u/LeatherEuphoric3028

Chance Me for ivies+ & duke/cmu/nyu/gtech

rising senior, asian male
hooks: fgli
school: public, non-magnet, mid-to-high comp, suburban

gpa: 4.0 uw/mid 4.6 w
sat/act: 1550, no act
class rank: no rank
ap classes: 9 up to junior year + 5 senior year (2 de, 2 av (weighted same as ap))
intended major: cs + env sci or env eng
4 years language
linear alg/multi var senior year school

spike: trying to be cs + social justice kinda, humanitarian side of ml/ai

ap scores: all five up to now

ec's

wildfire agent-based modeling research

  • ABM of wildfire spread to protect reservation communities (27k+ sq mi, ~175k residents); team program secured five-figure grant; project was presented at a uni-affiliated conference and prolly another in the winter. more of helping to develop legislation/risk planning/resource allocation for these residents.
  • with my local uni (t100)

ai hackathons

  • built/deployed ai/ml projects across 8+ hackathons; 4+ hackathon wins. a lot of them were against undergrad/grad/professionals in the field. ~$2500 earned

RAG research paper

  • first authored study on retrieval-augmented generation across 6 datasets, 9,000+ observations; ANOVA/Tukey testing; arXiv preprint in progress (prolly not going to submit to any conferences)
  • might collab w/ northeastern prof soon

PPG biomed research

  • first-author research on photoplethysmography + ML for low-cost health monitoring, targeting workshops (ml4h, among others) + publication (will be under review by apps)

ai Internship

  • Built/shipped AI features for production platform; contributed to five-figure revenue and resolved six-figure process bottlenecks in a startup engineering team.

water quality filtration device

  • ml + water filtration research for quinone 6ppd in stormwater drains, federal water quality award (1st) + wwema speaker invite (conference w/ industry leaders); continuing at a pretty good uni (t25 for cs) summer 26, prolly paper + conference as well. model 90%+ accuracy
  • won 3rd at regional science fair (isef-related)

established refugee organization

  • tutored Afghan refugee students in english/math (grades 1-12); 160+ hours supporting newcomers adjusting to US schools.

scioly

  • vp + multi-event competitor, member three years now

wasdl pf captain

  • public forum captain at my school, member four years now

vesss - nasa program

  • selected as 1 of ~100 in my state for nasa earth systems program; studied remote sensing and environmental data analysis.

awards

xAI hackathon 2025

  • accepted as 1 of 2 high schoolers among 554 college & professional competitors

yc startup school 2026

  • selected 1/~2000 from roughly 30,000 applicants. 2-day conference in sf

fwqa + wwema speaker

  • special award + invitation to conference

scioly

  • state 4th place (x2) + regional 1st + regional 5th (x2)

nmsf

  • probably, got 1490

recs

counselor: 9/10

teacher 1 (stem): 10/10

teacher 2 (stem): 7/10

teacher 3 (humanities): 7/10

prof (if i need it): 8.5/10

essays

beginning to start, i would say im an okay to good writer

idk im feeling so much imposter syndrome, esp for a cs applicant. let me know what i can do before apps. im gonna do regeneron + some fly-in programs. would love any advice at all, feel free to ask me anything.

reddit.com
u/LeatherEuphoric3028 — 23 hours ago