Stats -
Courses :
9th and 10th - ICSE
11th and 12th - ISC These two boards are considered the toughest in the country.
9th and 10th - Math, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, English, History, Geography, Sanskrit
11th and 12th - Math, Chemistry, Physics, English, Computer Science (Indian curriculum has all AP level syllabus for regular standard, so all these courses were AP equivalent)
Grades :
My school doesn’t do GPA, only percentages, and the grades are all probably weighted as difficulty of curriculum is already high. The tests that are given in my school are incredibly tough, they make it so that the board exams are easier, so don’t be surprised if 10th board exam percentage is much higher than the others.
9th - 91%
10th - 97% (rank 12 out of 128 in school, but I didn’t mention rank anywhere)
11th - 90%
12th - Exams not done yet, but mid year grade - 87%
Overall average grade up to 12th mid year - 91.25% (which is like 4.3 weighted out of 4.3 according to some website because of my curriculum being ISC, so it’s naturally “tough”)
SAT -
Math - 740
EBRW - 720
Total - 1460
According to the common data sets, I’m above the 75th percentile for both the mentioned colleges.
Extra curriculars -
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Computer vision and python internship with a defense contractor (I was selected out of more than 150 national applicants). Getting an internship while still in high school is not an easy thing in India and is probably a great achievement of itself. I worked on machine learning projects and even had an individual project regarding naval and rescue sign detection using deep learning.
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Participated in Google Code-in (international coding competition) contest three years, came in top 10 out of 123 in my organization in 2019 contest. Basically we need to work on real tasks that the organization we have chosen gives us, whoever does the most number of tasks wins. I did around 20 tasks, but probably didn’t win because I wasn’t involved in GitHub issue helping and stuff.
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I have also been the leader of the audio-video team in my school. We edit and create videos and photos for school events like valedictory ceremony, school annual day and stuff. We’ve received recognition from the management and been regarded as the best AV team among all the branches of the institution.
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I also do competitive coding, not won anything, but did go to the finals of a city level contest.
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I do quizzing, won third place once in a city level competition.
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I’m a junior level violinist, had stopped for a while during exams and stuff, so couldn’t advance further, but picked up again and I learn songs and play in my own. I’ve given multiple concerts and performed on stage, no awards and stuff as I wasn’t seriously indulged in it.
I don’t have any awards per say, but I do have a lot of certificates from competitions and exams, I don’t know if that counts.
Essay :
I’d say it’s a pretty well written essay, I’d rate it 8/10. My topic was “Describe a topic, idea or concept that you find so engaging that you lose track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to learn more?”
I wrote about my love for computer vision and how I find coding and computer science very interesting. I wrote about my internship and my projects, how I started coding when I was still 10 years old, played around with Arduino (a microprocessor which you can use to build and program small machines), how that made me curious about automation and AI and computer vision, I’ve included some literary stuff to like stuff about superheroes, Sherlock homes and Isaac Asimov, about how we should “not only SEE but OBSERVE” everything around us, blah blah, overall it’s a good essay and has a truly captivating hook.
I don’t know if this counts as community service, but I volunteered to help people who were affected by floods in my state and a neighboring state. I formed a team with my friends and went house to house to collect stuff like food, clothes, commodities, money to give to the people of those affected states. I included this too in my essay saying this was an inspiration to use my technical skills for good and help save people from natural disasters and built rescue sign detector, fire and smoke detector and stuff during my internship.
Excellent recommendations from Math, CS, English teachers and the school Principal, I’d rate them all 8/10 on average.
Race - Indian
Major - CS
Annual income of family in 2019 - INR 1957000 (approx)
Definitely asking for financial aid, applied early decision 2 to Lafayette College, if that helps increase the chances.
