Borderless Admissions Series: Stanford Class of 2028 with a full-tuition scholarship - Zareef🇧🇩

okay so I made a presentation for you guys so this is my story of how from Dhaka Bangladesh I got into Stanford

with a full tuis scholarship so let us begin um yeah so about me well I'm a 19-year-old who graduated from masterm English medium school and I applied to

Stanford in my Gap year so this was also the second time I applied I first applied uh in my fi my senior year of high school and then I

applied as a gap year applicant and some interesting things about me is the fact that I love Turtles and cycling and that's going to come in handy because this is something I literally wrote about in my essays and personal

statement as well and I'm entering Stanford as a Cs and Earth Systems major in case you don't know what Earth Systems is is basically something like environmental science and this is

important to me because I want to start um I want to launch startup related to climate science in the years to come so let us begin so before we start let me

talk about my academic stats um I went to an English medium School in Bangladesh and in case you guys don't know what English medium is about it's basically a curriculum from the United

Kingdom and I got nine a stars and four a Stars nine aars in O levels and four a stars in A Levels and that roughly

corresponds to like a 44 GPA uh unweighted and I had an a level average of like 95% which was Pro probably like

the highest possible grades achievable and I also gave this sat two times so the first time I gave it it was a paper

set and I got A500 on that paper set and then uh I gave the dad in May of 2023

where I got a 1570 and my breakdown was like 780 in the evw section and in back and then let's talk about my some of my

achievements so I was always someone who wanted to apply abroad from a very young age for example from uh like class eight

or nine and thus I was very um active when it come when it came to achieve uh olympiads and extracurricular

activities so as you could see I started from well um way back during the covid times I started with the Bangladeshi

Bangladesh economics Olympiad it's basically a competition where you um use your economics knowledge to solve problems and then uh do some case

studies as well and I was six on that team and then I got to represent um my nation on the global stage in the

um uh World economics Olympian oh and where I got a silver medal uh this is a typo with I basically got a a silver medal in that Olympia and then as for

the other things I got a gold honor which is given to the top 10 teams globally uh in the climate Science Olympiad uh we were also supposed to

actually present our solutions to um the uh in Dubai during the uh

International climate conference in 2023 but due to Visa problems we couldn't go me and my teammate and I also am someone

who loves writing a lot so I also um uh participated in the Queen's Commonwealth as a competition it's basically a competition that you guys

can also participate in because if I recall correctly the competition is still ongoing and it's going to end by um August I guess or July so you could

participate in that I participated in that and I was like 100 32nd out of 26,000 teams last year 26,000 people last year and then I was also someone

who has taken an interest in startups from a very young age so I always used to participate in um business competitions so this was also another

competition I was placed really well in this is something called young tycoons business challenge this is a competition in which you can uh present your startup

ideas to J Jes and if you are in like the top 10 you get funded and uh you get mentored by a startup accelerator and you also get to launch your dream

startup so in that competition I was like uh in the top 100 so um as for my oh no

yeah uh give me one minute yeah as for my extracurricular activities uh most of these activities are things I have really have an interest in it for

example I am um majoring in Earth Systems right so this uh the environment and conservation this means a lot to me especially since I have Turtles I have

kept for the last 14 years so reptiles are something which are really important to me and as such um this uh research

activity is something I did uh part took in my Gap year uh basically I was an intern at the ministry of climate uh environment and climate change uh under

a professor and I got to handle endangered reptiles specifically endangered um species like uh the uh Indian black soft shell turtle uh

these are really um these are really rare reptiles there are only like 500 individuals left in the while and I also supported in data

collection and contributed to that particular professor's academic Publications and as for another thing I also did an educational startup

basically um in my country there is not really a lot of avable resources so what I did as founder of a Academy is that I provided a lot of um alevel courses in

physics and Mathematics and provided um Learning Materials uh and disseminated materials via YouTube and Facebook to

hundreds of Learners and then another thing I did is that I was a CS explore Mentor so in case you don't know what CS

explore is it's basically a program under um uh the climate science uh web climate science organization and it's an

organization on supported by the un uh it basically helps uh raise awareness about the CL change to youths and in

that um organization I conducted workshops to raise awareness about conservation in third world countries like ours and another thing that I did

in my Gap here is that I I'm someone who loves tinkering with drones uh so what I did with my drone uh is that I

conducted Bangladesh has this unique Landscapes called wetlands which get flooded with water throughout the rainy season so what I did is that I conducted

detail mapping of these Wetlands around my city during the monsoon and I relayed the data to researchers who were working on this particular Wetland Conservation and

research efforts and I was also active in my school year as well for example I was the head of um business and economics forum and business society and

science society and through these clubs I um hosted and organized events for juniors and stuff and another thing

that's very important to my identity is cycling um this is something I used I do every single week for the last four years I go outside of my city and cycle

like 20 to 100 kilometers all around the Wetland surrounding my city and I carry out um uh I do uh cinematic drone videos

and um photography of these uh valuable Wetland places so this is just a summary of my extracurricular activities and now you might be thinking that I applied and

then I got to a lot of places right but this wasn't really the case I actually applied over two years and the first time I reject first time I applied I

kind of got uh rejected or weight listed every single place like every single of the 19 universities I applied to I only got like I think weight listed to a couple like kby and vasar and stuff like

that and Harvard Columbia Milbury HF for just some of the papes I can recall of the top of my head that universities that I got rejected

from um so this is actually understandable because if you are an international who requires a lot of aid for example from a full tuition to a

full ride uh you are going to get rejected by a lot of universities but I uh after I got rejected or weight

listed from so many um universities I reflected upon my strategy and I kind of found a couple of problems with why and I found out the reasons I think which

were which contributed to so many rejections so some of the key takeaways were that since I was a senior I already had a lot of academic stuff I had to

prepare for S I had to do Al also do my ecas and my club activities as well so I got my hands full so as such I did not

really research too much into colleges so as a result I rushed in my College college search a selection um honestly speaking you should apply to a lot of

universities and you should apply to a lot of s you uh lot of safeties then Target schools and finally just a few reach schools and the problem what I did

is is that I apply to a lot of res schools and no safety schools at all and the problem is the fact that

these uh universities are very selective and they have something like a Kota system they only will take one or two people maximum from every single country

or every single region every year so um if you apply to just a very top universities research University and the top L's uh there's a high probability

that you're going to get rejected even if you have a ivr profile or a really good profile or something and another problem what I did is that I was us

Centric um the US process yes it is very holistic but it's also very unfair because so many people apply to so many colleges that the colleges just don't

have enough space for you for example Stanford uh tells on their plat web side that they have enough qualified applicants to fill their classes three

times over so it's sometimes it's just luck that you got rejected from a particular University or something and that's why you should not just apply to

the US you also should um spread your um basket and not just um put all of your eggs in one basket you should also apply to other countries with off for

significant aid for example the European countries like um Finland or the or Sweden or Belgium or at least even have

a backup in your own country so that you don't have nowhere to go in case you get rejected everywhere and another problem was the fact that I think I did a lot of

things and that contributed to a scattered application theme so what you have to do in your us applications is

that you have to have a very specific um application team you have to uh you have to sell yourself to your University to make them understand why you're a

perfect Fe fit for that particular University so for example if you are passionate about um Earth's environmental science and you want to uh study environmental science maybe do

startups or maybe research in conservation you're going to have to do activities related to it and you have to let that passion shine in in your

particular essays that you write money uh in other words you're G to have to have a spike for example for me my Spike was um conservation and for my um my

love for Turtles I'm going to talk about that when I talk about my ESS section so you're going to have to have a spike in

order to have any shot of success in the US application season because there are so many people who appli there's

thousands of seats probably Sanford in uh I I think 1,00 or 2,000 people applied to Sanford from my particular country and I was the only one who got

in so it's insanely competitive and also another thing why I think I got rejected was the fact that I think I rushed my essays way too much uh I remember

writing my essays just one hour before the deadline and honestly speaking that doesn't really work because uh you are competing against people who probably finished their

essays months before who probably took the help of mentors and um admission counseling programs and stuff so you

cannot TR your uh essays I think in your entire application the thing that matters the most is your academic GPA and S scores and after that your essays

so essays are of Paramount interest uh importance and you should not R Rush your s so these are the things I reflected on in my Gap here and then

what did I do in my Gap here um so I just kept on so I just took a break for one or two months just to let that sink in to

um accept that I did not get anywhere while my friends also got into grade schools so then after I took that break I doubl down on my EC efforts for

example the research internship that I was talking about earlier about that um Turtle conservation and handling very

very uh endangered and rare specimens this is something I did in my Gap year and another thing I did in my Gap year is that I worked on Ace Academy a lot

and I disseminated a lot of lot more resources related to High School uh education in my country and then another thing that I did is that I took the SAT

again in May uh of last year and then I boosted my scor by 70 points even this 70 points from you might be thinking that from 1500 onwards is the same yeah

it is but if if you are an international seeking significant Aid if you are seeking full R then this 70 point really

helps because this 70 points from 1500 to 1570 this put me from uh 25 percentile at Stanford to uh being

better than 75% of applicants at Stanford and that is an advantage that your sat SAT scores are better than 75% of applicants in fact if you have a 1570

score I think you're going to be better than 70 you're better you're going to be at the 75th percentile for every single School except for maybe MIT and calch so

the better the S score the better you have better off chances you have at success because more and more top schools are becoming sat required for

fall 25 and fall 26 so it's it's very necessary that you give uh and submit your SAT scores because if you don't you will be at an advantage even if the

university say otherwise okay and then what another thing what I did is that I researched a lot in depth on my universities and then

I only chose the universities which suited my profile for example I was someone who slept and breathed uh admissions for like two years I was

someone who checked red who checked Discord and checked the admission groups in my um own country for for two or three years so I kind of had an idea as

to what um particular um um universities wanted from particular regions for example I believe that I got into uh both rice and

Stanford because they kind of want the simil uh same type of applicants from my country for example they want leaders who are activists who care passionately

about a particular uh world problem which in my case was conservation or the environment so they want change makers who can

bring this uh thing to their University uh for on the other hand if I were to apply to MIT I'm pretty sure I would get rejected and so I never

applied to MIT and the reason is that MIT only wants people who are almost like pure nurs like if you are people who who are uh Builders who are

Engineers who can or people who want to work in quantitative Finance then MIT is the way to go if you have ECA pertaining to this particular um Fields then MIT

might take you if you have a heart Science Olympiad field for example if you got a medal in the IMO International mathematics Olympiad or the international informatics Olympiad then

you have a shed uh universities like Caltech or MIT or you Chicago because these universities one that so you're going to have to research in depth about

which universities you are suited to because uh un you have to uh the universities also have to want you just as much as you want the university

that's the only way you can get into that s University in the first place and what I also did is that I worked on my college essays a lot this time so what I

mean by this is that when I applied in my senior year of high school I only um started writing applications just like two or three weeks before my early

decision deadline and that's really bad so instead what I did this year is that I last year is that I started on my essays from July or August which means

it there were uh four or five months before the early decision deadlines and this time I reapply to universities again but this time I apply

everywhere for for example I had I applied to I think five countries this year Singapore um Hong Kong then Finland and Canada UK and the US so in total I

think this year I applied to about um 25 or 27 universities because I did not want to apply just to us again and then get get

rejected again and even then I applied in my home country again so that I still have um some place to go even if this doesn't work out and another thing that

I just did is that I got to enjoy my Gap here so I was someone who was always kind of a nerd and I always worked really hard so Gap here was a time to

just pursue my hobbies for example take care of my turtles then work at that Turtle Conservatory then um go cycling to the wetlands around Daka then to

pursue n nature photography of birds these are some things I like so I kind I would say I kind of enjoyed my Gap here by pursuing this Hobbies I'm and I'm probably gonna do this for life even at

Sanford and Beyond so um as for the results this year I still got rejected from a lot of places for example even after doing so

many things I applied early decision to Cornell and then I got rejected from Cornell and then I applied early decision to um toughs and then I got

rejected from toughs to in my early decision too but then I still got success for example I got into LSC UCL and I got weight listed as a Pearson

scholar at the UFT I got accepted at UF as well then U Florida Oberlin and then I was also one of the only two uh people

from my country to get into rice and one of the only three people to get into kobby from my country and and Al obviously Stanford as well because I will be speaking Stanford uh and I got a

full tuition plus a health U Insurance scholarship at Stanford I only have to pay my um living costs so what changed what is the

differentiating factor between why I got rejected in my senior year of high school and why I got accepted into a lot of country into a lot of um universities

this year I think this time it was due to the fact that my application theme was better last time it was scattered

for example I had a lot of I still had a lot of conservation related ecas and Ace Academy as well but I wrote in my common

app that I wanted to become a uh neuros neurologist and that just doesn't add up to admission officers they want to see a story something that sticks in their

mind when they talk to uh talk about you to the admissions com committee and if you don't uh sck around in their mind then you're just going to be in the admission spile so you're going to have

to portray a story you have to portray a theme of what you want to do through that education at that particular universities that's why you have to

concentrate your ecas and then um you have to concentrate your ECS and then apply to a particular major around that particular ECA I don't think uh

that isn't an issue when it comes to applying to liberal arts colleges because they want well-rounded profiles but National research universities like

um Sanford or um Washington University in St Louis or UCL or UC Berkeley these want a particular themed profile they want a spike so that you um are

noticeable from the thousands of applicants who do apply and another thing uh is what I told already already College selection that's of Paramount

importance and of course essays I think this time I think I'm a good writer but this time my essays were more focused into what I wanted to portray of myself

I think this essays really showed my genuine and my authentic style for example I did not write about a single achievement at all I wrote about my

passions which was I wrote about my turtles in my personal statement I wrote about how I love caring for my turtles

and then how um they sparked conserv uh sense of conservation in me and then what I did throughout my life to save

Turtles from Extinction and I also pair together my love for cycling and then um how I told

about how I loved wetlands and how um I want to save these wetlands in the years to come so I think this is something that resonated with the admissions

officers the my story my genuine my authenticity uh you have to paint a story you just don't you can't do just do like yes I applied now I'm going to

have to get it no you have to um write paint a story about what makes you you and you unique from these thousands of applicants who do

apply and then what I also did is that I did not write about the conservation thing just in my person statement I also um introduced this theme to my sub

mental essays as well so for example in case you guys didn't know you have to write eight essays to Stanford five smalles and three large ones so I think

the conservation and environmentalism theme was per uh prevalent in I think

five of those eight essays so uh those five essays just merely um Extended just what I wrote in my personal statement

essay so so you have to paint a plot about your entire sto my entire story and last but not least even if you

get rejected again if in your Gap here it isn't the end of the world like there's so many universities there's thousands of universities you can do well even if you apply to a mid tier

University or a safety University someplace you never even considered going it's just college is just a time to experience and enjoy life what matters is the experiences and the

skills that you get out of it because five or 10 years down the line nobody's going to care if you go from if you graduate from Stanford or um some State

University or some Community College what they will care about is what skills you can bring on board to that particular um company yes a good University is going to give you a boost

but it's just going to be shortterm in the long term it's just going to be you and your um skills honestly

speaking so yeah that's my presentation guys well wonderful Z if you're a true natural Storyteller I must say I loved the entire webinar I was like completely

focused into this and I completely love successful Gap year stories I think that's really inspirational for everyone gapers out there and I especially love the part where you emphasized individuality painting a story and not

just applying I think that is more important than most people realize so thank you that was amazing and I would love to take like a moment to sort of uh take a stroll into the chat box and see

what our participants have to ask you today so give me a second okay okay so a really requested one is sat tips so since you have a really

really competitive score we'd love to know what resources used and what tips you might have for everyone who's struggling with the ESS anything okay um since I have given both

the paper sat and the datat I believe have I have a better experience when it comes to giving the SAT um I would honestly say that as for math uh you

should just do uh the math textbooks that are already on the internet for example the orange book or Erica melzer or the college panda book and you should also work through Khan Academy because

that's a really good resource when it comes to math but as for evidence-based reading and writing I would honestly say that after it depends on your English

proficiency um honestly speaking the more you read the better you're going to be at English a reading actually um no amount of Erica melzer's um practice

books or Khan Academy is going to make you jump from suddenly from suddenly jump from 518 ebrw to 718 ebrw no it doesn't work like that it's like a grad

ual process so what I would suggest is that you should guy you guys should go through hard literature and by hard literature I mean that uh books from the

early 199th or 20th century if you can and um magazines like Economist magazine or Time Magazine these are things uh from which

articles about sat regularly pop up in this SAT exams and another and some more things I would suggest is books like uh

Godfather or um The Game of Thrones if you have patience reading a 5,000 uh page book series yeah I did that but honestly speaking you have to read a lot

I think at least 100 hours of reading can automatically bring about uh an improvement in your ebrw

scores right right I see perfect so um another question I see here it is related to safeties for international students and sort of how to receive full

funding from universities and how to find universities that receive full funding so what do you have to say for uh like you know uh getting full rides and trying to get into like full R

colleges and University okay if you the for right thing it's a bit of a sensitive issue because thing is not a lot of universities provide Fise in the

first place like fiz Fise if you mean by what if what you mean by full rides is uh University paying your living cost your tuition your uh plane expenses and

even your health insurance and service fee then I would say that that situation is like really rare uh even in Stanford I think there's only one guy I know out

of the 1700 people uh who got a full ride and that guy uh I think he got us full right because he came from

Afghanistan and that's a country ravaged by Taliban they don't even have the internet there so that's why he might have gotten the full ride but the full

rides are really really hard to find so honestly speaking the US admissions is also based on something called EFC which stands for expected Financial

contribution so the more you can pay the better your chances are at success in the univer in the US universities and some ities for example liberal arts

colleges they have a particular esfc um threshold below which they are just not going to accept you for example from for colleges like roads or overlin or gburg

it's like 20,000 to 25,000 USD so it depends on the efcs and if you are an international seeking a total full right like the definition what I told you just

now I'm sorry to say that you don't have any safeties everything is like a reach for you but if you improve your um EFC

then you have a more of more uh breathing room so to speak for example if you have an EFC of $10,000 then you can apply to University of Dallas Texas

or Arlington and there you might be able to get um full tuition or half living uh expenses which might help you bear the

rest of the expenses by yourself right perfect I hope that clears out that very popular query right so there is another popular query that most

people have a sort of sum it up for you so like many people connect like for example bad academic results or sort of average academic results with like do I

have to compensate that with SAT scores or I scores so what do you have to say about that okay um if you apply to the very top universities for example Ivy and IV plus universities I would say

that every single thing matters if you are an international thinking Aid so if for some reason uh your GPA falls down then you are you can explain some of it

through some essays or there's something called the additional detail section in your common app so you can explain why that happened maybe someone passed away or maybe you were going through an um

emotionally tough stage in your life admissions officers will easily understand that and that's why you have the 650w um additional details SE ction for

and as for that I would say that if you have a low GPA yes you're going to have to improve your SAT scores to be better

than the pile like Stanford gets like 50,000 uh 50 to 60,000 applicants every single year so if you are bad in one if you are sub AAR in one particular

segment you're going to have to make up for it in your SATs or your essays or your um other things as well remember

that the US process is a holistic process and although it's a holistic process GPA actually matters the

most right right amazing so I also had like a specific question so like many people talk about like showing demonstrated interest and how much that plays a role as well in giving

interviews so like did you give any interview and did you that from your end yeah I did give a bunch of interviews for example I gave an interview of

rice and the other colleges did that I did give an interview at I got rejected from them and as for demonstrated interest I think it yields different

results for example demonstrated interest in my opinion only works if you are applying early decision if you are ear applying early decision there's

already a lot fewer applicants so the admission officers have a lot of breathing room so if you send a lot lot of uh emails back and forth to

admissions officers with actual queries not just conversation that annoys them uh with actual veritable queries and then um interviews or talking with

Professor yes that's definitely going to help because I know of a girl from my country uh she did do a lot of demonstrated interest I mean I think she

did exchanged like 20 or 30 emails between her AO so much to the point that her AO started uh talking about the AOS cat to her uh I think that definitely

helps because uh you get notice and then they want you and then she actually got a full ride uh she got a $90,000 per year scholarship at Washington and Lee

but it actually varies from University to University I know of another person who did a lot of demonstrating interest and stuff but then she got rejected

everywhere so it kind of varies but if if you have time you should honestly right that also brings me up to one of the conversations I had with you before this webinar like you did mention like you know about your common app ESS and

how simple it was in a unique way about your turtles you did say your admissions officer from Stanford separately emailed you about your passionate Hobbies right so can you tell me a little bit about

that uh that particular email yeah oh yeah um I think from that email I understood that my Spike was my was my love for Turtles and conservation and

the admiss officer really loves my personal statement which because she actually picked up a line from that particular and uh essay and then told me

that this really resonated with her and then she wished me best of luck uh in my aims to start launch a startup in

conservation oh right interesting great so I do also remember like there's a um a query here about UK and Canadian universities offering in like financial

aid or full rights to International undergraduate students so since you have your experience you did apply if I'm not wrong or I did research at least so can you tell me a little bit that yeah um

Canada actually has some um scholarships which are kind of for some reason not really publicized about for example the two most um famous scholarship is the

ler B Pearson scholarship uh from the University of Toronto it basically um is a full ride scholarship for thir and supports 37 Scholars every year so so

it's actually very competitive as well because it has a acceptance rate of just less than 1% and you also have to make

sure that your school is a recognized school and by that mean I mean that your school is registered with the UFT uh

because uh in lby pearon you have you your school has to nominate you as an exceptional candidate and your school can nominate only one person per year to

for this Pierce scholarship and another nomination based scholarship is the um UBC iot scholarship International

Leaders of Tomorrow scholarship in that scholarship as well you have to um nominate Scholars from that from a

particular school and for that you also have to um get your school register and there can be a maximum of three Scholars From Any Given school and as for as and

I think there are some other full right Bas scholarship or full tuition scholarships for example I think York has a scholarship called the Tanda scholarship that's something you could

look into and there's also if any of you guys are Frenching applicants who are also by lingual in English then you can get full tuition scholarships and uh

from the University of Ottawa and as for UK uh UK is much more stingier um even if you get aced into

Oxford for example you're still expected to pay the full cost of attendance which equates to like £60,000 every year and they only give uh Merit Scholarships to

three people globally three out of like uh the 1,00 people or 2,000 people who are currently at Oxford so that kind of

is bad I think the only place which offers full rise is U UCL UCL and Warwick they offer like full to scholarships to like 30 or 40 people

every year okay right that was very insightful did you apply to the UK or Canada during your first or second year uh no I didn't apply to uh either of these countries in

my first year but yeah in my second year applied and I was actually a UCL full tuition finalist as well but I kind of didn't go through since I already got

into Stanford and I was nominated by my school for the uh UFT piering scholarship and I was weight listed for that scholarship wow wonderful achievements

as usual well here is another question actually related back to your application Journey like when you spoke about and emphasized about an application theme right to like make it more of a story than just an application

so someone there are some people who wanted sort of like uh Point some pointers some guidance to how to set it up and how to sort of find their team um

okay so for firstly you have to uh you have to think about what activities you have done throughout your life and what

major does it is it relevant to and if you're young enough for example if you're a n9th or 10th grader then you have plenty of time to plan out what activities do you want to do for high

school and also you have to show authenticity like you you have to make sure that you're not doing these activities solely for the purpose of applying to universities because I know of a couple of people who did just that

and they got rejected everywhere despite having a 1590 SAT score so you have to be authentic and you just have to pursue what you are passionate about because if

you are passionate about something that's going to be show showing in your essays and that's going to be something that the admission officers will pick up on easily because these admission

officers they read to thousands of files and they can easily understand what's um what some what's genuine and what's not

so you have to first think about what you want to do in life and then um draw together the activities which

are relevant to that particular major and then apply also another suggestion I would make you guys is that in common up

section do not apply as someone who is undecided that will be disadvantageous right amazing as I said individuality is key so insightful thank

you zarif so um is there any are there any more questions yes so there is a question what programs or olympiades can you suggest for someone who is thinking

about majoring in environmental science do you have anything to say as for environmental science yeah this is something I am similar to so what you could do is that you could go uh through

some internships uh I think the more internships I think all the internships won't be good or even if I think yeah there's one only internship that's like

the citizen scientist program and other than that I think it would be better if you were handson if you took Hands-On stuff and did them because you could

also write about them in your essays as well and as for the olympiads I think a good Olympiad would be the climate Science Olympiad because the last admit

from Sanford uh he is also one of my uh closest friends he also did this particular Olympiad and he got into Stanford as well so this is something that Stanford probably regards highly

this uh climate Science Olympiad and another Olympiad that you could do is the biology International biology Olympiad or um the international Earth Science

Olympiad is it the one Veronica mentioned in the chat box if you can take a look yeah uh give me one minute yes oh um yeah this is something I was

talking about the NASA citizen uh scientist program okay okay great thank you zarif um so I think I will take I guess two to

three more minutes and see if any of you guys have any more questions for zarif he'll be very happy to answer them so go ahead I'll wait a few minutes

I do have a question as a non student but I'm just curious you've mentioned that you've applied to ctech for early decision so I guess if I were ask Cornell oh Cornell yeah sorry so I guess

if I were to ask you a few months before you would have told me that maybe Cornell was your dream School uh but now it was Stanford so kind of what was that evolution of like accepting the rejection than being like okay I have many more options and eventually why was

it Stanford because you had some really good offers uh so what was it that made Stanford your new Choice oh okay sure um

as for that uh I think Cornell was my fa uh dream school for the longest time because that is also some place one of my closest friends also studies at so that would be nice and colel also has an

excellent um computer science program so I was absolutely crushed when I saw my rejection uh that was also my 20th rejection and the first rejection in my Gap year so I was like thinking that

what is happening I'm not getting into my uh Gap year schools as well but I still kept applying anyways and applied to Rd in Stanford and a lot of universities although I get got into a

lot of universities Stanford was my particular choice because um the place surrounding Stanford is also well known for its startup culture for example San

Francisco and Pao Alto there's a lot it's like the home of all startups and that is someplace I want to launch my startup as well and there are a lot of

startup accelerators surrounding Stanford or and even in Stanford uh through which you could get money for your startup for example uh the closest

close friend I was talking about Ryan his roommate uh he already got a 500,000 USD Grant from a startup accelerator to fund his startup so the opport the

primary reason why I'm want go to Stanford is because of the Cs curricula and also because of the good startup culture I'm going to already have Advantage when it comes to launching my

dream startup well great that's amazing okay so we have um I guess one last question over here so um this is important actually so is it safe for a gap your

student to apply to the same school they got rejected from and why um honestly speaking I would say Do not unless you have

brought significantly new uh things to the application that you have otherwise not displayed in your prior application because if you apply to a particular

University and get then get rejected and then reapply again uh your before they even read your file they're going to uh open your previous file and then going

to compare if they don't really see a lot of improvement they're just going to reject it within 30 seconds so if you have a lot of things if you completely

change your application theme or did a lot of amazing extracurricular activities I would say Do not uh I would

say to not apply to universities you already got rejected from because uh there's like 1,030 universities in the US and you already if you got rejected

you only got rejected from 20 of them so you see have like a 1,000 uh universities to apply to right right right makes sense