In his native Turkey, Eren Yanik ’08 became a celebrated author of two books while still a teenager. The first, a nonfiction memoir about getting into Istanbul’s most competitive international high school, is in its seventh edition. The second, a satirical look at his seven years at that same school, soared to number 12 on the Turkish bestseller list.

Yanik’s dream is to become a newspaper columnist in Istanbul — “quite a popular thing to do in Turkey,” he says. Coming to Princeton, he knew he might not be the star he was back home, but he knew that he’d leave this place knowing how to think critically about the world and how to think for himself.

In Yanik’s first semester at Princeton, he took a freshman seminar taught by Paul Krugman, longtime economics and world affairs columnist for The New York Times. This is why he came to Princeton, he says: to have access to the best minds in the business.

After each three-hour class, Krugman would assign the 10 students two reaction papers, forcing them to argue both sides of the day’s key issue.

Yanik majored in economics, and took classes in applied math, finance and international politics, among others. In each, he was impressed with how much his classmates valued his opinion. “Turkey can be kind of random for Americans,” he says, but his classmates were surprisingly knowledgeable and curious about how someone from Turkey, “a country of paradoxes,” interprets world affairs.

Yanik also served as an ambassador to Turkey for Princeton Admissions Links, a program through which current Princeton students visit their high school to talk about Princeton. When he talked to students from his old high school, he didn't have to say much to convince them to apply.

He often focused on something that might have surprised them about Princeton: the family atmosphere. That is you might not expect from such an academically rigorous school, but that’s Princeton, he says.