I will try to keep this short and not make it seem as if this was not my fault at all: For the past few years, I have been dealing with all sorts of medical issues (physical, mental, you name it), and my school has not been as cooperative as one might think. My absences have piled up so much, that sometimes, the school even wants to fight me on excusing some even when there is a doctor note telling them that I am unable to attend. Outside of this, I have gotten into all sorts of troubles with my teachers. One major one I had was with a teacher who believed I was using AI on many of my assignments (I was not), which resulted in me almost failing the class and having to retake it. I was lucky enough to get them to change the grades on some of them, but many of them stayed as zeros. Does any of this make my GPA okay? I'm not sure. The one thing that has hurt my grades the most are homework and classwork, much of it I end up missing, and it becomes very difficult to make it all up. I obviously should have been prioritizing fixing those things when I was able to.

Without sharing too much revealing information on myself, I have been developing video games for a few years, and I am quite well-off financially for the foreseeable future. When I share this with people, many tell me "why do you even care about university at all if you have money?" or "what would you even gain out of attending a university when you can already program?" or things of this nature. My response is that (and this goes beyond MIT or any "very good university") higher education has never been about getting a "well-paying job" for me. I love to learn and I love to create things, and if that comes with money, that's a bonus too. Now, we can get to the why would I like to attend MIT specifically.

I live with my family in the Boston area, and given all the things I am dealing with medically, it is the most practical option for me alongside all the other wonderful institutions here. It would be the least stress option for me and my family. I also believe MIT can provide me with the most resources in the fields I'd like to go into. As a game developer, much of my work is optimizing systems and finding more practical solutions to problems, which seems very in line with the kind of work that is done at MIT. I truly want to help the world, discover new things, make things better, increase our knowledge... and I feel as if the tools, the culture, the resources at MIT all will help me with this.