Is Inspirit AI Worth It? Hear from an NYU Student
Hani Chalhoub is currently an undergraduate student at NYU studying Mathematics and Economics. Before getting admitted to NYU, Hani was a student in the Inspirit AI Scholars program. He participated in the program in Summer 2022, and in this interview, he shares a review of his experience in the program, answering the question: Is Inspirit AI worth it?
Hani Chalhoub’s Inspirit AI Alum Profile
How did the AI Scholars program impact your preparation for college and your academic journey?
“The biggest impact that the AI Scholars Program had on me was that I learned more about AI and machine learning in the context of what it could help automate in finance and where I should belong if I want to be well valued and do interesting work. It also helped me choose my major and has made me want to pursue a minor in computer science.”
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?
Hani applied early decision to NYU, 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. Hani 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 Hani, his project helped inspire him to pursue mathematics, economics, and business in college.
“The AI Scholars Project has affected my career journey by showing me a potential career trajectory that I may be interested in. It has caused me to continue learning more about coding and AI. After the project, my teacher gave me more resources to use, and we had all the code we used from the project to continue building on top of.”
Since completing Inspirit AI Scholars, Hani worked as a private equity intern and has taken data science and CS classes at NYU.
What advice do you have for high school students applying to their dream colleges?
“Be authentic. Don't tell a story just because you think it will be interesting to someone else, tell the story that also matters to you and it will help you make a final product that you are proud of.”
For Hani, 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.
