Applied for Financial Aid: No.
Major/Minors: Engineering / Philosophy and Psychology.
Country (if international applicant): Morocco
School Type: French High-School
Ethnicity: Arab
Gender: Male
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.):
Objectives:
SAT I (breakdown): 2060 (750 M 660 CR) one sitting
ACT (breakdown): None
SAT II: 780 Maths 2 790 Physics
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): Apparently, my transcripts conversion would give me a 4.0.
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): No rank in my high school but top tier.
AP (place score in parentheses): intend to take APs: Calculus AB and BC, Physics: Mechanics and maybe Computer Science in May!
I got a French Baccalaureate with Advanced Mathematics courses – scored 14.7 out of 20 with 15 in Physics and 14 in Mathematics. This score is not so good and not reflective at all of my rankings/scores.
TOEFL : 105.
I am a gap-year student; I graduated from high school last June.
Activities:
Founder, Editor-in-Chief and Redactor of engineeredstyle.net – I created this website to share my passions for mathematics and physics, to initiate newbies and to perceive sciences in a new perspective – more ludic, more accessible and less academic.
Founder, Editor-In-Chief and Redactor of myreadactor.com – The concept is original. We are 7 guys and we write article on topics chosen by our readers. Each of us writes one article per week so that one article per day is published.
Redactor for Artisthick.ma – Artisthick is one of the first cultural sources in Morocco. I am holding a series of article called ‘Travel with Ali’ in which I make the reader travel with me through my reading in every destination I have the occasion to go to – because I am travelling the world in My gap-year.
Founder of MoroccanPeople.com – This project is currently on work. We want to take pictures of the poorest populations of Morocco and relate their stories to incite people to take actions!
Teacher for 5 months, since December in 2 centers. One of them is located in the poorest quarter of Rabat, the capital. Our aim is to prevent Drugs addiction and lack of education. The other is an orphan center!
‘Ftour du Coeur’ is a project during Ramadan, What we do is offer food and drinks to homeless people during the all month of Ramadan.
Volunteer at an association for animals’ care!
Muay Thai and Capoeira fighter for 4 years now – big fan of martial arts.
Essays:
In my common app essay, I talked about the opportunities that I was granted as a Moroccan non-living in minorities, and how I wanted to use my education to provided chances to others – I like it, it is appealing and moving but kind of short (420 words)
In my additional information, I talked about the world tour that I intend to take. 5 months of traveling during the rest of my gap-year, in Germany, Thailand, Australia, USA, Canada and Chile. Travels that include activities like volunteering for refugees in Germany and one month of practicing Thai Boxing in Thailand. I also linked my Youtube Channel in which I post videos about my projects and activities which makes them moooore appealing : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCScBU_65jVKLGCIIT6AIwJA
They also told me to talk about the year in my educational pursuit. I talked about the criticism I received regarding to my decision – the only gap-year student within 5 years - and how I stood up and didn’t regret to take a gap-year.
Sadly my supplements were good but I don’t feel I put all my efforts on them. We are not particularly familiar to essays writing in French system
Recommendation Letters:
Counselor: very good.
Teachers: Maths, Physics, English.
Very good. My teachers praised my involvement, my courage and my spirit of entertaining.
Other: Thai boxing Teacher. Very good
Honors/Awards:
Top 1% in Brevet Des College with 39/40 in Mathematics.
Participation to Mathematics Olympiads.
Delegate of Class for 4 years.
Extra points for French Baccalaureate – Sciences project graded 16 out of 20.
Reflection:
Strengths
Well, my academics are great for an international application. I had the SAT only twice and I had to work on aaaall the subjects’ contents in English…
My essay is altruist.
My extracurricular are great for an international applicant and really show a spirit of engagement. My gap-year is noticeable for a Moroccan student. My world tour sets me apart.
No financial aid.
Weaknesses
My SAT score is not very high.
I am afraid of not efficiently expressing all I wanted to show.
SCHOOLS:
Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, MIT, Columbia, Georgia Tech, UCLA, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvani, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Duke, Illinois Urbana Champaign, Rice, UMichigan.