I wrote these essays in March 2020. I had an idea about what I would write about, and nothing more. I caught pen and paper and wrote intensely for 3-4 hours. I then looked back, checked grammar, and submitted it later in the application.

You can still find some grammatical and spelling errors here. I could have corrected it but I wanted to show it to you as it is. What I realized is that complicated words, grammar syntax don't matter. What matters is your story, what you are saying. I mentioned in the previous article that you should show you need it and you deserve it.

Read my essays here:

1. Why do you consider yourself a suitable candidate for theOpportunity Fund program?

I'm Rabin. I'm a high school student at St. Xavier's College, currently studying in 12th grade. And, as always, believing in my hard work and achievements, I think I am a suitable candidate for Opportunity Fund Program.

My origin is Panchkhapan, Sankhuwasabha, a beautiful village in the Sankhuwasabha district of Nepal. In my early childhood, I was brought to Khandbari, a town near my village, where I completed my schooling and graduated with the best result in the school. I actively participated in the ECAs like Natural Agriculture Practice conducted by Shumei, literature competition, dances, sports and so on. With all my hard works, I successfully achieved CGPA 3.70 in the SEE examination conducted in 2018 AD.

Being a Computer enthusiast and successfully getting enrolled in St. Xavier's College, Maitighar provided me the next playground of achievements to step on. I then worked to achieve academic excellence. And simultaneously, I engaged in various events and activities like Computer Olympiad, Physics Olympiad, Football tournament, Poem Competition and so on. Being a member of Computer Club, I participated in various competitions related to Computer Science and Programming in and out the college. Securing equally good academic results, CGPA 3.39 in my first year, I passed my 11th grade.

During my second year, I was elected and I became the president of Computer Club, SX3C and worked to bring several progressive changes in the club and college. I initiated House System in the club where students learn Web Design and Development, Algorithms and Data structures, Robotics, Gaming and Apps including Arts. With the team of highly effective students, we organized CSP Olympiad, Website Design Competition and SXC Computer Festival. And the SXC Compute Festival was one of the best and grand events in the college. I also build a web application named Mattrab for students to ask questions, share answers and resources which was happily supported by the college. I again build a Mattrab Community where the best 200 students of the college help other students all over Nepal through the app.

Contrary to all my achievements, the economic background of my family is very poor. The couple of hundred dollars per year salary of my father has been sustaining the living of my grandparents and the study of my siblings. Since my school days, I studied with the scholarship of the best performer and I could continue my studies at St. Xavier's College with the financial support of the founder of my former school.

After graduation from St. Xavier's College, I have decided to study Computer Science in the USA. So that I can contribute the society with better knowledge and degree. For this, I require financial support. Therefore, with all my achievements and needs, I am definitely a suitable candidate for the Opportunity Fund Program. So, I humbly request and appeal for the support.

2. What is one of your most significant achievements so far?

To no one's surprise, we all want betterment, progress, and development. And we attain those through our achievements. I, being a student, have made some successful and significant achievements. Among them, engineering and developing Mattrab Web Application is the most significant one.

I, participating and organizing several competitions, teaching programming, design, and development in the club, became ready to develop my own application 6 months ago. After being challenged by several questions, confusion and so on, working hard and continuously, I coded over 13000 lines of code and successfully build Mattrab App. It is built with Ruby on Rails including a couple of other supporting frameworks. The app is designed to be used by students. The main aim of building the app is to bridge the quality of education around different places in Nepal. In the app, any students can create, share and learn from the academic resources, ask questions and answer their friends and help. My work was highly appreciated by the college and it was financed to be hosted. And finally, I hosted my app at askmattrab.com.

I again build a community, of 200 students with the best academic performance in the college. The community was named Mattrab Community. The teachers from various departments are also in the community who guide the students to create academic resources in the app and help the students all over Nepal.

I, being the president of the community, have proposed and passed the activity of Mattrab Community in the college, where we will collect the support and sponsors from the market and build the Mattrab library in the school of the remote district in Nepal. We are coordinating with a few book writers, computer distributors, book publications to support us by providing the necessary books and computers. This will be the greatest achievement once we successfully build the Mattrab Library.

I believe education can bring change and every human, either child or adult or old, should have access to education. And in our country Nepal, we can find a huge gap in the quality of education from place to place. I think the best methodology of bridging this gap is through the use of technology and computer. For this, I have set my first step by building Mattrab Web Application and Mattrab Community.

I also organized various classes and interactive sessions and helped my friends to build themself and code the computer but out of all these, I consider the building of Mattrab App and Community my most significant achievement because it is my first attempt of bringing progressive change and betterment in the society.

Also, notice that I have not cared about the word count. Focus on what you have to say and say it. If you have said everything you have to say, you don’t have to make the perfect 500 count. If it is more, you have to condense it of course.

In the next article, I will talk about the interview that is the second round of selection. Join me there.