Hi, I just got into my safety college. So let’s play a game. Chance me with an ‘accept/reject/waitlist’ at the following places, and once all the results come out, we’ll see who made the most correct predictions
International, male, not seeking financial aid
College List: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Yale-NUS (shortlisted the interview), UPenn (M&T and SEAS), Cornell (Engineering), Columbia (SEAS), Dartmouth, CMU (SCS and ECE), UC Berkeley (EECS; Got the LOR request), UCLA (CS/CSE),Georgia Tech.
Scores: 34 ACT, 800 Math L2, 700 Physics, 4.0 GPA (freshman year was a bit rough, but the rest are great). Currently ranked 1/320
Note: APs are not offered at my school, but I’ve still taken the most rigorous course available to me.
Extracurriculurs:
- Research: 4 papers. 2 in CS and 2 in math. Published research x 2. Selected as ISEF Semi-Finalist for 1 paper (another one that I collaborated on got selected, but I did not attend with that paper). Collaborated with some pretty awesome people. Math papers deal with some relatively significant long standing conjectures.
- Volunteer Work: Run a non profit with my friends and provide CS education to underprivileged children. Present in 11 cities and helped over 2K children. Teach, manage daily operations as well as handle the 100+ member volunteer base. Serve as COO
- Startup/Business: Run my own startup that I started with friends. Received closure for angel funding. Employ 19 people (15 at the time of applying).
- Student Govt.: Head boy of the student council (highest position on student council) for 2 years. House captain (3rd highest position on student council) for 2 years. Elected to both of them after school wide campaigns.
- Clubs: CS Club (President), Debate Club (President), Math Club (Member)
- Sports: Varsity soccer and basketball (captained both the teams for one season). Started a REC team at new school. Played at city/district level (Only till the 10th grade though).
- Magic: Perform magic tricks based on mathematical principles. Not professionally or something. Just for fun and helping children learn mathematics in a more fun way.
Awards
- ISEF Semi Finalist (National Fair Finalist in Math category; top 1% in the country)
- Qualified AIME equivalent of my country
- 3rd in state and 36th in national in a computing olympiad
- A national level merit based scholarship to pursue 11th, 12th grade studies
- Merit certificate holder (top 10% of candidates) in a relatively significant state government organized science exam
- Winner x1, Runner-up x1 in an inter school debate competition
- Lots of other irrelevant stuff (best basketball player (9th grade), overall achievement award (for ranking first), best of subjects award x 2, best performer of the year)
- A few external scholarships for performance in 10th grade school leaving examinations
After submitting my app, there were 2 major updates to it which I believe would help me a lot. I have not notified colleges about it yet so I have not included it on the list of awards/ECs.
Recommendations/Essays:
Essays: Common App is quite strong. Got it reviewed by an alumni from Yale who professionally edits essays (he called it the best response to the prompt he has ever seen). I’ve tried to make my other essays as enjoyable as possible.
Teacher recs: Pretty strong.
Additional rec: From my research mentor (AB Harvard/PhD MIT). He said that he would write a strong recommendation based on my research work.
Note: Math research is really strong. Like grad-level strong. (the person who previously solved another part of the problem that we worked on did so as a part of his PhD thesis). I also cold emailed like nuts to get opportunities and work with really awesome people (read: additional rec writer and another top prize winning tenured prof at a vv top institute). I am the first author on all papers.
