[Student Profile]
GPA: 4
SAT/ACT: /35
Academic focus/Extracurricular activities:
[Prompt & Essay]
Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major? Please limit your response to 250-300 words.
How can a vulture resemble a giant panda? I asked myself, staring in disbelief at the output displayed on my screen. My eyes, visual systems connected to the most complex and intelligent computer that will ever exist, can easily discern between the voracious scavenger and the majestic bear, yet the model was sure--92% certain-- that the two creatures were identical. In the realm of computer vision, misattributions like these aren’t as befuddling as they look, sometimes the result of misplacing a single line of code or training the wrong dataset. But regardless of the mix-up, my first tango with machine learning was thrilling, I had just glimpsed the power of computing.
My fascination with technology stems from my affinity for math. As a child, I embraced math's necessity for logic and reward for creativity, but most importantly, relished its invitation to experiment, proving theorems at math olympiads or unearthing the subtle applications of the Fibonacci sequence during gifted classes. Within the walls of my physics and engineering classrooms, equations and ideas previously bound by paper jumped off the page, manifesting themselves physically as programming robotic lever arms to sort marbles or calculating the mechanical advantage of a pulley system.
It wasn’t until the pandemic and an impending food crisis within our communities that I discovered the direct application of advanced computing to solve pressing problems. I listened intently to meetings where my father, a USDA engineer, coordinated with MIT Lincoln Labs to integrate IoT devices within food distribution channels to revive the nation’s supply chain. Eager to catalyze impact through such projects, I immersed myself in learning Python and Java over the summer and was selected for the technology and engineering course at the Center for advanced Professional Studies (CAPS). At CAPS, I’ve developed a fascination with artificial neural networks (ANN’s)--computer learning algorithms that mimic the decision- making process of our brains-- and their applications to precision medicine. By leveraging the power of machine learning, the ANN that failed a simple animal classification task has been trained to recognize the subtle differences in malignant and benign brain tumors.
Through pursuing a computer engineering degree at UT Austin, I’ll both extend my knowledge of software and satiate my curiosity of hardware systems. From building computational health models that simulate the spread of brain tumors to testing and evaluating bio-integrated materials at Texas Advanced Computing Centers, studying at UT equips me with the tools and experiences to tackle problems that are more than just vultures and pandas.
Leadership can be demonstrated in many ways. Please share how you have demonstrated leadership in either your school, job, community, and/or within your family responsibilities. Please limit your response to 250-300 words.
Having been immersed in soccer for more than half of my life, I figured my experiences would translate seamlessly into teaching a contraband of 10-12 year old Indian-american kids the fundamentals of the game. I meticulously planned every detail of the session, dispersed a medley of balls and cones across the field, and confidently blew my whistle, commencing our first practice. But the session was unremarkable. Basic commands like “play two-touch” and “switch the field” received a swarm of confused glances and simple passing and ball-control drills yielded agitated sighs and disgruntled groans. I created the clinic with the aspiration to foster a love for soccer within my tight-knit Indian community, a group entangled in and surrounded by looming stereotypes, yet my players left the field frustrated and I felt as if I had only confirmed a mindset that Indian Americans lack the aptitude for certain team sports.
Unwilling to acquiesce to this convention, I adapted my coaching style to uncover the motivations behind each of my players, forging creative ways to accomplish the overall mission for the clinic. Through discovering Sarah’s love for tennis, previously mundane ball-tap drills transform into challenging hand-eye coordination exercises, simply by throwing a tennis ball to catch into the mix. By designing a program with tiers and a rewards system, weekly practices are injected with an aura of excitement and healthy competition as Hannu and Lucky hone their skills towards earning that coveted Messi jersey or attaining “shark” status. These practices remind me that leading effectively requires tailoring objectives to each individual and empowering my members to adopt my goals of exposing and igniting a passion for the sport as their own. This outlook hasn’t only manifested itself through Minnows Soccer clinic, but has been cultivated through captaining my club soccer team and tutoring students at my local mathnasium or across the nation online.
Competing alongside and uniting an array of skill levels and personalities involves an understanding of each of my teammates’ individual strengths to achieve our common goals of winning the match or qualifying for the regional tournament. While tutoring low-income youth demands a degree of specificity and customization to ensure my students not only meet the standards but transcend them. Whether it be collaborating with programmers and medical students to optimize medical imaging software at Texas Health CoLab or establishing goals within design teams at Texas Innovation Center, I aim to develop and apply my leadership style at UT Austin.
Please share how you believe your experiences, perspectives, and/or talents have shaped your ability to contribute to and enrich the learning environment at UT Austin, both in and out of the classroom. Please limit your response to 250-300 words.
I eagerly opened my lunchbox, greeted by the familiar aroma of chicken tikka masala, complemented with savory garlic butter naan. As I lifted my hand to tear off a piece of naan, I looked up at my friends' curious faces and knew what I had to do. A few minutes later, our middle school cafeteria table transformed into a sampling station of fine indian cuisine
I imagine the scene looked bizarre. Six kids, in the middle of the cafeteria, utensils nowhere to be found. Five of them covered in sweat, water bottles in hand, with one slowly smiling, excited by the opportunity to share his culture. Since then, that simple memory has become a conscious mission: to be a bridge between my Indian culture and the one I embrace as an American. But though I’ve crossed this bridge multiple times, I often feel like an outsider on both sides. My spiritual beliefs lead me to church on Sundays instead of the temple. My upbringing grounds me in practicality and discipline while my passions find me joking with friends on the bus on our way to tennis tournaments or lying in my hotel room, dreaming of winning tomorrow's soccer match as much as behind my desk tinkering with code.
It is through reckoning with these juxtapositions that I've gained perspective to explain the dynamics of the oppressive class system on the debate stand, form a soccer clinic to ignite a love for sports among Indian youth, and establish my school’s cricket team—actions born from my aspiration to foster understanding between my distinctive, yet intertwined identities. My experience with connecting and delving into the nuances of both my American and Indian side has drastically shifted my outlook on the hundreds of cultures different from my own and empowers me to seek the support of a new bridge -- one that traverses all 431 acres of the melting pot that is UT Austin.
By supplementing my education with a humanitarian engineering certificate, I find the guardrails for this bridge. I’ll immerse myself in courses like Intl Development in Africa and fuse this newfound cultural and international awareness with Designing Sustainable Nanomaterials to equip myself with a global engineering mindset. Outside of class, I envision myself debating and engaging in responsible discourse through BridgeTexas, mending old beliefs and forming new ones and providing me with the beams to not just construct another simple suspension bridge, but forging an immense structure connecting an amalgamation of perspectives, people and cultures.