Daniel Hall ’26 was busy with his ISP. Working with Durga Menon ’26 on writing music—Daniel was producing, Durga was on vocals—they had a good R&B song going. Daniel, who plays saxophone and piano, was surprised by how much work this one song required. Not that this was new to him. He had been producing music since Middle School, a hobby he started during Covid.
Daniel came to Pingry as a freshman, arriving with high hopes for making the varsity basketball team. In Middle School, he was “pretty good” on the court and expected to join varsity easily. “I came in with aspirations to be a star on varsity basketball my freshman year,” he says, laughing. “But I completely got out-muscled, out-strengthened, out-hustled by the upperclassmen…. I got humbled really fast.”
He joined JV for two years before moving up to varsity his junior and senior years. His friends joined the water polo team during his freshman year and, though he regrets it now, he occasionally teased them for it at the time. “I would troll them,” he admits. “I was like, you look so goofy.” Yet when he got injured playing basketball, he promptly reconsidered. “I always heard water sports were a great way to recover,” he says. “I figured, I couldn’t do swim because that’s during basketball season, so the only other way for me to get into the water would be to play water polo. So that’s how I found myself in the pool.” He played water polo his sophomore through senior years, and came to love the sport. “I really enjoyed the connections I made playing it. Water polo is a really fun sport.”
During his sophomore year, he joined the jazz band and started the Harmony Club with his friend Austin. “The goal of the club is to bring music to elderly communities,” he says. “We’d have students record themselves playing their instrument, and then we send that recording to a nursing home, or compile holiday videos, and send those.”
Finding a way to connect with the elderly has been important to Daniel his whole life. It drives his interest in studying science and his determination to be a neurosurgeon. Is he on his way to becoming, quite literally, a brain surgeon? “Yeah. I am,” he says with a wide smile. He wants to make a difference for the masses, but the person he’d really like to reach is close to home.
“I’ve always been interested in the brain,” he says. “That stems from my relationship with my grandma, who unfortunately has had Alzheimer’s for my entire life.” When he was younger, she was a warm and lively presence in his life. “She would cook for me, sing to me, and directly care for me,” he says. “But now, we’re the ones caring for her.” As he got older and the traces of memory loss and cognitive dysfunction became more pronounced in his grandma, he noticed she would forget where she placed things, drop items suddenly, or have an occasional emotional outburst that was out of character for her. “It just progressed and progressed, and kept getting worse…. She can’t really talk. She’s bedridden now,” he says quietly. She lives with Daniel’s family, and he praises his dad, who has taken on caring for Daniel’s grandmother, noting his strength. “To see how he’s cared for his mother, invested his time, money, and energy into making sure that she’s well, or as well as she can be, has been very influential and inspiring.”
Finding a cure for Alzheimer’s drove him to participate in a competitive summer program at Georgetown after his sophomore year, and when he got back, he led the Neuroscience Club and began doing Alzheimer’s research. When it came to apply to colleges, he started the process early, and his efforts paid off. “I got into Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, Duke, and Brown University.” He was accepted into the highly competitive B.S. M.D. program at Brown, which has a 1.4% acceptance rate, and decided to pursue medicine there. He’s looking forward to going straight to Brown’s medical school after finishing his undergrad, without having to take the MCAT.
Daniel considers himself “purpose-driven”, and his goal is to do good in the world. “I believe I’m meant to help as many people as possible, impact and inspire as I can.” He knows trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s will be no simple feat. “It’s definitely a huge ambition, but I understand I won’t do it alone. There’s so many people who would help me achieve it—if I can achieve it—and I’ll be working with others, so if I’m not the one who creates the actual drug that cures Alzheimer’s, I’m still content with helping make that discovery possible. It’s like a domino effect—If I make a discovery about a protein or something else that inspires someone to conduct experiments that solve it, that’s my mission.”
Daniel’s physics teacher, Dr. Chester Chu, admires his dedication to learning and making a difference. “What makes Daniel even more impressive is that he maintains a selfless attitude to make everyone better around him,” he observes, noting that Daniel always went out of his way to work with his underclassmen to prepare for the IRT group’s success in the years ahead.
It’s that selfless attitude, that sense of purpose, that keeps Daniel motivated toward doing good in a world that sorely needs it. “I understand some trials are put in front of me for a reason,” he says thoughtfully, “either to make me stronger, or to make me consider something else, or to make me choose another approach.” He pauses here, deep in thought. “But I believe the things I can’t control are ultimately positioned for my good.”
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To contact the author: Sara Courtney