Nikhil Gupta
Class of 2011
What kinds of things did you like at Nysmith? What activities did you participate in?
Activities that I participated in included Football Club, MathCounts, Band/Jazz Band, and probably another few that I am sure I’m forgetting. I really enjoyed my time having electives in 7th and 8th grade because I got to try out a bunch of different things.
What did you do after Nysmith?
After graduating from Nysmith, I went to Thomas Jefferson (TJ) High School. There, I played soccer (3 year varsity) and basketball (2 year varsity) for 4 years each. I sporadically participated in a handful of academic clubs throughout the 4 years but I could never regularly attend them due to scheduling conflicts with sports.
After graduating from TJ in June of 2015, I went to Caltech in Pasadena, CA (a few miles outside of LA). A big reason I decided to go to Caltech is because it is small school (~240 undergrads / class) so there would be a lot of opportunities to interact with faculty in ways that might be more difficult at larger schools. Another aspect I liked about Caltech was that it requires a broad scientific core which gives us the ability to relate a certain topic across multiple fields, while exposing each student to a wide knowledge base.
At Caltech, I am double majoring in Computer Science and Business, Economics, and Management. In addition to academics, I play varsity soccer (DIII) along with a variety of intramural sports and am doing research with a professor.
Tell us about any of your internships throughout high school and college.
In high school, I interned at NIH in Rockville MD doing biomedical research for 2 summers. In college, I interned at Google in New York City after my freshman year on a Site Reliability Engineering team. After my sophomore year, I interned at a early stage tech startup based out of Sunnyvale, CA doing Computer Vision work for them. This upcoming summer, I will be working at a small hedge fund in New York City.
How did going to Nysmith impact your life?
One aspect of Nysmith that I really liked was how everyone encouraged students to push themselves and get as far ahead as they had the ability to. This gave me a good foundation to make full use of the resources I have had since (at TJ and Caltech). Having been at Nysmith for 10 years, another aspect aspect I liked was seeing how the school evolved and how my perspective on the school evolved over that whole period.
What advice (if any) would you give to a current Nysmith student and/or parent?
Students: Make full use of the resources presented to you (whether academic opportunities or otherwise).
Parents: Kids will get much further in a certain activity if they are doing it of their own will instead of being pushed to do it.
FAVORITES
Field Trip: Chesapeake Bay
Place to Hang Out at Nysmith: Ga-ga ball pit
Do you still know all the words to the 50 states song? Maybe the first half
What state were you? Delaware
