Introduction and Background
I am coming from the public school in Bukhara. I am 16 years old and an 8th-generation gold embroidery craftsperson in my family lineage. I spent my entire childhood in our workshop museum. I hosted thousands of international and local tourists, including professors at MIT, Oxford, and Cambridge. They inspired me to look for opportunities abroad, even though I have limited resources out here in Bukhara. I was also a very big fan of sci-fi (Star Wars and Rick and Morty).
Academics and stats
- GPA: 4.89 → I have 4s in Uzbek language, Uzbek history, and Geography, and 5s in the science subjects. I took 18 subjects.
- SAT: 1520
- IELTS: 8.5
- APs→ I got 5s on AP Physics 1, Physics 2, and Physics C: Mechanics. My school had no APs, so I did self-study at another school. This year, I am studying AP Chemistry, Physics 2, and Physics C: E&M. None of the schools in the city has AP subjects offered, so I traveled to other cities for this opportunity.
Awards/honors
I received a merit scholarship of $6,500 to the Horizon Research Program, which is awarded to 2.6% of 6,500 applicants. I also became a national champion and received a silver honor from the International Astronomy and Astrophysics Competition (IAAC), ranked in the top 7% globally out of 13,000 people. I participated actively with my family in craftsmanship festivals, and we never lost. I mentioned only 2 festivals because I helped the most there, and we won $7,000 in prizes. I got a perfect score in the English Olympiad among thousands of people nationally. We also won silver and bronze in local volleyball tournaments.
Being the 8th-generation craftsman in my family
I submitted the portfolio of the works I helped make. The work we have is never done by a single person; at least 5 people are always involved. I helped in 4 steps: designing, attaching the design onto a cloth, sewing, and selling, which is basically showing the product to visitors. Our family used to participate in a lot of international competitions, and we never lost. I was with them, and although my contribution was limited, I helped them present their work to the judges.
Extracurriculars
Being the founder of Silk Orbit and Resolut
Resolut started as a school club when I saw that many people were procrastinating. My friends and I founded it. We had a group chat where people would share tasks they wanted to do that day. If they didn't do it, they would send money to a local charity. Then we grew it nationwide, and some people came from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan too. We even collaborated with some learning centers.
Silk Orbit is my small passion project for Bukhara and my country. Resources are limited here. We have to travel to the capital to do research or make any contribution to the STEM field. There was also a culture of people being demotivated, thinking nobody could do research in Uzbekistan. So I helped people connect to professors abroad. Hundreds of people benefited. I started this in high school, but after I had done research with a professor myself, things took off.
Minecraft Activity
I built my city, Bukhara, in Minecraft. I gave virtual tours to my friends who wanted to visit Bukhara but couldn't. I spent about 1 to 2 hours a week building it, and it was purely from passion. I actually put it as my top 5 ECA.
Research work
There is a story of how I started with research. I was 14 or 15 at the time. I took a free course on nuclear engineering on edX from MIT. I really liked how the MIT professor explained things, so I emailed him about studying in the USA and doing research. He told me to first learn more about nuclear engineering and science by writing articles and essays about it. I wrote those for about 4 to 5 months and showed him some articles over email. He liked one so much, which was about "what if Uzbekistan had a nuclear reactor," that he said to do a research project regarding it. I started that project, and he helped me with editing and the research itself. Before doing research, you really need to learn about research, the processes, and the topic itself properly.
My first paper was a comparative analysis of nuclear fusion fuels. I wrote it independently and had it reviewed by the MIT professor, then reworked it with his advice. He later connected me with Samarkand Professor Akmal Safarov, who invited me to give a presentation to a group of his PhD candidates in Samarkand. It was published in a mid-tier journal: Advances in Aerospace Science and Technology.
My second paper was on Knot Theory, written under the mentorship of MIT Doctoral candidate Dr. Ryan Maguire and Dartmouth Full Professor of Mathematics Vladimir Chernov. The mentorship lasted the entire summer and September. I put the paper on arXiv and later gave a seminar talk on it for about an hour and a half to a group of Dartmouth undergrad students. Professor Chernov invited me to give the speech, but it was online because of the distance.
My third paper was a history paper with a faculty member from Virginia Tech. I wrote on "the evolution of propulsion technology," which was a long project, but it allowed me to synthesize large amounts of data.
Horizon academic research program
It was extremely rigorous because I was studying math at a high level. I had a lot of fun connecting with Zining from Pennsylvania, Dr. Ryan Maguire from MIT, and Professor Vladimir Chernov from Dartmouth.
Resources that helped me
There is also a program that helped students from Uzbekistan understand the admissions process called Freshmen Academy. They helped guide me through college essays.
My College Decisions
I applied to 21 colleges. Here are the results:
Accepted (with ~$400k+ full ride scholarships): Stanford, Caltech, Swarthmore, Washington and Lee, Brown, Minerva (no aid)
Waitlisted: Amherst, Columbia
Rejected: Duke, Rice, UPenn, Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, NYUAD, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Williams, Colby, MIT
I am currently choosing Stanford over Caltech and Brown because I know I will be able to create the technology I have always only dreamt about and scale it.
Tips for international students
Age is but a number! I started prepping when I was 13, and I am so grateful that I wasn't discouraged by the words of others. Don't victimize yourself by saying that you don't have resources. I came from a public high school in Bukhara, a very small city in Central Asia, with research centers thousands of miles away. I didn't study abroad or have millions of dollars for my education. Through educating myself on YouTube and connecting with people online, I now have an opportunity to do research in nuclear engineering in Switzerland at CERN due to participating in the Beamline for Schools competition. You can always find resources. Start early. Stay curious. Send the email.
