Asian rice lover gets totally deep-fried 🍚🍚🍚

*Demographics*

Gender: Male

Race/Ethnicity: Asian

Residence: Texas

Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): None!

*Intended Major(s)*:

Neuroscience

*Academics*

GPA/Rank (or percentile): 3.99 UW / 4.65 W

# of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 12 AP Classes + 2 DE

Senior Year Course Load: Lots of AP Classes + Advanced math (dual enrollment multi + others)

*Standardized Testing*

SAT/ACT: 35 ACT

*Extracurriculars/Activities:*

1. Founder of an online creative writing platform promoting teen mental health (600+ contributors from 40+ countries, 500k views/month with 20k ish followers on social media, interviewed Congressmembers and prominent government contributors + co-authored articles and briefs with them)
2. Only Teenage Board Member of a large speech nonprofit w/90k annual budget (managed a team of 500+, enacted league policies improving league culture and efficiency). This nonprofit holds monthly events with about 2k attendees/year
3. Research w/selective program (sub 10% acceptance rate). Co-authored a published paper related to neuroscience in a real peer-reviewed journal.
4. Research through a local university lab. Co-authored a published paper and was involved in outreach and organizing work for the lab's public health initiative. Presented research at a conference.
5. President of a school club teaching neuroscience to middle school students funded by a local university. Also led online workshops. About 300 students impacted.
6. Speech team President. Many state/regional awards.
7. Part-time paid work teaching middle schoolers speech and helping them prepare for local/national competitions. Won lots of tournaments.
8. Selected for selective research program at state level. Chosen to present in multiple conferences in different states (fully funded by program). Selected as top projects from all in this program for my neuro research
9. Creative writer for a mental health nonprofit
10. Advisory board member of a random club. Won an award for impact.

*Awards/Honors:*

Basically put publications I received, state/regional writing awards like scholastic for creative writing, and the 7k grant funding i received from various orgs for my initiatives (my 1st EC)

*Essays/LORs/Interviews:*

Essay about my personal background in mental health tied to my interest in writing

LORS from teachers i didn't know that well (long story). Maybe this hurt my results?

*Decisions:*

*Acceptances:* Rice, USC (small scholarship), UCI, UC Davis, Case Western (40k scholarship per year), Penn State

*Waitlists:* Tufts, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCSD, WashU, Emory

*Rejections:* Pomona, Columbia, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Brown, Duke, Northwestern,

*Additional Information:*

Maybe I was overestimating myself but I really thought I would get more acceptances, especially because lots of my friends and people I know had better results and got into Ivy Leagues, etc. IDK if I am being dramatic and hoping for more than I deserved. Overall, I was accepted to many great schools but I thought I would get into a couple more.

I am still kinda happy and prob will be going to Rice or USC. I know I didnt get totally deep fried sorry for the clickbait title.