Biography
My name is Yann-Shin Aaron Chen, and I am a Taiwanese immigrated into United States four years ago. I am very excited about attending the training camp in University of Maryland. Here is some information about myself. I took AP Physics B as an independent study in my sophomore year, since there was not such a class offered in my high school. I received a 5 without much help from anyone. In my junior year, I took Engineering Physics in a community college as an independent study with a professor. I took AP Physics C at the end of the year and received 5 on both mechanics and E&M as well. In that year, I was qualified as a semifinalist of the United States Physics Team, but I did not do well on the second exam and was not invited to the training camp. This year, my senior year, I did more independent study in order to complete all the topics covered in a typical introductory calculus based undergraduate physics course. I also read some physics problem solving books. Among those books, the most amazing one is Problems in General Physics, by I.E. Irodov. It was written in Russian, and the copy I have is an English translation of it. It contains about 1900 problems, and it provides answers to all of them. Even though I haven’t had time to do many problems from this book, and some of the material in the book is quite antique, this book helped me much become a finalist of US Physics Team. Besides physics, I am also quite interested in mathematics. Since the end of my sophomore year, I have been working on problem solving in math. I founded the Math and Science Club, and later the Math Team, in my high school. I have participated in quite a few math competitions, such as AMC, ARML, USAMTS, Pomona College Talent Search, Math Day at the Beach in CSU Long Beach, Creative Studies Math Competition, Math Field Day in Cerritos College, etc. The most notable achievement is being qualified for taking USA Math Olympiad this year. Currently I am taking Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra as independent studies. I am also studying some math problem solving as preparation for these math competitions. My second talent besides logical reasoning is art, as well as music, even though I have not had the time to do much in these areas. My favorite sports are volleyball and badminton, although I have not played for nearly two years. I already decided to attend UC Berkeley this fall after receiving the Regents’ and Chancellor’s scholarship from Berkeley. My major will be either Engineering or Physics, or somewhere in between, and I will probably minor in math. If you have further questions or if you want to know more about me, here is my email address: obooyo_2000@yahoo.com, and my AIM screen name: aAaronnoraAa. Thank you for reading my little autobiography.