Weirdo Nepali shooting shot at Brown ED
Hello,
Hope everyone's day is going well. A Nepali boy planning on shooting my shot at the Brown ED round upcoming fall here.
I've been looking at profiles that got into the Brown university from here and it seems they mostly fall into this category: well-rounded student (high gpa + community service + volunteering, etc)
I am not really like this. I've a very weird spike, like my profile's miz of these (and more, but I will try to keep this short):
DeFi/Applied Tech: Instead of grinding competitive programming, Ive built many functional and well documented things. The most recent work of mine is a pretty awesome Solana-native risk oracle that I am really proud of lol. Would share it but then again, this is reddit.
Math modeling: Participated in the International Mathematical Modeling Challenge (IMMC) twice, once we made it to t10 globally and were invited to the summit. The result for the recent one is yet to be out.
Application of Math in Finance: Ive tried working in tasks related to finance, like Riemannian geometry in finance. I even shared notes related to a work of mine with professor Jaimungal at the University of Toronto and was lucky enough to receive a positive response from him.
Linux: Haha, if this can used as a EC, then I've very custom rice for my hyprland, i3 and niri in arch linux. Must say, am obsessed with this work. (Can't install arch myself btw and used archinstall lol)
Organization: Co-Founded an organization along with few others that's pretty active in 13 countries, with decent amount of members (600+) where I am still a member of senior chair and have created some educational resource related to Heston, HJM model and few more things which are all well detailed miro boards accessible to everyone.
Science: Many works, notably, a project showing meteor damage caused in a certain area which also showcases the trajectory of that aesteroid.
Also, I did do a research along with few friends of mine for bl4s proposal related to damage cause due to muons and pions. (I slacked off, but my friends were kind enough to still credit me thankfully)
The problems: I am from low-income family seeking full aid, and i am also a first gen student.
My questions:
Does Brown take students that are just nerdy like me instead of being well-rounded? I really liked brown because of its gorgeous campus, city and the most important thing: open cirriculum, where I can design my own weird path that's a intersection of quantum physics, applied math, CS and economics lol.
Have you seen many international students get in with this sort of profile, or does the lack of a medal and publications make it a harsh battle?
Does Brown’s "Open Curriculum" philosophy actually translate to how they view "spiky" international applicants? (I’m betting on the fact that Brown prefers someone who builds their own path rather than someone who follows a pre-set Olympiad track.)
Also, I haven't really volunteered or done community service, does that severly hurt my chances?
Ik this is not the best profile, but I guess, trying my best to make it better right now, haha. Do drop any suggestions that you have.
Thank you so much for your time. Love you!