My Background
My name is Fenan Shumeta, and I am from Ethiopia. For high school, I had the opportunity to study at the Oromia Development Association Special Boarding School as a scholarship recipient. The school is located in Adama, Ethiopia, and is known as one of the most competitive schools in the region. To gain admission, students must perform exceptionally well on the Primary School Leaving Examination after completing grade 8. Those who score 95% or higher are automatically eligible to apply for the boarding school. For my batch, the acceptance rate was approximately 4.25%.
Our schools offer two streams to choose from after grade 10, which are natural science and social science. I studied natural science and took 8 classes per semester.

Why I chose to study abroad
The idea of studying abroad came to me during my second semester last year, when we started hearing stories about acquaintances from other schools getting accepted into universities in the U.S. That’s when my classmates and my curiosity pushed us to apply for top schools in the U.S. and hopefully get a full ride. Before that, I was never exposed to or had preliminary knowledge about studying abroad, such as how the admission process works or what the eligibility requirements were. I truly started from scratch.
Over the summer, I began working on my applications and building my extracurricular activities. In total, I applied to 40 schools (not recommended) to increase my chances of getting in.
Application process
I started working on my applications this summer while still continuing my summer programs. I decided to apply to Bowdoin as an ED1 applicant, but unfortunately, I got my first rejection. After that, my immediate reaction was to apply to as many schools as I could to increase my chances.
Haverford was my first acceptance, and Brown was second. In total, I applied to three Ivy League universities: Cornell, Columbia, and Brown. The one I was most eager to hear from is Brown University, and I also I submitted their video portfolio.

Why Brown?
I chose Brown because of its commitment to academic freedom and the belief that students learn best when they shape their own paths. The Open Curriculum deeply resonated with me—it gives me the opportunity to explore my interests with intention and flexibility, without being confined by traditional requirements.
What also drew me to Brown is the sense of community. It’s known as the happiest Ivy, and that energy is clear in the way students collaborate, support one another, and genuinely enjoy learning. The environment is laid-back yet intellectually vibrant, and I knew it was a place where I could thrive.
This fall, I’ll be joining a university that values curiosity, kindness, and individuality—and I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of it.


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My stats and extracurricular activities
GPA: 95.13/100, Unweighted
SAT: 1490 in one sitting. I’ve experienced a computer malfunction during the test, which affected my score. In my application, I mentioned that I had 1540 the day before on my practice test, but I don’t know if this made any difference.
Activities
Director of Ethiopia Branch, Stooping Club (ethiopiastooping.org)—The first student-run, free online chain store globally. We secured $ 8K+ in electronics & books for a pilot shipment to my school; organized a 7-member team; landed 2 partnerships & interviewed on BBC Afan Oromo.
Rabies Vaccine Production Intern, Armauer Hansen Research Institute—an Ethiopian biomedical research center.
Lead Author and Book Designer for Siddii Fayyaa, Traditional Medicine & Rare Diseases Book Initiative—Student-led health education project. Wrote a book as a team on traditional medicine & diseases like Down Syndrome, with 5 copies printed; mass publication in progress, and awarded $250.
Water Supply & Sanitation Thesis Research Assistant, Ethiopian Civil Service University, Environment & Climate Change Dept.
Mentor and Teaching Assistant, AddisCoder—Free 2-week summer coding program taught by AddisCoder alumni.
First-ever high schooler to intern at Adera Surgical Center—one of the top surgical centers in East Africa.
Founder and President, Foreign Languages Club. Interviewed on Fana, a national TV station, delivered welcoming speeches in Russian, Korean, and Arabic to diplomats, and presented to the President.
Lead Organizer and Actor, Theater Club, under the extension of The Oromo Cultural Club.
President and co-organizer, English Club at ODASBS.
Auxiliary Pioneer—volunteer educator, Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall - Jehovah's Witness congregational centers in Ethiopia.
Honors
2nd Place at Harvard Crimson Global Business Competition Achieved as a Team For Our Non-profit.
Selectee Of The Highly Competitive(6.25% acceptance rate) AddisCoder Summer Coding Program.
Oromia Development Association Special Boarding School full-ride scholarship winner(4.3% acceptance).
Winner of the Best Book of The Year Award for Book on Traditional Medicines and Down Syndrome (2023).
Achieved 3rd place in the 2023 ODASBS Q&A Science Contest.
Personal statement
It took me three months to write my personal statement. I often went on Instagram asking people to review my essay. I wrote about my family dynamics, how they shaped me, and the lessons I’ve learned from them. Here is my personal statement.
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
I was going through my mom's Telegram account when I saw recording 49. Heart racing and hands shaking, my fingers pressed on the chilling recording my mom forwarded to my dad again and again. With each playback, it sank deeper into my soul, filling me with fear and disbelief.
"Ati boor, nama duutedha!"("Consider yourself dead by tomorrow!")
Behind those frightening words was a terrorist threatening my mother's life back in my hometown, Nekemte, amid intense ethnic violence. Her crime?—being Amhara, an ethnicity she was mistaken for due to her Amharic name and profession as an Amharic teacher, despite her being fully Oromo.
Back in 2021, when Mom insisted that I apply to a boarding school 402.5 km away, my first thought was, "She’s had it with me; she can’t keep up with my demands anymore. That’s why she wants to send me off to a boarding school." After all, in my 13-year-old mind, she was a mom who shunned me whenever I asked for new clothes or shoes. She was a mom who couldn’t keep her marriage together. She was a mom who couldn’t provide the life I thought I deserved; she was a mom who...13-year-old me could go on complaining. Eventually, the idea of going to a boarding school supported my narrative as an escape from a family I loathed, an escape from my alcoholic dad and my mom's relentless bickering that kept me up all night. An escape from... 14-year-old me could go on giving reasons.
At the end of eighth grade, our regional examination results came in. That morning, my mom received a call telling her that I had scored the highest grade in the entire province. Wasting no time, I immediately applied to ODA Special Boarding School, earning a full scholarship later on. Leaving that house seemed like a ticket to paradise! Until the unfamiliar environment and overwhelming loneliness took their toll. Freshman year was a real struggle; not a day went by without me blaming my parents for all my setbacks.
On a random Saturday, as I logged into my mom’s Telegram account to reply to my father per her request, recording 0049 grabbed my attention. After that four-minute recording, followed by a series of messages between my dad and mom, feelings I once had about her, and the information in front of me began to clash. Guilt consumed my body. She hadn’t shunned me because she found my consistent appeals for new shoes or clothes annoying, but because she was saving up to buy land near Addis and relocate the whole family. She wasn’t a mom who couldn’t keep her marriage together; in fact, after knowing that her husband had cheated on her, she kept it a secret in order not to dismantle the family. She didn’t send me off to a boarding school because "she had it with me," but because she genuinely believed in the opportunities it would create for me and for our family to relocate and stay alive. As the first drop of tear rolled down my face, I realized how immature and judgmental I had been toward mom. I focused too much on the actions apparent to me, completely oblivious to the sacrifices she made.
Although my path was unorthodox, I am grateful for discovering that recording. Those truths have sculpted me into the Fenan who cherishes every moment with his mom, aware he nearly lost her; the Fenan who forgave his father, despite knowing his affair, following his mother's lead; the Fenan who seeks triumph over defeat until the very last, reminded by the fact that his mom didn’t surrender to that unlawful death penalty; the Fenan who founded a support group for a persecuted Amhara student, relating to his pain having been banished from his own town due to assumed ethnicity; the once lonely freshman who became the humorous friend that glued his group together; and, most of all, the Fenan who now understands stories before drawing conclusions.


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Scholarship and helpful resources
I received full financial aid from Brown, and to help my application stand out, I have been using Borderless Guidance App. I used it to refine my activity descriptions and essays, and it really helped me a lot during the application process. One of my favorite features was the activity description tool. It helped me create effective and impactful descriptions by using fewer words while still being numerically accurate. It also gave me ways to enhance my descriptions and make them stand out.