Junior Year Reflection

Quick heads up: This may be a rambling post. Much of this is aimed for a USA-based audience, though UK-based (add one to year #) and other educational systems can still read this.

But what is College for?

College education is something that’s pretty darn useful because they’re shelling points for a lot of motivated people. I personally want to go to college to get better at a lot of things (math/cs/philosophy/Chinese), and college gives you a place to do this with other people. The college being “top” means you get more access to “higher level” of education and the types of people you’ll find there will probably be more motivated, although by different things.

Middle School/Early High School

My memory of what happened throughout high school is not very indexed by time, as I feel as though I’ve been different people as I’ve grown up. I think I started ‘doing things consciously’ relatively late in my high school years.

From a young age, I was interested in math. I’m from the Bay Area, so my understanding of “ahead” of the school curriculum is that most people were, but for a quick idea of how I was doing I finished learning Calculus BC in around 6th-7th grade (though I only took the AP in my 8th grade since I didn’t know that was an option). I was in public school in my 6th grade, and I’m really lucky to be in an area known for having good “math kids.” I made a lot of friends who did math, but you’d think I didn’t actually take competitions super seriously from my (lack of) ability at the time.

I went to Proof School in 7th. Funnily enough, I didn’t actually know I was accepted, since my parents didn’t let me know for a while, so I actually went back to public school for the first 2 weeks until they told me that I’d have to take the train to San Francisco. Covid definitely messed up my memory of who I was as a young person in middle school, though I remember feeling much smaller than I am now, physically and intellectually. I kept taking AMC 8s, and my score in 8th grade was 23. I took my first AMC 10 in 7th grade, though I laughed after the 10A and didn’t sign up for the 10B because I wasn’t actually sure what the exams were. Surprisingly, I qualified for AIME then and have kept doing it ever since. I’ve never qualified for the USA(J)MO, though I’ve come close a few times, and I know I’ve improved through an increasing score on the AIME.

I never used AoPS and I only went to State MathCounts from my room in 8th grade, which was demotivating to say the least (I’m not actually even sure it was “State,” since they had to update the structure that year…? maybe). I kept teaching myself math, although it usually wasn’t super hard, more akin to topics covered in competition math since those were taught the best online.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go to Proof for high school, since I knew people in my grade who didn’t want to. Since I was unsure what that meant about the school, one of my teachers put me in contact with two other kids who called me and talked to me about what high school was like. I was in middle school! Online middle school! I had no idea about any of this stuff.

The first guy was in Stanford at the time (though he’s dropped out to work on AI) and effectively told me that doing research in high school would be worthwhile. The second guy (now at Cal) said that it was only a good idea to leave if you felt like you didn’t have that many friends at Proof. I’ve met with both of them in real life since, and they’re both doing well. I appreciate their advice.

So I stayed. Proof School math post calculus (most of which I realized I could skip, since I had known the material from self-studying) is generally much cooler. There’s always 1–2 classes that are pretty top tier each “block” (6 weeks, every day for 2 hours), and so I learned stuff like Lin Alg, Multi Var, Complex Analysis, Diff Eqs, which are the classes you might be able to access at a local college. I also got into Partition Theory, Analytical NT, etc. These types of classes were special. I will never have this type of experience again in my life and for that I am so happy that I could have done it when I did.

But I listened to the first guy’s advice. I had learned Chinese for a while (which is its whole other bag of worms), and Proof only teaches Latin, which I still find kind of strange and archaic. As a 9th grader, I thought that native English speakers can decipher Latin sentences given enough time and maybe a little context (like a NACLO problem), so I genuinely didn’t see the worth in trying to learn Latin. I dropped the class the first day when school started post-covid in 9th grade. In the end, this was kind of a loss, since I couldn’t learn physics during that time as the seats had already been filled but…

I just asked for a research question. Proof is also blessed by the numerous math PhDs that genuinely love puzzles, and so I was given a question about iterates of the floor function, which I formulated in the language of trees. It’s not really important to get into the technical details here, although I remember who I was in 9th grade. He was a good guy, almost dead set motivated on coding up ideas and writing down proofs. I try to make him proud.

Now when I look at the research, I see something that would probably take me about a month to do, probably less. That didn’t really matter, since I was 14–15 years old and just learning how to do things rather than doing things. My parents asked me to submit it to a research competition since my brother was, and so I obliged, though I was against it. I won first at regionals, then 5th at state, and one of my interviewers asked me why division was well-defined. Good times.

I showed this to an older math mentor of mine who said I should submit it to a conference in Bulgaria, and again I obliged, this time more excited since I could learn how to give a talk. I did it, and so that summer I flew to Bulgaria and was there for the morning to give the talk, then after for lunch to learn about competitions around the world (it was a conference on math competitions, and I represented the interested party of the test taker), and then I had to leave before being able to develop any problems in their writing session. The energy in the room was always exciting when they were making problems, and I wish I could’ve stayed for longer.

Some other side things: I applied to math programs and got rejected from them all, so I worked for a bit in Seattle and then stayed in India to relax a bit before the school year. I did Euler Circle and learned about elliptic curves.

Middle of my High School

My freshman and sophomore years felt very blended together, and I think this is because I didn’t go to any programs and was living with my family full time.

With all the previous things happening in my 9th grade, you’d think that my 10th grade would probably be a bit more interesting. I think this is mostly true, although to math kids this might seem false. I applied to pPRIMES and got rejected. So, I fenced a heck of a lot more, earning points, ratings, etc. I became a referee and watched little kids flail their swords around. This was also the time when I lost my shoulders. My right shoulder has been dislocated about a few times, and since it had always kind of popped itself back in, I didn’t worry too much. Till it happened again, and again, and again. Don’t lose your shoulders. I got surgery back in March 2023, and was kind of immobile for most of that year. To avoid my own brain melting out from the pain of not being able to fence, I read philosophy.

The problem with philosophy and doing it when you’re young is you will be captured by ideas that will feel much bigger than yourself, and you will conform to it, and I was a victim. I’ve grown out of this now, but at the time I found philosophy incredibly engaging for this reason. So I started a club, as all interests may lead to doing, which went really well. I was honestly surprised at how well it ran, and I’m so thankful to the people who were a part of it. Proof clubs aren’t actually as big enough that I would call them extracurriculars, but they are incredibly rewarding to do.

I also learned a ton about machine learning. There was an ML class at Proof which my research mentor was teaching, so it felt right to study it. Awkwardly, I finished the assignments months early. I spent the rest of the time just helping around and self-studying, though I think I was lazy at times. This is where 9th grade me would look at 10th grade me and be somewhat appalled, but I digress.

During the beginning of the year in 2023 I also reached out to a professor of complexity theory, who sent me to his grad student at Oxford (first of many times this name will be mentioned). I kept in the back of my mind that I could maybe try to repeat what I had done in 9th grade, but it was harder, I think because I had lost the period of time during school where I would do it dedicated. I definitely learned so much about complexity theory, reading textbooks on my brother’s kindle late at night while traveling, much to my parents’ chagrin.

I did a lot more math tournaments, which are the in person ones. It was hard not to fall in love with them, so I organized teams, although less now at school. We do well at them. I only got my first Jane Street shirt from one of them in 2024, but other than that one the math competition shirts are really nice. I went to BMT, GMC, SMT, and ARML, all good competitions if you’re in the Bay Area.

If my freshman year of high school was “pointed,” my sophomore year felt more “kaleidoscopic,” and I learned more as a person.

Summer of ‘23

I applied to Ross within 3 days of the application deadline, since I knew I wanted to be on my own for the summer. Don’t get me wrong—my family’s great and all, but I wanted some space. Also, I think I learned how to write at the beginning of that year, or more appropriately, I learned how to sell myself. This is the most pessimistic way of putting it, and more lightly I think I figured out how to communicate and tell stories. I got in, and I remember clutching my sling in excitement in the car when I got the email notification.

I’m not gonna go too far into the details of what happened at Ross (what happens in Ohio stays in Ohio), but I met genuinely amazing people and fell back in love with math, something I didn’t know was possible. Social media ain’t all that bad since it lets me be in contact with a lot of them. Ross (Ohio) was amazing. It was my first time doing anything of the sort (living without my parents). School is weird because I don’t actually hang out with people in my free time, because my transit to an from school takes up a lot of it. At Ross, people were everywhere. I think I learned the most about what math was like here, and how to live it.

I also applied to PAIR, an AI program that I knew was associated with ESPR, which a friend and a previous mentor were associated with. So I applied, and I got in, which I think again had to do with this newfound ability to sell myself. I remember “falling” to the ground when I got the acceptance and friends at Ross checking on if I was ok.

PAIR (Cambridge) was awesome. Simply put, I changed more here in 4 days than I did in the 6 weeks of Ross. I also dislocated my left shoulder here.

It was strange there because a lot of people there were older than me. The only previous situations I had been in like that was math back in middle school, but PAIR wasn’t just a math program. A lot of them were applying to / going to / in college, and a lot of them were European. So I looked even more into the system of applying to the UK.

I had been looking into the UK school system already and this motivated me to look further into what applying to Oxford might be like. I read a draft guide which was so weird and eye opening to what college there might be like and I was intrigued. It honestly felt like I was in middle school again, asking those two about high school. Deja vu.

So that summer was good. I went to Ross, and then went to PAIR. Ohio and Cambridge. Beautiful places. Here’s a poem about PAIR:

Before the beginning, I was in the belly of the bird. The wind was rushing outside, with the lights turned down inside, only the quiet din of robotic breathing could be heard.

Hours later, finally some courage found and so, the woman and I spoke. This was still before the beginning, She was old in her years and had biked the country, and was living for more than just herself. End prologue.

In the beginning we were all newborn calves treading on the soft grass of the Churchill, with the piano in the distance, past the Obelisk. The midpoint came.

I changed in those days. The lights were turned down, There was no wind. I remained barefoot on the felted ground, My neck now pointed skyward for the future.

To make matters more textured, the people were full. This felt rare at the time. The woman was an introduction. One found solace in satellites and his God Himself. Another had a false eye; he saw the World as data.

The man we called Graves held a summoning, where we huddled around the obelisk. We sung broken hums and chanted in our broken songs. Wittgenstein smiled down below.

On the flight back I was alone, no other bodies, only memories. The songs still played softly, in the spaces with no wind.

“belly of the bird,” agniv sarkar

Ultimately? I gave lectures at both camps and found that I enjoy teaching.

Current year of High School

I had applied to PRIMES as a 10th grader and got rejected. Womp womp.

I applied to PRIMES as an 11th grader and got in. I’m gonna use this bit as a commentary/response to another’s post. Read it if you’re interested, skip if not.

I’m skipping the blurb on what PRIMEs is. If you’re interested you either already know or will search it up on your own. I will not share my solutions. I solved all of the problems except for M4 which was my friend from school’s problem (i.e. the main focus of her research).

Solving the problems took up a lot of my time, but I submitted the complete application about a week before the deadline, simply because I thought I would be rejected. My rough schedule:

• Skimmed it as soon as it came out. Solved a few of the G’s as quickly as possible. Left G5 for later, but drew out what I thought was going on.
  • Funnily enough, someone with the same last name as me had published a paper on G1b.
• Solved some M’s over time, saving M5 for later since it was just a formula.
• Scream at M4 and stare at Laurent polynomials till I could lie to myself about them.
  • I read my friend’s paper on them after the application closed. It was… weirdly beautiful?
• Read the factorization theory literature on G5, then… stumble upon the solution in the literature.

My favorite problems in no particular order: M3, M5, M2, G4.

I think more people didn’t use the literature to their advantage, though I strongly caution against simply searching without building the ideas up for yourself. In general, the PRIMES sets are pretty well thought out, and it’s worthwhile to do on your own. I believe that G1b, G2, G3, G5, M3, and M4 had references online during the time of the application.

One thing I should’ve done better was spend more time on the personal essay. I didn’t work on it as much as I could’ve, and so it definitely wasn’t fleshed out as it could have been. It hopefully did get the point across that I found mathematics stunningly beautiful.

I had an interview, though I was in Singapore, and so I joined the call at midnight in my dad’s suit. My interviewer asked me why I was wearing a suit, and I responded that it was either this or PJs.

During the whole of the application, I was fairly lucky that I didn’t have too many other commitments at the time, as I was just getting back into fencing from the surgery recovery and was in the middle of applying to college and focusing on math.

I don’t know why I got in. They simply select for people that they think can do research, and their judgment seems pretty good at times. So, one thing to take away, don’t make getting into PRIMES your goal. If I had gotten in as a sophomore, who knows. While I harped on my sophomore year a bit here, I think it was overall pretty good and formative without PRIMES.

Currently, as a kid in the program, I spend a lot of time working on it. I’m also privileged that this is my main commitment, since my left shoulder decided that I would not be fencing this year. My group mates are both really motivated people, and it’s really sick to be able to contribute to the team. We’ve received a grant to continue this research, which is highly motivating.

In terms of other extracurricular programs that ran during the school year, I applied to NonTrivial, though I dropped it for personal reasons. I’m fine with my current balance of things I’m doing/learning, though I’m always looking for more.

Applying to College

I’ll take a brief tangent to talk about APs. These exams are one of the college board’s ways of making money, and while I like them a little bit more than the SAT, I still really don’t like them. Proof School doesn’t have a weighted GPA system because they don’t offer AP classes (the distinction to me has never actually made sense. you’re both learning the SAME thing?!) and so students just take the AP on top of the normal classes. I made a soft plan back in middle school to always take at least 2 new APs per year starting in 8th grade. By the beginning of junior year, I had taken 6 APs, with 4 of them having a score of 5. Given that most of these were self studied (i.e. I had never taken a physics class before AP Physics C: Mech), so I was ok with this.

From this, I thought that it was not enough for applying Cambridge (though I didn’t know about predicted grades, something I also think is kind of weird). Essentially, you need five APs with a score of 5 on them to be equivalent to their A-level standards, although you can say “I’ll probably get a 5 on a future exam.” I didn’t know that at the time, since that’s not really done in the USA, so I didn’t end up applying to Cambridge.

There are of course other factors to consider. Proof doesnt weigh GPAs or use -/+’s, and my lowest grade was a B in the hardest literature class offered that year. This is a pretty standard transcript at Proof, and my GPA would probably look like a 4.95/5 right now.

I had taken an SAT already (which was an optional requirement for Oxford), and scored 1560 which I was fine with. Cambridge is unique in what it demands for AP takers. Oxford lets you get away with just 4 exams, or you can have 3 exams with a high enough SAT score. However, what Oxford actually cares about is your score on their Math Aptitude Test, or the MAT. It’s… really easy. If you’ve taken a proof writing class, seen some calculus, and can score above a 5 on the AIME, you can probably get at least 80 on this exam. Try it!

I had been using the MAT as fun practice since for the math tournaments since they’re formatted similar to Power Rounds, and from talking to UK people who sat the exam I don’t think I really prepared for it in the same way other people did. If you’re from the math tournament community and have done a few Power Rounds, you’d probably score above a 90 on the exam.

At the end of it, I was debating between applying for MathPhil and MathCS, and I ultimately chose the latter. The former was because I loved the two subjects, and I knew someone else from the Bay Area who really enjoyed it. I chose the latter because I felt as though I’d benefit more from self-studying philosophy and sitting CS. This didn’t actually change any of the strategy for the exam, since it changes a single problem from more “mathy” to more “algorithmicy.”

Compulsory Reasons Why

When you’re a senior applying to college, the reason why you’re applying is generally because it is now convention. When you’re a junior, people get more intrigued?

Why Oxford? Well, it’s a good school. I like to travel. PAIR had given me so many friends who I knew were at or around the school. Deepmind was made there. Something I found strange was if you ask a lot of students from the UK, they might call you crazy for debating about MIT or Stanford over Oxbridge (although the tuition does make this choice clear why). I disliked this question when people asked me why, but I understand it. From visiting, it’s beautiful.

Why as a junior? College applications are stressful because “they determine your future” (this is in quotes because this is a terrible mindset, but you can’t really tell people that it’s false without sounding fake). I think my friend’s post goes into this super well and is the correct way to go about it. But I was basically scared of college applications, and this seemed like a way out. Solve the problem by succumbing to it!

Why Oxford as a junior? Because if I failed, I could still apply to the US ones the next year. There’s this idea that applying as a junior is risky because of the time sink and if you’re rejected, the college won’t take you the next year. The latter one got to me, and I had felt as though I hadn’t accomplished anything in sophomore year which my junior self was doomed to repeat (both things that I now think are very false).

Why not MIT? This is almost always the college for juniors who go to college in math. However, I consider myself a somewhat muted person in the math competition community (unless we win a Power Round. Then I yell). I’ve never qualified for an olympiad, but at math tournaments we were always top 3 for the Power Round. In the math community it also seems like “the % of getting in scales with the level of competition you’re at!” and this discrepancy in my demonstrated ability made me insecure. Because of this, I was more interested in the recruitment path for MIT, though my shoulders falling out made me even more insecure that this would be possible.

Ultimately, I would not recommend this plan to other rising juniors, though that’s extremely hypocritical of me.

Compiling the Application

My philosophy was to give them less reasons to say no rather than more reasons to say yes. This stemmed from the fact that I was a junior and an international applicant. I think the distinction lied in “hiding” the fact that I was a junior. I believe the only real place where they could tell this was in my reference letter and my transcript.

For the American audience, here’s a step by step guide:

1. Go to a site called UCAS
2. Type in your transcript, grades, goes on and on. Pretty standard stuff.
3. Ask for exactly one recommendation letter, which they call a reference.
4. Type a personal statement, with a 4k character limit and 47 line limit.
   1. This line thing would be the bane of my existence! I’m guessing it’s so the printout they have on the student fills up exactly one page.
   2. The statement is more about what you’re applying for and what you’ve done related to it. Writing it can feel more like a job application at points.
5. Choose an Oxford College
   1. The guide I had read outlined what some of the colleges would be like. I applied to Magdalen, simply because it was really pretty and had really cool mathematicians.
6. Take an exam.
   1. For me, I scheduled a MAT near my house, and skipped school to take the exam.
   2. Screaming kids at a daycare near the exam center made it kind of hard to focus, but I scored above average for the accepted class, so I did all right.
7. Wait for your college to email you a request to interview (called shortlisting)
   1. They schedule it for you, which is kind of silly, but I skipped school anyway.
   2. You need a drawing tablet for this. My brother had gotten one recently, so I just used his.
8. Wait for a second college to schedule a request to interview.
   1. I was assigned to University College, which is the oldest college at Oxford! It’s also pretty cute, across the street from Queens College, and Logic Lane cuts through it.
9. Wait for Jan 9th (why it isn’t at least a week earlier escapes me)
   1. Wait till 2 am.

For the personal statement, I read a lot of examples. I find that my own writing tends to get rambly at times, and so having examples as sanity checks was extremely helpful. I also asked a lot of my PAIR friends to review it for me, who all kind of laughed and said “as long as you don’t say you commit a crime, you’re safe.” I essentially took the life that you’ve read and made it fit 4k characters, 47 lines. I went much more in depth for my math and cs, mentioning my previous research, my experience with ML, and the programs I had given lectures at.

Since it’s the one essay, it was actually the exam that got me more stressed. It shouldn’t have stressed me as much, since I took it and did well. Technically I could’ve done better, since I made a subtraction mistake while doing the quadratic formula, but I digress.

Now, I’ve started looking at USA college application questions and have found them much more fun to think about, though that’s unfair since I don’t have to worry about being rejected from them. The questions make me reflect on how I wish to describe myself, and that’s nice.

I had already asked my teacher for recommendations for other programs, and he sent them into Oxford after some persuading. My school was very against this plan, for good reasons (what school would let a junior apply? probably a crazy one), so it took a while to convince my counselor to even think about it. I think it came down to I would be the first student the school had sent overseas to the Oxbridge system. To thank him, I coded up a heightmap from a fractal we had co-found and asked a friend to 3D print it. That was probably the coolest gift I’ve ever given.

Ultimately, Oxford is really not that subjective. I submitted it on the last day that I could, and then sat the exam. There was another test that they scheduled for those who were interrupted by software glitches, but I thought this was a superscore of the multiple choice section on the MAT, which I had perfected. I didn’t take that one. Later I found out that it was it’s own score, but I didn’t really mind.

So, I don’t think I applied forward, sideways, or anything else. I simply lived.

Predictable Anxiety

It’s very useful to have friends who will listen to your problems, even if the problems affect them in no particular way. I think the majority of people I knew thought I was kind of crazy for doing this, which they were correct to be. But I appreciated each one who would listen to me talk about %’s for no real reason.

I was pretty anxious, though being on my own meant that I didn’t mind it as much. It felt like this when I applied to PAIR. I was able to communicate with friends who were applying to Oxford, and from PAIR I had a friend applying to Cambridge (and he got into Trinity!), so it was nice to have people who were also going through the process.

My idea behind applications is that once you press submit there’s no real reason to care about it anymore until you get the news back. Your application is water under the bridge (or, as I like to put it, dead in the water), but we’re only human, so we stress, we calculate, and we grimance.

I had no previous data on this. I knew some Indian kids from the Bay who had gotten in, who I talked to about this stuff and they were pretty nonchalant about their responses. Juniors? No data there.

Then I got the emails.

Interview 1

The Oxford interviews are 100% technical interviews, and the best way to practice is to talk out loud to yourself while using a drawing tablet on Miro. Make sure to read your own personal statement and know what you say, since that can be mentioned in an interview. I did really well in both of my computer science interviews, which I found really fun, but less good in my final interview, which was mathematics. I think I was tired from doing the other two back to back and had seen the problems before, meaning I wasn’t talking as much as I should’ve. If I had to grade it, it’d just be in the middle of the road.

It was then I got the other email.

Interview 2

This was for PRIMES, and I’ll say nothing about the interview beyond the previous joke about suits versus pajamas. I honestly think the preparation I did for Oxford was incredibly useful for PRIMES, but I can’t imagine anyone who has done this combination before, so I imagine that’s not as applicable.

Miscallaneous

I ranted, as anyone applying to college does. I looked at pictures of the college (I had only ever been to Cambridge, never to Oxford). I asked my friend who went there what it was like, and that was enough.

Then it was new years.

Then it was Jan 9th.

I called up a friend, and shouted.

Acceptance 1

I had gotten into Univ. I woke up my dad at about 3 in the morning, and he showed me flight tickets he had already bought for Oxford. That meant a lot (though I later found out that these were a connecting flight with a one day layover, the sly planner).

This messed up my sleep for the week.

I already had all of those criteria for test scores, and became “post-results,” meaning my spot at Oxford was guaranteed.

I realized that PRIMES was upcoming, and so I stressed again. I wasn’t sure if I should commit to going to college anymore, since senior year is pretty interesting, and I wasn’t sure how PRIMES dealt with this situation. Now I know that they’re fine with my situation and are flexible with my status, but at the time it filled my head.

So, as all sane people do, I typed up a document on how I felt, which was effectively a self-rant and a decision tree on what I would do based on factors like PRIMES and scholarship. It was incredibly useful to get out.

Acceptance 2

I was out with fencing friends eating lunch after a small competition, and so when I got the email about MIT-PRIMES I didn’t actually process it at all. I was more focused on the In-n-Out sandwich in front of me and the lemonade I was sipping. It was in the back of my friend’s car with the roof down that the wind beat it into my face—I had something I could devote my time to. I’ve been doing PRIMES for the past few months and we’ve just moved onto the research phase, and my thoughts on the program have changed as I’m now a scholar. I feel blessed.

It’s probably a weird thing to say, but I both regret and am happy that I didn’t apply to RSI. I regret it because it was my “last chance,” and I’m happy that I didn’t because the time spent there would’ve made it harder to do these. I also doubt that I would be accepted, and from the kids that I know were admitted this year, they’ve selected a good group of people.

One thing to note: getting in is meaningless. It’s really what you do with it that matters. So, I’ve been working hard on PRIMES and thinking more critically about my next year. To be continued.

Post-Results

I attended ASPR, which I also wrote a poem on:

We all came to the forest, although this heaven is strange. Imagine death. Then finding yourself with strangers, No matter how great, they were strangers. Though it would be wrong to call them that now. Strange.

And this was heaven. We were in heaven, and the birds shouted. We were in heaven, and the sheep rolled in poop. We were in heaven, and the dogs were territorial.

We knew heaven when the forest was silent and clear. My mind was mountain fog, and then it cleared, for heaven. Silence is introduced for safety, and now mine was for heaven. The dogs barked at us, trespassers in the night, for heaven.

I loved the world and it loved me back. Success was fleeting and took forty years off of life, Greatness was finding new things on a rusty ladder, on which many cut their hands, trying to climb.

My hands were made for holding sheep feed, My body to carry my friends up the quiet road, My eyes to see the waterfalls, falling loud. Fulfillment was the goal, and I felt fulfilled.

It is hard to see if the world loves you, yet sometimes; When the moonlight falls right between the cracks of the trees, and alights upon your face, treat it as a compliment. Let its gentle glow change you from stranger to man kind.

“moon light forest,” agniv sarkar

Rejections

I was rejected from SPARC.

I was rejected from Imperial College London.

My guess as to why is that I was an international student and I’m a junior. My friends say yield protection, but who knows. Imperial has their own exam if you apply for anything related to CS, which I got a perfect score on. When I got the email, I reread my essay and cringed at it. So, that could’ve been why.

Future Anxiety

Going to college early also means you think a lot about why people go to college, and I think it’s useful for me. One of my goals in life is to end up teaching kids in Reykjavik complexity theory.

I visited Oxford in the beginning of April, and it’s beautiful.

I’ll probably be in Ohio this summer, with my left shoulder in a sling. Other than that, I’ll make sure to live.

Reading this, you might feel like you can reproduce these results. Maybe? Good luck if you try. I’m not the youngest (grade-wise) to get into Oxford, nor was I the only non-senior to apply.

Advice

Maybe reading this has made you think I have some insight into this process. I still feel as though the college application process is obfuscated, though I have some soft ideas on what are good to do. So, what should you do for college?

• Pretend college doesn’t exist.
  • Keep it in the back of your mind as a failure mode, since although it’s the wrong motivation, it’ll probably get you moving a little bit.
• Write as if you are “giving them less reasons to SAY NO!”
  • Again, that just was more useful than thinking “giving them more reasons to SAY YES!”
• Treat your body right.
  • It sucks not being able to use your body, especially your arms.
  • Workout to gain new skills, like the splits, or to run really far.
  • Minimize risk to your body through strengthening yourself.
• Try things out!
  • I jumped around a bit. Differential Geometry, Notch Model, Decidability, Absurdism, Phong models, Free Verse.
    • math, cs/bio, math, philosophy, graphics programming, poetry
  • Try things out and push them as far as you can. I think diversity and learning it all is really useful, though having some key idea of what underlies it all is important.
  • It’s useful to be incredibly bad at things, because everything you then try and do is a learning experience.
• Make sure to develop time management.
  • This is the most important skill you should develop.
  • I don’t really use anything specific beyond writing down a soft TODO list on paper every now and then.
• Do well in school.
  • I don’t think you should have a reason to not do well in school.
  • Try to make a reason why you should try to fail! If it’s not super convoluted, I’d be surprised.
  • That being said, guess what classes will be like when you’re planning the next year. If the teacher will affect your experience, think deeply about it.
• Recommendations are important for yourself.
  • Talk to your teachers in person. Make the recommendation request a “I believe you have seen much of me as a person and I hope you can reflect this” instead of a “I am your student and this makes sense.
  • I’m also incredibly lucky to go to Proof School, with such small class sizes that it is possible to talk more one on one with teachers.
• Make sure your essays answer the prompt!
  • I think you should try and diversify your essays a little bit, but not to the point where you avoid answering prompts.
  • Ask people to revise it. Revise it yourself. Writing is easy and words are cheap. Revisions are what make it worthwhile..
    • Or pay Evan 9000.01 USD.

There’s probably more, but you’ll figure it out.

Warning

After reading this, you might feel as though I am “cooler” than before you started reading this, especially if you’re young and thinking about college. Nothing has changed beyond I got two specific emails in my inbox. There is a universe where I didn’t get any of these. Is that me a failure?

The answer is obviously no. While I don’t really like the applying sideways post from MIT, it ends really well. The best thing to take away from rejection is that:

Well, you may be disappointed. But you learned everything you could, so now you’re smarter; you were a positive member of your community, and you made people happy; and you spent high school doing not what you thought you had to do to get into a selective college, but what you wanted to do more than anything else in the world. In other words, you didn’t waste a single solitary second of your time.

Chris Peterson

And this is hopefully why you think I’m cooler, not because of some university or program. I lived.

I’m currently still in my 11th grade. Getting into college means it’s even more clear that you don’t have to care about college in the context of being a high school student, though that’s a bit circular. I’m busy spending my time now focusing on becoming a better student, member of my community, and friend.