Inspirit AI Review from an MIT Student
Eric Noriega is currently an undergraduate student at MIT studying Artificial Intelligence and Business Analytics. Before getting admitted to MIT, Eric was a student in the Inspirit AI Scholars program. He participated in the program in Winter 2021, and in this interview, he shares a review of his experience in the program, answering the question: Is Inspirit AI worth it?
Eric Noriega’s Inspirit AI Alum Profile
How did the AI Scholars program impact your preparation for college and your academic journey?
“I mentioned Inspirit AI in my college essays, which really tailored my application to the fields I was interested in.”
What project did you work on in the AI Scholars program?
AI + Algorithmic Trading
In this project, students use logistic regression, LSTMs, and BERT to analyze the sentiment of financial tweets. The ultimate goal is to predict long-term stock market trends, which can help people manage wealth and anticipate potential booms and busts.
Which colleges/universities did you apply to, and which did you get accepted to?
Eric applied to highly selected colleges, including MIT, where he now currently attends. Take a look at his college admissions journey below.
In what ways did you feature your Inspirit AI experience on your college applications?
Many students will choose to showcase their AI project-building experience on their college application in a variety of ways. From including Inspirit AI on the activities section to writing an essay about their project, many students will highlight the work they completed as part of the AI Scholars program to help bolster their application. Eric chose to showcase Inspirit AI on his application in the activities section, where he mentioned participating in the program, as well as his essays, where he wrote about his Inspirit AI project-building experience.
How has your AI Scholars project affected your career journey?
A student’s learning journey doesn’t end with AI Scholars—the Inspirit AI program can be a launching point for many students’ college and career journeys exploring computer science and artificial intelligence. For Eric, his project helped solidify his interest in AI.
“Inspirit AI has made for interesting conversation during internship interviews. The experience is pertinent to the positions I have applied for.” Since completing the Inspirit AI program, Eric has had 2 research internships as a data science intern at Nasdaq and a software engineering intern at Capital One.
What advice do you have for high school students applying to their dream colleges?
“Your essays are the ‘pages’ in your ‘book’ - what do you want colleges to know about you? Your ‘book’ should tell them who you are, who you want to become, and how that college will help you get there.”
For Eric, the Inspirit AI program was more than worth it, from showcasing AI Scholars on his college application to applying his learnings from the Inspirit AI course to his work as a college student. If you liked this Inspirit AI review, we encourage you to apply to the live online program here.
About Inspirit AI
AI Scholars Live Online is a 10 session (25-hour) program that exposes high school students to fundamental AI concepts and guides them to build a socially impactful project. Taught by our team of graduate students from Stanford, MIT, and more, students receive a personalized learning experience in small groups with a student-teacher ratio of 5:1.
