Student Self-Assessment Form for requesting Academic Letters of Recommendation

This form will assist your teacher in writing your academic reference. The more specific details
you give, the more thorough your college recommendation will be. Expect to spend about 2
hours on this document and make sure you put down evidence of your self-assessment.

Student Name : Aashita Nath

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Date : 25th september 2019

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Name of recommender : Mr Varnajoshyula Nagarjuna

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Country applying to : USA, UK, Canada, Italy

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Course of Study : Economics

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List 3 top universities that you will be applying to - 1) London School of Economics, UK

2) University of Chicago, Illinois USA

3) Northwestern University, Illinois USA

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YOUR RESPONSES TO THESE CAN BE COMMON FOR ALL ACADEMIC LORs -

1.​ ​In or out of school, which awards and honors have you received? Which elected
offices have you held?
a. Deputy Head of School’s Honour Roll (2018)- in recognition of outstanding excellence
and demonstration of the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile.
b. Head of School’s Honour Roll (2019)- in recognition of outstanding excellence and
demonstration of the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile.
c. The Sue Morgan Service Distinction Award (2019) - for distinguished service of action.

Held the position of House Chair in the student council at the International School Of Helsinki,
Finland.
- Conceptualized house events among students of the school.
- Organized various school activities such as the Annual Fests, fun runs on topics ranging
from climate change to ‘International Food Fairs’ to organizing the annual snowball.
- Worked closely with the faculty administrators and liaised between students and faculty.

2.​ ​Which book(s) have had the greatest impact on you? Why?
- Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner remains an inspiring book for me as it
captures so many key facets about life journey - the book taught me that if you
work hard, never give up on your dreams and be an authentic person success
will follow. There will be many failures but the book taught me that rising every
time from those failures and learning from them is the most important lesson in
life.
- Steve Jobs by ​Walter Isaacson ​has had a profound effect on my personality
development - I learnt how one idea can transform mankind and society - despite
changing the consumer industry forever, he also had many blind spots in his
professional and personal life and how he overcame those are lessons well learnt
by me. Innovation, Collaboration and being single minded focus were key.
- The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi showed me how
real transformation can be achieved if one practices a philosophy one believes in
- the values Gandhi Ji lived by are so relevant in modern times as well in
personal and professional spheres. The book taught me key aspects of
leadership, empathy and a higher sense of purpose.

3.​ ​What kind of learner are you? Which academic setting or assignments make you
thrive? What interests you?
- Life is a marathon and not a sprint and hence my learning philosophy is based on
a strong reflection model. I reflect on my experiences gained, the impact of my
decisions on the quality of my life journey. I often take feedback from my peers,
my teachers and my parents and use this to reflect on how I can improve my
strengths and weakness in my professional and personal life.
- They say the best way to see success in an academic setting is to focus on the
knowledge which is gained by my strong focus on research. I spend looking at
various issues by doing research and validation of the same and this gives me an
all-around perspective.
- From an interest perspective economics as a subject is something I am
passionate about - I love the subject, the why and the how and it provides me
with a great perspective to global issues.

4.​ ​List 3 of your most distinguished or admirable qualities. Explain each in a few
sentences.
- Jim Collins in his book - Good to Great speaks about defining leadership as
having a strong will power with humility
 - I believe that humility is not a sign of weakness but a great strength of mine - it
gives you balance and helps oneself to retain perspective in most demanding
times and builds in you authentic behaviour towards people and society in
general.
- The second quality which helps me is about focus and target approach. I work
best when I am able to define my clear goals and do a structured step by step
planning towards the same.
- Aiding the above is my penchant for time management and tough deadlines.
Time is a scarce element and I am able to work systematically using this towards
my goals

YOUR RESPONSES TO THESE QUESTIONS MUST BE SPECIFIC TO EACH SUBJECT LOR

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5.​ ​Can you recall and explain any instance in or outside the classroom when an
academic issue was discussed and you felt that you have added value to the
discussion?
- In my old school, there were only 4 students in my math HL class which gave me
a lot of opportunities to contribute to the discussions in the class. Once we were
discussing how to find the roots of a cubic function. I put forward a new
technique that I had learned before- the sum of the roots would be equal to -b/a,
the product of roots is -d/a and the sum of the product of roots taken two at a
time is c/a, apparently my teacher hadn’t seen this rule before so I even derived
it to show its validity. Apart from this, I also frequently presented topics that I had
knowledge about in front of the class such as arthmetic sequences and series.

6. Describe an academic accomplishment that you are most proud of and write down
why you take pride in it.
- Head of School’s Honour Roll (2019)- awarded for overall excellence in academic
achievement. I take particular pride in this award as it is an explicit reflection of
my academic growth. I went from getting 4’s in my subjects at the start of the first
semester in grade 11 to getting a Deputy Head of School’s Honour Roll (2018) at
the end of the first semester and have come from there to achieve this award.
Changing boards in grade 11 was not particularly easy, but this award reflects
that my goal for grade 11 was achieved because I was focused.

7. Mention the individual work that you have undertaken in this subject. Make sure you
put down the topic and a synopsis for each. (IA, EE etc)

Online courses
 - Introduction to Calculus by The University of Sydney
5 weeks- completed
- Matrix Algebra for Engineers by The Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology- 4 weeks- in progress

- Apart from online courses I work on mathematical problems every day for an
hour just for practice.

Internal Assessment- (tentative) I will be using the painting Stud Bull, ink on paper, 50 cm x 44
cm, 1959 by the painter Abani Sen.
My goal is to find a mathematical function in the painting. I will first try to come up with a function
that represents the lines in the painting using a set scale, then I will use taylor polynomial to
simplify the function and find taylor polynomials that best approximates the value of a function
around a certain point. I will also be deriving and finding out the radius of convergence for that
particular taylor function.