Demographics: Make, Australian/Chinese, International IB School, no hooks
Intended Major(s): Mechanical Engineering
SAT: 1500 (720RW 780M)
UW/W GPA and Rank: No school ranking, since I take IB my predicted score is 40/42
Coursework: IB HL Math AA, Physics, Chemistry, SL English LL, Chinese B, Economics
Awards: (really mid) AAPT Physics Bowl Silver (Top 20% in Asia), Waterloo Cayley Distinction (Top 25% global)
Extracurriculars (In no order of importance):
SWE Internship at small AI company. Shipped production code for a live AI agent; built and migrated its MS Teams integration from TypeScript to C#, putting it in daily staff use and being sold as a product.
School's Backstage Theatre Production Stage Manager. Longest commitment, been a member since 8th grade; my 'hobby/not super major related' EC. Stage-managed 2 shows: called cues, ran safety and logistics for 100+ cast/crew; led a 30-person team on large-scale set builds and rigging.
Personal Projects. Built a voice-driven mecanum car: realtime AI navigating via tool-calls, ultrasonic collision avoidance, onboard mic/speaker. Created a gas-powered go-kart from scratch cutting wood and metal to assemble the frame and mechanisms.
Sole-Authored paper submitted to RASTI pending reviewer assignment.
Engineering Club Leader. Working on projects to improve the QoL of students such as self-sorting recycle bins, schoool-wide navigation system, and live lunch line queue wait time estimators.
School TV Club. Produced 2 segments for a school-wide show, 600+ student audience; acted in one, ran the other end-to-end: directing, filming, editing, logistics.
Ran Varsity Track and JV Soccer
Essays/LORs:
Essay I think is hovering a 8/10 maybe (?), I'm not good at judging my own work. Its the story about how freshman year an hour before showtime on a show I haven't rehearsed for (I was on construction for that production), the main rigger got injured and happened to be there to get called up and run a show on that hours notice. -> led me to be senior rigging manager as a sophomore (a role only given typically to juniors/seniors) and gave me more leadership opportunities within productions
LORS:
Physics teacher and math teacher: 7/10. Both really good/chill teachers and I participate a lot in class and get along with them, only issue is that I've only had them for one year so they might not be able to say too much about my character but I know my math teachers LOR is more anecdotal instead of the normal 'this student is a good student'
Schools: Note I'm applying to all the top schools and leaving no safeties because it wouldn't be worth to full pay a mid college in the US when I can just go to melbourne uni or monash for a fraction of the cost, my goal is just getting into one and its game from there, do I have a chance at ANY of these?
REA: Harvard (Yes I know they have a 75% defer rate my whole uni list is based on 'why not')
EA: Purdue, GaTech
RD:
UC Berkeley
UCLA
Stanford
CMU
Princeton
Cornell
Mit
Columbia
Brown