Environmentalist and explorer
Elizabeth Rider didn’t think much about college until she got a laptop. Then she discovered blogs and Tumblr accounts of other ambitious high school students who were applying to competitive schools, and she found the MIT Admissions blog. The websites gave her a better idea of what she was seeking for the next chapter of her life. “I grew up in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and I just sort of wanted to go somewhere else. To a bigger city, [with] more diverse people, more opportunities to learn, or to apply myself. In high school I was scrambling for opportunities and things to latch on to,” says Rider, now an MIT senior. After participating in the Minority Introduction to Science and Engineering (MITES) summer program as a high school junior, Rider was determined to come back to MIT. As an undergraduate, she has found a number of meaningful activities to participate in, in areas ranging...