Chance me for Cornell, BU, UW-Madison OOS, UVA, W&M, and/or UPenn.

I doubt my chances are higher than 1%, for anything Ivy League, but ya! I've applied as a linguistics major and CS as 2nd choice if possible.

I like both linguistics and computer science, but if I had to study one, It'd be linguistics. I didn't even know there was an olympiad for it until last week :P.

I attend a low-income majority latino and black school in Northern Virginia, and I am a first-generation disabled Latino. 70% qualify for free lunch at my school, myself included. I am applying to Cornell through CommonApp instead of QB RD to start on a clean slate.

ACT: 33; 34 in reading and English, 35 in math, and 30 in science.

SAT: 1460; School average is 980 (My school JUST updated their school profile, it was 1000 last year)

3.56 UW GPA out of 4.

3.96 W GPA out of 4, Im in the top 15% of my class. (idk how; my school has grade inflation)

I got 5s in APHUG and Precalc, 4s in AP Physics 1 and APUSH, and a 3 in AP Lang. (My school doesn't let freshman do APs and sophomores can only do a history AP)

I am taking AP Calculus BC, AP Biology, AP Lit, AP Compsci A, AP African American Studies, AP Macro (2nd semester), AP Physics 2, Dual Enrollment US Government online (2nd semester), Dual Enrollment Cloud Computing, and a Dual Enrollment intro to IT class.

Honors/Extracuriculars:

AP Scholar with Distinction (2025)

Questbridge College Prep Scholar.

QuestBridge National College Match Finalist. (I did not match 🥀🥀)

Matriculate High School Fellow.

Accepted/attended Northern Virginia Community College IET Bridge Program (A program to introduce engineering to first gen students) the summer between 11th and 12th grade. idk if it matters, but I did mention that it was a 2 hour one way commute by public transit, and I had to come in 3 times a week from June to early august.

Accepted/attended Northern Virginia Community College E-Summer Program (A scholarship to take a CS and College prep class with seminars and stuff like that to present CS opportunities in Northern Virginia) the summer between 11th and 12th grade

Accepted/attended Prologue to Bates (Bates flyin); I don't know how I got in, but they didn't match me in the end. Only 20 out of 600 people were accepted, so I think this is my most impressive.

I was accepted to a program during this winter at my state school nearby to introduce academic and career opportunities in STEM, mostly engineering fields and CS. (STEM Fusion at George Mason University) I have not included this in my initial applications since I got the decision after finalist decisions + idk how selective or impressive it is; I had to write an essay, and they give priority to students who have already worked with their prior middle school programs, which I did not.

CollegeBoard School Recognition Award

CollegeBoard National Hispanic Recognition Award. CollegeBoard National First-Generation Recognition Award.

I'm the cocaptain of my quiz bowl team this year, and the main programmer of my school's robotics team. We have won 9/12 quiz bowl matches so far under my lead! If next week goes well, it will be the first time our school has gotten a district trophy/award in quiz bowl since 2018.

I've done tutoring online here and there, since it was most accessible to me. I’ve done around 20 hours over the year.

Making a fan translation of Deltarune to Salvadoran Spanish over all 4 years of high school (My progress is very slow because I have a whole ton of other things to do; This is something I do purely for fun, not college apps but might as well add.) I also translate and write fanfiction for fun lol. I made a small conlang for undertale and that was fun to share with my MIT interviewer.

I occasionally do sports concessions when I am able to and my mom doesn't work as long as she normally does. It's here and there, not consistent because of my other responsibilities. So far, I have around 40 hours from concessions and 20 from tutoring others remotely TOTAL.

I spend around 40 hours, sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on my mom's work schedule, on family responsibilities, such as translating for my mom, taking care of my siblings while she works, cooking for them, teaching them life skills, chores, housekeeping skills, tutoring them, etc. Because of my mom not having the most consistent work schedule, I sometimes am not able to come in at all for extracurriculars after school.

More info

My family makes 39K, and I wrote my personal essay on my experience teaching myself spanish to connect and communicate on a deeper level with my mom, and how that has influenced myself today, mainly in quiz bowl, school, family responsibilities, etc.

I wrote my community essay on how I found community in Quiz Bowl starting Junior year after having to teach myself my courses for so long the school year prior (I was in recovery from a surgery on my legs, and it took months for me to rebuild the strength on my legs to walk again, and my schools elevator was broken, so I was absent the whole time) and how it taught me the value in interdisciplinary learning (I’m bad at summarizing 😭)

For the CAS supplement, I wrote about programming my own portable notetaking software with LaTeX support when I couldn’t use OneNote because it wouldn't update, stopped working, and my school’s IT department was useless + my school didn’t allow me to bring in a personal laptop, connecting that to the Info Sci major and then connecting my project translating Deltarune into Salvadoran Spanish to the linguistics major.

I high key regret not ranking Cornell bc I only found out about Cornell after I didn't match.

I accommodate for myself in my extracurriculars by looking for remote alternatives, like uploading code to a GitHub repo for robotics and editing it with the rest of our team on the phone, or hosting online study events for quiz bowl at my school (its not a large team).

I am chronically absent from school due to having to go to Physical, vision, and occupational therapy appointments, and having frequent medical appointments in Richmond, VA, a 1.5-2 hour drive from where I live due to the limited amount of medical providers good for my family that accept medicaid nearby.

I missed several months of school consecutively in Freshman and Sophomore year leading to not so great grades (No less than a C), and was denied access to note-taking accommodations, limiting my performance in my classes (if things go well, I'll have 5-6/8 As and the rest Bs), up until the week before winter break.

Over that time, I didn't have much faith in my school’s IT department, so I worked on programming a barebones note taking software and attempting to figure out LATEX support. I got it working literally a few days before my problem with accommodations was fixed, so my grades are still fried, but I tried to overcome at least -- plus I can use it on the CompSci laptops since they don't have the notetaking software I normally use.

I have an upward trend, with only a single C and all As in junior year. The C was in AP physics I because my teacher heavily weighed labs and wouldn't let me make them up despite missing for appointments scheduled before I even know I was gonna take physics 1.

Despite my school being mostly low income, most taking AP classes are middle to upper middle class kids of government workers, and I've been nervous since my classmates are all cracked with a shit ton of leadership roles, community service hours, passion projects, internships, research, etc.

My school has a Project Lead the Way program for Computer Science, but I transferred my junior year and when I did my scheduling for my junior year, I did it for the classes at my old school which didn't have PLTW classes, and couldn't change them by the time I found out about that opportunity. I did sign up to take Compsci A for senior year!