Developing Passion Projects in High School: From Ideation to Perfection!

Passion projects are a key component of college application portfolios. Explore this talk from a student’s perspective.
Aalaap Hegde (Stanford ’27) and Vishnu Veeravalli (UChicago ’27) are recent high-school grads and co-founders of a college admissions mentorship platform, AdmitMate (AdmitMate.org).
From their personal journeys and experiences guiding other students like them, they will cover the following topics:
1) Why passion projects are important
2) How to ideate passion projects depending on your spike
3) How to execute passion projects in a time-efficient manner
4) How to present passion projects most impressively on your college application

Date: July 28th, 2024

Time: 10:00am to 11:00am PDT

On Zoom : Please register below to receive the Zoom link.

Missed the podcast? Don't worry , we got you covered. Recording will be available at link below.

Speakers

Aalaap Hegde

Hey there! I’m Aalaap Hegde and I’m a sophomore at Stanford University. I was fascinated with cooking and food my whole life, and I’ve centered many of my projects around that passion. I started a YouTube channel and food blog in freshman year, where I showcase unique (and sometimes completely crazy) recipes about plant-based cooking. I’ve also done nutrition research on the effects of plant protein, and started a nonprofit to relay surplus foods from restaurants to soup kitchens. In my free time, I love to play sports (catch me playing tennis and spikeball often) and love to try new restaurants. If you’re interested in the intersection of CS and business or have a unique passion that you’re looking to build an application around, I’m your guy!

Vishnu Veeravalli

Hi! I’m Vishnu Veeravalli, an incoming sophomore at the University of Chicago studying Physics and Mathematics.

I have always been passionate about educational equity and pedagogy. Therefore, in high school, a lot of my portfolio surrounded this theme. For instance, I created a non-profit where top scientists (including Nobel-prize winners!) could communicate their findings with the lay public. I also volunteered to teach workshops in rural schools in India, and did research on the human mind in order to understand how it learns.

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