Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: Wasian
• Residence: Great Plains, US
• Income Bracket: 100k +
• Type of School: Public
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): Geographic

Intended Major(s): Biology/Biochem + History

Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 4.0/4.5
• Rank (or percentile): School doesn't rank
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 14 AP Classes, 2 Dual Enrollment (Calc 3 and Diff Eq)
• Senior Year Course Load: Calc 3 + Diff EQ, AP Lit, Spanish, AP Gov, AP Research, AP Chem, AP Bio

Standardized Testing

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

• ACT: 36 (36E, 36M, 36R, 36S)
• AP/IB: 11 5's and 3 4's (World, Seminar, Research)

Extracurriculars/Activities

List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

1. Research role in a Microbiology lab (discovered new virus)
2. YYGS History
3. Science summer camp that accepts 2 people from each state
4. CNA Intern + Volunteer at Hospital
5. Debate Captain
6. Boys State Party Chair + Editor
7. Varsity Tennis Captain (3 Years)
8. Canvasser for School Board Candidate
9. Science Olympiad Founder
10. School Tutor

Awards/Honors

1. 2 Published Papers (sustainability in medicine)
2. T15 Placement in obscure olympiad
3. 1st Place in 2 other olympiads
4. All Metro + All State Academic Awards (tennis)
5. National Merit Finalist

Letters of Recommendation

1. Teacher I had twice and was close with (7/10)
2. Chemistry teacher who I had twice and founded club with (9/10)
3. Person I canvassed for (has PHD) (9/10)
4. PI who helped me publish aforementioned papers (5/10)

Essays

I spent a lot of time working on my personal statement which focused on what I learned working with patients as a CNA. Also touched on canvassing and the people skills I needed to use to succeed in that environment.

Didn't really start my supps until winter break so they were probably a lot weaker.

Interviews

Rice: My first one, felt super stiff and talked mechanically. We were both from the same town so there was a little common ground

Harvard: Interviewer clearly had a series of things Harvard asked him to do and killed any attempts to engage in a more natural conversation

Dartmouth: From the same city, talked a lot about sports and how medical school was going for him

MIT: Dude was ancient (like 75+) but we still talked for a super long time, about 90 minutes

Duke: Nothing to note, he was a finance guy so we didn't really have anything in common

Stanford: Great convo about movies and what he liked about Stanford

Decisions

Acceptances:

• Stanford RD
• Georgia Tech EA (Significant Merit Aid)
• UW Madison EA
• UNL RD
• UMich EA
• Brown RD
• Dartmouth RD
• Cornell RD
• Ohio State EA
• Rice RD (Significant Merit Aid)

Waitlists:

• Princeton RD
• Johns Hopkins RD
• Northwestern RD
• Duke RD
• Vanderbilt RD
• UChicago RD
• Columbia RD

Rejections:

• Harvard RD
• Yale EA
• MIT RD
• UPenn RD

Additional Info: Committed to Stanford!

Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: Asian
• Residence: Southwest US
• Income Bracket: 100k +
• Type of School: Public
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.):

Intended Major(s): Pure Math or Math + Physics

Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 4.0/4.9
• Rank (or percentile): 1/~450
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 12 AP Classes, 4 Community College Math Classes( Calc 3, Linear Alg, Diff Eq, Real Analysis)
• Senior Year Course Load: AP Phys C Mech, AP Physics C EM, AP Spanish, AP Lit, AP Econ, AP Gov

Standardized Testing

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

• ACT: 36 (36E, 36M, 35R, 36S)
• AP/IB: All 5's other than a 4 on APUSH

Extracurriculars/Activities

List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

1. Research role in a lab doing pure math
2. Research role in a lab modeling disease spread
3. Research involving materials for more efficient solar panels
4. Co-President of a foundation tracking voting data and trying to increase voter participation in underrepresented areas
5. Debate Captain
6. Math Club President
7. Chess Club Founder
8. Varsity Football(only played 2 years)

Awards/Honors

1. ISEF Grand Award
2. ISEF Special Award
3. National Merit Finalist
4. Davidson Fellowship Honorable Mention
5. Coca-Cola Regional Finalist

Letters of Recommendation

1. Teacher I knew for 4 years doing debate (8/10)
2. My math teacher that helped me run the math club (6/10)
3. PI for the lab I worked in. (8/10)

Essays

I spent a lot of time working on my personal statement which focused on contrasting my experiences of where I grew up when I was little to where I live now in a big city, and how that change led to me searching for a sense of community and how I was able to recreate that sense of community for myself.

Didn't really start my supps until winter break so they were probably a lot weaker.

Decisions

Acceptances:

• Yale RD
• UPenn RD
• Columbia RD
• Rice RD
• Harvey Mudd RD
• Georgia Tech EA
• UC Berkeley RD

Waitlists:

• MIT EA (Deferred-> Waitlist)
• Priceton RD
• Stanford RD
• Caltech RD
• Johns Hopkins RD

Rejections:

• Harvard RD
• Duke RD
• Cornell RD
• Brown RD
• Darthmouth RD

Demographics

• Gender: Female
• Race/Ethnicity: White
• Residence: Michigan
• Hooks no hooks-just a white girl :)

Intended Major(s): (write here)

Academics

• GPA/Rank (or percentile): 3.95 unweighted 25/492
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 10 AP
• Senior Year Course Load: 5 AP 1 elective

Standardized Testing

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

• SAT/ACT: Did not submit scores-1350 but did not submit
• SAT II:
• AP/IB: did not submit any scores
• Other (ex. IELTS, TOEFL, etc.):

Extracurriculars/Activities: (list here) Varsity LAX captain, BPA all 4 years, started a clothing closet, taught elementary kids, leadership all 4 years, dance team all 4 years,

Awards/Honors: (list here)national BPA winner x2

Essays/LORs/Interviews: (briefly reflect/rate) 2 LOR from leadership teacher and a BPA advisor

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

• Acceptances: (list here): UMich Ann Arbor used The_Michigan_Admit for help, Cornell used a counselor for help, Northeastern University, TCU, University of Florida
• Waitlists: (list here)
• Rejections: (list here)Notre Dame

Hopecore story after battling it out with 119 classmates! The only dress code stipulation is….no college sweatshirts so students don’t jump off a cliff when they see the name of the school that rejected them. Yikes!

Demographics:
* Gender: female
* Race/Ethnicity: white
* Residence: MA
* Income Bracket: upper upper class, not big donators though
* Type of School: small private college prep school. Every student is required to participate in 2-3 seasons of afternoon activity (community service, athletics, arts) as well as have 80 hours of community service by graduation.
* Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): 4x Princeton legacy, 1x sibling legacy at Brown.

Intended Major(s): poli sci/international affairs/public policy/economics

Academics
* GPA (UW/W): My school doesn’t calculate it, but if I had to guess it would be 3.82 UW.
* Rank (or percentile): Top 1/3 of my class of 120.
* \# of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 3 AP classes (Enviro, Stats, Drawing) and Honors History of Ancient Rome
* Senior Year Course Load: Regular Calculus, senior English electives (no honor English courses), AP statistics, regular physics, history of Ancient Rome honors

Standardized Testing
* SAT I: N/A
* ACT: 34 (reading: 36) (english: 36) (science: 36) (math: 29)
* AP/IB: AP Environmental Science (4), AP Drawing (4), AP Lit (5, didn’t take the class), AP Lang (5, didn’t take the class).

Extracurriculars/Activities:

1. Founder and EIC of school feminist magazine. Published 3 editions, raised 5k for local domestic abuse shelter. 6hr/week, 40week/yr.

2. ice cream shop worker (5 years). 15hr/week, 20week/yr.

3. 4 year Head witness coach and caption of school Mock Trial team. 2x Massachusetts Bar competition participant and ‘25 statewide runner-up. 3hr/week, 35week/yr.

4. Summer before senior year, intern under the Chair of the Senate Ways and Means committee, did fiscal research and presented bills to the committee staff. 20hr/week, 8week/yr.

5. All-female a cappella group president and member for 3 years. Member of classical chamber choir for 4 years. 3.5hr/week, 35week/yr.

6. Head long term care volunteer at local senior living facility for my junior year winter, 5.5hr/week, 12week/yr.

7. 3 year JV tennis member and junior captain. 8hr/week, 9week/yr.

8. Actress in school theater program, 4 plays and 3 musical with varying roles in each. 15hr/week, 27week/yr.

9. 3 year Co-leader of Jewish affinity group. 1.5hr/week, 12wk/yr.

10. Sophomore year service trip to rural Indian village, worked with schoolchildren and raised 8k. 30hr/week, 2week/yr.

Awards/Honors

1. Highest Academic Distinction (all four years)
2. MassBar competition state runners up, junior year.
3. AP scholar with honor, junior year.
4. Massachusetts Music Educators association all-district honors choir, junior year.
5. Student elected speaker and 1st place capstone project winner at Yale Young Global Scholars summer program the summer before junior year.

Letters of Recommendation

College Counselor: 9/10, we are very close and she thinks the world of me lowk, point off because she also had to work on other student rec letters at the same time so wouldnt be surprised if it was not as good as it could be but no hate!

Junior science teacher: 8/10, she also loved me but we weren’t super close. She was JAZZED when I asked her to write it tho.

2–year history teacher: 10/10. I had him multiple times and he is super close with my grandmother, practically worships the ground I walk on. Love him!

Interviews:

Harvard: my first one, didnt have awesome answers to a couple questions but interviewer was super nice.

Tufts: he had done literally everything I said I wanted to do at Tufts. We started vibing HARDCORE and eventually went off track and were just chatting.

Georgetown: Fantastic, she clearly loved me. Recommended a book and she emailed me several weeks later saying she loved the book!

Princeton: lady was super awk, but we started talking about AI randomly halfway through (because she’s a comp sci professor) and I made it work.

Essays

Personal statement: wrote about my nail color (CND gel #36, “Dangerous Woman”) and my journey through feminism. Best piece of writing Ive ever done, only edited it twice before it was done.

Supplementals: Wrote the Ivies and GTown genuinely day before. Other ones I started much earlier, god only knows why. Hot trash, icl.

Decisions

ED Deferral: Brown ➡️ ACCEPTED RD ✅

Acceptances:
* American University EA (plus significant merit scholarship)
* UMass EA
* Northeastern EA (London Scholars program)
* Villanova University EA
* Lehigh University RD (merit scholarship)
* Tufts RD
* The George Washington University RD (merit scholarship)
* University College London (unconditional)
* Trinity College Dublin (unconditional)
* Kings College London (unconditional)
* St. Andrews (unconditional)

Waitlists:
* Georgetown University RD
* University of Pennsylvania ➡️ ACCEPTED ✅
* Princeton University RD

Rejections*:*
* Boston College RD
* Cornell University RD
* Dartmouth College RD
* Harvard University RD
* Williams College RD
* Amherst College RD
* London School of Economics

Additional Info:
Committed to Brown! Good luck guys, never thought I’d be here td but the process was worth it. Hang in there.

**Demographics**

* Gender: M
* Race/Ethnicity: east asian
* Residence: TX
* Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): n/a

**Intended Major(s)**: Applied math and CS

**Academics**

* GPA/Rank (or percentile): 4.82, 17/~860
* \# of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: ~12 APs
* Senior Year Course Load: AP Physics 2, C Mechanical and E&M, Gov, Macro

**Standardized Testing**

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

* SAT/ACT: 36 ACT
* SAT II:
* AP/IB: 5s all around
* Other (ex. IELTS, TOEFL, etc.):

**Extracurriculars/Activities:** (list here)
Published cybersecurity research into IEEE
Started a rock band
Did orchestra for four years
Scioly regional medals
Science bowl
Volunteered at church
Sold an online astronomy and public health course

**Awards/Honors:** (list here)
USACO Gold
IEEE Best Paper Award
Violin award in my city

**Essays/LORs/Interviews:** (briefly reflect/rate)
My essay was about how i saved a kid from choking on a grape and how it made me reflect on friendships. Wove that into my admiration of transcendentalism somehow, lol.

LORs were probably mid, wasn't particularly close with either. it was kinda last minute cuz the teacher i was really close with retired the year after so she couldn't write me a LOR 🥲

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

* *Acceptances:* (list here): Brown (Deferred -> ACCEPTED), UT Austin, TAMU
* *Waitlists:* (list here) Cornell
* *Rejections:* (list here) Caltech, CMU, Columbia, NU, Princeton, Rice, Stanford, UChicago, Vanderbilt, Yale

Additional Information: BTW, this was a few years ago, i just got bored and decided to post today 😂

Hi all!

I recently made a new game: Admissions Partner, which allows you to see real people's college profiles, guess where they got into college, and compare those guesses with they're real results! It's currently only in BETA but I would love for any of you to try it out and give me some feedback! As I keep building it I'll keep adding more profiles, but for this BETA version there are 20 REAL profiles for you to play with. I'd appreciate any feedback or experience on how it was!

Here's the link: Admissions Partner

These profiles are REAL profiles from this subreddit (scraped of any personal info like usernames) containing Academics, Demographics, EC's, Awards, and college list, as well as their REAL college results!

If anyone wants to get their profile removed from the game, just dm me and I'll be happy to help with that. I've also added a submit your own profile feature to this game so if anyone wants to contribute their own stats I would love for any contributions! (PS: it requires a source link just so I can verify it's real, can be a reddit post from here or anything else like a tiktok you saw)

I'd appreciate any feedback at all! Just comment on this post or dm me, I'm also open to feature requests. Future things I'm planning on adding: financial need category, lifetime stats, daily challenges, and making a new name!!! (If anyone has ideas for the name please help)

Also, would people be interested in a subreddit for this game??

PS: got this post approved by the mods already!

Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: Wasian 
• Residence: SC
• Income Bracket: middle class/upper middle class (single parent household it would be lower middle but if we also include my dads income, we become upper middle class) 
• Type of School: Large, suburban public school 
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): Some schools I was a recruited athlete, others I wasn’t.

 

Intended Major(s): Forensic Psych/Psych/Poli Sci/ Sociology 

Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 3.92 UW, 4.8 W
• Rank (or percentile): 78/486
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.:

Honors: 5

AP: 6

Dual Enrollments: 3

• Senior Year Course Load: AP Chem, AP Lit, AP Stats, Dual Enrollment Poli Sci, honors Econ

 

Standardized Testing

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

• SAT I: Never took
• ACT: 26 
• AP/IB: AP Lit (4), AP Stat (4),  AP Lang (4), Psych (5), AP Chem (3), APUSh (4),
• Other (ex. IELTS, TOEFL, etc.):

List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

1. Police explorers: about 8 hours a week (but changed depending on the week), corporal in leadership, taught new members, many awards won in a variety of competitions, 150+ hours in community service, joined at the beginning of sophomore year + year round activity
2. Track and field: Recruitable pole vaulter. Won most improved in 2024-2025 season, Captain, 4 years of participation 
3. Swimming: Year round club for 2 years + high school swim for 3 years, captain 
4. 7 cups: 250 hours of service hours, mental health related, in leadership on the site 
5. Selective county Youth leadership Program, community service project, then I joined the planning committee my senior year and oversaw the service project for that class. 
6. Speech and debate: 2 years, did poetry interpretation + LD. I sucked at this so I Lwk didn’t really fluff it up 
7. Participated in service hours for underserved youth in STEM through a friend’s passion nonprofit. Tech lead 
8. French honors society: co President 
9. Student government president: I was president of my rehabs class 😭obviously I left that detail out but ya 
10. Lifeguarding job, 3 years

 

Awards/Honors

List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

1. College Deans list 
2. AP scholar 
3. Art in the state art show (psych related piece)
4. Palmetto boys state: I also ended up being the first trans man to ever be selected to go 
5. NHS, NAHS, and NFHS

Letters of Recommendation

AP Psych teacher: I had been my sophomore year. She is known for extremely good recommendations letters and has to put a sign up on her door that she will no longer write them. I rate it a 8/10 so let cause I didn’t really talk to her after I had her. 

Swim Coach/AP lit teacher: 10/10. I actually read the letter and he hyped me up so much. I have known him since my sophomore year of HS and I did well in his class. He also had a soft spot for all CO26 swimmers for some reason which helped 

English teacher: 6/10. I’m not really sure why I asked him. He at one point was my advisor for the Rubik’s cube club I started but it ended up falling through. I really only talked to him about home life issues throughout the years

Calc teacher: 10/10, we were really close when I had her and I came to her class a lot throughout the entirety of senior year. 

AP Chem teacher: 7/10. I had her twice in HS and she really liked me as a whole. 

Interviews

Grinnell: my interview was alright. I kinda blew it since I didn’t know they had tutorials and so I talked about the “history of the pencil”

Conn Coll: I remember we connected well during the interview. She seemed really into all my answers and we were able to connect since we both had siblings applying to the coast guard academy this past year (which is across the street from Conneticut college)

Essays

I spent around 10 hours on my personal statement. I did it during a workshop that my brother’s school hosted. A college counselor reviewed it prior to submission who said it was a good essay. 

My topic was on the butterfly effect. It followed my life from freshman year to senior year and how someone I met at rehab directly impacted my future career plans and life choices throughout HS. 

All my supplementals were done the day of. All of them were BSed and I was pulling the most niche stuff out. I think I, at most, spent maybe 30 minutes on them. I rate them a solid 3/10

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

Acceptances:

• Colgate: RD
• Clemson: EA
• Augustana College : EA
• Connecticut College: RD
• Davidson: RD

 

Waitlists:

• Grinnell RD: WL —-> Accepted

 

Rejections:

• N/A

Additional Information:

Waitlist info:

• 4th place in an Anatomage tournament at HOSA SLC
• Top 10 in Community awareness event at DECA SCDC. Project was psych related 
• Started a new job at a swim school 
• 3rd place at a police explorer competition  in crisis negotiation (so the psych event) 
• Wrote a long LOCI about how Grinnell has always been my dream school

 

Note:

My ACT score struggled the way it did due to me not have a traditional math path since I was in a rehab my freshman year. I never took Geometry, Algebra 1, and Algebra 2. I ended up having to teach myself a lot of the curriculum I had missed when I was taking pre calc. Due to that, I learned the bare minimum for pre calc to be able to do well, but missed a lot of smaller, tested topics. 

Rehab also affected my class rank which was based on W GPA. Since we only had CP classes there, I wasn’t able to challenge myself academically till sophomore year. Something I emphasized in my application 

also i legitimately don’t think I deserved to get into the schools i did. I think that my personal statement probably carried me

Friends told me to post here

Demographics

• Gender: Female
• Race/Ethnicity: Nepali
• Residence: NJ
• Income Bracket: Middle-high
• Type of School: Public
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): None lol

Intended Major(s): Business analytics/dual degrees btwn tech & business

Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 3.97/4.65
• Rank (or percentile): not applicable
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 15 APs
• Senior Year Course Load: 6 APs, 1 honors

Standardized Testing

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

• SAT I: 1570 (770 RW, 800M)
• ACT: N/A
• SAT II: N/A
• AP/IB: All 5s but a 4s in AP CSA & AP Physics C
• Other (ex. IELTS, TOEFL, etc.): N/A

Extracurriculars/Activities

List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

1. Personal Business - combined engineering w/ niche hobby of mine; generated $10,000+ in revenue; 15,000+ followers on insta; taught through this at a bunch of middle schools near me (250+ kids)
2. App Development - made a STEM focused app available on the app store; ~15000 downloads; made mid 4 figures in revenue; also have social media accounts with ~7000 followers
3. STEM & future skills org that basically helped kids with skills needed for the future; did a lot of workshops + private stuff; online presence; was on the news a few times
4. Marketing intern for a tech nonprofit - 2+ year intern; 6 posts a week; do a lot of actually meaningful work it wasnt js a filler internship; paid
5. 2 of these competitive entry NASA programs; in person summer opportunity; very selective; did work on exploring the moon; symposium style presentations; great time overall honestly
6. Dance; done basically my whole life; have a degree in it; performed a lot; did some competitions; only put it this high because ive done it for so long... lowk shouldn't have tho
7. Deca/FBLA - competition + small leadership (grouped together); only put some fundraising stuff and like outreach stuff I did for this
8. CS internship - lowk complete bs if im being serious; just organized stuff + helped out a bit; honestly more of a learning experience (mostly learned)
9. School humanitarian org leadership + mental health club leadership; held some small events; did a bit of fundraising + environmental work.
10. Varsity Soccer + Track since freshman year

Awards/Honors

1. Congressional App Award
2. DECA ICDC
3. FBLA Nats
4. National Merit Semi-finalist
5. Random Pitch Comp

Letters of Recommendation

My AP Calc BC teacher (probably 7-8/10) & my AP Physics C teacher (8-9/10). Also submitted one from my internship supervisor who personally knew me for both years of the internship.

Essays

Personal statement was about a speech disability I had for a very large amount of my childhood and how I would never talk but then when I got into high school that all changed through business & whatnot. Honestly 7-8/10 but my sups and why us essays were great*.*

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

Acceptances :

• >!Rutgers University (RD)!<
• >!University of Virginia (RD)!<
• >!University of North Carolina Chapel-Hill (RD)!<
• >!University of Southern California (RD)!<
• >!University of California - Berkeley MET program (RD)!<
• >!Stanford University (RD)!<
• >!Carnegie Mellon University - Tepper (RD)!<
• >!New York University BTE (RD)!<
• >!University of Pennsylvania - Wharton (RD)!<
• >!Cornell University - Dyson (RD)!<
• >!Virginia Tech - (RD)!<
• >!University of Texas at Austin - (RD)!<
• >!Case Western Reserve University - (RD)!<
• >!Rowan University - (RD)!<

Waitlists:

• >!Yale University (RD)!<
• >!University of California San Diego (RD) - was so confused lol!<

Rejections:

• >!Harvard University (RD)!<
• >!Massachusetts Institute of Technology (RD) !<

Additional Information:

Lowk didn't apply to that many safeties because in my mind I would've rather gone to community college and transferred to save money rather than attend a safety.

Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: South Asian
• Residence: VA (not nova)
• Income Bracket: Upper
• Type of School: Public school with multiple t10 acceptances in last few years
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): none

Intended Major(s): Biology/Human Bio

Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 4uw/4.38w
• Rank (or percentile): none/~300
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 9
• Senior Year Course Load: more classes

Standardized Testing

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

• SAT I: 1530 (760RW, 770M)
• AP/IB: CSP (5), Bio (5), Euro (5), Chem (5), Calc AB (5), Psych (5), APUSH (4), CSA (4), Lang (5)

Extracurriculars/Activities

1. Ran a free K-12 Chess Club in my city for 5 years
2. Computational Biology research larp
3. founded my schools chess club
4. Quiz bowl tm captain
5. doing oil paintings and selling them
6. co-founder of an environmental service club in my school
7. volunteering at local walk-in health clinic
8. bioinformatics summer program
9. cofounded a trivia-for-charity club
10. worked front desk and customer service at a hospital for a bit

Awards/Honors

List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

1. ISEF 4th place category award
2. quiz bowl state champs x2
3. congressional art comp 1st
4. art work published in hs art journal x3
5. regional science fair 1st place

Letters of Recommendation

prlly like a 7/10, two teachs i was close to and my library director. one of the teach writes letters for most of the ivy admits from my school

Interviews

didnt get ANY interviews idk why

Essays

i did my personal statement on why I paint, talking about how it connects me to memories of people and places in my life that I cherish. my supps were some bs tho

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

Acceptances:

• VT (EA)
• UVA (EA)
• VCU (EA)
• UMD(EA + 50k scholarship)
• UPitt (EA)
• Drexel (EA + 60k scholarship)
• Boston University (RD)
• Unc chapel hill (RD)

Waitlists:

• Casewestern (RD)
• Vandy (RD)
• Rice (RD)
• Emory (RD + accepted)

Rejections:

• Duke (RD)
• harvard (RD)
• Penn (RD)
• Brown (ED)
• Yale (RD)
• Georgetown (RD)

committed to Emory. good luck to this next cycle yall gonna do great

Don't know why this got deleted but felt like reposting, I'm pretty sure it's because cause I didn't list the full names of the schools like the template requires.

Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: South Asian
• Residence: The South
• Income Bracket: Middle Class
• Type of School: Public school fresh-soph year, transferred to a competitive boarding school junior-senior year
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): none

Intended Major(s): Business, Economics, Psychology in that order

Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 3.59 unweighted for Early Action, 3.38 for Regular Decision
• Rank (or percentile): na/135
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: I took 2 APs at my old HS and got an Associates Degree at boarding school

Standardized Testing

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

• SAT I: 1490 (740M/750RW)
• AP/IB: Human Geography (5), World History (2)

Extracurriculars/Activities

List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

1. Research Assistant under a professor that I cold emailed
2. StockX/GOAT sneaker reselling + selling on Depop
3. TikTok account where I posted takes about the NFL and College Football
4. Founding member of boarding school's career readiness club
5. Oversaw funding for boarding school's club sports teams + captain and founder of the flag football team
6. JV Captain/Varsity bubble playing football at my old HS + played on a 7on7 team outside of school + ran track in the offseason
7. Coached a 2nd grade flag football team
8. Taught middle and high schoolers financial literacy
9. Volunteered at a local animal shelter + volunteered at a local food bank + volunteered mentoring special needs children for a local church + volunteered as a part of my church (about 250 total hours among these)
10. Played on an AAU basketball team freshman year

Awards/Honors

List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

1. A/B Honor Roll 3x at my old HS

Letters of Recommendation

Math Teacher at boarding school (8/10) - did great in his class, built a great relationship with him and I still keep in contact with him to this day

Research Mentor (9/10) - I was the first and only high schooler he worked with, and even though I didn't know anything about his areas of interest I picked them up on the fly

Interviews

Dartmouth (8/10) - This was my only interview but he was from my hometown and we talked a lot about football, community, and the social life at Dartmouth. We went for the entire time the call was scheduled

Essays

I started the big essay in early June and finished in mid July, I thought it was pretty good and others clearly thought so too since it got leaked by my friend to my entire hometown. My smaller essays were decent too But I feel like the word counts made me condense a lot of my talking points. Overall I'd say the main essay was an 8.5/10 and the smaller school specific essays were about a 6-6.5/10.

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

Out of State for all of them, yes it was stupid to not apply to my state's flagship but I never wanted to go there anyways.

University of Mississippi (Rolling) - Accepted + full tuition scholarship

University of Alabama (Rolling) - Accepted + almost a full tuition scholarship

University of Colorado (EA) - Accepted + a tiny ass scholarship compared to the outrageous oos tuition

Texas Christian University (EA) - Accepted + decent scholarship

Southern Methodist University (EA) - Accepted + a nothing burger scholarship compared to tuition

University of South Carolina (EA) - Accepted + pretty good scholarship

San Diego State University (RD) - Waitlisted

University of Tennessee (EA) - Deferred -> Waitlisted

Indiana University (EA) - Accepted + tiny scholarship

Florida State University (EA) - Deferred -> Waitlisted

University of Georgia (EA) - Accepted

University of Wisconsin (EA) - Deferred -> Rejected

University of California, Santa Barbara (RD) - Waitlisted

University of Miami (EA) - Accepted + decent scholarship

University of Florida (EA) - Rejected

Tulane University (EA) - Rejected

University of North Carolina (EA) - Waitlisted

University of Texas (EA) - Deferred -> Accepted

University of Southern California (EA) - Deferred -> Rejected

University of Michigan (EA) - Deferred -> Rejected

University of California, Los Angeles (RD) - Rejected

Vanderbilt University (RD) - Rejected

Dartmouth College (RD) - Rejected

Feel free to comment any questions!

Around this time last year, I found college apps really stressful because I felt like I hadn't done enough to fit the "mold" of what AOs are looking for. Having gone through this process now, I thought I'd share my results to show that you don't necessarily need to have crazy accomplishments and that you can definitely take "basic" activities and frame them in a meaningful way that can still stand out to really top schools! (To be clear, I don't think my app/stats are bad at all, but they are nothing insane or definitively Ivy material).

Demographics

• Gender: Female
• Race/Ethnicity: Chinese
• Residence: Texas
• Income Bracket: Middle
• Type of School: Public
• Hooks: None

Intended Major(s): Engineering for my state school. For other colleges that asked what I was interested in, I put environmental science/studies, econ, sociology, music (it varied school to school)

Academics

• GPA: 4.7/4.0 W
• Rank: 27/1200
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 18 APs, 2 semesters of DE (Multivariable Calc and Differential Equations)
• Senior Year Course Load: AP Lit, Multivar Calc, Differential Equations, AP Physics C (E&M and Mech), AP Macro, AP Chinese, AP Music Theory

Standardized Testing

• SAT: 1580 (790RW, 790M)
• AP (all 5s): Calc BC, Environmental Science, WHAP, EHAP, HGAP, Statistics, Physics 1, Lang, APUSH, Comp Sci A. Also listed the 6 I was taking senior year (no scores)

Extracurriculars/Activities

President of a youth music org, organized 10 free concerts and also collaborated w/ another music NPO to bring free performances to festivals and NPO events in the area

List of school-related orchestral and music experience - in the top orchestra all 4 yrs of high school, was a school-affiliated piano accompanist for 50+ students, also held a leadership role in orchestra. Also listed that I played in the pit of my high school's musical as a fun tidbit :)

Debate. I had a captain role sophomore year and gave some lectures. Privately coached 4 teams for free and conducted a survey about resource inequalities in debate. I quit junior year, so I tried to focus on what I did outside of competition.

President of a student-created news publication posting articles relating to public policy in the US.

Volunteered at a public nature preserve grades 11-12. Duties were: working on irrigation systems, mowing trails for walkability/public access, planting native grasses, identifying/removing invasive plants.

Youth orchestra; I got to play multiple piano solos with them, so I included that. I also tried to highlight the multicultural aspect of it because each year we got to play a concert with a professional pipa artist in the area.

Part of a youth policy-reporting institute and did some projects with them (researched and reported on topics relating to social justice and economics)

Outreach member of a robotics team. Hosted free STEM events and a few free robotics camps for kids. We also gave away STEM bundles to low-income schools in our area.

Started and independently managed a cookie business, donating all profits. Raised $1000 for humanitarian aid in Palestine as well as legal funds for immigrants and even got to booth at some markets.

Intern for a podcast company in 10th grade and helped with a podcast that they were about to launch. Didn't do much, but I helped research some marketing strategies and also did transcribing/summarizing raw interview footage to help with producing the episodes.

Awards/Honors

2x All-State musician

2 TOC bids in debate (this is like alright, but I didn't explain what TOC was in my app, so I'm not sure if this did anything lol)

I did International Public Policy Forum (IPPF) one time and made it to Round of 64

3rd place in a regional engineering comp

Qualified to states for debate

Letters of Recommendation

English teacher 10/10: I had her for 2 years (grades 9-10). We stayed in touch through junior and senior yr. She knew about my personal values and projects (like my cookie business). We are super duper tight so I'm confident she wrote to my best qualities (I love her sm)

11th grade history teacher 7/10: I wasn't super close with him, but I think I exhibited a lot of my academic ability in his class, so he probably could've written to that. He's also just a pretty chill dude and accepted a limited # of students

Orchestra director 9/10: I had him in 9th and 10th grade, but he was also coincidentally the director of my youth orchestra (outside of school), so I saw him weekly in 11th and 12th grade too. We connected really well throughout all of high school. He did procrastinate on my rec so Idk if he wrote allat but I'm sure it was good because he's awesome like that. I only submitted his to a few (including UPenn) because of rec requirements

Interviews

I had interviews with Yale (REA) and Harvard (RD).

My Yale interview was exceptionally well; it lasted over an hour (meant to be 30 min). My interviewer told me that she genuinely thought I was a perfect fit and, after hearing about me considering environmental science-related career paths, even referred me to her friend from Yale who is currently getting a master's in a related field at Harvard. I ultimately got rejected lol, but I do think the interview played a role in getting deferred (which I think is not bad for Yale).

Harvard went really well too; my interviewer was really sweet, and I really connected with her!

Essays

Tbh I'm kind of lazy and also just don't want to go into all my essays, but I think they were authentically myself and the ones I cared about the most were pretty good. I do think they made a big difference (but who knows). (Mostly) happy to share more details for some specific colleges if you want to ask in the replies/DMs

Decisions

Acceptances:

• UT Austin (EA)
• William & Mary (RD)
• NYU (RD)
• Boston University (RD)
• UPenn (RD) (committed!)

Waitlists:

• Tufts (RD)
• Washington Uni in St. Louis (RD)
• Swarthmore (RD)
• Northwestern (RD)
• Columbia (RD)

Rejections:

• Yale (REA) deferred --> rejected
• Harvard (RD)

Additional Information:

Submitted music supp (piano) to W&M, Swarthmore, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia

Demographics:
female
low-income
muslim

4.0 gpa
3.6 unweighted
ACT( taking in sep)

17 honors classes
Two AP classes
five dual enrollment classes (taking more in the spring)
A honor roll
bookkeeping certification
QuickBooks certification

President of club
Over 200 hours volunteering (most of it at an islamic school teaching children arabic and quran + various club volunteering
NC tutoring officer - language (1 year)
Shadowing cofounder of company
Job one year
member of five different clubs : BSA (black student association) , MSA (muslim student association) , prelaw and advocacy club ,craft club, middle Eastern, and North African club
Babysitting service during the summer (15$ an hour 18$ late fee)

essay: about being a war refugee and how it taught me gratitude and living in the moment

edit: sorry im not publicly releasing my essays

Edit 2: stop dming me for my essays im not giving them to u bruh

Demographics

Gender: M

Race/Ethnicity: East Asian

Residence: Northeast, high school in city, live in suburban area

Income Bracket: Lower Upper

Type of School: Private somewhat competitive

Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): Legacy Cornell, UC Berkeley, UCLA

Intended Major(s): Applied Computational Biology/Bioengineering/Biomedical Engineering as 1st major depending on school offerings

Always did English/Creative Writing 2nd.

3rd major varied. Yale I did math and philosophy, some schools I did philosophy, others I did engineering things like biomechanical engineering for Stanford.

Academics

GPA (UW/W): 97.03/99.81 Rank (or percentile): Top 10% no rank (I think I was ~7th) Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc: 4 AP, 2 DE, max honors Senior Year Course Load: AP Physics, Combinatorics, Multivariable Calculus, Multivariable Calculus, Proof Based Multivariable Calculus (DE), Differential Equations (DE), Graph Theory, Topics in College Math (Weird mix of game theory, probstats, some intro analysis, combinatorics, other graph theory. was a very weird class ngl), Latin V (after AP), Creative Writing, Another random English elective

Standardized Testing

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

SAT I: 1560 (770RW, 790M) AP/IB: 5s on English Language, BC Calculus, Latin, CSA, Physics C Mechancs(Senior year so no score when applying) 4 on Euro. School didn't offer many APs and I self studied English and Euro

Other (ex. IELTS, TOEFL, etc.): NA

Extracurriculars/Activities

List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

These are really vague to avoid doxxing myself. If you know who I am dm me so i can delete the post ty

1. Research intern at lab at local T20 University doing clinical research on a specific disease with a computational/data science emphasis. Started this summer after Freshman year. My work wasn't super amazing bc my mentor didn't rly know how to help me and I'm kind of stupid but it was really interesting and I spent a lot of time on it.
2. Independent engineering project building a device to help diagnose and monitor said disease for low cost that was later picked up by a research group with members all over the globe.
3. Similar independent engineering project as before with similar goals, but that didn't pick up as much as it required a lot of difficult engineering I struggled to pull off on my own.
4. Summer research program in that was honestly really bad bc it was free and online but I managed to manifest an independent project out of it (bioinformatics research) and presented at a conference as 1st author.
5. Athletics. Was top 50 in the country for my sport and my school's team was consistently top ~20 in the nation. This one meant a lot to me because I started in 8th grade and really wanted to get recruited to play D1 but ultimately didn't take any offers. Quite honestly trained about ~20 hours a week but reported 15.
6. Co-founded school science publication/magazine
7. Editor-in-chief of award winning school literary-arts magazine
8. Leader of hospital volunteering group that combined writing and volunteering
9. Summer writing program (one of kenyon/iowa/sewanee/yyww/juniper)
10. Co-Leader of school science club

Additional info: Explained my publications for my 1st internship (1st auth in progress, 2nd and 4th on different manuscripts) Also reported my published writing in various lit mags. I published in all genres, but my focus shifted a lot towards poetry.

Awards/Honors

List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

1. Honorable mention on small-ish olympiad related to bio/medicine
2. Scholarship to dual enroll at T20 University for free as a result of being a top scorer on an advanced mathematics exam in the state. Got to skip linear algebra requirement to enroll in classes due to status as a scholarship student.
3. Honorable mention on another small stem-related olympiad
4. Awards for school literary magazine
5. John Locke Essay Competition finalist (Theology)

Letters of Recommendation

BC Calculus Teacher: I didn't like math at all until I took his class junior year. Over the next year, I locked in super hard and got really into learning math and physics and he told me I was one of his favorite students and agreed to write my rec even though he was retiring. Probably an okay rec. Based on his report card comments I don't think he's an amazing writer, and also when I asked for his RSI rec he forgot about it until the day before when I asked him lol. I'd guess like 6/10

English 11 Teacher: He was my advisor through high school and oversaw the literary-arts magazine. He knew a lot about my creative writing and philosophy writing endeavors and had a career as a writer so his was probably pretty good. I think he thought really highly of me (higher than what I deserve for sure lmao), but that's also because the average student at my school struggles to put together a coherent paragraph without chatgpt so finding a student who actually liked writing and STEM was probably mind blowing. I'd guess like 8/10

Research Mentor for EC 1: TBH I've met him twice in person, once at a research conference and once at a lab dinner at his house. I don't think he knows me super well except I am doing research in high school which he still thinks it's kind of insane even though everyone and their mom is doing it now. He's really kind and generous though and I'll always be grateful for him for taking me on but I don't know how highly he sees me. He's a really good writer though so I'd guess like 7/10.

School counselor: Thought really highly of me, and we connected really well. I ranted to her a lot about how much I hated high school and how nobody likes me because I do well in school and am passionate about things and whatnot so she really felt for me. She thought my writing was really good as well and would tell me things like "if anybody gets into these schools it's you." Probably 7/10

Interviews

Stanford and MIT interviews went really well. Stanford especially. I talked a lot about wanting to do MD PHD and my mentor did ug+mdphd at Stanford and really resonated with many of the things I said. I kept in touch with her after getting in, and she gave me advice on what to enroll in this upcoming fall. MIT interview I yapped a lot about research, writing, music, philosophy and I think made a pretty good impression. I'd guess like 8/10 Stanford 7/10 MIT.

Essays

I spent a looooooooooot of time writing my essays over the summer. I got smited by summer programs and was unbelievably terrified for apps and as a writer, ended up grinding out essays like crazy. I started in April junior year and followed the process of "if I have an idea even if it sounds shit in my head I will write it out and decide after that." My final document of drafting for my Stanford supplementals was ~75k words after I finished lol.

I personally think my personal statement was the best essay I could've written and fit my profile perfectly. I tied together my interests in theology, space, philosophy, medical research (particularly my disease of interest), and art. My school counselor started cried a lil bit after reading it even though it wasn't a trauma essay or anything. I'd say this is probably the only 10/10 on my application and 100% the reason I was admitted.

My Stanford supplementals were also very good in my opinion. I don't want to be specific about what I wrote about but my counselor read them and said "if you don't get into Stanford with these essays, then it's impossible." I'd say these were a 9/10

My MIT supplementals were kind of bad ngl. I wasn't sure if I wanted to apply after getting Stanford and ended up just throwing together something a few days before. I only applied because a bunch of my best friends got in EA and really wanted me to go. I also didn't get to send in my personal statement which I think transformed my profile from "anotha asian kid in research" to actually interesting and compelling. I'd say these were like a 3/10 or 4/10 aka really bad

​My UC essays were ok, but I heard online they're not supposed to be flowery or elegant so I suppressed my writing style a lot. I'd say these were like a perfect 5/10. Not stellar, but they got the point across

Vanderbilt was literally my Stanford supplementals with some random vandy stuff substituted in. It didn't fit as well but the essay was still like a 7 or 8/10 imo.

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

Acceptances: Stanford (REA) UVA (EA) (Rodman Scholars Program admit) UMD (EA) (Didn't get into the honors program lmao)

Waitlists: Vanderbilt (kept application in because I applied for the Cornelius Vanderbilt scholarship) Rejections: UC Berkeley (fuh u axe is ours this yr) UCLA (east asian male from east coast yea was cooked) UCSD (brother what) MIT (expected)

Additional Information: I reported on CommonApp I commute an hour to my school every day so that probably helped.

Final Thoughts: In hindsight I wish I applied to more schools to flex (kidding). All in all, super super super happy with Stanford. I tried to gaslight my parents into thinking it came out a week later than it actually did so I could have a week to process getting rejected from my dream school lol but then my mom went on tiktok and said nonono it comes out today but then I was like ok imma play video games and open it at midnight when ur asleep so I was playing osu at 7pm when it came out and then checked the result and saw confetti and then alt tabbed back to play osu for 5 more minutes to process then emerged victorious from my room and announced i was admitted then collapsed on the carpet and cried for the next 15 minutes till my nose bled and there was a big red spot on the floor anyway that's enough of storytime thanks for reading and good luck with the essay writing everyone

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: Indian
• Residence: Northeast
• Type of School: Competitive public
• Hooks: None

Intended Major(s): CS, Computational Math

Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 4.0
• Rank (or percentile): Top 4%
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 17 APs, Some dual enrollment (Multi, Linear, US History)
• Senior Year Course Load: Physics C: mech, AP lit, AP Stats, AP Macro, AP

CSP

• , Differential equations, Cs 4

Standardized Testing

• ACT: 36 on everything
• APs: 5 on all APs except Macro (4)

Extracurriculars/Activities

1. Research at somewhat niche but prestigious camp (published, became my ISEF project)
2. VEX Robotics (lot of state/intl awards here)
3. Research ab ML/Parkinsons (generic slap ML on medical problem)
4. Worked at a company (no nepo) where I was able to help patent specific algorithms
5. On A Student ran Hotline for Suicide Prevention
6. Built website used by many for local library
7. CS Club (got10 students USACO Silver)
8. Cybersecurity Research at UCLA
9. Independent Research w/ML on student psychology
10. Varsity Swim

Awards/Honors

List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

1. 3rd @ ISEF
2. AMC Honor Roll
3. USACO Plat
4. USApho Bronze
5. DECA ICDC

Letters of Recommendation

Math Teacher: Way too old/ doesnt know how to write/ probably GPTd my rec but he likes me alot so hopefully gave a good prompt (7/10)

English Teacher: Won a writing competition all 4 years with her as my teacher and had a very good relationship with her (9/10)

Research guy: AFK until the day before it was due and wrote it in 6 minutes probbaly 5/10

Interviews

I declined all of them because I felt too lazy which in hindsight, I should not have done

Essays

Personal Statement was about card tricks I learned, was very cool and pretty humorous, I think. Supplementals for EA were good, but after I got burnt out and turned them into straight slop

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

Acceptances:

• Rutgers
• Georgia Tech
• UMich
• UWisconsin
• Umaryland
• Northwestern
• All UCs except Davis
• Purdue
• UT Austin - Turing Scholars + Scholarship
• Caltech (Super Cool)
• Columbia
• Penn
• CMU

Waitlists:

• UIUC
• Harvard
• Cornell
• UC Davis??

Rejections:

• MIT
• Stanford
• Brown
• Princeton

Committed: I chose UT. I liked the really small class size of the Turing program, the job placements seemed just as good as any other top school, and I nearly got a full ride. Only sad about MIT/Stanford. Also I don't like the cold so it will be nice to stay in the heat. feel free to dm with any questions

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.

Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: African
• Residence: California
• Income Bracket: Middle Income
• Type of School: Large Public HS
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): URM

Intended Major(s): Economics, Linguistics, Cognitive Science

Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 3.98/4.47
• Rank (or percentile): N/A
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc: 16 APs throughout HS (3 self studied) and 5ish honors
• Senior Year Course Load: 5 APs, 1 Honors, and MultiVar Calculus

Standardized Testing

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

• SAT I: 1550 (770 R, 780 M)
• AP/IB: Fifteen 5s and One 4 (FML AP SPANISH)

Extracurriculars/Activities (being vague so i dont get doxxed)

List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

1. Intern at UCSF for Autism Research
2. Intern at Carnegie Hall
3. 4 Years attending a selective private music school where I was first chair Violin and Viola
4. Did financial consulting for 5 small businesses in my area increasing revenue by $500K in a year and wrote a case study/research paper about my findings. Had to write code/my own models to make this happen.
5. Created my own orchestra which raised $60K for local charities/organizations
6. Taught music to kids from underprivileged neighborhoods
7. Taiwanese Student Association CoFounder + Treasurer (Im not Taiwanese but can speak Chinese fluently)
8. Did an exchange program in Taiwan where I learned Chinese fluently in a summer at a small University in Taipei (scored a 5 on the AP test without taking the class aferwards)
9. Econ/Finance Intern at a BioTech Startup
10. Econ Bowl Captain

Awards/Honors (This is my weak point lol)

List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

1. Research Award from music school
2. Award for a speech I made in Chinese
3. 3rd place in Cali for Econ Bowl
4. CMEA award for my orchestra
5. AP Scholar 3x

Letters of Recommendation

Honestly should have done this better ngl I think my teachers probably gave me an 8/10 and the ones from outside one was a 9/10 and one maybe a 6/10????

Interviews

Harvard, MIT, Princeton - Nothing really happened I just overshared and they liked that lol

Essays

Personal statements was about how each language I speak unlocks a different side of me (I speak 4) and my counselors/friends gave a LOT of glaze so I think it was a rly good description of who I am and what I believe in (9.5/10).

Supplementals alternated between descriptions of ECs and more personal stories like my experience growing up with a neurodivergent sibling etc

(willing to share more information about essays and ECs its just that I find that my experiences are really REALLY specific so its very easy to find who I am lol)

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

Acceptances:

• UC Merced
• UC Riverside
• UC Santa Cruz
• UC Santa Barbara
• UC Davis
• UC Irvine
• UC San Diego
• >!UMich (EA)!<
• >!Brown -> Commited!!<

Waitlists:

• >!UCLA -> Accepted!<
• >!UChicago -> Accepted!<
• >!Princeton -> Accepted!<

Rejections:

• Harvard (REA) (Deferred -> Rejected)
• Yale
• Columbia
• UPenn
• UC Berkeley
• Northwestern
• MIT lol

Additional Information:

My UC application was RUSHED AF and I think that showed through my acceptances.

In general I have a lot of interests in many different subjects so I found that my interviewers had a hard time understanding why I chose to apply under econ and also it was hard to convey my interests while at the same time sticking tru to the fact I applied under econ. I wish I had better spikes in my ECs but in the end I did all of these ECs because I love them and are passionate about those different fields (Econ, Cog Sci, Music, Linguistics/Anthropology). But if you want to sweep more schools than I did, I HIGHLY recommend making clear spikes and not having a very interesting yet kind of all over the place application like I did.

DM or comment for any questions or help!

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.