Hello everyone, I’m Arif Barlas, and I’ll be spending the next four years studying Computer Science at the University of Toronto. I grew up in Niğde, a relatively small city in Türkiye, before moving to Istanbul at fourteen to attend Cağaloğlu Anatolian High School. What began as a move for high school gradually became a journey of discovering my interests in engineering, computer science, and artificial intelligence, exploring opportunities far beyond what I had initially imagined, and eventually applying to universities across the world. In this article, I want to share how that journey unfolded, what I learned along the way, and how I ultimately found my way to Toronto.
Taking the First Step: Moving from Niğde to Istanbul
I grew up in Niğde, a relatively small city in Türkiye, where I completed both primary and middle school. At fourteen, I moved to Istanbul after earning my place at Cağaoğlu Anatolian High School through the national high school entrance exam. Moving from Niğde to Istanbul on my own was a major change, especially because I spent my first year of high school living in a dormitory. It was one of my first experiences of becoming independent and adapting to a completely new environment.
My high school had a strong German-language curriculum. The school offered us the opportunity to gradually develop our German throughout high school and earn a diploma corresponding roughly to a B2-C1 level by the end of 12th grade. This diploma could also provide a pathway to studying in Germany. Because of this, Germany was initially my main goal. During my first years of high school, I imagined taking the national university entrance exam in Türkiye and then continuing my education in Germany. At that point, studying abroad did not feel like an entirely unfamiliar idea because I was already surrounded by students who were planning to do the same.
At the same time, moving to Istanbul changed the way I thought about what was possible for me. I had already left my hometown at fourteen, adapted to dorm life, and started building a life in a city that had initially been completely unfamiliar. After experiencing that transition, studying in another country gradually stopped feeling like a distant or unreachable goal. It became something I could realistically imagine doing.
My plans would eventually change. By the end of ninth grade and the beginning of tenth grade, I started questioning whether Germany was really where I wanted to build my future. I realized that I wanted to explore larger companies, a more entrepreneurial environment, and opportunities beyond the path I had originally imagined for myself. Germany remained a backup option, and I continued improving my German and completed the language examinations, but I started looking beyond it.
That was the beginning of a much broader journey. What had started as a plan to study in Germany gradually turned into a search for the environment that would best fit the kind of person I wanted to become.
Finding the Path by Walking It
I did not enter high school with a perfectly defined plan for what I wanted to study or where I wanted to end up. I knew that I was interested in engineering and technology, but much of my direction developed through the opportunities I encountered along the way.
One of the most influential of these opportunities was my school’s unmanned underwater systems club. The club had been established a year before I joined, and I initially became involved in its electronics and software team. I was genuinely interested in the work and enjoyed being part of the team, and over the next three years, I worked with students from different grade levels, took on increasing responsibilities, and eventually became the captain of the electronics team.
Together, we competed in the high school category of TEKNOFEST, Türkiye’s major technology and innovation festival, where we achieved several national rankings. We placed seventh in one competition and second in another in the high school unmanned underwater systems category. In another year, our team competed in both the high school and university categories, placing third in the university category and reaching the top ten in the high school category. We also participated in competitions in both Norway and Singapore.
Beyond the awards, the club gave me an early experience of what working as part of a technical team could look like. I joined at the beginning, learned from older students, gradually took on more responsibility, and eventually led part of the team myself. Looking back, it was one of the first places where I could see my interests in mathematics, physics, software, and engineering coming together in practice.
At the same time, my plans for university were changing. I began looking beyond Germany and exploring other possibilities for my education.
That search eventually led me toward the United States. In tenth grade, I took AP Calculus BC and AP Computer Science A. Until then, studying in the United States had not been a clearly defined goal. But experiencing the curriculum and the way these subjects were taught made me realize that the American education system could offer the kind of academic environment I was looking for. The idea of studying in the United States, which had once felt distant, suddenly became a possibility I wanted to explore.
My interests in engineering, computer science, and eventually artificial intelligence did not emerge as a single decision. They developed gradually, through the teams I joined, the subjects I studied, and the opportunities I chose to pursue. High school was less about following a predetermined path and more about discovering which paths were worth following.
A Profile That Wasn’t Built Just for College
I never wanted to limit myself to a single area just because I thought it would look better on a college application. One of the clearest examples of this was Model G20, which I joined in ninth grade and continued until eleventh grade.
At my school, we organized both Turkish and German versions of Model G20, bringing together hundreds of delegates from different schools each year. I worked as an assistant academic director, contributed to writing committee guides, helped shape the event throughout the year, and served as both a chair and vice-chair of a committee. While I was becoming increasingly interested in mathematics, physics, computer science, and artificial intelligence, Model G20 gave me a completely different space to explore my interest in history.
For me, Model G20 was never just another extracurricular activity. I did not join because I thought it would add another line to my application. I genuinely enjoyed spending those few days immersed in the event, using what I already knew about history and discovering things I had never learned before. Later, when I realized how much I enjoyed it, I wanted to become involved in the organization itself and started taking on more responsibility.
Looking back, I think that distinction matters.Model G20 did not necessarily fit my CV, but it fit the person behind it. If I had been thinking about my CV from ninth grade onward, I might never have chosen to spend so much time on something that did not directly connect to my academic interests. Instead, I allowed myself to explore something simply because I enjoyed it.
The same was true of my volunteering experiences with LÖSEV, a Turkish NGO supporting children with leukemia and their families, and TEMA, a Turkish environmental organization focused on combating soil erosion and protecting natural habitats. These activities did not take up a huge amount of my time, but they introduced me to people and experiences that I would not have encountered otherwise. At LÖSEV, for example, I participated in activities such as painting and reading with children affected by leukemia. These experiences helped me see different circumstances and people beyond my own environment, and I genuinely enjoyed being part of them.
I also explored smaller interests alongside my main activities. I played the bağlama, wrote about software and artificial intelligence on Medium, and took courses through platforms such as Coursera and edX. None of these became defining achievements, and that was never really the point. They reflected my tendency to explore things that caught my attention, even when I had no clear idea of where they would lead.
I only started thinking seriously about my CV around eleventh grade. By then, I could look back and realize that many of the things I had done earlier were valuable precisely because I had not done them for my CV. They were things I had chosen because I was curious about them, enjoyed them, or wanted to learn something new.
That mindset became an important part of how I approached the rest of my application. I wanted my profile to show not only what I could achieve academically, but also what genuinely interested me as a person.
My First Glimpse of Academic Life
In my high school, I had never really been taught how to write an academic paper. More broadly, I realized that I did not know what conducting research actually involved. When I decided that I wanted to do research in eleventh grade, I started looking for ways to gain that experience and figure out how the process worked. That search led me to two research programs: Polygence and the Cambridge Centre for International Research (CCIR).
In both projects, I explored the intersection of healthcare and artificial intelligence. Through CCIR, I worked with a mentor from Cambridge on the relationship between brain waves and epileptic seizures. At Polygence, I worked with a PhD student on using an artificial intelligence-based model to detect lung cancer and several other types of cancer.
The projects taught me much more than the technical knowledge related to these topics. For the first time, I learned what it actually meant to conduct academic research: how to find a research question, structure a paper, conduct a literature review, identify reliable sources, divide the writing process into stages, and develop an appropriate academic writing style. These were things I had never really encountered before, and learning how they fit together made the idea of research much more concrete for me.
Having mentors throughout the process also made a significant difference. They knew that I was a high school student and could guide me according to my level, while still allowing me to take ownership of my work. My relationship with my Polygence mentor continued beyond the project itself. I was able to receive a recommendation letter from my mentor, and during my university application process, they continued to check in and ask how everything was going. That experience showed me that research could also create meaningful academic relationships and expand my network.
Both of my research papers were eventually published in Curieux Academic Journal (CAJ). Publishing them was important to me, but I think the experience itself was more valuable than having another line on my application. Research gave me an early glimpse into the kind of academic work I could encounter at university and taught me how to approach questions systematically rather than simply look for answers.
Most importantly, I realized that these skills were not limited to STEM. Whether the subject is sociology, humanities, or another field entirely, knowing how to ask a question, examine existing knowledge, evaluate sources, and build an argument is fundamental to academic work. Research was therefore not simply “research experience” that I could add to my application. It was my first concrete introduction to how academic knowledge is created.
A Year of Doing Everything at Once
Eleventh grade was probably the most intense year of my high school experience. I had only recently started understanding what the international university application process required, and I knew I had limited time before applications opened. I decided to make the most of that year, which meant trying to fit an unusually large number of things into it.
I took six AP exams: AP Physics C: Mechanics, AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, AP Computer Science A, AP Macroeconomics, AP Microeconomics, and AP Statistics. I scored a 5 on four of them and a 4 on the other two. At the same time, I was preparing for the SAT, working on two research projects, completing an internship, and building a team focused on healthcare and artificial intelligence. I was also continuing my schoolwork and other activities at the same time. Between January and May especially, my schedule became extremely demanding. There were periods when I would sleep at around 3 a.m., wake up at 6 a.m. to go to school, and spend much of my weekends working as well. Looking back, that period feels almost blurry because of how intense it was.
The SAT was another part of that process that did not go according to plan immediately. I took it once simply to see where I stood, without really understanding the test or the process, and scored 1280. Since I was already getting close to the application period, that result made me question whether I was on the right path. I was already trying to learn German while improving my English, keeping up with school, and preparing for everything else. At a time when most people around me were focused on Türkiye’s national university entrance exam,I was following a completely different path and was not always sure whether I was making the right choice.
I eventually took the SAT again and raised my score to 1510. More importantly, the experience taught me that progress did not always happen immediately. I had to learn how to manage uncertainty while continuing to work toward a goal that I could not yet be sure would work out.
When I look back at my application, I think this year may also have been one of the things that distinguished me from other applicants. I managed to fit six AP exams, the SAT, two research projects, an internship, and other commitments into a single year. I think that showed that I could adapt to demanding environments and manage a heavy workload when I was focused on something. The same year that pushed me to my limits also became the year that shaped my application.
Tracing My Route to the World
I initially imagined my university journey taking me from Türkiye to Germany. Because of my school’s German-language focus and the number of graduates who went on to study in Germany, it felt like the most natural option. But as I learned more about different education systems and universities, I decided not to limit myself to one country. I eventually applied across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Hong Kong, trying to keep as many possibilities open as I could.
By that point, my application had become much more than a collection of test scores. My academic profile included a 96.24 GPA on a 100-point scale, a 1510 SAT, and a 7.5 IELTS score, but I also had my research projects, extracurricular activities, internship experience, and other work I had pursued throughout high school. I gradually realized that each part of the application served a different purpose: my academic results showed what I could handle academically, while my activities and experiences showed what I chose to do with my time and what I cared about.
My essays were where I tried to bring these different parts of myself together. In my Common App essay especially, I did not want to simply tell admissions officers that I had changed. I wanted them to see that change through the places that had shaped me.
I grew up in Niğde, and later moved to Istanbul at fourteen. Those two places represented very different stages of my life, so I built my essay around specific places from both. I wrote about places from my childhood, including rural and local settings that had been part of my life, and then brought in the places in Istanbul where I had spent time after moving there. Rather than describing my growth in abstract terms, I tried to create a kind of route through my life. Each place represented a different point along that route and a different part of who I was becoming.
That approach allowed me to show my background without simply explaining it. I wanted the essay to carry traces of where I had come from and how those experiences had shaped me. In a way, the essay became a map of my own transition—from growing up in Niğde to arriving in Istanbul, and from the person I had been there to the person I was becoming through everything that followed.
For my supplemental essays, I also tried to draw from experiences that were genuinely mine. When I encountered prompts about disagreement or resolving conflicts, for example, I could draw on my experience with Model G20 and the organizational roles I had taken on there. Instead of trying to construct a perfect answer around what I thought universities wanted to hear, I tried to use experiences that actually reflected how I think and interact with people.
I also had to learn much of the application process on my own. In tenth grade, I joined a WhatsApp community called Astra, where students interested in studying abroad shared opportunities, programs, projects, and information they had discovered. That community became one of the places where I learned what was available and got ideas from what other students were doing. Since I did not have extensive guidance on studying abroad, I also relied heavily on my own research through social media and other online resources.
I briefly worked with an admissions consultant as well, mainly for help with organizing my application. However, the experience was short-lived and relatively superficial. It taught me that, while consultants can help organize what you have already done, they cannot build the application for you. Ultimately, I had to understand the process, make my own decisions, and take responsibility for the direction of my application.
One thing I wish I had understood earlier was that strong numbers do not guarantee admission. There was a common perception around me that a 1500+ SAT score and several 5s on AP exams would make admission to almost any university possible. I had partly believed that myself. But as I went through the process, I realized that there was no formula like that. Even universities I had initially considered relatively attainable could put me on the waitlist or reject my application.
Looking back, I think I underestimated how much the admissions landscape had changed, particularly for international students seeking substantial financial aid. If I had understood that earlier, I might have approached the beginning of the application cycle differently. The process taught me that numbers can open the door, but they do not tell the whole story.
When the Results Changed My Path
I entered the application process believing that I would probably receive a full-ride scholarship from at least one university. Looking at my academic profile and extracurricular experiences, I had expected that outcome to be realistic. The results, however, were very different from what I had imagined.
I received offers from several strong universities, including the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, UNC Chapel Hill, Purdue, UCL, King’s College London, Delft University of Technology, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Hong Kong. I also received waitlists from universities such as Harvard, Dartmouth, Emory, Notre Dame, and Hamilton, although those ultimately turned into rejections. I received partial scholarships from several universities as well, including UMass Amherst and Michigan State University.
But I did not receive a full ride from any university. That was difficult to process because it challenged the expectations I had built throughout the application process. For a while, I found myself wondering whether I should have studied in Germany instead, or whether I should have stayed in Türkiye and focused more heavily on the national university entrance exam. I had spent so much time pursuing a different path, and suddenly I had to ask myself whether I had made the right decision.
The financial side of the process was especially important because I was applying as an international student who needed substantial financial support. At the same time, the landscape for international financial aid in the United States had become more restrictive compared with previous years. Looking back, I think that changing environment affected my results, and I wish I had understood earlier how much the admissions landscape could shift from one application cycle to another.
Despite the unexpected results, I did not want my final decision to be based simply on which university had accepted me. I wanted to ask a different question: Which option actually made the most sense for the person I wanted to become?
That question ultimately led me to the University of Toronto.
For computer science and artificial intelligence, Toronto had the strongest academic environment among the universities where I was admitted. Its faculty and research strength in the areas I wanted to explore were major factors in my decision. I also believe that studying at one of the strongest universities in a country can have an important effect on the opportunities available to you during and after university, and Toronto offered that kind of academic environment in Canada.
My long-term plans also played a role. I wanted to work in North America after university, so studying in Canada would place me in the region where I hoped to build my career. The University of British Columbia was another strong option, but I ultimately felt that Toronto was a better fit for my academic goals. I also considered my offers in the United Kingdom, but the cost of studying and living there—particularly in London—was significantly higher. Beyond Oxford and Cambridge, I also felt that many UK universities placed considerably more emphasis on academic statistics than on the broader extracurricular profile I had spent years building.
I considered my offers in Singapore and Hong Kong as well. The universities themselves were academically strong, but I was less comfortable with the international student systems and the long-term environment compared with North America. Since I already wanted to work in North America after graduation, I ultimately decided that Canada made more sense for me.
I received an International Scholar award from the University of Toronto, worth CAD 20,000 in my first year and CAD 10,000 in each of the following years. I will be studying Computer Science and living at Trinity College, one of the seven colleges within the University of Toronto.
In the end, Toronto was not a decision I made simply because my other plans did not work out. It was a decision I made after reconsidering what I actually wanted from my university experience. The application results changed the path I expected to take, but they also forced me to evaluate my options more carefully—and ultimately choose the place that best aligned with where I wanted to go.
What I Learned About Myself—and What I Would Tell Others
The biggest thing the application process taught me was that I was more than any single number. In Türkiye, both the high school entrance exam and the national university entrance exam place enormous weight on a single test. One exam can determine which school you attend, and later, another can have a major influence on what you study and where you study it. Going through an international application process showed me a completely different way of looking at a student.
International universities, particularly selective ones, do not simply ask what score you received. They look at what you did with the years you had. They can consider your academic performance, but they also look at your interests, your activities, the challenges you experienced, the decisions you made, and how you changed over time. You are not being evaluated as a single score. You are being evaluated as a whole person.
I realized this most clearly when I finished filling out my applications. I had spent years entering my grades, test scores, research projects, extracurricular activities, internships, essays, and experiences into different sections. At some point, I realized that what I had actually put into that application was myself. It was the version of me that had changed, grown, struggled, experimented, and made different choices throughout those years.
That was one of the things that made me feel that I had been on the right path. Selective universities are looking for students who have demonstrated genuine interest in the fields they want to study. In a system where admission depends heavily on a single exam, students can enter university without necessarily having explored their intended field in depth during high school. In a holistic process, however, you have the opportunity—and, in many ways, the responsibility—to show what you have actually done with your interests before arriving on campus. As a result, the people you meet at these universities have often already spent years exploring the subjects they care about.
If I could give one piece of advice to students who are starting this process, it would be to start early and be organized. Try to identify your target countries and potential fields of study as early as possible, and think ahead about the exams, activities, research opportunities, and other experiences you may want to pursue throughout tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade. Understanding the process early gives you more time to make thoughtful decisions instead of trying to fit everything into one year.
At the same time, I would not recommend doing all of these things simply because they look good on a CV. Some of the experiences that became most important in my application were the ones I never started with an application in mind. I joined the underwater systems team because I enjoyed electronics and software. I participated in Model G20 because I enjoyed history and organizing the event. I volunteered because I genuinely wanted to contribute. The fact that these experiences eventually became part of my application was something I realized later.
Looking back, I think that is what makes an application meaningful. You should not spend your high school years trying to construct a person that you think a university will accept. You should spend them exploring who you are, what you care about, and what you want to become. If you do that honestly, the application will eventually reflect the person you have become.
Model G20 did not necessarily fit my CV, but it fit the person I was becoming. And by the time I finished my applications, I realized that I had never really been trying to build a perfect CV.I had been building a life, and the CV was simply the record I left behind.
