Success Stories

Valencia joined ALL-in when she was already in Grade 12 and already had a lot of activities on her plate in the beginning, but not much related to her interest in biology and neuroscience. She followed through with suggestions of things she needed to do such as joining more research competitions even though she already had school activities lined up in her final year.

Even though she has big interests in STEM, she already has stellar writing skills that helped her a lot in her application. Valencia always responds fast and sends her revised essays quickly when it comes the time for the application process. Her personal branding as an aspiring neurologist who is keen to combat dyslexia through digital media & photography shines through her essays. That landed her into 13 top universities, including UPenn, UCLA, King’s College London, and University of British Columbia and finally put her decision to University of Pennsylvania. She’s currently enjoying her first year as a Neuroscience student, which is something that she loves to do and we love her for that!

From dancing to swimming to filmmaking, our first impression of Alysha was that she is a very multi-talented person. Despite her busy schedule of dancing classes and swimming practices, she surprisingly excelled in her academic performance as well! When it comes to the time for the university application process, she was initially aiming for middle-ranked universities to learn about filmmaking. However, seeing her potential, we encouraged her to try to apply for USC even though she was very doubtful at first.

Alysha took the challenge and started preparing her application to USC. The School of Cinematic Arts has an earlier 1,5 months deadline than other schools in USC. For 2 months, Alysha wrote 6 essays (2 of which required 1000 words), a short video, screenwriting, and other short essays. It wasn’t an easy journey, but it has brought her to one of the most state-of-the-art film schools in Los Angeles!

Darren’s passion in political science and social issues shows from his participation in 7 extracurricular, 2 community services, 3 work experiences during high school including the Model United Nations, Student Council, also environmental and wildlife conservation communities. Despite his interests that look serious, he’s a fun person that loves to play drums and guitar, swim, run in marathons, and joke around with his peers.

Darren is a person who always grabs opportunities and is willing to carve his path to achieve his dreams by working harder than others. This spirit continues until the university admission period, where aimed for a scholarship if he wants to study in the US. All of his efforts paid off when he received the Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholarship and Koshland May Scholarship for UC Berkeley with around 0,2% acceptance rate! With these scholarships, Darren is able to study with full scholarship at UC Berkeley.

There are two things that are going on in our lives: global warming and pandemic. People’s activities are restricted because of the on-going pandemic while global warming keeps on being something that people should also pay attention to. Mellvin realized this and started to make this bicycle project. This bicycle will not only help him stay fit during the pandemic, but the energy from pedaling the bike could also be converted to electrical energy. This project already solved 3 problems at once; keep people fit, produce clean energy, and power the gadgets in case a blackout occurs.

Currently, Mellvin has created an electricity-generating bicycle using a 12V alternator, 500W pure sine wave inverter, and a 12V battery. He planned to redesign the bicycle and do further research on how to see how many calories are burnt on the monitor on the bicycle.

The twins joined the mentoring program quite early and still have more than a year to prepare their university application with ALL-in. With the same interests in engineering, it wasn’t hard for the mentors to explore that part of the topic for both of them. Both also have worked on their profile when we first met them, but the challenge was to step up their activities and create strong profiles that stand out without sabotaging one another.

Both Rashika and Rachinta are already great in terms of academic achievements, but Rashika has the difficulties in writing and reconfirming her interests and major at that time, while Rashika needed help in polishing her personal brand through non-academic activities. Through mentoring, we can see Rashika’s progress on getting more comfortable in writing and showing herself in university application essays and Rachinta stepping up her activities with higher commitment and helping her progressing in the personal brand she chose.

Their hard work, attitude, and excellent self-management paid off when it comes the time they receive their acceptance letters. Combined, both landed more than 10 top universities in the US and the UK, including Columbia University, UCLA, Carnegie-Mellon University, Purdue University, UIUC, UCL, King’s College London, and many more, and made their choice into Columbia University and Georgia Tech. They’re now enjoying their life as a first year student, and we hope the twins can continue pursuing their passions!

Our first impression on Nathasya, our 2021 Admission Mentoring awardee, was ambitious,  a hard-working person, and not so much of a blank canvas. With strong academics and competition achievements in her hands, she knows that she is still lacking in her writing skills and wishes to improve them with ALL-in. After the initial consultation, we realised that she also needed to engage into more practical activities related to her interest in life sciences.

She then successfully established her own community, called Life Online to educate and inspire Indonesia’s children to learn more about life sciences, and also engaged herself in other passions such as theatre and volunteering. These activities surely helped the process of crafting her personal brand and align it with her intended major, biomedical engineering. Nathasya is a self-motivated person and also commited with the plans that she and her mentor made together, and that landed her to top universities in the UK and Asia.

Watch Nathasya’s application journey here

When she first had her initial consultation, she was already on the right track as her profile and essay were basically ready. However, it is noticeable that Dhiesta lacked confidence in herself and needed to be more confident with her work.

Realizing that all Dhiesta needed were a support system, so the mentor then helped her gain confidence by providing a different perspective, as well as sharing their experiences and guidance in writing the application essay. Dhiesta were so eager and cooperative with her mentor so that she could not only make an essay that people would enjoy reading, but also stay on topic with the requirements of the universities. It was a nerve wracking moment when she decided to apply to Ivy League campuses, but in the end, she ended up getting accepted to both of them–Columbia and Dartmouth! We wish Dhiesta the best of luck on her journey as a Dartmouth student!