Decided to make a post as a ““therapeutic”” exercise since I’m grinding my teeth waiting for notification day.
Demographics: White, high family income, private school. LGBT but semi-closeted so it doesn’t mean much, touched on it in application briefly.
Intended Major: Computer Science in Columbia College (+ Physics/PoliSci major)
Schools: Columbia ED (Hooks: won MIT AI competition with team of Columbia freshmen, relationships with several professors, legacy through mother, father is a mentor for their graduate program), also "Stan"ford, Harvard, UC Hicago, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, NYU
Academics:
- School: Competitive boarding/day prep school, 600 students, reputation for liberal arts, 10+ people to top 20s each year
- UW GPA: 3.84-3.9 depending on first quarter senior grades, school doesn’t weight so this is largely an estimate
- Rank: unranked but counselor hinted top 5/123. Since unweighted, I might be the top student accounting for course difficulty
- APs: Chem (Soph, 4), World History (Soph, 4), Macro/Micro (5, Jr), APUSH (5, Jr), AP Comp Sci A (5, Jr), AP Biology (5, Jr), AP English Lang (5, Jr) | AP Physics C Mech/E&M (Sr), AP English Lit (Sr), AP Euro (Sr), AP Calculus BC (Sr)
- ACT: 35
- SAT II: Math 2 790
Extracurriculars (Strongest Point):
- Co-Captain Vex Robotics Team 3 years, won highest individual team award at nationals, helped build new program and train members, wrote all code and wrote design notebook, 7+ state awards
- MUN Co-President (Sr), Secretary (Jr) 4 years, first non-senior club officer in club history, largest club on campus, top 25 program in the country according to BestDelegate.com, won 3 individual awards, coached mentees to 10 awards
- Internships 3 years, interned in multiple NYC Tech companies building cluster computing systems, warehouse logistics system, worked on a data science team, only high school intern all years
- Student Researcher 2 years, did novel computational biology research with professor, pre-pub manuscript
- Computer Science Projects 4 years, top 10/1000 teams MIT Battlecode AI competition, won hackathons, design physics sims
- Captain Math Modeling 4 years, 13-120 hour applied math competitions, Nat Finalist/Finalist in several, first freshman team in school history to place
- Co-Founder/Co-Captain Debate Team 3 years, started debate program, got funding, won local tournaments, finalist at several national tournaments
- National Director of Technology for youth civic engagement org 1 year, largest student-run org in US
- Co-Captain History Bowl, 2 years, founded team, top 25 at nationals our first year, won 3 NYS tournaments
Letters of Rec:
- Counselor and I are bros, hang out with him and his kids all the time, said my letter wrote itself
- AP English teacher. Had strong relationship with me, emphasizes non-STEM side of me, she’s a published writer with very good letters in the past
- AP Bio teacher. Like a second mother to me, her letter made me cry
- Head of the School, she and I are really close and she loves me. Have fundraised for the school extensively
Essays:
- Common App: wrote about being the worst person in MUN but finding a role through being a mentor, very honest about my failures (8/10)
- Supplements: Labored hard for Columbia. Why Columbia essay talked about the people I’ve met there and what they mean to me. Talked about Physics professor who inspired me. Study topic essay talked about my passion for Artificial Intelligence and gave metaphor as to how it works (9/10)
Honors:
Renseselear Medal for STEM achievement (School)
Cum Laude (School honor society, top 6 students in grade)
Oberlin Book Award for Highest Academic Standing in English (School)
National AP Scholar
Questions:
How do I stop thinking about this? What should I do for my interview?