u/Cute-Atmosphere9125

Hey everyone,

I’m a high school student working on a native Android project to get better at the ecosystem. I’ve been building a Text-to-Speech reader and I’ve run into a few architectural questions I’d love some "pro" eyes on.

I’m using the native TextToSpeech engine and ML Kit for OCR, but I’m curious about the "correct" way to handle a few things I’ve implemented:

• Floating Windows: I’m using a Service to manage a floating overlay. Is this still the standard for Android 13/14, or is there a more lifecycle-aware way to keep an overlay responsive without killing the background task?
• Document Parsing: I’ve implemented .pdf and .docx parsing locally. I’m curious if my approach to extracting text before passing it to the TTS queue is efficient, or if I should be streaming it to avoid memory spikes on larger files.
• The TTS Queue: Right now I’m just using the standard QUEUE_ADD logic, but I’m wondering if I should be wrapping the engine in a custom manager to handle interruptions better.

I’m really trying to move away to build it right. If anyone has a few minutes to look at my MainActivity or my Service logic and roast my architecture, I’d appreciate it.

Repo: https://github.com/Vishwesh-AIENG/Text-to-Speech-Reader-Android-App

I’m not looking for users or testers, just hoping to get some stars and advice from people who actually do this for a living. Thanks!

Demographics

Gender: Male

Race/Ethnicity: South Asian/Indian

Type of School: Suburban, Have no AP/SAT college board centres in ENTIRE CITY

Intended Major: Computer Engineering/EECS

Hooks: none

Academics

GPA: 9.95CGPA

Rank: 1/201

APs: Travelled 120 miles to write AP Phy C Mech and AP Calc BC and get 5s in it.

School's courses: Sanskrit (Elective) Math A (Advanced Trigo+Matrices), Math B (Adv. Calc), Phy (Mech + E&M), Chem (Organic+Inorganic+Physical), English

SAT: 1550

Extracurriculars

Position: Independent Developer

Org Name: Assistive technology | OmniLingo app (Google Play + arXiv)

Description: Founder and Developer of Omnilingo- An assistive translation app for visually impaired users multilingual communities; supports 100+ languages recognition; published on Google Play; open-sourced core logic on Github.

 

Position: Independent Systems Engineer

Org Name: C++ key-value store | high-performance computing system

Description: Engineered lock-free, multithreaded key-value store in C++; optimized ACID transactions, thread-safe memory, and cache locality.

Position: Content Creator & Developer

Org Name: Vajra Gaming | YouTube game dev channel (28K+ views)

Description: Built Python isometric game from scratch; reached 28K+ peak views; showcased rendering math and memory-efficient logic. (Running this since 5 years)

Position: Author & Educator

Org Name: Python Made EZ | 200-page school-adopted textbook

Description: Authored 200-page textbook adopted by 8th-grade curriculum; taught 200+ students; published and sold 100+ copies. Published on amazon.

Position: Data Analyst Intern

Org Name: Deloitte Hyderabad | enterprise data standardization project

Description: Automated 3 Industrial workflows, Worked with seniors to gain exp. on Data Analytics 

Position: Club Leader & Captain

Org Name: Competitive Chess | district-level tournament player

Description: Club with 50+ school people in my community; earned 2x district titles, silver medal, and 1972 Chess.com rating.

Position: Champion

Org Name: Regional Mathematics Olympiad (RMO) | national-level math contest

Description: Won RMO; solved advanced combinatorics and number theory problems; applied rigorous math to systems thinking.

Position: Hardware Developer

Org Name: Blind Aid Sensor | Arduino assistive device

Description: Built Arduino-based spatial sensor for visually impaired users; integrated C++ logic with real-time physical feedback.

Position: Student President (Grade 12)

Org Name: School leadership

Description: Boosted school attendance by 10% By incentivizing with chocolates

Awards/Honors

(Not much)

RMO gold medal.

Honored by state minister for Python Made EZ book.

Won a hackathon on CS against 3rd Year Undergraduates

* I know that app. is mid, But please Atleast predict my reaches and safeties.

Colleges I am applying to:

MIT(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)	EA (Early Action)
Cornell University	ED for Tata Scholarship
Harvard University	RD (Regular decision)
Princeton University	RD (Regular decision)
Stanford University	RD (Regular decision)
Columbia University	RD (Regular decision)
Dartmouth University	RD (Regular Decision)
Yale	RD (Regular Decision)
UIUC(University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign)	EA (Early Action)
CMU(Cargegie Mellon University)	RD (Regular decision)
Purdue(West Lafayette)	EA (Early Action)
Northwestern University	RD (Regular decision)
Georgia Tech	EA (Early Action)
UT Austin	EA (Oct 15)
IIT(Illinois Institute of Technology)	EA (Early Action)
Arizona State University(Barrett Honors college)	EA (Early Action)
Purdue (Indianapolis)	EA (Early Action)
Indiana University (Bloomington)	EA (Early Action)
Michigan State University	EA (Early Action)
University of Michigan	EA (Early Action)