Grades:
Class 9: 75% [Deflated]
Class 10 [ICSE]: 95%
Class 11: 84.2% & 83.4% [Deflated]
Class 12 [CBSE]: 97% Predicted
[Had my counselor explain grade deflation in both the transcripts]
Class Rank: Top 5-10%
Test Scores:
SAT: 1430 + 6/7/6 Essay (Jan) and 1500 + 6/5/6 Essay (May)
SAT Math II: 800
SAT Physics: 800
AP CS A: 5
AP Calc BC: 5
AP Phy C Mech: 5
Essays: Idk I’m still working on them but they’re going to be pretty strong. Might turn out to be phenomenal.
ECs:
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Competitive Programming. Qualified for the Indian National Olympiad in Informatics twice. Was deemed qualified for the national training camp. Recognition in a ton of no-name competitions. Was invited to a couple selective competitive programming summer camps.
Founder & Lead Dev, Empathize: We’re building an AI-powered therapist chatbot. Have received significant interest from investors we’ve met.
Internship with a social org. Can’t give away specifics. My role was significant in one of its initiatives.
Deep Learning. Worked on numerous personal projects. Research on one-shot learning and synthetic gradients (Most of my work is unpublished, shall describe in the additional info section of the app.)
Published work on conversational AI in an international journal
Self-Taught Therapist. Listens to sexual assault survivors and lgbt youth online. Helps them with their personal problems. ← theme of my CommonApp essay
Amateur Keyboardist. Awesome LoR from music teacher of prev school, where I went in 9th and 10th grades. Performed in many school events and a couple interschool competitions. [Two of the events received some press coverage if that matters]
Hosted an online programming contest that received over 300 participants from over 10 countries.
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LORs
Dope LoRs from CS and Music Teachers; Good-ish ones from English teacher and Math teacher (who’ll be acting as my counselor).
I NEED A TON OF AID. I can pay like 15-20k a year.
Please help me prepare a list of safety and target schools to apply to. Also, should I apply ED to Cornell or EA to Stanford?
One, in general, aid is very hard to come by for international applicants. Two, the schools that do give aid are hard to get into. So, I think, with your stats, the chances of getting into any top schools such as the Ivy League or Stanford are very slim to none. Most of these schools probably take no more than 1-3 from India each year. So your competition is ridiculously fierce. Other than may be a 2-year community college, I am not sure what other colleges you can possibly go for $15-20K. Alternative…to do undergrad in India and pursue grad school in the US. Just a thought, especially given there are many good CS/CE colleges in India. Good luck!
Target merit aid (look at the thread at top of financial aid forum).
Flip a coin between Cornell and Stanford : both Cornell and Stanford are need aware. Stanford is better for what you want, Cornell has the Tata scholarship. Because both are need aware, your odds are ridiculously low at both.
At the same time, apply to as many merit scholarships as you can at state flagships. Avoid colleges where all Indians apply (Purdue, UIUC). Think UIndiana’s or UNebraska’s new schools of computing.
Add LACs known to be strong in CS (Harvey Mudd, Carleton, Denison…)
Only submit your May SAT if possible. The SAT essay isn’t nearly as important as the rest of it, and your May essay score is okay as it is. Submit your subject scores. Pleas don’t say you think your essays will be phenomenal. If that kind of attitude reflects in your essays, you can be sure colleges will pick up on it and act accordingly. Absolutely do not submit four LORs, unless a colleges says they will accept them all. A sure way to annoy adcoms is to submit more than they allow.
I am not sure how much you can really say about your “unpublished work.” I wouldn’t emphsize it. You can’t mention things you didn’t do, like national summer camps you were invited to but didn’t attend. If kids listed stuff like that, adcoms would never read about things they actually did. You can’t say you are a “self-taught therapist.” That’s ridiculous. You can say you volunteer on a help forum, and that’s it.
Please reread your post. You think very highly of yourself, which is great, but it’s coming through here as being a bit self-important. Colleges want to admit people they like, in addition to all the rest.