為何選擇斯坦福？

Many ideas that came out of Silicon Valley now define society—the personal computer, the search engine that has democratized knowledge, and, in Stanford’s own Industrial Park, the once tiny company, HP, that is now the world’s largest technology corporation.[1] Last year, I, too, got into the game, creating a patent for live services delivered through a cell-phone. Though I was not familiar with the science behind phones, I provided insight toward the user’s ability to interact with the handset.[2]

By merging knowledge of the technical aspects of phones with a humanities-based analysis of its usage, an IKain research engineer and I together created a successful patent.[3] Though this patent will not be as earth shaking as Google’s search engine, it shares a common theme with other Silicon Valley innovations: the interaction of technology, humanities, and information.[4]

Stanford is a place where miracles take place every day—in the student dorms, in the underground labs, and in the garages of rented houses.[5] All these miracles, all these super creativity, are not just happening because of the smart collection of people Stanford has assembled[6]. It is also its unique culture that Stanford has fostered[7] . Specially, Stanford has an open attitude toward knowledge interaction and integration[8] in the broadest sense. When discipline boundaries are obliterated, when knowledge from many disciplines freely intermingle, miracle happens.[9]

I want to go to Stanford for just this reason: Stanford is a university that uniquely integrates liberal arts[10] with science and technology advances. Stanford is not only a place where students go just to get a good liberal arts education. It is also a place where liberal arts interface with the revolution of cutting-edge technology.[11] Public policies have been studied by many, each in its finest detail, but they pertain to the old society when yesterday’s technologies reign.[12] As society enters the Information Age and the Post-genomic age[13] , we need new policies, new legislatures, new humanity-oriented social structures and order.

These major changes of tremendous humanity concerns will not arrive by themselves. But rather, it will require leading thinkers of our era, fully equipped with the cutting-edge knowledge on science and technology, plowing hard at this volatile, virgin territory.[14] It is toward this end that I have prepared myself. Not just practicing writing essays, participating in debate tournaments, but also I have taken Advanced Placement Tests in Calculus, Statistics, Physics, and Chemistry.[15] I am a student with broad interests, and a deep thirst for every kind of knowledge human kind has produced.

I could envision myself, a liberal art major, someday, lying back on the green Stanford lawn, discussing freely with friends of science and technology majors, about the possible ramification of a new piece of biotechnology on society, which I have just heard from the Stanford Genome Center Symposium from a Nobel Laureate.[16]