Hello everyone! I’m a junior from California planning to apply to RSI, SSRP, SSP, and the NIMH internship program this year. I’ve never really done anything like this, so I wanted to know what my chances are.
Any comments are appreciated, along with any tips!
Demographics (if they’re helpful):
- rural area, small town
- Indian-American
- female
Scores/GPA:
- no standardized test scores at the moment - my ACT was cancelled along with my PSAT. I got a 3 in APES though.
- probably a 4.5 - I had an extremely strict AP Chem teacher and got 1 B (the rest of my transcript is all As).
- I’ve taken 7 college classes and received As in all.
ECs:
- I’ve done independent research ever since 5th grade. In ninth grade, I developed a synthetic ethanol biofuel that’s quicker and cheaper to produce than corn ethanol in a community lab. In tenth grade, I designed a diagnostic device for diabetic neuropathy with a 100% accuracy.
- I’m a part of my school’s varsity science olympiad team, and recently won 9th place at a national invitational (Transcontinental). I also scored several regional medals (1st-7th place).
- I’m a social media co-director for a national organization. I’m organizing a STEM-based social media challenge.
- I’m the founder of mhcsgirls, a chapter of ProjectCSGirls based in my community. We’ve educated around 20 girls on topics like HTML/CSS web design, game design, and more within 4 workshops.
- I’m the founder of my school’s March For Our Lives club, where we organized a Vote For Our Lives event to encourage civic advocacy and participation.
- I’m the founder of an organization focused on encouraging girls in research to disrupt the current narrative of women in science. We’ve been making posts on women in this field and are currently organizing workshops in high school research, how to get a remote research internship, etc.
- I’m currently an intern at the Walsh Lab at Vanderbilt University Medical center (my research internships at Stanford Wall Lab got cancelled due to COVID-19 :/). I’m doing research on NLP applications to improving the quality of motivational interviewing counseling conversations and am creating a remote, automatic feedback system for counselors to use post-conversation.
- I was accepted into the New York Academy of Sciences and am developing a novel, large-scale interdisciplinary platform to facilitate better telemedicine diagnoses.
- I write poetry (more on that below!)
Honors/Awards:
- Honorable Mention, UCD Teen Biotech Challenge
- 2nd place at SJCOE County Science Fair, (2019-2020) 5+ years CSEF qualifier, 2nd place at Sac STEM Science Fair (2019 - cancelled 2020)
- Scholastic National Art and Writing Awards Western Region Honorable-Mention (2019)
- Published poetry in Defiant Magazine and Dear Asian Youth
- 9th place at Transcontinental Science Olympiad Invitational, Anatomy and Physiology + several regional medals in Science Olympiad
That’s all! Thank you so much!