Tiktok Mukbanger + Coke Scholar Gets Into 3/5 HYPSM
Demographics:
• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: East Asian
• Residence: Texas, uncompetitive city
• Income Bracket: 250K
• Type of School: Public uncompetitive title 1 hs 2.5k ppl. We send 1-2 kids out of 600 to an Ivy, most go to A&M or UT
• Major: Business Analytics, Data Science, Business
Academics:
• UW/W: 4.0 (valedictorian) Weighted is unimportant if you don’t go to my hs
• APs: 20 (max course load), some I self studied. 2 DC
• SAT: 1510 (Reading: 720; Math: 790)
ECs
1. ?????District Student Council President - organized conferences and retreats for 70+ high schools with $40K budget. 2nd largest region in Texas.
2. ?????State Student Council Conference Coordinator Role - worked alongside state board to create $250K budget 4k attendees state leadership conference. Similar to HOSA and DECA state.
3. ?????501(c)3 non profit founder - Pro bono consulting service for small business owners. Essentially did data analysis and business analytics consulting for minority and women entrepreneurs in my area. Partnered with Chamber of Commerce and SBA in local area, raised revenues by 4K, 25K in micro loans.
4. ?????Website founder - internship job board for high school students connecting them with small businesses. Integrated AI to help them write emails to businesses to ask for internship.
5. ????& 6. NSDA and local debate non profit for Latinos. Nothing crazy. Competed OO and PF, qualified for nats. Local debate NPO i taught mock trial and helped students compete at state level.
7. ?Paid Internship at a startup (remote) - AI and machine learning. Did a lot of data manipulation and cleaning for an educational company.
8. ?????Environmental club - Just something fun I founded with friends. Got some grants.
9. ?????Family business cashier at farmers market.
10. ?????Tiktok Mukbanger - won’t elaborate lol, never went viral.
Awards:
1. ?????Taco Bell Ambition Accelerator Seed prize ($500 for consulting non profit)
2. ?????Notre Dame Leadership Seminars: Business
3. ?????Georgia Tech Statistics Competition Finalist
4. ?????Local university startup competition 2nd place
5. ?????Special commendation by Congresswoman for non profit consulting work
Updated schools on being a Coke Scholar and Forty Acres Scholar in an update in Feb.
LoRs:
Note: I’m not an AO I won’t rate them.
AP Calculus teacher: Never read it, we had a pretty good relationship. I think he talked about my readiness academically.
AP History (3 years in her class): Had to be pretty good, led the creation of AP Euro at our school with her. Petitioned the admin for it and it worked. Love her!
Student Council advisor: Best LOR she loved me sm. Spent literally everyday in her class + outside of class + coordinating state conference. She spoke on my leadership and rarity as a student. More on self initiative and passion. I actually read this one.
Counselor: Read this one too, love her! She spoke on my leadership on campus and drive.
Lady at Chamber of Commerce: Very short LOR but helped prove that my work with business owners was legit.
Essays:
Personal Statement: Eh, I talked about growing up in my unique community and finding similarities between my dad and I in our legacies. Don’t love what I wrote but whatever.
Supplementals: The ones I kept reusing were about Student Council and representing my city at a state level. We haven’t held a state position in a long time so it was about those challenges. Another was about the website and how I got the idea. The other was about helping businesses and the stories I learned. I think my supplementals were stronger than my personal statement.
Results:
Rejections:
• UC Berkeley (Spieker Undergraduate Business)
• MIT (Business Analytics)
Waitlisted:
• UCLA (Business Econ)
• Columbia (Data Science, showed interest in business courses there)
Accepted:
• Northwestern (Data Science CAS)
• Northeastern (Global Scholars)
• Indiana University (Kelley)
• Princeton (ORFE Deferred REA, Accepted RD)
• UPenn (Wharton)
• UT Austin (McCombs Canfield Business Honors Program + Plan II Honors, Forty Acres full ride scholarship recipient)
• Harvard (Statistics w/ Data Science Track) 1-2 kids get into Harvard from the entire city.
• Stanford (Data Science and Social Systems)
Where I'm going: Stanford GO TREEEEEEES It came down to Harvard v Stanford even though UT gave me a full ride. The dream was always an ivy and my parents were willing to put me through it. Penn and Princeton were the initial dream and I was ecstatic I got in but I visited and it didn’t compare to Harvard and Stanford.
First and foremost: If you’re looking at this and comparing yourself to me and getting anxiety, just stop. I want you to know you’re amazing and trying your hardest. College admissions is so context dependent, based on the opportunities presented to us and our backgrounds. I was in your shoes, looking at these crazy a2c applicants and thinking I’d end up at UT Austin (which is an amazing school and I’d pick it over a lot of things had I not gotten into Harvard or Stanford) Little did I know…
Reflection:
All these cracked students are literally 18 years olds at the end of the day. Stop putting them on a pedestal and glazing them. You are just as capable and I wish someone had told me to believe in myself. I needed others like my student council teacher and counselor to tell me I was enough when it should’ve came from within. I kid you not on Ivy day I genuinely thought I wasn’t getting into any of them. This self deprecation is unhealthy and while it’s good to be humble believe in yourself please.
I think college admissions sometimes brings out the worst in people and even online it’s easy for you to believe you aren’t enough. My advice is to distance yourself. Get off of A2C, stop talking to the people at your school who breed this competitive toxic mindset. I think the best type of environment is to read purely informational and insightful guides like some by past students or TineoCollegePrep. He’s literally the goat i love him so much. I also like CollegeEssayGuy.
Advice
1. ?????Solve an actual problem and be able to articulate why it is important to you:
Essentially a passion project. So many people create useless npos that solve non problems in their community. Or a lot of them try to tackle global issues when it’s much more interesting to solve a unique local problem. What impacts your community? What do everyday ppl struggle with? Be able to connect this problem to your everyday life, culture, background. In my community entrepreneurs don’t have access to capital and data analytics because they don’t know about it. My NPO wasn’t some global thing (although that can work) but I was able to actually connect with people and help them solve a problem by providing data to them. Passion projects are easy once you start you just have to find the right resources and problems in your area. For me big local impact is so much more impressive than trying to tackle a huge problem with little impact.
2. ????Stop chasing clout and prestige.
My plan going into college admissions was to shotgun the T20 business programs. I realized that a lot of these weren’t a good fit and my true target and match school was UT Austin. Your goal in college admissions should be to find a place you love and see yourself thriving, not somewhere you only applied to because of prestige. I kinda regret applying to Princeton because I knew nothing about the school only that it was a good STEM ivy. Don’t let prestige blind you, there are amazing state programs that will get you as far as an ivy.
3. ????Pay to play summer programs are not worth it, just further your passion projects or do research or SOMETHING else pls.
4. ????Be unique:
I literally talked about being a Mukbanger in almost every interview and some essays. Every interviewer was super intrigued. If you are a business kid and the only thing you can talk about is placing in DECA, you’re going to be overlooked. I talked about flying cockroaches in my app to UT Austin, farmers markets in others, try to separate yourself.
5. ????You are more than college apps, don’t let it consume your life:
I read this from somewhere that I really liked: “Passion in college apps is overrated, if I did the things I were passionate about I’d be playing video games and partying.” I agree to this to an extent. If I didn’t have a passion for helping entrepreneurs and data science I don’t think I would’ve gotten as far. But you’re literally in high school to yes get into college but also learn about yourself. Have fun. 6. ????You will learn so much about yourself and your values:
I’m not the same person I was junior year. I’ve had my priorities and values re evaluated and now know who and what’s important. So let yourself change.
My biggest takeaway is to stop with the gatekeeping and arms race against each other. I hope this community changes so that we stop normalizing anxiety and stress and actually help each other out.
My Stanford and Penn AOs wrote me personal notes that talked about my passion to uplift others and dedication to serve if that helps.
Feel free to reach out of comment! I can talk more about specific question on essays, ecs etc. Not sure if I’ll respond and if you know me IRL pretend you didn’t see this.
