Family. That’s the theme that Yalini came back to again and again as she talked about her time at BASIS Independent McLean. “Because of the small class sizes,” she said, “you have the opportunity to get really close with your classmates, and also really close with your teachers.”

That sense of community was there from day one, when she joined BIM in grade 9, attracted by the school’s rigor. She remembers teaming up with Joel C. and Avi F. on orientation day in a contest to build the tallest tower out of popsicle sticks. She became especially close with her carpool crew of Soumil B., Saaketh V., and Anvika V. At Homecoming that year, she remembers falling over while taking a picture with everyone from her grade. “So there’s a photo of me falling,” she said with a smile. “That’s a fond memory.”

Yalini excelled academically, eventually getting accepted to Johns Hopkins, but even in thinking back on her classes, she kept coming back to family. She remembers grade 9 biology and psychology fondly because she made so many friends. She says AP Literature was her favorite class because “we were very into literature and very close-knit.” At the end of the year, the class produced a chapbook – a collection of poetry, prose, and art. “We all collaborated to make it, and it had a lot of love and effort put into it.” The project sums up her experience as a student: lots of effort, fueled by teamwork and genuine affection for her classmates.

That community feeling extended outside the classroom. She was the school media manager for Science Olympiad and “put a lot of effort into my posts, taking pictures of everybody. And since Science Olympiad is a good mix of almost every grade at BIM, it let me meet a lot of other students that I didn’t normally interact with. It’s again like going kind of back to the idea of like a close-knit family.”

She also found that family feeling in debate, even if she only started because her dad made her. “I had really bad anxiety throughout middle school,” Yalini says, “and didn’t like talking to a lot of people. My dad wanted me to learn to talk more and to get out of my comfort zone.” It was hard at first, but even though debate sometimes stressed her out, Yalini loved the teamwork aspect of it. “It’s a collaboration between the whole team.” She remembers a moment before Metro finals last year, when she spent a Friday prepping with Richard P., Aarya V., Rishik P., Ben R., and Soumil B. “We shared notes. We debated each other. Then, when we went to get lunch together, we accidentally left Ben behind, and he came running after the car. It’s still something I laugh about to this day.”

The sense of community also saw her through a sometimes stressful college application process. But, as Yalini advises future seniors, “It’s ok to be stressed. It’s ok to be scared. Those are normal feelings. But if you take a step back, you’ll realize that it’s not the end of the world.” It helped that she took ownership of the process early on. “I put my foot down with my dad,” she says. “I told him, ‘Just let me do it. I’ll be okay.’ And I think the best work a student can put into their college application comes when they have the freedom to do it themselves.”

It certainly worked for Yalini, who got in Early Decision to Hopkins. She says she loves the campus, the dorms, and the students she’s met, and she’s excited about the research opportunities, especially in her fields of psychology and neuroscience. We hope she finds the same tight-knit community there that she enjoyed at BIM, and we wish her the best of luck!

BASIS Independent McLean is an Age 2–Grade 12 private school, providing students with an internationally benchmarked liberal arts and sciences curriculum, with advanced STEM offerings. Considering joining the Red-Tailed Hawks community? To join our interest list for the next school year and receive admissions updates and more, please click here.