u/Patriciansa

I’m an incoming freshman whose entire identity is based on anime and Japanese culture. I didn’t see any anime-related student organization listed in the Hopkins group website.

So is there an Anime club at all in Hopkins?

😭😭😭

Note: Bro almost got cooked by writing Yuri, DO NOT WRITE YURI IN UR APPS

(and pls watch I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day pls pls pls its rly peak)

Demographics: Bay Area Asian Male in an extremely competitive private school where everyone goons into STEM and STEM only 🤓🤓🤓 (Our school is ranked nationally in STEM...)

hooks:

1. bro's American only in the political sense (U.S. citizen) 😓 I was raised in China and family is located in China, also had first two years in a Chinese international school.
2. why I come to the U.S.: had some extremely complicated family issue it's such a drama: so basically non-existent biological father pops up and sued mom with absolutely made-up BS so I can't renew my passport so no more Chinese visa so have to involuntarily move here. Also I live independently with my relatives, have to deal with my own life.
3. I always have a dad since childhood but surprisingly my parents are never married so I would appear single-parent family on paper 😅 (totally didn't expect this but it happened)

Income: Chinese economy is crashing 😭 and parents chose the wrong industry so very low income (<$20k) and decent asset (<$1M).

Intended Major(s): Physics/Astrophysics 🤓 + Visual Arts 😍

SAT: 1530 (Math: 790; RW: 740) 💀 everyone in my school who's locked in got 1580/90 and half of my entire grade got NMSF which is CRAZY

UW/W GPA and Rank: 4.0/4.0 UW; 4.83/5.0 W; school doesn't rank

Coursework: 19 AP Classes with 17 AP Scores in hand already (sixteen 5s and one 4 (which is AP Art 2D 🥲).) 2 more APs in senior year and rest are capstones.

Awards (Strongest Session?):

1. USAPhO 2025 Silver Medalist (Top 100 in the Nation) with a F=ma score of 20/25 (this is actually quite high, qual score is 14 this year)
2. Physics Bowl Division II Global First Place with a perfect score of 40/40 (tied with 2 other people). Physics Bowl is much easier than USAPhO but it's an international competition also hosted by AAPT (same as USAPhO). There are ~5k ppl competing division II this year.
3. AMC 12 Distinction and AIME Qual + High score (132/150 (this is ~top 2%) and 9/15 (this is ~top 20% in AIME qualifiers)) 3 AIME questions from AMO 😭
4. Astrophysics Research Publication (Published in an international conference with proceeding journal, not that prestigious like SCI but at least it's peer-reviewed and not some random high school journal 🥺)
5. Scholastics Art Award Gold Key, Bay Area Region (this means quite a lot to me since I firstly did art for fun but it gets more and more serious)

Extracurriculars (Not very very strong but at least they are unique):

1. Leader of a indie game studio with 10+ ppl to produce a middle length visual novel (~70k words and 10+ illustrations with full voice acting) (It's Yuri + Sci-Fi!!!) Promo Video and Posts having 30k+ views/3k+ likes and demo gonna publish on Steam very soon (will make it happen before Nov 1st ddl)
2. Collaborated with Princeton PhD and Chinese Academy of Science Professor to develop a collocation method to solve restricted three-body problem, the research went over a year. Wrote a paper as first author, published on peer-reviewed journal through international conference.
3. Organizer and Main Artist of a local community art show. We gathered around 5+ volunteers all across the nation to take photography using film rolls in their daily life. Then I as the artist use those photographs as sources and collaged/merged/distorted them into some really fancy surrealist abstract arts. We hit about 50+ attendees.
4. Created dozens (too many) photography-based digital arts using Photoshop, many used in my visual novel as backgrounds (there are over a dozen of them). Also made some large-scale ones (i.e. instillation long as 14 meters). Awarded work exhibited at California College of the Arts, submitting art portfolio.
5. Student Leader of school's math modeling club: taught students Matlab/python/general math skills like differential equations. Organized and led peers competed in MFTC (got to Semifinalist) and M^(3) and HIMCM (many teams got some awards)
6. Some creative writing: for example the sole author of that 70k word script of my visual novel, used many experimental skills like stream of consciousness and fractured narrative. Also wrote some short stories (submitted to school literary magazine). Currently researching on why Yuri literature is so effective in conveying stories with a college professor as my school's senior project. (I love this topic 🥴)
7. Independent living: I now live with my relatives in the U.S. (that's why I'm in Bay Area 👽) Rent a room in their house, manage my meals sometimes (other times they would give me some food to keep me alive 😎), laundry, cleaning, groceries, budgeting, etc etc. Give some contexts for EC time/quality (can't do too crazy things)

(Below are my first 2 year's ECs in China, explained in additional info that transferred had caused some activities to stop, sadly some are actually having really good potentials)

8. Founder and President of Anime Literature Club: The most important club for me in my high school, have to put that in. 10+ club members, we watched so many anime (will call this "anime appreciation" in common app), did reviews on them, wrote proses about them, and created funny stuffs like an anime-genre coordinate system that would sort most anime onto some positions so we could see their relations in a clearer way.

9. Peer Tutoring Group: founder of a student-led tutoring group that supported 100+ students in our school in AP/HW/test prep, this was really fun but sadly I transferred to the U.S. the second year.

10. More volunteering: did peer tutoring in America too, but instead I tutored a middle schooler in physics/chemistry for 2 years (1hr/wk) (he's smart but just needs more confidence...) In China I did library volunteering, (60+ hrs for over 2 years), NHS (25 hrs), managed school events and volunteered at local library (I loved the library job for real).

Essays/LORs/Other:

Common App: This is the coolest college essay that I've written imo, the hook and starting scene is me in a delulu scene where I saw my visual novel's character in real life, on my way of walking back home (yes it's a sob story and yes I can't even afford a car so I walked back home for over 30 min each day 😭) Then I talked about how my creative initiative got me out of this emotional/physical adversity by letting myself learning from the fictional character that I created, with excessive existentialist philosophies mentioned (this may sound logically weird but tbh it would sound fine in the essay itself)

LoR 1: 9/10 From my physics teacher, we had a good relation and one thing special is that AAPT got 3 questions wrong in their answer key for Physics Bowl so I reached out to my teacher and debated whether I or them were right. He firstly supported AAPT but eventually it turns out that I was right. I was very active in his class and I often asked him about USAPhO questions.

LoR 2: 8/10 From my AP gov/econ teacher, we talked a lot in class and he definitely remembered me. One special thing is that when my peers can’t answer some questions in class the last one he would ask is me. 😇 So subconsciously he might think I’m quite smart.

Counselor LoR: ~8/10 He was kind to me and I was kind to him. I think he’ll mention my family issues, etc so it’s quite important but I don’t think he’s gonna boast me in any sort.

Schools:

Applied to quite a lot of T5/T10 and good LACs, big shout out to the only four that accepted me:

>!Reed!<

>!Vassar!<

>!Carleton!<

>!JHU-commited!<

Reflection:

College app IS the ultimate randomness. You basically can't do anything with it given your race, gender, and geography always stay as what it is. The entire process is fundamentally flawed, and to be honest, really unfair. But you have to work around the system, not combatting it.

I'm really grateful to those four schools that accepted me. I really hit the jackpot this time, but many people didn't. There are people who are benefitting from this system by some specific means, and all you need to do is to learn from them, not me.

Thank you very much for being with me for this entire process. You guys mattered way more than the colleges themselves.