gng shud i apply as indian intl to stanford 2026? lowkey stats are fire? maybe?
hi y'all. i’m an indian intl applicant planning to apply this year to the ivyies & the t20s. any advice would be really appreciated.
preferred major: econ, finance, business
grades: HS doesn't have GPA system, but rank 2/74 in 12th right now. (however high school is extremely competitive with over 67 out of 74 kids getting 90%+ in average score). GPA if i'd calculate myself, is kinda mid, around 3.75 UW & 3.9 according to STARS.
BOARD: ICSE
APs: None. APs not offered by school :(
SAT: 1580
IELTS: 8.5
Financial Aid: NONE REQUIRED. FULL PAY.
awards:
- international ai hackathon winner + $2.5 K in prize money (international comp)
- john locke essay category winner (international comp)
- gyec special recognition award (international comp)
- national ai hackathon, with over 5000+ participants, 2nd-runner’s up + 1 lakh prize (national comp)
- all india rank of 81 in National Finance Olympiad out of 3000+ participants (national comp) / diamond challenge semi-finalsits, top 50 of 4,000+ global applicants (international comp) (will give either one from here)
ecs:
- co-founder of an ai-agri tech company + received equity-free grants from gov schemes and private sponsorships of Rs. 2.3 Crores (~$200K USD) for seed funding + 10K downloads in playstore + piloted this with state agri gov + letter of recognistion by state agri minister (or mayor as america has) + featured in local newspaper (applying to YC fall 26. i feel like i have somewhat of a probability of getting in, even if its low)
- co-authored research paper with with IIT econ prof on econometric analysis of willingness-to-pay among smallholder farmers in india for ai-assistive agro tech + surveyed 120+ farmers + got selected & presented research at a global agri conference + pre-print published in SSRN, arxiv + currently being peer-reviewed + LOR from prof
- wealth management intern @ local wealth management company, where i analyzed 18+ portfolios (~Rs. 3 Crore (~$300K USD) AMU) + built an excel VaR model to identify risk and help with reallocation strategies to support Rs. 10 Lakh (~$10,500 USD) reallocations. + LOR from boss & he also gave me recommendation on my linkedin
- young founders summit (startup accelerator) in singapore, for which i was selected as 1 of only 8 from india to be part of the 80 kids cohort from all over asia + it was a fully funded program + i was mentored by people who were ex-500 global partner and SG 100 women in tech leader + phase 1 of it was 1 week long program in singapore + phase 2 was for finalists after the week long program, who got selected for round 2, which was for the next 6 months, for which my team & i, built an assistive technology for neurodivergent children & pitched in front of singaporean VCs in june last yr. i applied for its country director position, so lets see about that.
- have a blog, where i breakdown topics on econ, biz, start ups, finance in gen-z way + try to showcase my state's entreprenurial & business ecosystem as there is very less representation about it in india and in my state itself. + have reached over 18K subscribers till today. have been doing this since 3 yrs now & total readership is around ~800K total views with over 32 blogs posts till now.
- core member & project lead of rotaract club in my city, where i've lead an project which aims to expand banking access in underserved communities + organized financial literacy workshops for 900+ blue-collar workers on govt schemes + assisted them with application processes; enabled till today ~600 scheme enrollemnts + got a letter of recognition from district magistrate after we submitted an impact report + this program has been adopted by 5 additional rotaract chapters till now.
- organised my state's first ever 3-day youth startup bootcamp & competition in collaboration with the gov start up org, for which there was 120+ participants from 24 schools from 7 different states. even raised Rs. 1 lakh (~$1000 USD) for prize money for top 5 pitches. was featured on the local paper for this.
- finally, i also have been doing the classical indian vocal for 9 yrs now & have merit certificate for the completion of the course. i also have ABRSM merit certifications for classical guitar till grade 3. i've been in the school choir for almost 8 yrs now + self-produced and released my own two singles & hit 100K streams in total from all platforms.
my essays is going to be about my unique cultural background & community first vibes. LORs is from my counsellor, math teacher & econ teacher who know me for quite sometime now and i'm pretty tight with both of them.
if there’s any advice, pls do share! I’d really appreciate it!
(really wanna get into the ivyies & STANFORD of couese, but i dont wanna be delusional about it. applying for class of 2031)