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Caleb Chen Gets a Full Ride to University of Pennsylvania Yet Remains a Humble, Friendly Guy

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by Caylee Winpigler

One of the most prestigious and seemingly impossible awards to be bestowed on a student is a full ride scholarship to the college of your dreams. Although many of Walkersville’s students are highly qualified to obtain one, it is a highly competitive award and is open to everyone across the world. However, one Walkersville High School student was fortunate enough to receive this tremendous honor. His name is senior Caleb Chen.

University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) is the university responsible for making Chen’s dreams come true with their generous offer. “It was very surreal,” exclaimed Chen with a joyful smile spreading across his face.

UPenn is highly acclaimed and is not known for handing out money freely. On average, the school gives out approximately 30 full tuition scholarships which are mostly given to students pursuing a medicinal degree. [1]

Now considering these statistics, it makes Chen’s accomplishment even more outstanding.

“I remember the whole day,” admitted Chen with a look of nostalgia, “It was a Thursday and I had spent the whole day thinking about [acceptance to Penn], and I also had finals, too, for FCC and I had to focus on that first. As soon as I was done with the finals, I started thinking about it again because I knew the decision was coming out that day, I just didn’t know what time so I kept checking my email. I just kept looking at the time every few seconds for when we’d leave school. When I got home I checked again and several more times and each time nothing came out of it; it was just spam emails. I decided to just wait it out, and I decided to check one more time before I went to take a shower and there was an update on ‘your application.’”

“I decided this could either be a rejection, deferment, or acceptance, so I decided to click on it and it said ‘Congratulations! You have been accepted to the University of Penn!’ I only briefly read the first part and ran up to tell my sister and my mom, since they were the only ones home. We were all really excited at that time because I didn’t really think that it could happen, but it did happen. So afterwards, I just kept checking again and again just to make sure because I know it’s happened because before where a person got accepted because there was a flaw in the system. I didn’t want the whole acceptance and then to realize it’s not true. After a period I realized that I was going to UPenn.”

Chen’s own excitement was personified and heightened by his mother and sister. “My mom and my sister were definitely the most excited about [my acceptance]. They were hugging and jumping around. My two younger brothers were happy too, but they were more subdued because they’re in middle school. They still knew that it was something important to me, but they weren’t as excited as my mother and sister.”

By having a couple of months to sit on the results, Chen has had time to process the magnitude of his acceptance, “It’s definitely a lot more relaxing because I feel like a lot of the seniors work towards college applications. I know that I spent September and October studying for tests, making sure I did well in school, while also making sure that I got my college applications done since I knew the last thing that I wanted to do was procrastinate. The two times that I felt really relieved was November 1st when I got all of my college applications in and it was out of my hands at that time, so all I had to do was pretty much wait. Then December came and that was when I knew college decisions were coming out, so I was very excited during that time. And then I got into Penn.”

Beyond the esteem that Penn provides, Chen had other reasons for why he thought Penn to be the perfect university for him, “Honestly mostly because it is close to home and it’s only [roughly] two and a half hours away. It’s also a really good school and it’s in Philadelphia which I know very well. Since I used to live in Pennsylvania, we would go there quite often.”

Another contributing factor was, surprisingly, the size. Many students are intimidated by a school whose proceeding undergraduate student population was 10,406 [2], but Chen found it to be an advantage. Not only are there a wider scope of people to collaborate with, but they also have the proper funding to support more in depth learning opportunities, “I was looking for a larger school environment that had smaller programs… that allow you to take smaller classes with different professors where you can do research internships with them. It’s the balance of the actual size of the school and the programs they offered that were more personal.”

With all this said, what exactly made Chen stand out to the admissions officers?

Chen believes a lot of their decision had to do with his writing samples and those of his teachers, “I think the strongest parts of my application was my Common App essay, my supplemental essay, my two teacher recommendations, and my recommendation from my NCI (National Cancer Institute) mentor. I think the qualitative parts of my application, rather than the quantitative, contributed most to my acceptance.”

In addition, he tried not to obsess over applications and he maintained proactive in his other activities that he participates in at the school. “Most of my day I spend at my internship at the NCI specifically in biomedical computer extension. I switch my time between NCI, FCC, and classes here. Since half of my day is spent at NCI, I spend the rest of my day doing research that my mentor has given me and learning all of the stuff that I’ll have to do on the job. Currently, I am working on a 360 video to be our device like Google cardboard, so we can actually post a video on YouTube to show the molecules that we are visualizing much like a Virtual Reality (VR) device.”

Besides his academics, he does extracurricular activities too that he truly enjoys. He is on the academic team which started having matches after the winter break.

Chen is also responsible for entrepreneurship club that he began himself earlier this year. The club is powered by MIT Launch who give them mentors to assist them throughout their creative process. “We decide what we want the app to look like and what niches we want to target, so it’s a lot of collaborative work,” summarized Chen.

A common theme that seemed to play across all of Chen’s interests was science, and he explained his interest in science as being innate in himself, “I am naturally inclined towards discovery and creation which is science in some ways. That’s not the only thing I enjoy, but it’s the career path I want to take.”

He is not only gifted with an immense understanding of the science fields, but he also enjoys drawing, writing, reading, and playing video games.

“I enjoy mostly drawing people because I can’t draw animals at all,” Chen said with a laugh, “[People are] what I practiced drawing because when I started drawing I drew mostly comic book figures. I remember seeing a guy in elementary school, when I was back in Pennsylvania, and he drew a Captain America figure and it totally impressed me so much. I looked at my own stick figures and felt so embarrassed by [them]. When I started, I thought they looked really nice, but they looked horrible even my siblings said they were really bad, but I kept drawing. Eventually, I got to the point where I was pretty satisfied with what I was drawing. More often than not I’m just doodling; it’s not like I’m really sitting down and drawing. I do it more for relaxation.”

Writing is also another one of Chen’s various talents. He began writing in eighth grade, “I enjoyed writing short stories and it was a way to express myself during that time. During that time, public speaking made me really scared so writing was a way for me to be able to express myself and my creativity. Most of the stories that I wrote were, not really horror stories, but more darker stories. I wanted them all to be connected, but I never got to finish it, but it’s still something I did for fun.”

Currently, he continues to write, but mainly he is trying to finish up drafts and to put some of his ideas onto paper. “One of the stories I am in the process of writing it’s like an animal story. It has creatures in their natural element. I want it to be a mixture of The Hobbit and Wind in the Willows. I want to find a way to write the story without making it sound overtly childish.” Along with this idea, he has another idea of a story involving “labor unions in a small town and the accompanying economic and societal effects.”

To blend two of his passions together, he has also entertained the idea of writing his own graphic novel, “The ideas that I bounce around in my head are mostly about sci-fi. I would say, although I love to write about fantasy and horror, I love to draw sci-fi characters more. My ideas are mostly about a place where robots and humans live together, and soon robots will be seen as another human and not overtly robotic. I want to, with this, explore more humor and lighthearted elements to it instead of the horror and fantasy that I normally write.”

Chen’s creativity and immense passion for knowledge may stem from one of his favorite memories with his family, “A memory that I find most memorable is when my mother [took] us [out] during the weekend. There was a new outside shopping mall near our town and it had a Barnes and Noble there, so she would take us there every time over the weekend to read. We wouldn’t buy the books, we’d always sit there and take books from the shelves and just read. Occasionally, we’d buy some.”

At the time this memory was formed, Chen, as was alluded to previously in this article, lived in Pennsylvania. He lived in a town called Hellertown, near Bethlehem. This was small town which allowed a close bond to develop between community members, but it also did not allow for a wide berth of diversity.

Chen’s mother is Chinese and his father is Taiwanese, causing him to grow up with a plethora of Chinese traditions, which he admitted did set him apart, “Like everyone has their most distinct memory, and the most distinct memory I have of how different my culture was, was when I brought seaweed into school for a snack, so everyone was asking what [the seaweed] was. I really enjoyed [eating it] a lot and it made me feel very weird. Luckily there was another guy in the class, he was Asian too, and he said he knew what I was eating so he could relate.”

Despite the lack of understanding he faced at times throughout his life, he is grateful to have such a distinct background. He savored the unique chances he got that not many others could easily relate to, such as visiting Chinatown, “For another one of my most vivid memories, I’d say it would be the several trips my family would make to Philadelphia. We usually started in Chinatown at a noodle restaurant (or dim-sum restaurant). Afterwards, we would go to Franklin Institute of Science and spend the rest of the day there. I’d definitely say that all of my fondest memories are with my family.”

Family is an extremely important element in Chen’s life. He gets occasionally annoyed at his siblings (one sister and two younger brothers), but they do not hold grudges and remain close.

However great his relationship with his siblings is, it cannot parallel the one that he has with his mother. According to Chen, the most influential and inspiring person to him is his mother, “She really had a big impact on my life. She never pushes me to do one thing. Especially with the cultural stereotype that she’s a tiger mom or something like that — I know a lot of people like to think that — but she really hasn’t been like that at all,” said Chen with admiration permeating through every word, “She let me do what I want in school and she trusts me that I am going to do well and not slack off. Along with that fact, she understands that I have my own ambitions and I know what I want to do in the future. It’s this trust that motivates me since I know that whatever I want to do I want to do well and make her proud too.”

Everyone can admit that mothers are truly motivation figures and their impressions on our lives are everlasting. A less easily relatable situation is being the eldest child. Chen is the oldest brother to three younger siblings.

When asked if he thought his siblings looked up to him, he heartily laughed and recommended that they be asked instead, but he did admit there were pitfalls to being the first born, “For a lot of [instances] I have to do research myself and being able to find out about other opportunities. Most of the time though I just am trying to figure out how to do this by myself.”

All eldest children can unite on the fact that having to brave the unknown without any direction is frightening. Chen did believe there were some advantages such as “having to do it for yourself for the first time is different. It’s also worthwhile, I feel,” explained Chen, “because then you’re able to help your siblings and everything. [For example] being able to get into Penn shows my other siblings, not to follow what I did, but that I’m able to help them with [applying to college] too.”

With all of this credit that he gets for doing what is, seemingly, impossible, he remains humble. After some thought he stated, “I feel like the most apt comparison is when you see the final film, but you never see the background like the actual stuff going into it. Even though what I do is considered, by a lot of people, to be commendable, I feel like there’s a lot of work that goes into it too and not a lot of pretty stuff. I know I still have some issues with procrastination but I feel like being able to work hard is something that everyone is able to do, so I don’t feel like I have something that other people don’t have. I’m more ambitious and I want to work hard because I do have goals that I want to achieve so those are my two driving forces in life.”

This profound viewpoint of his success then begs us to ask, what are Chen’s goals?

A lot of seniors are currently struggling to decide what they are going to do with the rest of their lives which is a daunting task, and Chen is just as undecided as his fellow peers, “The only constant with my future is that I want to help people. Regardless of whether it’s donating my time to volunteering or working at a nonprofit, I want to be able to help people.”

If you have made it this far into the article, you should be in awe of Chen and all of his amazing qualities. Truthfully, there is a novel’s worth of material that any individual could write about him and I am ashamed to say that I did not just turn this article into a biography. However, in the hopes of helping the soul who has been fascinated and galvanized enough by Chen to continue reading, here’s a tip that you can live by to be on a similar road as Chen, “Make sure that you’re always curious and always want to learn more. Also, be ready to be perceptive to new ideas and making sure that you’re not caught up within your own bubble. Also, not being so obsessed over test scores, school, and college applications because, [while] those things are important, but being able to find time to relax and find something you really do enjoy rathering than just committing yourself to something that isn’t very fulfilling to you.”

That is valuable advice that everyone should live by and Chen is full of well versed phrases that will make you reexamine how you are living your life. Just as he hit a topic that was especially prudent to me and how I live my life, “As a piece of advice, don’t connect yourself with the work that you do. Since there’s always stuff that’s more important than that. A lot of people associate the quality of their work with the quality of their character. I think people need to separate that because there’s a lot of things that describe a person, but not just one thing describes the full story of each individual, It’s easy to judge one person from just one thing you see but it’s harder when you understand the whole context of their situation.”

Could Penn be more lucky? Not only will they be receiving a humble, wise, motivated, and successful student this fall, but they also will be getting a Walkersville Lion in their midst. While his family, friends, and community will be sad to see him depart, we will be sure to keep a sharp eye out for his helpful hand. The sky is no limit for Chen.

 

Sources:

[1] http://www.med.upenn.edu/admissions/financial-aid.html

[2] http://www.upenn.edu/about/facts

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