Please let me know if I should do RD, REA, or ED to some other school. I think Stanford is a good fit but I don't know if I realistically have a chance. Thanks in advance :)

Demographics

• Gender/Race: Male / South Asian
• Residence: Northeast (fairly competitive area)
• Hooks: None (No legacy/athlete)

Intended Major

• Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence / Computational Biology

Academics

• GPA: 4.0 UW, 4.76 W (top 3% prob atleast, not officially released tho)
• SAT: 1570 (800M, 770R)
• PSAT: 1520 (perfect)
• Course Load: Most rigorous available at school

Awards

1. Big Entrepreneurship Comp (think Diamond or Conrad) Challenge Finalist (2026)
2. Top 100 Emerging Innovators
3. USACO Gold
4. ACSL Finals Gold Medal
5. International Society for Computational Biology - ISMB Conference accepted sole author poster abstract
6. State-Level + Regional Science Fair Awards (numerous 1st place + special awards)
7. Debate State Champion: 1st Place debate in all of state
8. Co-author (2nd) on abstracts in numerous other conferences (with Stanford postdoc, for example Society for Neuroscience Conference)
9. Publication under review at Nature Communications Biology (postdoc says most likely will get accepted by Nov 1 as we are just got 2nd round of feedback back, but no guarantees ofc)

Extracurriculars

1. Research & ML Engineer @ Stanford Lab: Worked here for almost 2.5 years now, abstracts accepted in confs + Nature Comms Bio pub in review rn (as above).
2. Internship at big neuroscience institute
3. Developed AI-driven medical project; finalist at big entrepreneurship comp (Diamond or Conrad Challenge), competed at various sci fair awards listed above
4. USACO Club Leader: Captain of competitive programming club; organized first-ever competition with 100+ participants and $1,000+ in corporate sponsorship (Jane Street, Desmos, etc..).
5. Software Engineering Intern @ Big Startup
6. AI Intern @ Big Conservation Nonprofit + proposed pilot project that was accepted and used
7. Varsity Debate Captain: Debate captain, 1st place at states, many bids to finals comp and ran practices and such
8. Designed and developed an assistive math learning app for neurodivergent students (honorable mention at a comp)
9. Science Olympiad Lead
10. National Guild Playing Audition Member

Essays/LORs

• Essays: I'm not horrible at writing essays but also not amazing either, so these probably won't be too crazy.
• LOR 1: Stanford Head of Department im working at (he is head of a major Stanford department, but the postdoc will actually prob be the one to write the rec because he knows me better, the head will just sign off)
• LOR 2/3 (teachers): Research mentor at school + English teacher