Totally tooting my own horn but I'm miffed enough that I can handle coming off a bit conceited rn. Going to delete later bc doxxing myself lol. Does this look like a worthless/irrelevant accomplishment? and there's shit i do that i haven't put up on my github where I'm exploring compiler design and type theory/functional programming and writing z80 assembly (for TI calculators -- not a useful real-world skill, duh, but it should show drive or something) and a bunch of other stuff that I would totally be qualified to study further at an appropriate institution. My gpa's shit (low 3) because i didn't do hw for three years in favor of whatever personal projects lol, and I have an entirely average amount of ECs (hell, mostly programming stuff), but what I have done is more than enough when compared to the people I described in the post. I'm not unique here, there are so many kids whose HS performance does not reflect their potential in the field and it's annoying that admissions are a game of general-academic showboating rather than raw merit