to say at 17 that you need to know what you want to do with the rest of your life. I want to explore a variety of fields and pick a major that creates lots of options.”

One option at Rice that Chang is considering is the unique Rice/Baylor Medical Scholars program. Every year, 14 incoming freshmen are given a guarantee that they will be admitted to the Baylor College of Medicine. They are selected based on their science background, sense of compassion and social consciousness. In eight years, students complete both their undergraduate degree and medical school. They can choose any trajectory through college that interests them and as long as they complete the required courses for medical school, they don’t have to take the MCAT entrance exam.

Both of Tim’s parents work in the medical industry. His mother, Florence, works for Multicare. His father is a consultant. On Thursday nights, Tim volunteers in the waiting room at Multicare, comforting families as they wait for loved ones in surgery.

“I’ve worked with families from a wide spectrum of society and seen a lot of different outcomes. I’m there to share in their joy or comfort them in their grief, and you never know what you’re going to get each night. I’ve learned that people handle stress very differently. I started volunteering there to see if I would be interested in medicine, and it has drawn me closer to that idea. The connection between patient care and the relationships between doctors, patients and families are really important,” says Chang.

“I want to engage in a profession where I can serve other people and benefit society. I feel like one of the most far reaching ways to do that is to go into medicine. These careers give you a lot of useful skills and the flexibility to volunteer with non-governmental organizations like Doctors Without Borders.”

Chang’s commitment to service goes far beyond his responsibilities at Multicare. He is very involved in his church in Shoreline where he helps lead worship and has been elected by his peers all four years of high school to lead community service efforts.

Music is another of Chang’s long term commitments. He studied violin and piano from a young age and has played in the CWA orchestra since seventh grade and the Tacoma Youth Symphony since eighth grade. He plays in a string quartet, competes in Solo and Ensemble contests, and has played in the pit for several school theater productions. “At Charles Wright you can explore your interests and do things you’d never try at another school,” says Chang. “If you’d told me my freshman year that I would play a lead role in a musical, I would have laughed you out of the room because I always had piercing stage fright, but here I’ve been encouraged to participate in a lot of different things and explore a lot of passions.”

Chang is also making his first trip to the state tennis tournament this spring. He and his doubles partner, Evan Valentine, qualified in the fall. “Most years I’ve just played tennis during the season, but this year I’ve got to be ready for state in the spring so I’ve been playing outside of school and trying to stay in shape.”

Perhaps the only thing Chang has not enjoyed about his years at Charles Wright was living far away from most of his family. He moved to Tacoma with his parents, but left behind twin brothers who are ten years older. His extended family on his mother’s side is based in Texas. Going to Rice was their idea, at least at the start.

“Through the end of my sophomore year, I thought I wanted to go back to California for college,” Chang says. “I loved living there, so Stanford and the University of California schools were the first on my list. As I started looking, however, I couldn’t really see myself at any of them. Some felt pretty impersonal, like they’re just trying to get you through the machine of school as fast as possible.”

As his interest in California schools began to wane, Chang took a fortuitous trip to Texas. “I went to Houston for a church retreat and spent some time with my aunts, uncles and cousins. Thanks to their persistent nagging, I went on a tour of Rice. Right away, I could feel myself there. I knew the school would be a top candidate for me. As I went through the process of considering schools, a lot of what I had to do was put it into the Lord’s hands and have Him decide for me what he wanted me to do. At first, I really didn’t see myself in Texas. I prayed a lot about it and felt the Lord pulling me there. I want to spend more time with my grandparents and learn from their experience. I also want to assist them in any way I can by being closer. My grandmother had a minor fall and that was a sign for me. From then, it was a matter of overcoming my own desires and focusing on the Lord’s desires.”

By the end of his junior year, Rice was his top choice, but Chang kept working with his college counselor, Noel Blyler. “He really appreciated that I knew where I wanted to go but encouraged me to keep looking none the less. I really thank him for that because it really showed me the reasons that Rice was the right school. In looking at other colleges, I understood better what I liked in particular about Rice and what I want to get out of going to Rice – an education for the future and a focus on thinking critically.

“My parents also went through their own college search. Initially we all thought I would attempt to go to an Ivy League school. In the end, we realized that just because a school doesn’t have a certain name brand it can still provide a great education, and we all saw that the Lord’s decision needs to supersede our own. In the end, they were fully supportive of my decision.”

After submitting his early application, Chang waited anxiously for a response. He started applications for many of the other schools on his list but held off submitting them until he heard from Rice. In December, he learned he was among the first students accepted. “I took a bit of a gamble,” he admits. “If I had not been admitted, I would have spent the whole winter break on applications.”

Chang’s advice to future applicants: “Know how you best learn. You can read all the reviews and rankings, but you need to come up with your own ranking and that should come from your own criteria. Don’t let some rating agency decide that for you.”

Knowledge Bowl
CWA has a long history of winning Knowledge Bowl championships in this “team Jeopardy” style contest. After beating every other school in regular season competition, the Tarriers 2012 trip to state began with the regional tournament. The CWA A and B teams came in 1st and 2nd place in the big 3A division. The A team won regionals by defeating Garfield High School in Seattle and Woodinville High School in the finals 17-10-5. The A team lost big to Garfield in round three, but won the final round to take the title.

Now ten seniors will compete for the school’s first 3A title on Saturday, March 17, at Marysville Pilchuck High School. The A team will include Sarah Sadlier, Tim Chang, Anthony Wohns, Peter Schilling and Josh Zhu. The B team will include Kajsa Mayo, Steven Lemma, Sarah Yamamoto, Justice Nichols and Nikki Ebalo. The teams are coached by John Lemma and Dave Kangas.

Knowledge Master
While Knowledge Bowl is a WIAA competition that ends at the state tournament, Knowledge Masters allows CWA students to compete via the internet with teams from schools all over the country and world. Sadlier organized practices last fall for the school’s first run at the competition. She competed with fellow Knowledge Bowl veterans Yamamoto, Chang, Nichols, Zhu, Wohns, Ebalo and Mayo. Joining the squad were senior Feng “ Frank” Wu, sophomore Nick Lai, and freshmen Emily Ge, Conor Sandoval and Jack Dimmer. In the fall competition, CWA placed 34th out of 82 teams. The school ranked fourth among schools with 201 to 500 students. The Tarriers plan to compete again in April. The team is coached by Kangas.

History Bee and Bowl
The National History Bee and Bowl Washington State Championships took place in Silverdale over Presidents Day Weekend. A total of 12 varsity and 6 JV teams fought for the titles and the opportunity to compete at the national level. In the varsity competition, Charles Wright won the state title, defeating Thomas Jefferson B 240-180 in a great match that was tied heading to the fourth quarter. Sadlier and Zhu, accompanied by Lemma, represented CWA. All the other teams had four members. The Bee follows the same format, but is set up for individual competition. Sadlier won the state championship and she will advance to nationals, held in Washington, DC, in April, to compete in both events.

American Math Competition
The American Mathematical Contest (AMC) tests are part of a series of national contests sponsored each year by The Mathematical Association of America with support from a number of professional organizations. These exams (the AMC 12, AMC 10 & AMC consist of 25 challenging multiple choice problems to be completed in 75 minutes. In November, 50 Middle School students took the AMC 8 and we had 15 students score in the top 25% nationally with two earning results in the top 1%, Grace Lee and Jack Moore. In February, about 50 Upper School students took either the AMC 10 or the AMC 12 and we had 16 students score in the top 25% nationally, again with two earning results in the top 1%, Alexander Moore and Greg Lee. Greg Lee becomes eligible for the invitational round in March and is the first CWA student to advance in the past three years. Gil LeFrancois organizes participation at CWA.

History Day
In contract to the quiz-style competitions, National History Day challenges students to conduct their own original research and present their findings in a variety of formats. After winning the state team title in 2011, CWA is sending just one veteran competitor into competition this year along with a strong group of freshmen. Sadlier and Ge have submitted historical papers. Erik Peterson, Tyler Sadlier, Hayley Tillett, Taylor Walsh and Tabitha Wibowo have all built websites on different topics. The regional competition will be held March 29. The state competition is in early May and nationals are in June. The team is coached by Nick Coddington, Susan Sparrow and Althea Cawley-Murphree.

Computational Linguistics Olympiad
The North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) begins with an open round in February, for which middle and high school students all across the country are eligible. Students who do well in the open round become eligible for the invitational round in March. Students who, in turn, do well in the invitational round become eligible for the international round, usually held during the summer. CWA students competing in the first round included Ebalo, Schilling, Yamamoto, Jacqueline Elder, Decker Nielsen, Kim Skokin, Ashley Thomas and Natlie Tjota. Yamamoto and Nielsen made it to the invitational round and are now awaiting their results. The group is led by Creighton King.

Science Bowl
As previously reported, CWA also participated in Science Bowl this year. Students proudly came home with more than $300 in prizes won in the building portion of the competition.

Editor’s note: This story is the first 2011-2012 entry in Charles Wright’s College Choices blog series. Please check back soon for more stories or to read the 34 stories from the classes of 2010 and 2011.

When it came to choosing a short list of colleges, Anthony Wohns took a step back. He thought carefully about the experience he hopes to have for the next four years and the doors his college education will open in the future. He chose Harvard as his top choice because of the sense of belonging he felt among Harvard students and the strengths of academic programs in his areas of interest.

In the fall of his junior year, Wohns attended the Harvard National Model UN Conference with his Charles Wright classmates. He spent an evening with his cousin, a Harvard sophomore. They hung out in his dorm, casually chatting with other students. “Everyone I met that night was so intellectually motivated, they didn’t care that I was a high school student. If you have something interesting to say, they wanted to hear it,” recalls Wohns. “That’s when I knew Harvard was my top choice. Going there became the dream for me.”

Wohns grew up in Browns Point, the youngest of Richard Wohns and Marie Lauritano’s four children. Anthony became a Tarrier in third grade and followed in the footsteps of Michi ’98, Sage ’01 and Nicolai ’03.

Wohns began his college search much earlier than most students. He began visiting colleges when he was in Lower School, tagging along to visit schools with his older siblings. Throughout his Upper School years, his family made a point of visiting schools during family trips. “Visiting a number of campuses really helped me figure out what sort of school I wanted to attend. I decided I wanted a research institution of moderate size on the East Coast with many opportunities, resources, and strong programs in history, computer science, and Japanese.”

To fully explore these three areas of academic interest, Wohns sought opportunities inside and outside the classroom. For example, Wohns took four history classes with John Lemma including AP US history and an independent study. Throughout Upper School, Wohns participated in Model UN and Knowledge Bowl, both sponsored by the history and social sciences department. Wohns’ interest in computer science links the fields of math, science, and engineering. He took the most rigorous science and math courses Charles Wright offers. Last summer he combined all these interests as he conducted research in the neuroengineering lab at the University of Washington.

Wohns was exposed to Japanese traditions and culture by his mother and grandmother and began studying the language in sixth grade at Charles Wright. While in Upper School, he spent two summers in Japan. His first immersion experience living with a family in Tokyo was made possible by a scholarship from Youth for Understanding, an opportunity that his teacher, Stephanie Glenn, encouraged him to pursue. The next summer he spent two weeks working on an organic farm on the Island of Hokkaido, then studied Japanese history and language at a university in Tokyo.

Following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, Wohns partnered with classmate Sarah Yamamoto to raise more than $8,000 for the Japanese Red Cross. Teachers say that this effort is consistent with Wohns’ character as a quiet, unassuming, deliberative leader who almost always achieves success by working with others, but rarely claims the credit for himself. It has earned him the respect of his classmates as well, for they selected him to serve on the honor board this year.

Wohns’ academic accomplishments have already won him high honors. He is a National Merit Scholarship Finalist and as a junior he received CWA’s Brown University Book Award for English and the Rensselaer Medal for science and mathematics, among other awards. He’s also an athlete and musician.

As a member of the track team, he was voted “most improved athlete” his sophomore year and competed with the 4×400 meter relay team at the state meet his junior year. He also loves travel and outdoors activities. Just before his senior year, Wohns joined English teacher Creighton King and senior Alex Nielsen on his most ambitious trip yet. They made a 93-mile trek around Mount Rainier on the Wonderland Trail in just three days.

Wohns began studying the violin at age four and has played with CWA ensembles since seventh grade. He also began playing the viola in ninth grade and performs in a string quartet, Strings Around the Sound, with Jay Um, Tim Chang and Yamamoto. After five years in the string orchestra, a scheduling conflict pushed him to try the jazz band where he has played the electric violin. This past fall, he won a place in the all-state orchestra. This February he won the regional solo and ensemble competition for solo violin and will compete at the state level in the spring. Outside of school, he has played with the Tacoma Youth Symphony for eight years.

After considerable deliberation and several meetings with Katie Ryan, his college counselor, he chose to apply early action to Harvard and began writing his application during the summer. In December he heard that he had been accepted to Harvard. “It’s a dream come true,” he said.

With one major life decision behind him, Wohns began thinking about his future plans and the challenges ahead. “I’m trying to take it one step at a time,” he says, “but I know I want to study psychology, computer science, history, and Japanese. I also want to learn Russian and explore the fields of economics and international relations.”

Wohns said, “I’m really going to miss driving to school everyday, looking up at Mt. Rainier and the Olympics, knowing that I can go hiking almost every weekend. I’m also going to miss the teachers, staff, and students at Charles Wright. The school has given me amazing opportunities not only in academics, but also in the greater world.”

His advice to students is simple: “Take advantage of all Charles Wright has to offer. Choose challenging courses and work hard at them. Compile your college list, and get your applications done early. Start over the summer and finish before final exams. You don’t want to submit your applications without knowing you did your best work.“

Many professional musicians credit their All-State experience as crucial in their decision to choose music as a career. Thousands of others whose career paths took them in other directions have great memories of participating in this inspiring and motivating musical experience and claim that it was a life-changing experience for them.

Well-known Washingtonians who have participated in past years’ WMEA All-State groups include The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist David Horsey, 2008 National Teacher of the Year Andrea Peterson and jazz saxophonist Kenny G.

During the legislative session, pages deliver mail, run errands, present the flag and learn parliamentary procedures first hand. Students also try their hand at drafting a bill and engage in a mock session. Oh and Miles both worked on a bill to help prevent childhood obesity. His bill would educate children on how to exercise. Hers would mandate schools to have more physical education in their curriculum.

Oh was sponsored by Sen. Tim Sheldon from the 35th legislative district. “The page program offers a rare, firsthand opportunity to learn about state government,” said Sheldon. “I am glad Sewon was able to take advantage of it.”

“I really enjoyed the page program,” said Oh. “It was really cool to see how senators make the bills, it’s not just a yes or no and then it passes. It takes a lot of time and effort to persuade people to vote for your bill.”

Miles was sponsored by Sen. Regala from the 27th district. “The page program is one of the best ways I know for young people to learn about state government,” said Regala. “I am really glad that Olivia got a chance to participate.”

“I never knew the bill process was so difficult,” said Miles. “You must first think of the bill, then you need to get certain people to sign on to it, and then even if your bill gets picked there is a chance that it might not go through committee. It’s such a long process, but it means a lot. There are so many good bills; a lot of people have good ideas.”

Students ages 14 to 16 who are interested in the Senate Page Program are encouraged to visit http://www.leg.wa.gov/Senate/Administration/PageProgram/.

As each candle was lit, Chaplain Mike Moffitt read the following statements in alphabetical order explaining its significance.

Bodhi Day: Buddha statue and candle
This day marks the time when Siddhartha Gautama, a spiritual teacher and founder of Buddhism, positioned himself under a tree and vowed to remain there until he attained supreme enlightenment.  All Buddhist traditions agree that upon the rising of the morning star, he had experienced enlightenment and attained Nirvana.

Chinese New Year: Chinese lanterns
Chinese New Year is an all East and South-East-Asia celebration. In China it is known as “Spring Festival.”  It marks the end of the winter season, and the festival begins on the first day of the first month in the traditional Chinese calendar. It is a reflection on how the people behaved and what they believed in the most.

Christmas: Advent Wreath
Christmas is the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, believed to be the Son of God and Savior of the world.  Christmas traditions vary worldwide, and the day is often celebrated in prayer and song at church services, and gifts are often given to represent the gifts that Jesus received from the three kings, and the gift that Jesus is to the world.

Diwali: Diyas
Diwali gets its name from the row of lamps that Indians light outside their homes to symbolize the inner light that protects us from spiritual darkness.  Diwali originated as a harvest festival that marked the last harvest of the year before winter.  Indians celebrate with family gatherings, glittering clay lamps, festive fireworks, flowers, sharing of sweets, and worship.

Hanukkah: Menorah
Chanukah — the eight-day festival of light — celebrates the triumph of light over darkness.  More than twenty-one centuries ago, a small band of faithful Jews defeated the mighty Syrian-Greek army, which sought to eliminate Jewish religion and culture, and drove the Greeks from the land.  They reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the service of God.

Japanese New Year: Wreath and candle

New Year is the most important holiday in Japan.  Families typically gather to spend the day together.  Each new year is seen as providing a fresh start. Consequently, all duties are supposed to be completed by the end of the year, while parties are held with the purpose of leaving the old year’s worries and troubles behind.

Kwanzaa: Kinara
Kwanzaa is an African American and Pan-African holiday which celebrates family, community and culture. Celebrated from 26 December thru 1 January, its origins are in the first harvest celebrations of Africa from which it takes its name. The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase “matunda ya kwanza” which means “first fruits” in Swahili.  Kwanzaa was established in 1966 in the midst of the Black Freedom Movement and thus reflects its concern for cultural groundedness in thought and practice.

Yule: Candle
Yule marks the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and celebrates the rebirth of the sun in the Norse pagan tradition.  The modern day, western Yule festival contains a large blend of celebrations, leading back to multiple cultures and religious practices.  Practices include decorating a fir or spruce tree, burning a Yule log, hanging mistletoe and holly branches, and giving gifts.