TL;DR: Mitchell Lachat is an Eagle Scout who wants to understand the connection of mathematical properties with the behavior of the world around us.
Mitchell was born in Davenport, Iowa in 1998. He is an only child. His father worked for Alcoa at the time and his mother worked for an an architecture firm. Shortly after he turned four, his father’s job moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania so the family moved with him. His mother gave up on finding work because of the many places that she had lived with her husband in the past. She became a stay at home mom for her son.
Mitchell attended Seneca Valley School District once he became old enough. He had an interest in Math and Science before the 5th grade. He wanted to know more about space and how the universe works. He fueled this hunger by watching shoes such as “How the Universe Works” and “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman”. Being engaged with these shows made him realize that he wanted to do these things for the rest of his life.
High school was a crazy time. Mitchell attended Seneca Valley Intermediate and Senior High School where he was a grade ahead in his math courses and breezed through all of his classes until junior year. He was taking both AP Calculus AB and AP Statistics for math classes while the average student at the school took one class or the other in his or her senior year. Statistics was much harder than anticipated. The math was not difficult but the concepts were abstract. Calculus was the opposite. It was much simpler than expected. When he took the AP tests, he scored the opposite of what would be expected. He only got a two on the Calculus exam while attaining a five on the Statistics exam. Hard work leads to success.
Mitchell was a part of the scouting program beginning Kindergarten. He moved up ranks within Cub Scouts quickly and became a Boy Scout just before the fifth grade. Mitchell wanted to attend the 2010 National Boy Scout Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia. This meant that he had to ascend to the rank of First Class in less than a year. He then worked hard and was able to attend the event. From here, he continued to climb ranks but only about one rank every two to three years until he became an Eagle Scout in the early part of 2016. He has gone to both the 2010 National Jamboree and the 2013 National Jamboree, which were at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia and Bechtel Summit Reserve in West Virginia respectively as well as hiked about one hundred miles in two weeks at Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimmaron, New Mexico.
At the beginning of senior year, it was time for Mitchell to decide what colleges he was going to apply for. Knowing that he wanted a small school from the different campus’s that he had been on, it was narrowed down to the three schools of Oberlin, Allegheny College, and Ohio University. The school that had the largest physics department was Ohio University simply because it was about eight times larger than the other two. However, the most respected program was Allegheny College. Mitchell also preferred the campus layout of Allegheny. He decided to only apply to Allegheny as an early decision applicant. He was accepted and received the highest merit scholarship value which covered approximately half the cost of admission.
Mitchell’s future goals are not clear. He knows that he wants to go to graduate school to study astrophysics. He is also interested in computer science because it affects everything in the world. He would like to use his knowledge to change the world around him whether it be a new discovery, or a new way to view the world and connect mathematics with the real world. The understanding of the processes that create a universe like our own and whether there are others. This is the interest that drives his accomplishments.