Occasionally I think about how much less I might have achieved if my hearing had been 100% when I was growing up. I might have heard—and heeded—all those pessimistic experts. . . I might never have decided I wanted to be a doctor who was not an “expert,” but one who specialized in basic family medicine. I might never even have applied to Duke / Georgetown / Columbia / Penn.

When I was five weeks old, I contracted meningicoccal meningitis. Doctors said I would not make it through the night. A priest administered last rites. They were just the first of many experts to be wrong.

When I was five, I complained that I heard ringing in my ears. “Just pinch your nose and blow,” my mother said. That too was a wrong assumption.

That year, routine kindergarten screening confirmed I had a hearing problem: the hearing in my right ear was completely gone with moderate to severe hearing loss in my left ear. This time, my reading teacher was the one to write me off. “How can he keep up in an accelerated reading group if he cannot hear the phonics?” She seemed to overlook that I had already developed such effective inner resources for coping with my impairment that she herself—like all my other teachers—had completely missed it.

Next came Yale-New Haven Hospital, where I was diagnosed as one of only twelve people in the country at the time to have Enlarged Vestibular Aqueduct Syndrome. I was fitted with a hearing aid that I refused to wear. “It doesn’t work,” I kept saying. It turned out I was right; the experts had installed the device in my right ear, not my left.

In middle school, once again, it was just as well I could not hear too clearly, though for a different reason. The words of kids that age are cruel, whether you are hearing impaired or not. Over time, I’ve come to view my limitation as having its advantages. The first hint came in the midst of one of many hearing tests at Yale. Rigged up to miles probing wires, computer readouts and sophisticated gauges, on the receiving end of MRIs, CAT scans and even cymbal-clanging monkeys, the question experts asked me always was the same: “Justin, did you hear that?”

That was when I first became attuned to the quiet little voice inside my head: the experts needed me to indicate what I could or couldn’t hear. Unless I told them, they had no way of knowing. I was the only expert. And so I learned to listen with my inner ear and came to trust my instincts.

———>Trusting my instincts is why I am selecting Duke. I know that Duke stands second to none in offering me full CART support for my hearing impairment, insuring me that I can add my goal of becoming a doctor to my other achievements. By attending Duke, I will be close enough to home that I will not have to fly, I will be enrolled in an unequaled pre-med program affiliated with best teaching hospitals in the world, and will have all of Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle as my campus. I also like that Duke’s core curriculum will give me a broad liberal arts foundation and that Duke’s Medical School offers an outstanding training program in Clinical Medicine. I realize that’s a few years off for me, but it is nice to know.

——>Trusting my instincts is why I am selecting Georgetown. I know that Georgetown stands second to none in offering me full CART support for my hearing impairment, insuring me that I can add my goal of becoming a doctor to my other achievements. By attending Georgetown, I will be close enough to home that I will not have to fly, I will be enrolled in an unequaled pre-med program affiliated with best teaching hospitals in the world, and will have all of Washington as my campus. I also like that Georgetown’s core curriculum will give me a broad liberal arts foundation, while your Biology Department occupies nearly three floors (!) in the Reiss Science Center as well as two buildings on Observatory Hill (!) connecting me (okay, anyone!) to unparalleled resources devoted to research in cellular, molecular, and organismal biology. I also like Georgetown’s small faculty to student ratio, which will bring me in contact with such excellent teachers as Dr. Barrows, Dr. Chapman, and Dr. Henderson.

——>Trusting my instincts is why I am selecting Penn. I know that Penn stands second to none in offering me full CART support for my hearing impairment, insuring me that I can add my goal of becoming a doctor to my other achievements. By attending Penn, I will be close enough to home that I will not have to fly. I will be enrolled in an unequaled pre-med program affiliated with a Top 10-ranked medical school and the vest teaching hospitals in the world. I will also have all of Philadelphia as my campus. I also like that UPenn’s core curriculum will give me a broad liberal arts foundation while your science faculty includes Nobel laureates, recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, Fulbright Fellows, MacArthur Fellows and Guggenhein Fellows. (relate more specifically to science/pre med.) At Penn, I also look forward to taking part in a wide range of campus activities. Look for me to be teaming up with other students with disabilities to help expand the definition of diversity on the campus. At Penn, I will be first in line to share what my inner voice has always whispered to me: that I, and people like me, have yet to find our limitations.

——>Trusting my instincts is why I am selecting Columbia. I know that Columbia stands second to none in offering me full CART support for my hearing impairment, insuring me that I can add my goal of becoming a doctor to my other achievements. It’s also my nature to be involved. Look for me to be teaming up with other students with disabilities to help expand the definition of diversity on campus. By attending a college in New York City, I will be close enough to home that I will not have to fly, I will be enrolled in an unequaled pre-med program affiliated with best teaching hospitals in the world, and will have all of New York City as my campus.

At Duke/Georgetown/Columbia/Penn, I look forward to taking part in a wide range of campus activities. Look for me to be teaming up with other students with disabilities to help expand the definition of diversity on the campus. At Duke/Georgetown/Columbia/Penn, I will be first in line to share what my inner voice has always whispered to me: that I, and people like me, have yet to find our limitations.