Demographics: International student(from India). Male. Not applied for fin aid(though I need it, I haven’t applied for it because of some reasons)
Intended Major: Math
School applied to: CAS
Academics:
ACT: 32 Composite + 34 Writing
SAT II: 800 M2, 700 Physics
School Academics: 91% in 10th grade, ~95% in 11th grade, and 93% in 12th grade.(I was told that my school grades convert to a 4.0 gpa)
Class Rank: 2/320
Coursework: My school doesn’t offer any APs. I took the most challenging courses available to me.
A little info about my school: it’s a really competitive school known for sending a quite a few students to top schools every year
Awards/Honors:
- Intel ISEF semifinalist(Selected for the team selection stage for my country’s Intel ISEF team)
- Merit based scholarship(from a national level exam) for pursuing further studies in 11th and 12th grades.
- Lots of less important stuff(Best in the subject in school x3, Overall achievement(for ranking in the top 1% in school), best basketball player in school etc.)
ECs:
- Research in Math under a PhD student from MIT. Proved a relatively longstanding and important conjecture. Paper selected for ISEF semifinals(my country’s Intel ISEF team selection stage)
- Research in Math under a Godel Prize winner. Made substantial progress toward solving a relatively longstanding and important conjecture.
- Research in Math under a Prof who used to head the undergrad research at MIT. Worked toward proving an important conjecture.
- Student Govt.: Vice Head Boy of the school for 2 years(2nd highest position in student council). House captain in school for 1 year(3rd highest position in student council). Elected to both the positions after a school wide campaign.
- Sports: Played Soccer and Basketball for my school’s varsity team. Captained both the teams for 1 year. Represented school at various district and city level competitions. Played soccer for over 5 years and basketball for 3 years.
- Volunteer Work: volunteered at an organisation to teach computer science to children from underpriviledged backgrounds. Volunteered for over 100 hours.
- Clubs: President of the school’s math club. The math club was responsible for producing two RMO qualifiers(akin to AIME). Member of the CS club.
- Did a lot of competitive programming(but didn’t do anything that great in it)
Essays and Recs:
Teacher recs: I think the teacher recs would be pretty strong because the teachers knew me well
External recs: I have two recs, both from my research mentors. One guy did his undergrad at Harvard and PhD at MIT. He was also a mentor at two of the most prestigious summer programs on the planet(RSI and PRIMES). My other mentor is an influential tenured professor at a really prestigious university, he also won the Godel Prize. Both of my mentors told me that they would write pretty strong recommendations based on my research work.
Essays: I was told by my seniors who read my essays that they were pretty great. Throughout my essays I have conveyed information about how I struggled to get research opportunities, my interest in math and research, and how a competitive and academically great environment would help me.
Some additional info:
My research was pretty important(read grad/phd level research. I was told this by my mentors), so I’m confident about my math skills. I’m also an ORM, so I think that it will act against me. I have also conveyed how I come from a background where I have to fight for opportunities blah blah blah in my essays. I cold emailed profs like nuts for research opportunities. I am the first author on all the papers
Main concern: low ACT score, lack of diverse or interesting ECs, and ORM.