Eligibility for Most Merit Scholarships at Public/Private Schools?"

Answered

demographics:

asian-indian male in CA, socal area

intended majors: data science, stats, data analytics, applied mathematics

GPA: 3.85 UW/ 4.4 W, as of this post being created (should go up significantly in time for RD's)

class rank: 93 out of ~1100

school context: 5k kids, but our academics are pretty bad (avg sat is around a 1100 or so)

course rigor: 12 AP's including ones in senior year, 3 DE's, 5 Honors (senior year: us gov, csa, lit, bc, stats,

phys c mech)

SAT: 1480 (710 EBRW, 770 M)

extracurriculars:

\- rotary interact: 3 yrs, member, historian, and VP | 50+ members and local recognition within

our city through a certificate (community service)

\- fbla: 3 yrs, member, march of dimes committee member + membership committee member |

raised $5k to $7k for march of dimes cause and actively recruited new members into the

organization

\- innovators + cybersecurity, 2 yrs | founded a community at school for like minded STEM

individuals to pursue their passions, developed connections with other high schools in the

region/state after our cyber competitions fell short because of minimal resources, put offensive

cyber techniques in place of our defensive

\- unmute, 2 yrs | founded a newly formed nonprofit that helps with teens mental health,

launched a brand ambassador program and a global chapter to reach teenagers struggling

around the world, social media page + website is in progress currently

\- ryft, 2 yrs | co-founded an academic community that specializes in SAT, AP, and college

admissions prep, at one point, we had over 350+ active members, paid SAT tutoring as well

\- upchieve, 3 yrs | tutored underprivileged and low-income kids online and accumulated 100+

volunteer hours, certifications in most AP science and math courses

\- family responsibilities and organizing culturally based potlucks, 5-6 yrs | mentor for my little

brother, everything from social to emotional to physical, running errands for the family whenever

parents are in need of something | set up stages, speakers, food and drink, as well as basic

amenities, developed strong personal bonds with elders around the community as well as

leadership skills, essentially a part-time job

\- internship with a foreign company in India: image visualization with Python as well as machine

learning + AI, verified certificate

\- ai program: working with a brown university grad researcher in CS (undergrad from UCLA) to

create an engaging object detection project, presented to a panel of parents at the end and

other mentors from Stanford, MIT, Cornell, other big schools, used Google Colab as well as

TensorFlow and Keras

awards: usual, principal honor roll (4.0+ GPA), AP Scholar with Distinction, UC Designated ELC

Letter, 1st in District Science Fair, 3rd at County for Microbio Research, BAA Leader and

Contributor Award from FBLA

LOR: 9/10. I've developed strong bonds with my teachers, (AP Lang, AP Calc, AP CSP/CSA -

same teacher for both), throughout the years and am confident that these will be good.

Especially hoping for a stacked LOR from my AP CS teacher as we've grown very close

throughout my 4 years in HS.

Essays: 8.5-9/10. I confide in myself as a strong essay writer and hope this is the main highlight

for scholarships, etc.

UIUC CS + Stats, Purdue Data Sci, CU Boulder Data Sci, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCSD (Data Sci, Applied Math or Data Theory)

P.S. this is not a post to brag, but for the purposes of merit scholarships that most public/privates offer.