Demographics: Male, Afghan, Texas, public school, <$30,000 in a 7-member household, ig I'm a URM (moved to the US when I was 10)
Intended Major(s): Computer Science (or Computer Science + Business)
ACT/SAT/SAT II: 1560 SAT (1580 superscore), some of my schools got my older low score of 1490
UW/W GPA and Rank: A cumulative 4.4 GPA W and 3.8 UW, not ranked in the top 10% (school only ranks top 10% of kids) but tbh I'm probably in the 11th percentile
Coursework:
- Got 5s on most of my AP exams (AP CSA, AP Human Geography, AP World, AP Euro, AP CSP, AP US Hist, AP Calc BC, AP Music Theory, AP Lang, AP Env Sci)
- Took all APs/5.0 classes junior year; currently taking AP Lit, AP Physics C Mech + Elec. & Mag., Multivariable Calculus + Differential Equations, Sociology Honors (would have taken something better first sem honestly but just couldn't), Honors CS 3
Awards (I've included general achievements as well):
- 1st place in HPE CodeWars, a pretty rigorous national coding contest in 11th grade
- CyberStart America, ranked in the top 125 in the nation and 9th in the state amongst 40k participants in 11th grade + CyberStart National Cyber Scholar with Honor scholarship (received the GFACT cybersecurity certification) in 12th grade
- USACO Gold (it's top 15% of the nation's competitors); I mainly did all of this in 11th grade, I hadn't done USACO before this
- Made a Minecraft server in 9th and 10th that got ranked 6th on a server list website and made 30k in revenue (most of it was to be donated to charity)
- Worked on an EC database website with over 3M visitors in less than a year in 11th grade
- Working on an AI startup that has been a part of Google For Startups and the League of Innovators accelerator programs, taking it more seriously this year
- Coca-Cola Scholar Semifinalist (top 1.45% of 103k applicants)
- I reached State doing Science Fair related to an AI model predicting the price of Bitcoin accurately.
- QuestBridge Finalist
- Have won like 20+ general programming contests in the state and in the region directly from my computer club (10th, 11th, 12th)
Extracurriculars:
- I am president of my school's computer club and have won quite a few, as evidenced in my awards section. I was most active in the club my junior year. I am quite passionate about teaching other students the power of software dev. and have also made sure to talk about that in my application.
- A board member in a political non-profit that has now branched across 10 countries, 80 chapters, and been featured in over 30 news outlets. We've invited many politicians (state reps, senators, majors, school board members, etc.) to events in our city and our school.
- I am president of my school's cybersecurity club (specifically called Applied Cybersecurity Society). It's one of the clubs that's more casual, but I very much enjoy it as a side-piece. I've done mainly CyberStart and CyberPatriot as part of this club and teach students cybersecurity concepts. Our previous year's officers did NOT run the club very well, so I worked a lot on bringing it more attention this year.
- Model UN, won a few conferences as just a member. Mainly did it because I am genuinely very interested in geopolitics and wanted to improve my public speaking skills.
- We got to state in robotics in 11th grade. Served mainly just the programmer
- I work as an executive developer at a non-profit focusing on using software to empower underprivileged communities (mainly FGLI students). This is an extracurricular I also talked about as it aligns with improving the lives of students. We are currently working on an AI-powered journaling app. We also hosted a pretty success hackathon with over 600 participants.
- As previously mentioned I am working on an AI education startup with a couple of other people and am the CTO. Was something featured on a few outlets, including Yahoo Finance.
- Worked with another non-profit where we mainly raised a lot of money for underprivileged students to buy them computers, hosted a very successful hackathon with over 500 participants, and offered programming workshops for students.
- Did over 250 hours of political volunteering helping people register to vote while also liaising with politicians.
- Volunteered a decent amount with the food bank near us which I enjoyed doing.
- Interned at a youth political non-profit that has connected over 200,000 young voters to a voter registration form, ballot request form, or location of their polling station.
- Interned over the summer in 11th at my school district.
- I worked through a contract with a local manufacturing company to develop the backend of their ERP.
- Did a lot of freelance work between 10th and 11th through Upwork.
- Did my first job in 8th and 9th grade as a technical content writer for an app that taught people programming. I also wrote a lot of their social media posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Essays/LORs/Other:
- I wrote about my experience in Afghanistan specifically a time when I was near a bombing that happened on my way home on my school bus. I mainly focused on how I've always wanted to fix the world once I was hit with the dichotomy of a world that was cruel and corrupt but also had people who had hopes and aspirations. I've wanted to change the world and rid the world of its problems ever since.
- In terms of LORs, I sent all the colleges a letter from my American Studies teacher (probably an 8/10 at the least; I loved the class and was very active in it) and my Honors CS 3 teacher, who is also the sponsor of our computer club (at its lowest gonna be a 6/10 just because I feel like she didn't spend a lot of time on it). A third letter was sent to some of my colleges and it was from my CSP and CSA teacher from 10th and 11th (this one kinda scares me, so I am only hoping it's not anything bad and at least ok).
- A lot of my application included information about my experiences in Afghanistan and blended it with my experiences in the US. I put a lot of emphasis on effective altruism as it's something I strongly believe in (let's not talk about the billionaire controversies with that ideology here). Practically everything I've talked about has mostly been tied with my purpose of effective altruism and mainly pursuing that through a tech startup.
Additional Info:
I applied through QuestBridge initially while filling out my Common App. I had a fee waiver, so I took a shot at every college I had time to write supplementals for and apply to. For those who don't know, QuestBridge is primarily meant for low-income and first-generation students. I am not first-generation since my dad got his masters in the US, but I am low-income. I became I finalist but did not match with any of the 15 schools I had ranked. I ranked the following schools: Stanford University, Princeton University, California Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, University of Chicago, Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University, Rice University, Brown University, Northwestern University, Boston University, Dartmouth College, Washington University in St. Louis. I have been moved to RD for all the schools except for UPenn (which I EDed), and MIT + UChicago are both EA right now.
Schools:
- Reach: Northeastern, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, UPenn (rejected today :( ), Vanderbilt, UChicago, Cornell, WashU, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Stanford, Columbia, Northwestern, Brown, Rice, Duke, Yale, Caltech, MIT, UIUC, Purdue, UT Austin
- Target: UC San Diego, UC Irvine, Boston Uni, UC Santa Barbara, UNC, UVA, USC, Emory University, Wisconsin-Madison, UMD
- Safety: Kansas State (accepted), Arizona State (accepted), UT Dallas (accepted), University of Arizona (accepted), UTulsa (accepted), Incarnate Word (accepted), Texas A&M (accepted), UMass Amherst, Ohio State (accepted), Brandeis
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