Q&A with QuestBridge Finalist from CSAS Micah Lauzon & Ruby Brahmbhatt
January 16, 2025 - Meet Ruby and Micah, two exceptional CSAS students who just landed full scholarships at Brown and Dartmouth! It wasn’t an easy road, but their hard work paid off. Competing alongside 25,500 other applicants, they, along with three other HCS students, won one of the 2,627 coveted QuestBridge scholarships, which cover everything from tuition to living expenses.
QuestBridge is a program that connects high-achieving students with full four-year scholarships to prestigious colleges. In 2024, 2,627 students received scholarships through the program's 52 partner colleges. To qualify, each student must have outstanding academic performance, typically earning A’s in rigorous courses, strong writing skills, intellectual curiosity, and personal traits like resilience, integrity, and motivation.
Applications open in late July; after a few very rigorous rounds, QuestBridge selects top applicants as Finalists. Finalists then rank up to 15 colleges and are matched to the highest-ranked college that admits them, receiving the full scholarship covering tuition, housing, food, and other expenses. Applicants must complete individual applications, including 3-4 essays, for each of the 15 ranked colleges on their list.
To get past all of those stages, essays, and applications, then to match with a college shows just how intelligent and determined each winner was. They did not get there on their own, owing much of the credit to their college and career advisor, Nick Siler. This is the third year in a row he has had recipients of the QuestBridge scholarship. He even put together a meet and greet with a previous student who had gone through the process so that other interested students could ask questions.
Another way Mr. Siler helped was by encouraging the kids to attend the QuestBridge College Prep Scholars program. This was held at the University of Chicago, where they ran through the ins and outs of the QuestBridge program. Students also had the chance to meet and get advice from admission officers from any of the colleges they were interested in. Ruby and Micah felt this was important to their success as it taught them key skills that got them through applying for all the colleges and all the deadlines they had to prepare for during the process. Mr. Siler feels it is the most important step that juniors looking into doing this program can take.. College Prep Scholars are over seven times more likely than other applicants to receive full four-year scholarships through the National College Match.
Along the way, Ruby and Micah learned a lot about who they are, and they’re excited to share their journey:
Q: Let’s start with your full name and the college you matched with.
Micah: I'm Micah Lauzon and I matched to Dartmouth College. It's in Hanover, New Hampshire, Class of 2029.
Ruby: My name is Ruby Brahmbhatt. I matched to Brown University. It's in Providence, Rhode Island, Class of 2029.
Q: How did you feel when you found out you matched with that college? Was it in your top 5?
Micah: It was in my top five. We were both here, I was in Mr. Siler’s office, she was in the room just outside, and there was a lot of jumping and yelling around. When we found out we matched, a lot of calling a lot of people, and texting people in all caps.
Ruby: For sure, just a lot of screaming, a lot of support. I was really happy for Micah, and Micah was really happy for me, and just everybody we had in the room, like Mr. Siler, our friends, everyone, there was just so much joy and happiness. With our family and everyone, it was just like really, really, really happy, and it was just like a lot of fun. Matching at Brown, for me, it was just so unexpected. I had ideas about what schools I would match to, and Brown was not even one that I had even conceived the thought of matching to. So the whole unveiling process for both of us was such a surreal feeling.
Q: Tell us a little bit about what made you apply to those specific colleges.
Micah: A couple months ago, the Dartmouth representative for our region came, and I knew that it was a Questbridge school, so I went to the meeting to talk to her. She was just saying a lot of things that I like about the environment of the campus, like how many people are there. They do a specific quarter based system instead of semester system, and you end up taking more classes by the time you graduate. It takes 9 weeks instead of 18 weeks to take a course, but you're taking less courses. The all around atmosphere, how many people were there, the location of it, and how academically rigorous it is, all aligned with what I wanted.
Ruby: I feel like I can't even talk about Brown without mentioning its open curriculum. It's definitely the best part about Brown, Brown's open curriculum is just so, so unique, and you can take anything you want at any time. Also the way that they do classes, the way they do grades, I thought it was just so cool. Having that way to explore multiple different areas of interest and just getting to do a bunch of things was so cool to me. I love the size of Brown, the student population is like 8,000 kids, which is like not too big, not too small. Both Brown and Dartmouth have so much support for low income students, have so much support for first generation students. They're really ready to help out.
Q: What was the process like?
Micah: We started applying in Spring of our Junior year, around April. Then we went to the College Prep Scholars event at University of Chicago the summer before our Senior year.
Ruby: So a bunch of these schools, as I was researching them, had things called flying programs, where you just turn in an application, they'll review it, and if you get selected, they'll fly you out to their school. You get to stay on campus for like three days. You get to talk to admissions officers and that really helped me really get a feel for the school and know which ones I wanted to apply to. It also helped me make so many incredible friends and connections. I got to go to three different schools on opposite sides of the country. I ended up going to Massachusetts (Amherst), Maine (Bowdoin), and California (Scripps). The fly in’s really helped and I would not have known about them if it hadn’t been for Mr. Siler and QuestBridge.
Q: What was the hardest part for you during the application process?
Micah: Due to College Prep Scholars and wanting to get all the info there, it only gave us a week to apply which was hard. Don’t do that, give yourself at least three months to apply. Also, once you become a finalist, you have about 18 days to get all of your supplementals in. So if you're ranking 15 schools, you have 15 schools worth of supplementals to get in. There might be three essays, there might be none. But you still have 18 days to do all of these essays for all of these schools.
Ruby: For sure, it's definitely the time constraint, just like being so constrained, having so many supplements to write. For Brown, there were eight different prompts I had to respond to. I had to also make an optional video. Imagine that but times 15, Brown was probably the worst of it. But every single school had so much you had to write. The whole process of turning in test scores, deciding if you even want to as it was sometimes optional. With the essays, just making sure, one, you get your point across and you're concise and you show them what you want to about you. But also keeping the heart in it, staying true to yourself and in every single thing that you write. Being and staying really, genuine and human throughout all your applications is definitely the number one key.
Q: Both of you had more than just essay supplements correct?
Micah: I’m in a band and I make music so I submitted a song. It was a video of us playing that one of the people at CSAS recorded. It was super high quality. But it was from the night before all the applications were due, October 31st. It was a Halloween show and then the next day everything was due. So I was just like cramming that in but it made it.
Ruby: I made a video tutorial of, because I do my own Henna all the time. So I did a video tutorial on just me showing how to do Henna. Then I also turned in a bunch of my Henna designs as an optional supplement. Getting to show so many parts of myself in the applications was so cool.
Q: Is there a moment in your application journey that stood out, like a specific essay or interview you did?
Micah: In my Dartmouth application, I wrote a poem. On a random Sunday morning at 10am where I just spewed it all out. It flowed very well, there was some refining that I had to go back and do but most of it was done in the morning. That was very memorable: just sitting at my desk, and typing a whole 250 word poem.
Ruby: For me, I think one of my most memorable moments aside from getting in is one time, me and my friend Anna, we went to Starbucks just to work on our applications for like an hour or two, nothing crazy. We ended up staying at Starbucks for four hours, then going to Panera Bread for dinner for another like four hours. And we had just spent eight hours talking and working on our applications by the end. One of my most memorable essays was writing about Pokemon. I love Pokemon games so much. And just like getting to share that aspect about myself, it felt so real and personal.
Q: What did you learn about yourself during the process?
Micah: This is one of the first things where I've had to fully apply myself in all aspects, because it's such a big scholarship. A lot of the time, you can just get away with doing a decent amount. But for this, I really had to put in all the effort that I could in all the essays. I needed to write all of them, even if it was 35 essays in front of me.
Ruby: For me, it's the self exploration that I really went through, like doing these things, answering these questions, I would think of a response or think of an aspect of my life that, I didn't even realize had such a profound impact on me or that really changed me as a person until I'm sitting there writing an essay about it and being like, Oh, my gosh, this really changed the trajectory of who I became moving forward without even knowing that it was doing it at the time. So it's just self exploration, everything you internally go through while you're writing these essays and making these supplements, you come out a little bit different, like a different person.
Q: What are you most excited about when heading to college?
Micah: What I'm most excited about is just figuring out more things about myself. I'm going undeclared, which is pretty much epitomizing it. I don't know what I want to do. Right now I'm 17. I probably won't know what I want to do when I'm 20. But I just keep figuring that out and just keep learning and this will be really good for that. I get to take a bunch of courses, see which ones are aligning with me, but just figuring out what I want to do.
Ruby: I for sure, I'm going in with a political science and econ major. Because I have an idea of, I want to do this in four years, I want to maybe go to law school, or just explore a bunch of things. But with Brown's open curriculum, even though I'm concentrating in something, I still have so much room over the next four years to explore so many other things. I only have to take 13 classes that actually pertain to my major. So I have all these other classes where I can take literally anything and explore so many things. Maybe in one of these classes, I'll find something else and I'll fall in love with it. Then it'll totally change the trajectory of everything. I really like what Micah said, like, I'm 17. I don't know what I want to do in 10 years, but just going to schools like Dartmouth and Brown, you just get so much room to explore and really see what you want to do.
Q: If you could go back and give yourself advice as a freshman, what would you say?
Micah: I agree with Ruby. Obviously, I don't think everything I did was right. But I think it was all important lessons. If I go back and I tell myself the importance of all this stuff, I wouldn't know it. I'd have to experience it. The combination of all the experiences have been what I think is very good. I would just tell myself to keep doing what I'm doing, you know, eventually it'll work out.
Ruby: I would tell myself not to do anything differently academically or generally, than what I did. The way that everything panned out, I think is truly how everything was supposed to go. Getting to do all these different activities and joining clubs that I genuinely was interested in quitting clubs, like Science Olympiad that I realized I don't really have much interest in. Just living high school to the absolute fullest, it never felt like I was joining a club, just to put it on my resume.
Truly every single activity that I threw myself in I enjoyed it so much. Even though I knew, eventually, yeah, I wanted to go to school somewhere nice and be academically strong, not forgetting to actually explore high school as well. Making friends, making memories, going through the motions of everything. Freshman year myself, I would tell myself to not have this existential dread about getting into college four years later. I really would just tell myself to like, keep living how I have been living. Just make the most of it and stay true to yourself.
Q: So there are students out there who might not think they have what it takes to apply to QuestBridge or get into one of these colleges. What advice would you give to them?
Micah: I think pretty much anybody can get into any school. There's outliers in every college's application process. As long as there's something reasonable, you can apply to anywhere and get into anywhere. Since QuestBridge is aimed at people who are lower income and first generation college students, those students might not be as interested in college and just because that's the way it goes. But those people are the people who need the financial aid and will get into QuestBridge. It's just applying yourself and applying.
Ruby: Having things like QuestBridge and schools like these, it really makes it seem like things are attainable, especially coming from a lower income background, coming from a first generation. Having self-doubt within yourself, having a school that is the right fit for you and having organizations like QuestBridge being like, no, it's okay, you can go to these places too.
Having support systems like Mr. Siler and all of our teachers and all of our peers and just everyone, everything seems attainable, which I just love so much, because I don't think I could go back to freshman year and tell myself, hey, by the way, you're going to Brown, and I would have believed it. To anybody who is experiencing self-doubt, I would definitely just say you will end up where you belong.
If you ever get rejected, it's redirection. If a school is the right fit for you it will work out. Brown's range for their ACT is way above what my ACT is. At the beginning it kind of deferred me because I was like, oh, no, I couldn't get in. But then I did. It's not one way. It is a relationship between you and the school.
Q: Is there a specific quote, mantra, or piece of advice that's helped you motivate through tough times, like, generally, or during this application process?
Micah: The idea that Ruby had said, “rejection is just redirection.” That just alleviated so much, for me because there were times I really wanted to go to a specific school, but then I realized after not getting that one I wouldn't fit in at that school. And maybe I wouldn't enjoy the college experience there. Just knowing that wherever I end up is where I was supposed to end up.
Ruby: Probably just like, everything's gonna work out in the end. No matter what happens, everything will work out in the end. And no matter what, Mr. Siler will find a way.
For information and resources about QuestBridge, talk with your high school’s career counselor and go here: https://www.questbridge.org/