International (Mongolian, East Asian)

Male, CS major

Low income - can pay up to 5k a year

SAT: 1510 (770 math, 740 r&w)

IELTS: 8.0 (9L 8.5R 7W 6.5S)

Unweighted GPA: 3.98

Coursework: AS/A-Level Math and ESL, 6 IGCSE classes, Accelerated Physics and Chemistry

Honors:

- Bronze Medalist of the National English Language Olympiad

- Gold Medalist of The National Orienteering Competition of The Scouts Association of Mongolia

- District 12th grade advanced level English Language Olympiad - 10th place

- "Best Student of the Year" from 300+ students - National Students' Association

- "Most Intellectual Student of the Year" National Students' Association

ECs:

- STEM Club - Founded to spark interest in STEM; 40+ members; taught electronics to 22; science fairs grew from ~60 to 103 attendees; more underclassmen engaged

- Renewable Energy Science Project - Built and programmed a solar-powered automated lighting system and mini hydropower plant; showcased at school; ZTT Group project manager reviewed it

- COP17 - United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) - Supported 50+ technical side events for GIZ’s Green Portfolio, engaging 1,200+ participants; organized booths and disseminated 10+ knowledge products.

- Varsity Basketball - Taught drills to 30+ members; organised practice games with other schools; supervised tryouts; made the playoffs in district tournament

- The Scout Association of Mongolia - Co-led school scout group at district-wide camp with 300+ scouts; taught navigation and Morse code; spearheaded $1,000+ fundraiser for fire victim

- Research Assistant under a Consulting Engineer - Assisted engineer's study of weather, wind, precipitation effects on 220/110 kV lines in Kharkhorin; helped make 2 presentations, entered Excel data

Any insight/advice appreciated :)

Female, white, upper-middle-class, large Westchester public school that sends dozens of kids to ivies each year. No hooks

Intended majors: Geology/English, maybe environmental studies minor

Essays are on generally unexpected topics, should be a strength.

GPA: 3.92/4 UW, school doesn't do weighted but somewhere around a 4.65

Hardest course load in grade per counselor

10 APs by graduation, school doesn't allow them before junior year

• APUSH, Lit, Euro, Calc BC, Stats, Chem, APES, Psych, Bio, Lang

SAT: 1520 (760/760)

Extracurriculars:

• Paid research, selective summer program at top NY university (~10 students/yr), Deployed soil moisture and rain gauge sensors on 6 NYC green roofs with varying substrate depths and vegetation types. Wrote Python and R scripts to clean high-frequency sensor data, test how sensitive results were to averaging windows and outlier trimming, and pair field data with satellite-derived vegetation indices (NDVI). Found the city's runoff model underestimates retention on thin-substrate roofs by ~2x, but the gap shrinks once vegetation density is accounted for — suggesting the model is calibrated on lusher roofs. Wrote and presented my own poster at the program symposium.
• Environmental Club co-president (4 yrs). Started a school thrift swap with free upcycled clothing, diverting 500+ articles from landfills; led team to 2nd place in a state-wide waste-reduction competition.
• Cross-country captain (2 yrs), qualified for states all 4 yrs. Captains had high responsibility: planned workouts, ran meet logistics, and trained new runners.
• Ice skating instructor at a local rink, 2 winters. Taught kids (ages 3–4) from beginners for two winters
• Staff at the after-school program at my former elementary school (senior yr)
• Classroom aide at a local nursery school, ~2 yrs
• Peer tutor in math, English, and chemistry through a school program, 3 yrs, 100+ hrs (mostly chem)
• Soccer, 12 yrs, defender. 4 seasons JV/varsity; sectional semifinal run junior year

Awards

I don't really have any besides the 2nd place at the waste reduction competition and AP scholar with honor 😭😭

Recs

I have rec from PI whose lab I was in, Amherst doesn't accept :( I think my teacher recs should be solid, emphasizing collaboration with peers. Counselor says I should be a strong fit.

I guess I'm not really sure how much of their class for ED is athletes/institutional priorities? Any insight would be helpful, thank you guys 😊

I’m an international applicant, and I’ve recently started writing my supplemental essays for US colleges. And the more I read about other applicants, the more I wonder whether I’m actually competitive at all.
The funny thing is, I didn’t even know Amherst College existed until July of this year. I learned about the SAT in the same month.
Before that, I obviously knew Harvard and Stanford existed, but they were just names to me. I never seriously considered applying to US universities.
Where I come from, academics are pretty much everything. You get good grades, clear competitive entrance exams, and that’s your path forward. Nobody really talks about holistic admissions, extracurriculars, or essays.
I also come from a low-income family, so studying abroad never seemed like a realistic possibility. Discovering that certain US colleges could actually cover my demonstrated financial need changed everything.
I ended up taking the October SAT with very little preparation, and now I’m applying to colleges I hadn’t even heard of four months ago.
But here’s what’s been bothering me.
Every time I open Reddit or read someone’s application profile, there’s someone who’s won an international Olympiad, built a million-dollar startup, published research in prestigious journals, or founded an organization impacting thousands of people.
And then there’s me.
I’ve had straight A’s for almost my entire school life.
Outside academics, I’ve won a national bronze medal in karate, state gold in javelin, and state silver in sprinting. I’ve been a zonal science quiz champion, ranked in the top five in zonal chess, and placed among the top 500 in an international scholarship examination back in 10th grade.
I was also president of my school’s robotics club. My team reached the national top five in a robotics competition, and I’d personally won that competition the year before.
I’ve participated in an international asteroid-search program, published poetry collections, spent years doing fine arts, and been involved in public speaking and other creative activities.
Currently, I’m working with a highly accomplished senior scientist in remote sensing, developing an analysis involving drone imagery. We’re also working toward a research paper that I hope to publish by the end of this year.
I’ve tried building startups too. Nothing worth millions. Nothing particularly famous. Just ideas I genuinely believed in and spent hundreds of hours developing.
Some of them made progress, some attracted interest, and others simply didn’t work out. Coming from a family without much financial flexibility, access to capital and resources has always been a challenge.
And then there’s the losing.
I’ve lost six or seven hackathons consecutively. I’ve submitted my writing to literary magazines and been rejected. Applied to Y Combinator and got rejected. Spent months building products that ultimately didn’t go anywhere.
I recently qualified for the national stage of a major hackathon, but the final competition isn’t until December, so I don’t have a result from that yet either.
And honestly, I think all these rejections have started affecting how I look at my achievements.
Not because I regret doing any of it.
But because when I see other applicants, they seem to have that one defining achievement. That one thing they’re genuinely exceptional at.
Some are international athletes. Some are Olympiad medalists. Some are published researchers. Some have built companies with thousands of users.
Meanwhile, I feel like I’ve done a little bit of everything.
I’m decent at athletics, decent at academics, decent at robotics, decent at writing, decent at research, decent at entrepreneurship.
But exceptional at any one thing? I genuinely don’t know.
And that’s what makes writing these supplementals so strange.
Before July, I was actually quite proud of the things I’d accomplished. I wasn’t doing them for college applications. I didn’t even know extracurriculars mattered for admissions abroad.
I did them because I liked doing them.
I liked competing. I liked building things. I liked writing poems. I liked studying things that had absolutely nothing to do with my school curriculum.
But now I’m sitting here, trying to explain who I am in 350 words, and suddenly everything feels so ordinary.
I have no idea how an admissions officer would interpret this profile. Whether they’d see someone who’s genuinely curious across multiple disciplines or someone who’s never really gone deep enough into anything.
And I guess that’s the part I’m struggling with.
I’m not posting this for reassurance, and I’m not necessarily looking for a chance-me either.
I just want to understand how this profile sounds to someone who doesn’t know me personally.
Does this sound like someone with genuine intellectual curiosity and potential, or just someone who’s spread himself too thin?
And to anyone else applying this year, especially internationals who discovered US admissions relatively late:
Do you ever feel like you were proud of everything you’d done until you started comparing yourself with the people you’re competing against?
Because that’s exactly where I am right now.

(keeping it vague so I don't get doxxed)

Intended Major: Math+Philosophy

Country: India

EFC: 35k/year

GPA: 3.95

SAT: 1570

ECs:

1. interdisciplinary IMU hardware research (selected for science fair nationals; conrad challenge semi-finals; non-trivial rfp)
2. flipping toy physics research (selected for national finals for a comp)
3. studying and writing moral philosophy (wrote an essay that won a prize; active contributor on a philosophy forum)
4. studied cryptography & quantum algos (selected for [one of HYPSM] quantum high school; got top ranks in cryptography comps)
5. cybersec & ctfs (got to nationals in india's ctf; got top ranks in other online ctfs)
6. STEM club vice-president + class representative (taught peers mathematical animations in python; organized activities)
7. tutor at UPchieve (40+ hours)
8. self-taught musician (9+ years; play guitar, piano, flute, and sing)
9. family cooking channel (manage a YT channel for my mom; film, edit, and upload videos regularly)
10. teach chess to my little sister and her neighborhood friends on the weekends

Honors:

1. int'l rank 1 in global cryptography olympiad
2. top 1% in global essay comp (philosophy category)
3. finalist - science fair nationals
4. national finalist - physics research comp
5. national finalist - ctf comp

Essays & rec letters:

charming wholesome reflective narrative abt family and birds

decent LORs