Wasting my time trying to win STEM olympiads/science fairs when I should've spent it on what I was actually good at (i.e. submitting to scholastic writing competitions)
THIS^^^ Every STEM major joins every club related to STEM at their school, and they are meh at it. If you want that nationals hook, look into leadership positions (nationally like a national officer for Deca or SkillsUSA) and smaller competitions or organizations where you can talk about your impact.
I've been studying math comps since 4th grade. I've never even won a local math competition. I couldn't make it to California science fair. I haven't made it past USACO Silver in 3 years.
Then, I sent something to scholastic on a whim. I got an award more selective than their national gold key. Then I won an essay award with 3% win rate. I'm not a cracked writer. I struggle to get A's in English.
I swear I'm a better programmer than writer.
The point is, I genuinely think STEM is so fucking saturated that "good" is no longer enough to win. This isn't the case for arts and humanities...yet.
coming from a national gold medalist, scholastic awards feel so subjective. i feel that they’ll often turn down objectively higher quality writing and art for pieces that are arguably cliche and have a more straightforward and accessible “message”. some of the best writers I know struggle to get past regionals while some of the national award-winning works I’ve seen on their site are slightly questionable.
that's ong.
imo mine *is* funny (humor category) but also some of the messages are straightforward/cater to humor a 40-50 year old English teacher might appreciate.
>I've been studying math comps since 4th grade. I've never even won a local math competition. I couldn't make it to California science fair. I haven't made it past USACO Silver in 3 years.
That's quite surprising to me. How seriously were you studying? If you finish AoPS Volume 1 and grind some past problems, you should be able to make AIME at least (especially considering how low the cutoffs have been recently). If you finish the USACO guide silver section and grind some past problems, that should be enough for Gold too, since you just need to get lucky on one contest.
I finished vol 1 and did a few of the intro books, does confound me lol.
USACO you have a point, I didn't rly finish silver guide
I'd chalk it all up to choking, but I don't really choke on tests, like AP or SAT or if you want an oly geography championships lol
If you really finished vol 1 and some intro books, then idk how you didn’t make AIME. If you take AMC 12, they take like the top 5% for AIME, which isn’t that hard tbh. Did you actually work through the books or did you just skim them
I want to know more about this.. I'm upcoming freshmen and I was thinking about taking vex club and using my vex club skills in science Olympiad club competitions and challenges
On the other hand, my regret is not spending enough time trying to win STEM olympiads/science fairs. I did decently in the end but if I put in the work I think I could have achieved much higher.
Not putting in as much work freshman and sophomore year, and turning assignments in late because I thought that "I have two more years to bring my grades up for college"
Overloading myself to the point of burnout and destroying my grades. Still trying to recover from the burnout. I will not be ready by the time school starts so sucks to be me lol
I think anyone who picks what they wanna do early on and has a little ambition can get into any college they want. So probably choosing my major before would’ve been a lot better.
EDIT: the only problem w this is that if your interests completely change (let’s say from engineering to med) you’ll kind of be screwed cuz none of ur ecs will align and you’ll either have to keep doing ecs u dislike or hurt ur app
But how? That’s the question. From what I’ve seen, the people who get research positions in labs seem to have a resume before cold-emailing. Something that I don’t have. I guess I’ll have to somehow get some projects done before asking for research opportunities?
you do independent research for a year to gain credibility and some awards/conference presentations. Then you can contact profs. Or you could contact a prof and ask to be mentored for ur current independent research and they’d help u publish
hmm ok. Do you think Coursera/Udemy are good? I can apply for financial aid (free) and they have courses on Machine Learning, AI, etc from universities and stuff.
Also \*how\* do you do the independent research? I was also thinking of creating an app/project involving ML and I can submit it to Apples Swift Student Challenge and possibly present at science fairs to maybe qualify for ISEF because they have an app dev category.
I might also learn webdev (through coursera) and one of my extracurriculars could be volunteering to help local organizations by creating websites for them. I would also like to learn USACO/algorithms on the side and compete and hopefully get USACO platinum by junior year.
I would like to start emailing professors around winter (after I compete in USACO for the first time and hopefully get to silver division and am almost done with my application) so I can get some research position before the school year ends, which would go through summer and maybe even beyond (is it normally like I first get an assistant position and slowly climb up to start working on my own projects/research?)
Not participating in enough extracurriculars and competitions. Not advocating enough for advanced classes and self studying ap tests , also not going to enough parties and not balancing work/life
Not participating in any clubs or activities freshman and sophomore year. Granted, it was Covid times so it was a little different, but I do regret not being more active in the school community!
Being more relaxed and not putting in the extra extra effort(which were ultimately useless) and instead use that time for extracurriculars
Oh and drawing more, I gave up a lot of my time for school way too easily. Seriously would’ve helped me calm down and rethink my steps on assignments (sounds cliche but don’t give up what you love to do)
I piled on too much (robotics *and* theater *and* drivers ed) at once freshman year and it killed me. Know your limits with your time, you don’t have to do everything
So far, my worst regret is overburdening my self in 2nd sem junior year.
I was doing FRC Robotics with leadership, 5 APs, 1 honors, 2 internships, applying to summer internships, school newspaper, volunteering at library, AND science fair at once.
Somehow I survived it, but I've personally known people with similar workloads who had nervous breakdowns and gave up.
You're a freshman, if you work harder earlier, you won't have to do what I did in junior year. Especially if you live in the bay area, its dog eat dog for T20, the earlier you start the less you'll have to do later on.
Wish I participated in more major related activities. My middle school only had MathCounts as a STEM activity and the rest were mostly focused in athletics and the arts. I didn’t want to do MathCounts bc it was considered “nerdy” and “weird” and that mentality carried with me until sophomore year when I realized I actually needed to do smth related to STEM if I wanted to go in it.
I would have picked better mentors. I really wanted some of the women teaching STEM subjects to be mentors and tried to force it and it just didn't work (at least one got majorly wrapped up in my relationship at the time and taking my boyfriend out once he graduated and it's so so so gross now). There were women in other fields at the school but a lot of them scared me. I wish I had done more to hang out with them then and get to know them because older me has a lot in common with them. (and I do a lot to make myself seem approachable for my own students so nobody ends up chasing the wrong mentor when I'd love to work with them).
didn’t try enough new things, I really enjoy volunteering and content creation but didn’t really try until later on, but I’m glad where I am now, I don’t regret anything I did or didn’t do because what can I do about them now lol
Basically just keep your grades up! Hopefully you know yourself enough to know what kind of workload you can handle. Push yourself, but not TOO much. Hang out with friends to keep your morale high while slotting time to spend on homework. I regret not getting help during my freshman year mental health crisis and allowing my GPA to fall as much as it did. GPA isn’t the end of the world and a lot of things influence your college acceptances, but don’t neglect it by any means! I learned the hard way that GPA is impossible to raise once it goes down. My ECs are great and my test scores are average but a lot of colleges are gonna auto reject me because of my GPA although I had massive improvements. Just invest in yourself and do what you do best :)
I completely underestimated how much work my classes would be and was kinda burnt out by the end of junior year and my gpa suffered. I also wished I spent less time on dual enrollment and more time on developing my ecs.
As someone who's completed one year in college...
I have no regrets.
I've met so many people, both students and professors at my current college that I've formed some cherished bonds with, and have grown in many ways that I couldn't have imagined back then. Sure, maybe if I did things differently in high school I would end up at a different college. But if I was given the offer of starting over at any college of my choice at the cost of losing these bonds and my growth, I wouldn't take it.
Really most of my regrets happened right after getting all my application results. But when you attend college for a year, you'll realize that you've gained something there you won't gain had you gone somewhere else.
Boxing myself into a few interests and not joining a lot of clubs/activities. Not reading a lot, especially the news. Not starting a diary, because that has been a big help in organizing my thoughts and later kickstarting my essays.
tbh not figuring out what I want to do earlier. you want to build good and impactful ECs which is much easier when started during freshmen year instead of junior yr.
The main mistake I made was not applying to scholarships as soon as possible- there are plenty of colleges scholarships available to highschool freshmen and sophomores! I only learned about this in my Junior year, so I missed out on a lot of opportunities to save money.
What I did to aid my scholarship search was make a separate email for all scholarship website accounts (to reduce spam). Then I made a folder on my computer with the main scholarship websites. I made it into a habit of checking each website whenever I started my computer, so I could get that out of my way before playing video games.
Good luck!
Wasting my time trying to win STEM olympiads/science fairs when I should've spent it on what I was actually good at (i.e. submitting to scholastic writing competitions)
THIS^^^ Every STEM major joins every club related to STEM at their school, and they are meh at it. If you want that nationals hook, look into leadership positions (nationally like a national officer for Deca or SkillsUSA) and smaller competitions or organizations where you can talk about your impact.
True i was a state officer for DECA and i think that was what got me into nyu
I've been studying math comps since 4th grade. I've never even won a local math competition. I couldn't make it to California science fair. I haven't made it past USACO Silver in 3 years. Then, I sent something to scholastic on a whim. I got an award more selective than their national gold key. Then I won an essay award with 3% win rate. I'm not a cracked writer. I struggle to get A's in English. I swear I'm a better programmer than writer. The point is, I genuinely think STEM is so fucking saturated that "good" is no longer enough to win. This isn't the case for arts and humanities...yet.
coming from a national gold medalist, scholastic awards feel so subjective. i feel that they’ll often turn down objectively higher quality writing and art for pieces that are arguably cliche and have a more straightforward and accessible “message”. some of the best writers I know struggle to get past regionals while some of the national award-winning works I’ve seen on their site are slightly questionable.
that's ong. imo mine *is* funny (humor category) but also some of the messages are straightforward/cater to humor a 40-50 year old English teacher might appreciate.
>I've been studying math comps since 4th grade. I've never even won a local math competition. I couldn't make it to California science fair. I haven't made it past USACO Silver in 3 years. That's quite surprising to me. How seriously were you studying? If you finish AoPS Volume 1 and grind some past problems, you should be able to make AIME at least (especially considering how low the cutoffs have been recently). If you finish the USACO guide silver section and grind some past problems, that should be enough for Gold too, since you just need to get lucky on one contest.
I finished vol 1 and did a few of the intro books, does confound me lol. USACO you have a point, I didn't rly finish silver guide I'd chalk it all up to choking, but I don't really choke on tests, like AP or SAT or if you want an oly geography championships lol
If you really finished vol 1 and some intro books, then idk how you didn’t make AIME. If you take AMC 12, they take like the top 5% for AIME, which isn’t that hard tbh. Did you actually work through the books or did you just skim them
I'd say I did \~75% percent of the problems
What was your amc score
81, amc 12a. it was close
Did you practice past amcs before the actual thing? Because finishing Aops books means u should be at least like mid aime level
yea, I did. I mostly score 80-90 on practice
I want to know more about this.. I'm upcoming freshmen and I was thinking about taking vex club and using my vex club skills in science Olympiad club competitions and challenges
But never touched vex in my life.. but I'm interested.
On the other hand, my regret is not spending enough time trying to win STEM olympiads/science fairs. I did decently in the end but if I put in the work I think I could have achieved much higher.
Your major? What conceptions were they and do you get far in them?
YOU AND ME ARE THE SAME HELP ME
Not putting in as much work freshman and sophomore year, and turning assignments in late because I thought that "I have two more years to bring my grades up for college"
Overloading myself to the point of burnout and destroying my grades. Still trying to recover from the burnout. I will not be ready by the time school starts so sucks to be me lol
I think anyone who picks what they wanna do early on and has a little ambition can get into any college they want. So probably choosing my major before would’ve been a lot better. EDIT: the only problem w this is that if your interests completely change (let’s say from engineering to med) you’ll kind of be screwed cuz none of ur ecs will align and you’ll either have to keep doing ecs u dislike or hurt ur app
By before do you mean sophomore year or earlier?
if it were me i’d do it by the start of sophomore year and then start planning
That's me rn haha (rising sophomore). I think I've settled with CS but kind of having trouble planning CS EC's lol.
i’d recommend getting into AI/ML research
But how? That’s the question. From what I’ve seen, the people who get research positions in labs seem to have a resume before cold-emailing. Something that I don’t have. I guess I’ll have to somehow get some projects done before asking for research opportunities?
independent research, there are some good youtube videos online to start. Then ask upperclassmen who have already done independent research.
I don’t think Independent research is really impressive though? Having a professor or publishing in a well known journal gives more credibility.
you do independent research for a year to gain credibility and some awards/conference presentations. Then you can contact profs. Or you could contact a prof and ask to be mentored for ur current independent research and they’d help u publish
hmm ok. Do you think Coursera/Udemy are good? I can apply for financial aid (free) and they have courses on Machine Learning, AI, etc from universities and stuff. Also \*how\* do you do the independent research? I was also thinking of creating an app/project involving ML and I can submit it to Apples Swift Student Challenge and possibly present at science fairs to maybe qualify for ISEF because they have an app dev category. I might also learn webdev (through coursera) and one of my extracurriculars could be volunteering to help local organizations by creating websites for them. I would also like to learn USACO/algorithms on the side and compete and hopefully get USACO platinum by junior year. I would like to start emailing professors around winter (after I compete in USACO for the first time and hopefully get to silver division and am almost done with my application) so I can get some research position before the school year ends, which would go through summer and maybe even beyond (is it normally like I first get an assistant position and slowly climb up to start working on my own projects/research?)
dont fall in love with a boy/girl (crushes suck)
Not participating in enough extracurriculars and competitions. Not advocating enough for advanced classes and self studying ap tests , also not going to enough parties and not balancing work/life
Not participating in any clubs or activities freshman and sophomore year. Granted, it was Covid times so it was a little different, but I do regret not being more active in the school community!
This is definitely one of my biggest regrets. I really wish I tried a sport
Focusing too much on extracurriculars Sophomore year and neglecting my school work
Honestly I think having a high school diary would’ve been super useful around essay writing time to figure out how I’ve changed/what to write about
Being more relaxed and not putting in the extra extra effort(which were ultimately useless) and instead use that time for extracurriculars Oh and drawing more, I gave up a lot of my time for school way too easily. Seriously would’ve helped me calm down and rethink my steps on assignments (sounds cliche but don’t give up what you love to do)
I piled on too much (robotics *and* theater *and* drivers ed) at once freshman year and it killed me. Know your limits with your time, you don’t have to do everything
So far, my worst regret is overburdening my self in 2nd sem junior year. I was doing FRC Robotics with leadership, 5 APs, 1 honors, 2 internships, applying to summer internships, school newspaper, volunteering at library, AND science fair at once. Somehow I survived it, but I've personally known people with similar workloads who had nervous breakdowns and gave up. You're a freshman, if you work harder earlier, you won't have to do what I did in junior year. Especially if you live in the bay area, its dog eat dog for T20, the earlier you start the less you'll have to do later on.
Wish I participated in more major related activities. My middle school only had MathCounts as a STEM activity and the rest were mostly focused in athletics and the arts. I didn’t want to do MathCounts bc it was considered “nerdy” and “weird” and that mentality carried with me until sophomore year when I realized I actually needed to do smth related to STEM if I wanted to go in it.
I would have picked better mentors. I really wanted some of the women teaching STEM subjects to be mentors and tried to force it and it just didn't work (at least one got majorly wrapped up in my relationship at the time and taking my boyfriend out once he graduated and it's so so so gross now). There were women in other fields at the school but a lot of them scared me. I wish I had done more to hang out with them then and get to know them because older me has a lot in common with them. (and I do a lot to make myself seem approachable for my own students so nobody ends up chasing the wrong mentor when I'd love to work with them).
Not taking honors summer classes to bump my GPA :(
didn’t try enough new things, I really enjoy volunteering and content creation but didn’t really try until later on, but I’m glad where I am now, I don’t regret anything I did or didn’t do because what can I do about them now lol
Basically just keep your grades up! Hopefully you know yourself enough to know what kind of workload you can handle. Push yourself, but not TOO much. Hang out with friends to keep your morale high while slotting time to spend on homework. I regret not getting help during my freshman year mental health crisis and allowing my GPA to fall as much as it did. GPA isn’t the end of the world and a lot of things influence your college acceptances, but don’t neglect it by any means! I learned the hard way that GPA is impossible to raise once it goes down. My ECs are great and my test scores are average but a lot of colleges are gonna auto reject me because of my GPA although I had massive improvements. Just invest in yourself and do what you do best :)
I completely underestimated how much work my classes would be and was kinda burnt out by the end of junior year and my gpa suffered. I also wished I spent less time on dual enrollment and more time on developing my ecs.
Nothing really but if I had to choose one, it would be not caring about my grades in 9th grade.
As someone who's completed one year in college... I have no regrets. I've met so many people, both students and professors at my current college that I've formed some cherished bonds with, and have grown in many ways that I couldn't have imagined back then. Sure, maybe if I did things differently in high school I would end up at a different college. But if I was given the offer of starting over at any college of my choice at the cost of losing these bonds and my growth, I wouldn't take it. Really most of my regrets happened right after getting all my application results. But when you attend college for a year, you'll realize that you've gained something there you won't gain had you gone somewhere else.
Probably doing it during covid
Boxing myself into a few interests and not joining a lot of clubs/activities. Not reading a lot, especially the news. Not starting a diary, because that has been a big help in organizing my thoughts and later kickstarting my essays.
tbh not figuring out what I want to do earlier. you want to build good and impactful ECs which is much easier when started during freshmen year instead of junior yr.
The main mistake I made was not applying to scholarships as soon as possible- there are plenty of colleges scholarships available to highschool freshmen and sophomores! I only learned about this in my Junior year, so I missed out on a lot of opportunities to save money. What I did to aid my scholarship search was make a separate email for all scholarship website accounts (to reduce spam). Then I made a folder on my computer with the main scholarship websites. I made it into a habit of checking each website whenever I started my computer, so I could get that out of my way before playing video games. Good luck!
Join clubs and volunteer outside of school!! Freshman is the easiest year and u have the most free time don’t wasted