u/tennis-637

I can't find them

Hi all,

I'm a fairly active 18 year old male. Went from 195 lbs bodyweight to 172 bodyweight, with around 4 months of cutting. Maintenance is around 2800-3000 per day. Currently eating 2200-2300 cals a day.

However, over this past week or so, I've noticed every time I stand up, I start seeing stars and can't really think properly for like 10-15 seconds. Kind of like blacking out on a roller coaster. Apparently it's orthostatic hypotension. Is this something I should be worrying about or just accept on the cut?

**Demographics**

* Gender: Male
* Race/Ethnicity: White and asian (probably only “appeared” as Asian)
* Residence: VA
* Income Bracket: 300k-400k
* Semi competitive public school
* No hooks

**Intended Major(s)**: Mechanical Engineering

**Academics**

* GPA (UW/W): 4.0/4.7
* Rank (or percentile): School didn't rank
* \# of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 11 APs, 4 DEs
* Senior Year Course Load: 4 APs

In my senior year, currently taking Multivariable Calculus/Differential equations as dual enrollment.

**Standardized Testing**

* SAT : 1520 (720 RW, 800 M)

**Extracurriculars/Activities**

I still don't know if my ECs were weak or not.

1. Worked as a paid research assistant at state flagship for \~1 year, built and tested particle detectors for particle accelerators around the country. Was going to get research published in March-ish but that was too late to put on Common app so I didn't include that.

2. Built a 3D printed, Arduino controlled bionic hand from scratch, won a couple of regional awards. Self taught arduino, 3d printing, CAD.

3. Founded my schools first physics club, grew club size from \~5 to \~40 members. Organized competitions and did outreach at local elementary schools.

4. Varsity tennis all 4 years. Awarded most improved and MVP.

5. Active weightlifter for 4 years.

6. Science fair project on graphene that won a regional award.

**Awards/Honors**

Never really competed much, and I think this is what held me back. I regret it a lot.

1. Couple of regional awards from the science fair

**Letters of Recommendation**

If I had to guess, 6-7/10. Was pretty close with my teachers who I got the letters from, was active in class and usually top of the class.

**Interviews**

MIT - 8/10 - went really well, talked a lot, learned a lot.

Princeton - 7/10 - guy was kind of old and it was his first time so we just talked about college life. Got along really well.

Stanford - 5/10 - really standard, nothing standout. Kind of didn't know how to answer a couple of questions.

**Essays**

Wrote about learning about myself and redefining my own expectations while working on my bionic hand, how it changed my mindset/approach to lots of challenges in life. I'd say it was 7/10. I liked it and my friends/family liked it.

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

*Acceptances:*

* UVA EA (in state)
* VT EA (in state)
* Purdue EA

*Rejections:*

* UIUC EA (deferred --> reject)
* Georgia Tech EA
* MIT RD
* Caltech RD
* Princeton RD
* Stanford RD
* UCLA
* UC Berkeley

Commiting to UVA ultimately. Pretty excited about this but it was a brutal app round.

Building a hexapod robot and sometimes I find myself overengineering the shit out of some parts. How do y'all know when to "stop"?

By “this event” I mean Gus’ and Mike’s deaths. After their deaths it feels like there’s no “structure” in the in show world. Everything seems very bleak and empty, but not in a bad way. The show is still a masterpiece and I’m eager to see where it goes.

Currently on my first watch through and I just finished the episode where Mike dies. He was one of my favorites so that pained me.

Now that everyone has committed somewhere and the dust has settled, what do y’all think about the 2026 admissions cycle?

For me, it felt hard asf all around this year for engineering specifically. I know someone who got into UPenn engineering but got rejected in state for UVA engineering. I was a MechE applicant and I got brutalized.

High school tennis player here, this happened like 4 days ago.

Our team lost 4-5 in the first round of regions to the team thats probably going to be eventual state champions this year. I was the losing match, court 3 doubles. Split sets and their team won the tiebreak 10-7, winning the whole match overall.

I’ll say I didn’t play bad, I won my singles match pretty well and was playing pretty well in doubles.

Im a senior, and so are a ton of my friends on the tennis team, so this was the last match we’ll ever play in high school.

There was some drama too, they had their second best singles player on the bottom doubles court, which is considered stacking and illegal in high school tennis, so that adds another level of frustration to this. Our coach is also retiring after 20 years this year, so that adds another level too.

The tiebreak haunts me. How do I get over this? If me and my partner had just won a couple more points in that tiebreak, there’s a real possibility we would’ve been state champs.

When graphing the standard deviation lines, my rightmost gene H standard deviation line went out of the graph at the top. I didn’t have time to erase my entire graph so I just drew an arrow at the top saying the value that the standard deviation went to.

Will i get points off for this? How many points are for the graph alone?