u/Comfortable_Cry_9657

Demographics

• Gender: male
• Race/Ethnicity: indian
• Residence: Bay Area BUT on a h4 visa, so considered international for admissions. ULTRA competitive private high school
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): none

Intended Major(s): CS

Academics

• GPA/Rank (or percentile): 4.0 unweighted, no rank
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 4 APs, 7 APs senior year. Took 6 total dual enrollment classes including multivariable calc, psychology and sociology cause that stuff really interests me, some other stuff
• Senior Year Course Load: Both AP Physics C classes, AP French, AP stats, AP gov, AP econ, AP lit

Standardized Testing

List the highest scores earned and all scores that were reported.

• SAT/ACT: 1530 (790 math)
• AP/IB: 5 on BC and CSA, 4 on Chem, 4 on APUSH

Extracurriculars/Activities: 

1. BSA Life Scout/almost Eagle Scout, had quite a unique engineering-based Eagle Project I reflected on
2. A well-known summer program on the east coast, did ML related research but did not get published or anything
3. A big family responsibility
4. Independent research I did on machine learning which was kinda chopped
5. Robotics FRC team, software member
6. Tutor for a nonprofit (quite a bit of tutoring)
7. Officer/mentor for a game development club at school
8. TA for two classes at school
9. JV swim team
10. Officer for a school volunteering club

Awards/Honors: Literally nothing lol, I ended up listing PSAT commended, AP scholar, and some robotics awards that were team awards lol

Essays/LORs/Interviews: Personal statement was about the family responsibility in #3, was pretty genuine and I thought it was alright, but reflecting on it I think I could've made it more unique and overall stronger. Supplementals for EAs were not too great, but my RD ones felt significantly more myself. I believe my PIQs were fantastic.

Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)

• Acceptances (all for CS except Cal): USC, UIUC, UC Berkeley (for alternate major, which was statistics), UCLA, UCSD, UCI, UCSB, UC Davis, UVA EA, UW Madison, UMD, Northeastern, Cal Poly SLO, SJSU
• Waitlists: Georgia Tech, Purdue (???), U Mich
• Rejections: Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Penn, Cornell (deferred ED -> rejected RD), CMU, UT Austin (i don't even know why I applied to almost all the ivies lol)

COMMITTED: Ended up committing to UC Berkeley for statistics. Debating between UCB stats and UCLA/UIUC CS for a while, but went with Cal

Overall, out of state wasn't too great, but was surprised I got into all my in-state schools except Stanford (which was my dream school, but oh well). I did feel a slight disadvantage compared to my peers for out of state schools, as I noticed most people with similar stats get into CMU/GT/Cornell, but I'm still super grateful, and go bears.

I'm an incoming freshman and honestly this class (w. Prof Sharma) has been pretty brutal for me. I would say it's more the fact that I haven't been able to dedicate as much time to this class as I should since I have another summer commitment that takes up most of my day until the evening, but I should have more time starting next week if I decide to continue. I think it's close to impossible for me to get an A in the class now since I would need basically a perfect 100 on the final. I'm worried about starting Berkeley with a low GPA. If I drop I would have to take it in the spring with CS 70, since fall enrollment is unfortunately done, but I would know a lot of the content already. I heard that dropping a class in the summer won't give you a W on your transcript or anything but I would lose the tuition money from this summer.

Genuinely idk what to do