My background

In Uzbekistan, I had 11 years of education. My first 8 years of education were in a public school, and afterwards I got into a new special school named Presidential School in Andijan. It was a new initiative by the government in partnership with Cambridge. When the entrance exam was announced, I prepared day and night and then got in. When I was accepted, the acceptance rate was 2%, but this year's class had a 0.38% acceptance rate. The acceptance rate is really low because there is a huge applicant pool, but they only accept 24 students. I was fortunate enough to be one of them in 2021. My grades 9, 10, and 11 were taught at Presidential School in Andijan, where I covered the IGCSE curriculum, and then AS level and A level. My majors were Physics, Computer Science, and Mathematics. At the end of this school year, in May and June, I took Cambridge A level exams in those 3 subjects.

Stats

I took the SAT three times. My best score was 1480, and my superscore was 1500. I applied to some universities with that 1500, but regarding Duke Kunshan University, I didn't submit my SAT. I just went test-optional. I chose to take the IELTS exam, which is the most popular English test in my country. My score was 7.5 out of 9, indicating C1 proficiency. In the first year, I lost some focus in terms of academics, and that impacted my GPA. I was in the process of adapting to the new school, so my results weren't that good. But after the first year, I was achieving the best grades. That's why my GPA is 4.97 out of 5. It was the second highest in my class. My predicted scores for my A-level exams were A in Mathematics, A in Physics, and A* in Computer Science.

Duke Kunshan's application details 

Duke Kunshan also uses the Common App. You can specifically search for Duke Kunshan University and add it to your university list. However, there is also another option: there is a box in the Duke University application that asks, "Do you also want to be considered for Duke Kunshan University?" or something similar. You can just tick that box. They will then consider your application for both Duke University and Duke Kunshan University.

Why Duke Kunshan 

One of the reasons why I applied was because my friend got in through early decision. So I applied regular decision and wanted to study with him. Another reason was the dual degree offer. By studying at Duke Kunshan University, at the end of your university education, you can get both Duke University's diploma as well as the Duke Kunshan diploma. The former is in English and the latter is in Chinese. So if you want to work specifically in China, you can just use the Chinese diploma. But if you want to work abroad, you can use the English one, and you can also apply to graduate programs using the same diploma.

Also, when I was reading some articles, I saw that the majority of the graduating class were admitted to top universities' graduate programs, e.g., Harvard, Columbia, Stanford.

I also liked the international diversity. At Duke Kunshan University, employees, teachers, students—everyone is from a different country. So everyone has their own background, which means every person can learn from each other. And of course, there's the financial side—my other options were too expensive to study. China is more affordable than the US, so it was not as big of a financial burden.

Financial aid 

You basically submit your CSS profile like you do to other American universities. The maximum amount of aid you can get is full tuition - the scholarships go up to only full tuition. But they recently announced a scholarship called the Global Leader Scholarship. It's actually a need-based plus merit-based scholarship. The requirements are that you have to be in the top 10 percent of the application cycle. You also have to demonstrate that you really need financial support and that you have international accomplishments. This scholarship gives you a full-ride. But they only choose three students out of the whole application pool. This year we had 150 admitted students. So only three of them were given this scholarship. I didn't apply because I didn't have time back then, but I still regret that I didn't apply. I ended up getting full tuition aid.

Extracurriculars 

I have been taking leadership roles since I was 13 years old, so I have a long history of being a leader. We had a national organization called Kamalak. It used to promote and protect children's rights and initiatives. They also used to support you when you needed it and held many competitions as well. I was a regional leader of that organization, which meant I was right below the national leaders.

When I got into the Presidential School in Andijan, I became a house leader, house captain. If you have ever watched Harry Potter, you know that the students are divided into different houses. We had the same thing in our school. We had four houses, each having the exact same number of students. Every competition was held inter-house. I was honored to be the first ever house captain of Green House, and I led them for one academic year.

When I became a grade 11 student - the graduating class - I got elected as President of the Student Government Association of the school.

I was an English and SAT tutor at my local learning center. I actually learned English there, so I just felt like helping others. I got employed by them and then worked there during two summer vacations. During my first year, I taught a group of 25 students. The second year I tutored for the SAT because it also helped me improve my score. Two of my students got 1380 and 1400, which made me really proud of them.

I was also a co-founder of the Zakovat Club at my school, and we used to hold annual competitions for students. I was also a member of my school's Zakovat team. We participated in different competitions, and one was the agency cup. Forty teams from 40 different schools participated, and we got fourth place out of those 40 teams.

I was also a graduate of the HundrED Youth Ambassador programme that was organized by HundrED and the International Baccalaureate Organization. I was one of three participants from Uzbekistan. We raised awareness about the issue of the rapidly shrinking Aral Sea. We created an ecological program to help others understand it better.

Honors

I got second place at the Al-Khwarizmi Mathematical Olympiad. It was the state olympiad, and I was in grade nine at that time. I was also a participant in the Skills Camp. It was a national camp organized by the government. I was selected out of around 1,000 candidates for that certified place. During the program, I majored in IT and programming. I was also ranked 8th out of 104 participants at the National Science Olympiad in Informatics.

Advice on "Why Us" essay

Duke Kunshan has a "why us" essay. For future applicants who want to apply to Duke Kunshan University - when you have to write this "why us" essay, you should definitely go to Duke Kunshan's YouTube channel and watch some videos because those videos are really informative. I also watched them, and it helped me a lot.

Duke Kunshan University posts many articles about activities being held at the university on their website. So when you are going to write these essays, you should definitely look for them. But the key thing that helped me was contacting current students. When I was writing that essay, I contacted a freshman student there and asked a lot of questions, and he helped me a lot. So when you are writing the "why us" essay for any university, another thing to keep in mind is that you should definitely contact current students there and ask for help. They will definitely help you a lot.