My Story and Reflections

Here is my story: Ten years ago, I was just another middle-school student in China—ranked below average, unnoticed, and written off by teachers and educational consultants alike. In the second year of middle school, I made a decision that changed everything: I refused to accept that “below-average” label. I wanted to be selected for the most elite group of students at our city’s top high school—the very program that would set me on the Gaokao track. For an entire year, I pushed myself harder than I ever had before, studying late into the night, doing extra problem sets, and drilling lessons until I thought I might break. But when the results came in, my name did not appear on the roster. I had failed to make that elite group—a moment that felt utterly hopeless, like all my efforts had evaporated into nothing.

At first, it felt as if I had lost everything. Had I succeeded, I would have stayed in China, followed the traditional path of exam prep, and attended a local university. Instead, I ended up in that same top high school—just not on the elite track. That small deviation proved to be a blessing in disguise, sparking my first major strategic turnaround: somewhere along the way, I heard about a U.S. high-school exchange program. Everyone thought I was crazy—teachers in China and the consultants my parents had hired told me I was reckless, that my English was still at a middle-school level, far below what any high schooler should have, and that I was squandering my best chance at the Gaokao. I applied without fully understanding why I was drawn to it, other than a vague sense that if I followed the conventional route, I might never stand out. The selection process was brutal: initially, I was placed on a waitlist. Then, by sheer chance, a chosen student broke his leg, opening a spot that I was offered. But I was determined to try anyway, turning what seemed like a hopeless deviation from the “safe” path into a bold leap toward self-reinvention.

When I arrived in the United States as an exchange student, I could barely speak a complete sentence. The first host family I stayed with wasn’t a good match; cultural misunderstandings and language barriers made those first few months feel isolating and overwhelming—another layer of hopelessness that tested my resolve. After transferring to a second host family, things began to settle—though every day still felt like a battle uphill. I focused on what mattered: improving my spoken English, studying for the SAT, and learning to navigate the American classroom. I took extra English lessons, stayed after school to ask questions, and lived with the persistent echo of doubt from my teachers back home who said I would never succeed. By the end of that year, however, I had transformed my shaky grasp of English into a solid foundation, turning that initial hopelessness into enduring strength. I applied to the University of Rochester and was accepted—something nobody back home expected. That exchange year had reshaped me: it taught me resilience, showed me how to build fluency in a second language, revealed that I could thrive in an environment where I had once been completely lost, and equipped me with strong academic records, qualifications for American colleges, critical thinking skills, and English proficiency that continue to benefit me to this day—allowing me to effectively communicate my research with any professor.

At Rochester, I arrived with no fixed plan, only a fierce curiosity. I eventually chose to double major in Computer Science and Financial Economics—Computer Science because I wanted to build systems and learn to program, and Financial Economics because I wanted to view the world through a rational, economic lens. During my time there, I encountered setbacks that forced me to grow. I applied to transfer to several Ivy League schools, chasing prestige without truly understanding why prestige mattered. Unsurprisingly, I was rejected by every single transfer application. That failure stung, but it also taught me a lesson: chasing a name without purpose is a hollow pursuit.

Around this time, another strategic turnaround began unfolding in my financial life, mirroring the academic pivots I was making. Five years ago, during my college years, I started investing randomly in stocks, chasing hot chances without a solid strategy. Over three years, I ended up losing over 40% of my portfolio—a devastating blow that left me feeling hopeless about my financial acumen and future stability. But I learned the lesson the hard way and refused to stay defeated. Two years ago, I gathered myself and shifted my focus entirely to index funds, embracing a disciplined, long-term approach. Two years later, I had not only made back all the money lost but also grown my portfolio by 120% in two years and 40% overall. This turnaround from speculative losses to steady gains reinforced my growing strength in making calculated pivots, much like how I was learning to align my academic pursuits with genuine purpose rather than fleeting allure.

As graduation approached, I applied to Master’s programs—but again, I misunderstood the process. I treated it like a college application, not a career-oriented pitch, and as a result, most universities rejected me. The only offer I received was from Rochester itself, which I declined reluctantly because I felt I needed a new environment. Those rejections did not break me; they taught me to examine my motivations more closely. At the same time, I found quieter victories: I did a CPT-eligible internship at a local data company, where I learned to apply my programming skills in real-world settings, took online courses to deepen my technical knowledge, and forged friendships with peers who understood my drive and supported me through tough times.

There was also another detour I almost took: music. At Rochester, I enrolled in guitar classes at the Eastman School of Music—one of the world’s premier conservatories—and, despite having only started learning guitar a year earlier, I was accepted as a guitar major. That opportunity was unbelievable—only five Chinese students were admitted each year, many of whom had trained since early childhood. But to continue at Eastman would have required a fifth year of tuition, and no scholarship was offered. I had to turn it down. It was a heartbreaking decision, but I realized music, though it stirred me deeply, did not lead to a sustainable future. Declining Eastman taught me to weigh long-term alignment over short-term allure, a lesson I would carry forward.

In 2021, I graduated into a world still grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and returned to China for my first full-time job. I took a position at a small data-analytics company serving a hospital. From the moment I walked in, the environment felt chaotic: my supervisor who had hired me resigned the day before I was due to start, and no one seemed to have a clear plan. The company moved offices frequently, priorities shifted without warning, and, to top it all off, periodic lockdowns meant I was occasionally stranded in my apartment for days or weeks at a time. That year was one of the most disorienting of my life. I felt untethered—my Master’s options had evaporated, I disliked my job, and the economic outlook in China felt grim. Yet even in that uncertainty, there were bright moments: I spent quality time with friends, explored local cuisine with more enthusiasm than ever, and finally took up Taekwondo—something I’d always wanted to try. Those small joys, though, didn’t change the larger fact that I could not build a future in that unstable job during a downward economic cycle.

This post-graduation haze marked another profound moment of hopelessness, where I felt completely lost after Rochester, with no clear direction amid rejections and a turbulent job market. But I gathered myself up and initiated yet another strategic turnaround: recognizing the need to start over, I decided to reapply for Master’s programs—this time with a clear, professionally focused narrative. During my gap-year job, I had gained insight into the intersection of computer science and medicine. I crafted my application around that combination, and it resonated: Duke University offered me a place in their Master of Science in Computer Science program. For the first time, I felt that my story—shaped by chaos and resilience—could be seen as an asset rather than a liability. This pivot from feeling directionless to securing a spot at Duke, and now pursuing a PhD at UPenn that I would have never imagined—literally among the best of the best that I used to know—transformed that hopelessness into a powerful strength, proving my capacity to rebuild and aim higher than ever.

Entering Duke, I initially intended to work on AI with medical applications. But I quickly realized that Artificial Intelligence was already saturated, especially in fields like natural language processing and computer vision, where candidates often need dozens of publications just to stand out. I hadn’t planned to pursue a PhD at that point—graduate school felt like a destination in its own right. During my first semester, I took a systems course and something clicked: all the programming I had done in Rochester, combined with my growing technical confidence, had prepared me better for systems research than for AI. I made a strategic decision to switch my focus to systems, despite having no papers or prior experience in that area.

To build credentials, I took every research opportunity I could find: formal verification projects, cryptography explorations, even robotics. Ultimately, I concentrated on a cryptography project under the supervision of a professor who also taught my networking course. By chance, that professor was a friend of a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania—though I did not know that at the time. When I sent a cold-email expressing my interest in PhD study, the Penn professor recognized my Duke advisor’s name and realized the existing connection. That fortuitous link, combined with my growing research portfolio, helped me secure a position in UPenn’s PhD program. Meanwhile, the cryptography project itself—an unpaid endeavor with no guarantee of publication—became a submission to Usenix Security, a top-tier security conference.

Applying to PhD programs was profoundly challenging. I initially assumed I might stay at Duke for my doctorate, but then came another blow: Duke rejected my PhD application. It was a crushing disappointment, but I refused to let it stop me. I broadened my applications, refined my research proposals, and leaned on the network I had built in cryptography and systems. Eventually, the University of Pennsylvania offered me admission to their PhD program. That acceptance represented the culmination of ten years of relentless effort—of being the underdog who learned to endure, adapt, and outgrow every expectation.

Looking back over that decade—from a “below-average” middle school student to an incoming PhD candidate at one of the world’s leading computer science institutions—the path was never simple or straightforward. I was never first in anything; I never had a clear-cut path to follow. Instead, I navigated a maze of setbacks, rejections, and detours: failing to make the elite high-school group, mastering English against all odds, struggling through transfer and Master’s application rejections at Rochester, declining a coveted spot at Eastman, enduring a chaotic COVID-era job in China, and even facing a second PhD rejection at Duke. Yet each time, I chose to learn from failure rather than be defined by it, turning hopelessness into strength through strategic turnarounds—like my bold exchange to the U.S., my financial recovery via index funds, and my post-college reset that led to Duke and UPenn.

I became fearless by understanding that hard work sometimes yields no immediate reward. I persisted for 2 years and have written over 50k lines of code, even when there was no stipend and no guarantee of publication. That tenacity, and the lessons it taught me about perseverance, turned out to be the very turning point I needed.

Now, as I stand at the end of this ten-year arc, I am humbled by how far I have come—and yet I know I am just getting started. I may never have been the obvious choice, but over time I outgrew every label and every expectation. Today, I face the future not as a “below-average” kid but as someone who has proven that, when you refuse to remain “normal,” you can forge a path that none of your peers—or your doubters—ever imagined. The next chapters will undoubtedly bring new challenges, but I have built the resilience, the adaptability, and the conviction to meet them head-on.