Jia Sheng Lin

High School: Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, Chicago IL
Intended College: Stanford University
Intended Major: Computer Science or Mathematics
Facts:

  • Grew up in Bridgeport/Chinatown area; immigrant family from Taishan, China; parents and grandparents are limited English speakers, and he regularly served as family translator
  • Transferred to Payton College Prep for freshman year, decided the math program wasn’t rigorous enough, applied to transfer back to Whitney Young as a sophomore — accepted, no gap in performance
  • Math Team contributor; helped the team win Chicago city championships
  • Table tennis team captain; won state title two of the last three seasons
  • Teaching assistant for a 7th grade algebra class, five days a week, for a full year
  • Took AP Mandarin despite being a native Taishanese speaker (not mutually intelligible) — notable because his math teacher flagged it specifically
  • Essay centers on finding a sense of “home” through community — math team, family dinners, translation work — rather than physical place
  • Course load is extremely heavy: multiple APs per year including Calc BC, CS A, Physics C, Stats, English Lit, and a Kaleidoscopic Advanced Mathematics (KAM) honors sequence on top of AP coursework
Jia Sheng Lin