A guide for ambitious high schoolers

Sigil Wen
2 min readMar 24, 2020

This is adapted from a post on oneskillaweek.com

Being the best in your class is cool and all but are you hungry for more?
This is a list of advice, opportunities, resources, competitions, and programs that I wish I had at the beginning of my high school career. It will be updated as I discover more 😁

Life advice:

Big Competitions:

  1. Paradigm Challenge ($)
  2. Microsoft Imagine Cup (😁 Currently North America Regional Finalist with Synbiolic)
  3. IOI, IMO, IPhO, IChO, IBO, and other International Science Olympiads
  4. Breakthrough Junior Challenge (Placed Top 30 in 2019)
  5. The Diamond Challenge (synbiolic made finals)
  6. CES Young Innovators to Watch (Submitted deepdev.tech)
  7. Google Science Fair (Aryan Misra and I did something fun 😉)
  8. MIT SOLVE (This is legit)

Grants/Funding:

  1. Pioneer grant (I currently edit videos for them and place top 100 globally)
  2. Emergent Ventures
  3. Thiel Fellowship
  4. 1517fund grant (I have a meeting with them :D)
  5. Helium Grant
  6. Y Combinator startup

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Sigil Wen

Creating content for driven individuals to build skills and wealth.