Xin is such a polymath-in-training that her entire resume would extend right off this page. She’s whip-smart at math and science, won the 2018 City Club Free Speech essay contest and practices kung fu. She can solve a Rubik’s cube in about a minute, and those aren’t even her most impressive feats. Xin also won the nationally competitive Coolidge Scholarship this year — a full, four-year scholarship to the college of her choice.
Cool-ish: Xin applied to the Coolidge Scholarship, named after President Calvin Coolidge, thinking she would be a long shot candidate. But then she was flown to Vermont for a weekend of interviews about her qualifications. In May, Xin learned she won the merit-based award. “I was in shock for the first two days. I was like, OK, I guess this is a thing now,” Xin jokes. “Most of my time, I’m like, I sure hope I don’t mess this up.”
Numbers Game: For Xin, math and science are the family way. “My parents are doctors,” she says. “Most of their friends are also doctors, so it’s just been that mindset ever since I’ve been growing up.” Since her freshman year, Xin has worked in a biomedical technology lab at Case Western Reserve University on an open-source model to map polymer-drug interactions, which will be published in a paper. Although she hasn’t made a college choice yet, she is leaning toward a technically oriented research university. “I just want to be able to give back to society, contribute in terms of medicine,” she says.
Punch Book: To de-stress, the 17-year-old sketches landscapes and is writing and illustrating a graphic novel about ordinary people who use their superpowers to solve everyday problems such as opening a can. “There’s a lot more potential in something like super-strength or vision, in terms of other benefits to humanity,” Xin says, “besides just punching bad people every once in a while.”
Keyed In: Xin is so musically talented she plays violin as a hobby. But her true passion is piano. She placed high enough in three national piano competitions to earn an invitation to play onstage at Carnegie Hall, an experience she says was equally invigorating and terrifying. “It’s like sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper. It has all the possibilities laid out in front of you,” Xin says. “It takes up your view space, especially if you have a full-size grand piano or even a baby grand piano. It’s like, This is a thing that you can now do.”
Private Schools: Alison Xin Wins Coolidge Scholarship
The Hathaway Brown senior is a math whiz, practices kung fu, plays the violin and illustrates her own graphic novel.
