<ul>
<li>Owner of a successful online store for about 2 years</li>
<li><p>What are your sales figures? Do you conduct transactions through Amazon, Ebay, or affiliate programs? I need something quantifiable to judge whether or not this is impressive.</p></li>
<li><p>Experience with marketing, advertisement
*This isn’t something you can put on your resume. (Also, for anything like this, you need tangible results that you can report. In any case, this is not something you put on a resume.)</p></li>
<li><p>I have participated in a few olympiads in Informatics
*Unless you won awards, or qualifying is a feat in itself, I wouldn’t put this.</p></li>
<li><p>I have created quite a few projects for customers - websites, mobile and desktop apps.</p></li>
<li><p>Who were your clients. Have these projects been successful? (How many downloads for the mobile apps on Droid/iOS?)</p></li>
<li><p>I have been to some conferences in Mathematics, where I have participated with “research” projects
*This seems vague, but potentially interesting. Please clarify about what makes this unique, other than attending? What kind of research project? Did you win anything?</p></li>
<li><p>1st place in a competition in web design and a participation in another one
*I would ignore the participate in the other one. The 1st place is cool? Was the competition competitive? What’s it called?</p></li>
<li><p>One of the translators of the most bought bulgarian programming book</p></li>
<li><p>This is somewhat intriguing, but doesn’t necessarily evoke the WOW factor.</p></li>
<li><p>An author of some papers about algorithms</p></li>
<li><p>This is cool. Published where? In a journal or by yourself? What was the threshold for entry?</p></li>
<li><p>An author in my personal blog and an author in a movie website</p></li>
<li><p>Completely unimpressive. Anyone can be an author on a blog (same goes for the movie website). Unless you get a substantial amount of traffic, your articles have been propagated by legitimate outlets, our you are making good money off advertising… This seems quite banal.</p></li>
<li><p>I was on a course in Informatics for a half year. Furthermore, I will be on two summer camps for Mathematics and Physics.</p></li>
<li><p>I’m not quite sure what Informatics is (but this might be MY mistake, and not yours.) Are these summer camps somewhat competitive or well-known? If not, will you partake in interesting workshops and projects?</p></li>
<li><p>I will be a volunteer in the local radio and maybe in a wildlife sanctuary in England.</p></li>
<li><p>Seems irrelevant to how you’re portraying yourself. This may in fact confuse adcoms, and hurt you more than it helps – its also a waste of time, and you could be using that same time to strengthen your more germane projects. That is, unless of course, you are a total wildlife freak – however, that does not come across in anything else you do, so it seems very random. You portray yourself as a marketer, entrepreneur, computer science type person (BTW, this is how I’m portraying myself in my APP, cause these are my true interests. However, my app very specifically demonstrates this is true without confusing adcoms)</p></li>
<li><p>Maybe the top student in Physics (Yes, I know 710 is an awful score), Informatics and Mathematics in my class.</p></li>
<li><p>Still not sure what informatics is (what does it entail?). You cannot state on any application that you’re the top student in Physics; it simply doesn’t work that way. An “A” in your class will demonstrate some strength, but your 710 will make adcoms think your physics class is easy, negating that grade.</p></li>
<li><p>I think I could get two recommendations from two doctors of Computer Science.</p></li>
<li><p>It seems repetitive to get two recommendations that will essentially be the same. In any case, why would two doctors recommend you? Unless it’s for a project you completed very successfully for them, it doesn’t really help your application.</p></li>
<li><p>I am also a bulgarian.</p></li>
<li><p>LOL. Thanks for sharing with us!
Are you a U.S. citizen, or do you mean you live in Bulgaria?
Being a foreigner inherently hurts you in American universities. And as of right now, I would only include your Math lvl 2 test, which is a fantastic score btw (I’m jealous). Your other subject tests are very mediocre, especially for a foreigner, and I would not send any scores below 750.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Artificial Intelligence Project
*This seems kind of quirky. You’ll have to explain what exactly makes this project legitimate. Otherwise, it seems a bit like fantasy. I’m not saying it’s not very cool, you’ll just have to explain why (in other words, if you explain it simplistically the way you did, they’ll laugh you off as a joke candidate)</p>
<p>I’m not sure how to interpret your GPA. These days, because schools (especially foreign ones) do all sorts of weird calculations to arrive at inflated GPAs, american universities are much more interested in your unweighted GPA. That is, treat all classes normally on a 4.0 scale (4 for A, 3.7 for A-, 3.3 for B+, etc), including AP or IB classes. This is a much more useful score.</p>
<p>Also, before I can judge, I would need to see your SAT 1 score. For a foreigner applying to the IVYs, scores of 2250+ are required, and a 2300+ would be a significant boon.</p>
<p>Now, I don’t mean to be a harsh critic. Take this criticism seriously and really work on tightening up your resume. Right now it’s too unfocused, and tells me you work on a bunch of random projects, not a few IMPRESSIVE ones – so you need to work on highlighting those few, and ignoring the rest.</p>
<p>Don’t take this completely negatively. You have some interesting ECs that certainly CAN make you stand out, however you have to delete the ones that are irrelevant, and focus on clarifying and emphasizing the really cool LEGITIMATE ones. It seems like you’re spreading yourself too thin. Remember, quality over quantity! Also, only send your Math 2 score, and do very well on the SAT 1, and you could have a very decent chance.</p>
<p>Either way, don’t focus too much on this idea of the “Ivy League”. These schools are a crap-shoot for everyone, especially international students. There are plenty of fantastic schools in computer science, as well. Think Carnegie Mellon and UMichigan, just to name a few – students that graduate from these schools are practically treated identically. Also, undergraduate often does not mean much in the window of your life. Your graduate school, and often your job performance, have much more impact on your future. Anyway, good luck!</p>
<p>If you end up refocusing your resume, please post it here for us to see!</p>