My name is Saltanat. I am proud of my name: in the Kazakh language it means “celebration”. For me, it is a sign of how diligently my ancestors worked towards the well-being of our family. My friends call me Salta, Saltusha.

Every year, I keenly observe new changes in myself. I used to be very impatient, but now I try to develop flexibility and tranquility within myself.

I think my admission story is quite unusual: I am following a path I never even thought about. I graduated from a music school and dedicated 8 years to dancing. Everyone was sure that I would enter an institute of arts and devote myself to the stage. And now I don’t even know what I will become after graduation, but honestly, it’s wonderful: where I am now is even better than what I considered the best for myself.

I am from a lower-middle class family, we have always lived in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, where life is just buzzing. I am aware of my privileges: being born here, I had the good fortune to be exposed to different opportunities. And yet I chose a university in the countryside: a sense of peace means a lot to me.

My stats are 5.0/5.0 GPA; 7.5 on IELTS and 1430 on the SAT.

7th grade: New school

From 1st to 6th grade, I studied at a completely ordinary school: "School-Lyceum No. 37 named after Syrbay Maulenov". I was a regular child who, besides school, was involved in music and dancing.

But in 6th grade, a turning point happened: the daughter of my mom's colleague was preparing to enter NIS, a Kazakh network of schools. My mom asked me if I wanted to give it a try. At the time, I was immersed in the arts - dancing, dombra - so I had a big choice in front of me. Even though I was sorry to give up 8 years of dancing, and music school, I decided to try. It was a huge risk: the selection was only 4 months away, and people were preparing for a year, two years... I had to give up dancing - at the moment it seemed to me that it was necessary to make a shift towards education. I thought that I had given dancing everything I could, so I was looking forward to something new. Thus, I studied at a test center, and then I found out that I was admitted. Now I understand that at that time, I made a choice that turned my whole life around. And it is strange for me to realize that I made this choice when I was 12-13 years old... Staying in the same school, I would have been happy to go to a Kazakh university.

So, I got into NIS. What I regret now is that I didn't strive to learn about educational opportunities. Back then, the prestige of NIS attracted me. The difference between me then and now is that I still pay attention to prestige, but now I try to be more analytical and think about what else an educational institution can offer me. It's not enough for a university to be renowned. You need to think about the opportunities.

NIS offers a twelve-year education: this was new to me, as the post-Soviet space usually has an eleven-year education system. Another feature of NIS worth mentioning is that in the 10th grade, we take internal exams, and in the 11th-12th grades, almost all of our learning is conducted in English.

Initially, I wanted to try everything, I listened to teachers in amazement, and every subject interested me. In biology in the 7th grade, we had a wonderful teacher, Aizhan Samatovna. She was very young, but I liked her enthusiasm for biology. Her words deeply resonated with me: "Don't think it's all over with NIS. Let's continue to grow – let's do projects, let's grow together." This encouragement led to my project activities in the 7th grade. Thus, together with Aizhan Samatovna, we did a project on kumis (a fermented milk drink). But my mom, who made calls to various laboratories, helping to arrange for research, was very supportive, and I am immensely grateful to her for everything.

Thus, we participated in conferences in the 7th grade and continued to submit the project to various competitions. At one point, the teacher said: "Saltanat, I submitted our project to a competition, it's in Russia." It was the Vernadsky competition! I passed all the stages and was invited to Moscow at the beginning of 8th grade! I didn't pay anything, everything was covered for me. Moreover, they even gave me pocket money. As a result, I not only saw Moscow on my own but also won 1st place in the competition.

Honestly, when I returned home… it was amazing. Getting into NIS? Well done. But getting into NIS and accomplishing something? Twice as commendable.

Although everyone around me, including myself, had high expectations for my future in biology, I realized that my love for biology had reached its final chord even before the beginning of 8th grade. All doors were open, but I didn't want to. I forced myself to read books by Taylor Green, to prepare for Olympiads. I didn't know what to do, but I decided to confess to the teacher that I was incredibly grateful to her, however, biology was not what I wanted to tie my future to. I was very scared: it seemed as if I was abandoning a promising job, and diving headfirst into the unknown. But I understood that for my soul, and to be true to myself first and foremost, I needed to choose a different path. Therefore, 8th grade started with the unknown.

8-9th grade: Finding Myself

I turned 14.

I decided to become a physicist. Started preparing for the olympiad, doing something. At the Olympiad, I was a few points short. I decided to end my pursuit of physics there, and I don't regret it.

However, it was when I was in 8th grade that quarantine began. It was 2020, and everything came to a halt. There was no school, no opportunities. I sat through the quarantine disheartened. 9th grade also passed in online mode, and it saddened me that such an important phase of my life was happening in confinement.

But during this time, I unexpectedly found interesting opportunities: online events, webinars, and competitions. Once, I stumbled upon a webinar on inclusive education. It was a course on children's rights by UNICEF. I pondered how great it could be to participate in discussions, talk with like-minded people, and discuss equality. I was attracted to the idea of such communication, so I reached out to the organizers and became a volunteer for the club. Initially, I did minor tasks, and this continued until the end of 9th grade.

By March, I participated in my first online hackathon, Teens&AI, which I joined out of boredom. At the hackathon, I met 3 girls with whom we together created an AI-based prototype. Until then, I knew nothing about technologies, but the realization that they could be used to solve and implement something shocked me. The direction of my project activities changed. I was thrilled that we were not just creating applications but had a goal: to help a specific group of people.

Before this, I regretted quitting biology, but at that moment, I realized: it's normal to regret the past and search for oneself. It turned out to be a stage of my maturation. I became more at peace with my wanderings: in 9th grade, I didn't know what I wanted to try, and the teacher of the "Fundamentals of Law" subject wanted me to participate in an Olympiad. In the end, I reached the republican stage. Eventually – a bronze medal. It seemed to me that I was in my element, as it was related to human rights. But still, I realized that I did not want to work in the field of law. This marked the end of my 9th grade.

Among other things, during it I started to learn about American education, to read Education USA. I did it intuitively. Life threw something at me - I tried it, I did it. I didn't think about the application, or the strategy, but I knew one thing for sure: you need an excellent GPA to get in.

10th grade: Human Rights

10th grade began – my graduation from middle school. In NIS, there are internal graduation exams, and I took 6 subjects: Mathematics, English, Russian, Kazakh, Physics, and History of Kazakhstan. Finally, we resumed offline learning!

My school is located very far from my home, on the other end of the city, and I used to travel by public transport/school shuttle. The journey took 2-3 hours, I arrived tired, so my mom wanted me to have more time for studying and activities. Thus, I moved in with relatives living very close to NIS. You could say I got a new family, a new stage of life began when I only saw my mom on weekends. At first, everything was interesting to me. I came to school and saw that after the quarantine everything had paused, so there was a chance to take the lead. I didn't miss the opportunity: I started actively interacting with UNICEF to create such a club at my school. I opened this club with the school's president, Aruzhan, who got into UPenn last year. Mainly, I was responsible for social media. Most posts were written by me. I truly lived out the values of inclusivity, equality, and human rights, I was a bridge between our club and UNICEF: I constantly communicated, traveled to meetings, and reported on our successes. I have many achievements from there. The coolest thing is that at the end of 10th grade, we established a partnership between UNICEF and our school: for example, we jointly held a quest on children's rights. I even made it onto UNICEF's page: they had a campaign about children's rights clubs. It was the first time I came into the spotlight!

I'm standing on the right. On the left is Aruzhan, the president of our school, with whom we started the UNICEF club. She is now studying at the University of Pennsylvania

Then I began to try myself in robotics. Technologies had captivated me after the hackathon experience, so I was interested in building something with my own hands. I was very lucky that at that time I was friends with Yasmina, a girl from our school who was strong in the field of robotics. So, I suggested that she participate in one of our competitions. The point was that we had to come up with and create a device within 10 days. Yasmina agreed. We started making a posture control device, a wearable device. I was interested in health issues, and scoliosis is an acute problem among schoolchildren.

That's when I gained serious experience in robotics. We finished school at 2 pm but left the laboratory at 10 pm. I liked programming, assembling, and at the same time bringing real benefits, while having the opportunity to see and touch what was assembled. That's when I started to understand who I wanted to become. It dawned on me that engineering is an overlapping field. Being an engineer means you're both a programmer and a seamstress… Engineering is so interesting!

As a result, we took a prize place, won 50,000 tenge. I not only won but also earned money. A drive appeared, and I wanted to move further.

In 10th grade, I began volunteering with TeensAI. After winning the hackathon, I wanted to contribute back, so I worked on social media and looked for sponsors. In August, we started organizing a new project, which took place in October. It wasn't a long experience, but it was interesting and related to technology, enlightenment, and volunteering.

I also had experience in the student council. As disjointed as my journey was, when I put together everything I tried since entering NIS, I understood why I did it all.

Despite starting 10th grade actively, by the end, I burned out: everything fell from my hands, and nothing worked out. I lived in another family for six months, I was 16, and naturally, I wanted to spend more time with my parent. All this fatigue negatively affected my mental state, and I performed mediocrely in the final exams. So, that's the flip side of the coin: despite all the successes, I had no energy left for anything.

Therefore, I decided to rest in the summer. Finally, I returned to my mom and started the StemQYZ project, which emerged after I encountered discrimination in robotics. Qyz translates as "girl" from the Kazakh language. As part of this project, we began to show examples of female representation, and write posts. Then I found Girl Up, an international movement from the UN: they support girls from different countries creating various projects. Thus, I became part of the Girl Up Club. With the StemQYZ team, we started exploring the topic of women's reproductive health: an issue that's taboo around the world. We had the idea to combine addressing the issue with educating girls in STEM. We gave girls lectures on reproductive health, and encouraged them to solve these problems using technology. We won a $300 grant from Girl Up, organized a hackathon, which reached about 50 girls from all over Kazakhstan: both cities and villages. Our participants created many applications. But especially memorable was a service for the emergency delivery of pads and women's hygiene products.

11th Grade: SAT, Politics

11th grade began – senior year of high school. We were developing StemQYZ. For my advanced level studies in school, I chose physics and computer science, both taught in English. Life became more measured. To be together, my mom and I rented an apartment close to NIS. Finally, I was able to relax a bit: it seemed to me that my activities were enough for admission. My focus shifted to studying and preparing directly for the application, namely taking the SAT. My first attempt was in the middle of the 11th grade, the last time the exam could be taken in paper format. I scored 1300: not high, not low. I prepared on my own. I wasn’t satisfied with the result: for a good university, I needed at least 1400. In March 2023, the first digital SAT was administered. I tried again and scored 1350. My third and final attempt was in June 2023: I scored 1430. I planned a fourth, aiming for 1500 by August before 12th grade, but ultimately canceled the registration: I doubted myself. It was disappointing not to reach 1500, but I came to terms with it, although many consider this score not competitive. I thought differently. It was a huge risk: typically, top colleges are applied to with 1500+.

So, my 11th grade passed quite peacefully. We have a course “Global Perspectives, Project Work,” aimed at teaching us to write research papers in practice. I decided to write about women in Kazakhstan's politics and their perception by the people. It ended up being about 8500 words. Honestly, this work became special to me: I expanded my horizons and then took second place at the school conference in the field of gender studies. Additionally, I had the honor of being invited to a real tea ceremony with the British Ambassador Kathy Leach. I told her about this research work, we had a wonderful time drinking tea. It was cool!

As I was a member of the Girl Up Club, I had the honor of being invited to the Girl Up Leadership Summit 2023, where I shared the experiences of our club's events and also conducted a workshop on the topic of menstrual poverty in Kazakhstan in front of more than 2,000 attendees.

Also, in 11th grade, I became fascinated with bioengineering, but I'll tell you more about that later.

12th Grade: Welcome to Wellesley!

By the start of 12th grade, I had my SAT scores and a list of colleges to which I wanted to apply. I worked on my Personal Statement over the summer. The only thing missing was the IELTS: Wellesley doesn't require it, but it was still advisable to present it.

Honestly, I was very afraid of the IELTS. At NIS, there is an opportunity to take the IELTS once for free. I was in the last cohort to have this opportunity, so my first and last attempt could be in the fall of 2023. I took the exam on October 12th, the results were due out on October 26th, and I was in a state of confusion: unsure if I could apply – in case the result was disappointing. I spent two weeks full of doubts: thinking I would apply to Wellesley for ED2. But I am very grateful to my friend who supported me, convincing me to apply for ED1. So, I decided to take the risk.

Without waiting for the IELTS results, I requested recommendation letters, gathered documents in the last few days – right before November 1st. It turned out I scored 7.5 on the IELTS. Then I realized I had worried for nothing and could apply for ED1.

Despite the application seeming very raw to me at the time of submission, a week after sending the documents, I realized I was accepted. Wellesley doesn't ask for the CSS Profile during the application submission: if they request one, it amounts to a Likely Letter. And so, on November 8-9, they wrote to me asking for my CSS Profile. Then I began to suspect this was a good sign: Reddit was very helpful. However, I encountered problems with filling out the CSS. Although I was just an applicant to them, they held two Zoom meetings with me. A representative from the financial office warmly and kindly answered my questions as if she really wanted me to study there. And they helped me piece together this profile on the fly! I was amazed by this situation: I realized I was supported. I was very happy and understood that I wanted to go there.

The results were due to arrive on December 9th at 9:00 PM. I couldn't sleep even the day before. I was on Reddit. About 8 hours before the decision, I started watching a completely random series: it had 8 one-hour episodes. The plot revolves around Elizabeth Holmes – a girl who got into Stanford. I planned it so: finish watching, and the letter would arrive. I kept watching… and when I got to the last episode, suddenly, out of nowhere, BILL CLINTON appeared! I thought: "What?! Why is he here?! He wasn't even supposed to be in the script…" The thing is, his wife, Hillary Clinton, is a Wellesley College alumna…

So, at 9:00 PM, the letter arrives. And on December 9th, I found out that I was admitted.

The next day, my mom and I went to celebrate, eating sushi.