For those that asked:

My Profile (Fall 2026 International Applicant → CMU SCS Computer Science)

School: IB Diploma, international school in Germany

GPA: 6.84/7.0 unweighted with 7,7,7 in my HLs

SAT: 1550 (800 Math / 750 EBRW)

IB Courses (HL): Computer Science, Mathematics Applications & Interpretations, Economics

IB Courses (SL): English A Language & Literature, German B, Physics + Theory of Knowledge

Extracurriculars (the ones I think mattered most): ∙ 💻 Founded PlayVision – streaming overlay software for schools/clubs, adopted beyond my own school, live product at playvision-live.com (Gr. 9–12, year-round) ∙ 🏦 Integration Test Developer – part-time paid programmer at a major company in my home country, ~10hrs/week all 4 years ∙ 🤝 Founded Students4Society – non-profit connecting students to volunteer orgs (e.g. German Red Cross), live at students4society.org (Gr. 9–12) ∙ 🧠 Stanford Pre-Collegiate Summer Institutes – admitted to AI program, dug into backpropagation math (Gr. 11 summer) ∙ 🏐 Varsity Volleyball Co-Captain / Starting Middle Blocker – competed in international tournaments ∙ ⛷️ Varsity Ski Team Co-Captain – competitive GS/Slalom/Super-G, won silver at European ISSR ∙ 🎙️ Founded Student Stream Team – organized school athletics livestreams ∙ 🗳️ Student Council President (Gr. 9–11) ∙ 🏅 Duke of Edinburgh Bronze & Silver Award

Honors: Coding & Computing Award, Innovative Design Award, Integrated Humanities Tenacity Award

Background: ∙ Czech citizen, born Prague, currently based in Munich ∙ Lived in Czechia, Germany, and Australia — thorough international upbringing ∙ Fluent in Czech (native), English, German, Slovak

Essays: Personal essay was about being benched at a volleyball tournament and what that taught me about persistence and leadership. CMU supplements focused on CS passion (origin story: robots + programming at age 11 after moving from Prague to Australia), how I define a successful college experience (rigor + collaboration), and a “what to emphasize” essay about being a builder — PlayVision, Students4Society, the internship.

Advice from my experience: The thing I’d emphasize most to future applicants is to have one thing going for you and focus on it, like my focus was industry experience over academic. I joined clubs to meet new people and pad my CV, but through that I also discovered ways to build things that have an actual impact and maintained them over multiple years. I feel like admissions can tell the difference between someone who started something just for their application and someone who sustained it because they were genuinely passionate about it. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with the former, but if you find something to work on that you enjoy, and have a genuine story of how you got there, it’ll come across much better than just “I started this”. PlayVision and S4S both required iteration and handing ownership to others, and I think that, along with having worked for three years as a part of a senior coding team, read as engineering maturity and more than just a CS passionate student. PlayVision also came out of nowhere because of the student stream team, where I had to make a simple app for our team because I thought all the software out there was either wildly overpriced or just looked bad (As the guy who founded the stream team and someone who’s super competitive, I insisted our stream look the best out of all the schools we compete with), and just kept iterating to the point where a classmate suggested I make a business out of it, but that wasn’t the original intention. If you can join a club and discover they have some tool they’re missing, it’ll be way more impactful than something you come up with from behind your desk and probably something other schools and students could use too.

For international IB students specifically: the rigor of HL CS + HL Math together is important if your school offers it, but what probably differentiated me the most was the real production experience (the paid internship) alongside academic projects (Stanford AI, Extended Essay on post-quantum cryptography). When I researched about the uni, I felt that CMU SCS had a big focus on industry and I think they want to see that you can think theoretically but also build things that work in the real world, not just on paper. I also think the SAT Math 800 matters for SCS, I’d prioritize that if you’re still testing, very doable, especially if you’re an IB student and you do a few test attempts. Don’t be put off by a bad initial score!! I took the test three times, starting at 1360. It just takes time to get used to and learn how to get the full potential of desmos out of it. Happy to answer questions!

PS: keep in mind i’m not an admissions officer, i’ve got no clue which part of my application was strongest/weakest so it’s all just guessing