Hi everyone,
I’m a High School junior and I want to apply to RSI next year and I was hoping some of you could give me a rough estimate of being accepted. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Basic info:
- 16 year old Colombian male
- Born and raised in Colombia, lived in the Bay Area for 3 years, and I just moved back to Colombia this summer
- Was lucky enough to get American citizenship while I was living abroad, which I think is really helpful since I will count as a domestic applicant
- My family is pretty well off in Colombian standards, and I go to one of the best private schools in Bogota
- In the bay area I went to a pretty good public school
- Both of my parents went to college in Colombia
School/test stats:
- 4.0 GPA, first in class of 40 something at my private school
- In the US, I took AP Calc BC (5), AP Comp Sci (5), and Ap Spanish Lang (4) as a sophomore
- My school in Colombia doesn’t offer any good classes, but I’m taking Multivariable Calc and Physics Mechanics online at US community college
- I just took the SAT Math II and Spanish with listening subject tests in the November test date. I haven’t gotten back my results, but I am really confident I got an 800 on both
- I’m going to take the SAT in the December test date, and I am pretty sure I can get in the mid to high 1500s
ECs:
- JV football team captain, my team won our league
- Math tutor in my American school, math and physics tutor at my Colombian school
- Summer research internship at NASA Ames: researched the effects of covid-19 on the aviation industry and some potential solutions/recommendations, developed a website and research paper that were published by NASA, and created a machine learning model to predict commercial air travel demand. Was given a leadership position over other interns
- After the summer internship, I was hired back to be part of a project for implementing machine learning algorithms to facilitate ATC operations with automation. I’m currently in this position which will continue indefinitely
- I play the accordion, which is a very popular instrument in Colombian music. I’m not the best, but I’m researching ways to automatically create tutorials given a song using machine learning
- I founded a nonprofit in Colombia to encourage innovation amongst high school students by providing them with STEM opportunities. I’m currently organizing a coding bootcamp in which we will teach students how to program machine learning systems. Also, I’m organizing a hackathon at the end in conjunction with Google, and we will have guest speakers from NASA, Google, and MIT
Honors/Awards:
- 2020 AP scholar
- Was awarded a certificate of achievement at NASA for the research project that my team did
- 4th place in one of the Colombian mathematics olympiads (not the one that qualifies you to the IMO)
- Won the Colombian programming olympiad, so qualified to IOI
- Qualified for the Colombian mathematics olympiad finals (the one that qualifies you to the IMO), which are next week. I doubt I can win because I haven’t really had time to train, but I think that I have a chance at making the national team that competes in international competitions
If you guys have any tips/advice on how I can improve my chances, I would really appreciate it!