u/ihateaimbot

Demographics

• Gender: M
• Race/Ethnicity: Asian
• Residence: Hawaii
• Income Bracket: middle-ish (Hawaii is a bit different due to insane cost of living)
• Type of School: Small mediocre private
• Hooks: First gen, farming family, immigrant

Intended Major(s): Applied as CS for all besides Caltech, which I did Computational Neural Systems + CS

Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 3.93 UW, doesn't do weighted
• Rank (or percentile): Doesn't rank
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 12 APs, 2 college courses (UCLA & HPU)
• Senior Year Course Load: AP Lit, gov, chem, physics 1, calc ab, independent CS project, Japanese 4 + self study for AP stats

Standardized Testing

• SAT: 1550, 750 RW, 800M, non-superscore, 3rd attempt (prev was 1400 (650RW, 750M) and 1450 (730 RW, 720M)
• AP/IB: 5s: Precalc, APUSH, CSP, 4s: Chinese, CSA, Lang, rest are in progress

Extracurriculars/Activities

1. Wikipedia editor -- 2nd highest permission level, 800+ edits over 4 years. Wrote my personal statement about this. I really liked doing this.
2. Made a quantum resistant encryption software in 10th grade, Congressional App Challenge (CAC) 3rd, RISE for the World Finalist, Special recognition in Hawaii state legislature
3. Made an AI powered college counselor designed to educate people on the college application process, 11th grade. This app wasn't designed to push people into ivy league but to provide general counseling that students don't get the chance to experience. Interned for my school's college counselor to make the app. CAC 2nd place, National STEM Champion, Conrad Innovator
4. Did research with an MIT professor on particle detectors and machine learning, published paper, 12th grade. National STEM Finalist (rejected for champion).
5. Blood donor, 3x
6. Math team President and led a revival of my school's math team, 1 year as member, 3 years as president. We went from bottom third to top third of schools.
7. CSHS, founded first private school chapter of CSHS in Hawaii, we taught elementary kids robotics and scratch, did hackathons and stuff, 3 years as president
8. Volunteered at various Native Hawaiian cultural sites, 4 years.
9. Food Bank of Hawaii volunteer, ~4 years. Package and distributed food, but mainly just a filler

Awards/Honors

1. National STEM Champion, National STEM Festival/Challenge
2. Congressional App Challenge 2nd & 3rd
3. Special Recognition from HI state legislature
4. RISE For the World Finalist (Top 500 out of ~15k internationally)
5. Conrad Innovator (Top 50% of applicants, not really that good)

Letters of Recommendation

CS Teacher - 9/10 very close relationship, favorite teacher too

History Teacher - 8/10 should be good, close relationship with her as well

Calc Teacher - 7/10 I needed a core curriculum teacher, she was the best option

MIT Prof - 7/10 should be decent but only submitted for Caltech as part of their research supplement

Interviews

MIT - Bad given the results

Rice- didn't know you could, but didn't matter anyway

Essays

My essays were done in 4 batches. The first batch was my EA essays, 2nd was my UC essays, 3rd were public RDs + NYU, and 4th was private RD.

All my EA essays were ass ngl. They were the first batch I wrote and they were all cliche imo. But I did keep my personal statement for all of these (excluding UCs)

My RD private essays were probably my best. For these I had the most experience and was locked in during winter break.

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

Acceptances:

• Ohio State EA
• Purdue EA
• UW-Madison EA
• UCR RD
• UCSD RD
• UCI RD
• UCSB RD
• Rice University RD
• Cornell University RD, Committed!
• USC EA Defer -> Accept
• UH Manoa RD (Got to skip class to apply)
• UW--Seattle RD (Rejected for Comp sci, admitted as pre-sciences)

Waitlists:

• John Hopkins RD
• Carnegie Mellon RD
• NYU RD
• Northeastern RD
• UC Berkeley RD
• Georgia Tech RD

Rejections:

• Caltech REA Defer -> Reject (this one hurt a lot, but tbf my major combo probably has a 0.1% acceptance rate anyway)
• MIT RD (Lowkey bs-ed their application cuz I loved Caltech)
• Northwestern RD
• UCLA RD
• UMich RD
• UIUC RD

Additional Information:

Caltech was my dream school and getting rejected from it genuinely hurt. Caltech >>> MIT btw.

Also when I was a writing my Cornell essay I saw a Cornell alumni that just graduated whilst on the beach and we talked about Cornell, colleges, and the future. Legit was a really cool experience. I'm sad I couldn't tell her I had gotten in and committed to Cornell.

I didn't get accepted into any single college that I've toured (Georgetown, didn't apply, UCLA, Caltech, NYU). So don't tour schools ig!!!