How Indian Students Can Build a Profile for US Universities (Class 9 to 12)

Indian students can build a strong profile for US universities by doing a few things well: keeping grades high in a challenging course load, going deep on one or two activities from Class 9 or 10, building something with real results, and explaining their context clearly. The hard part isn't knowing this. It's doing it alongside board exams, tuition and, often, entrance-exam coaching.

This guide focuses on what's different when you apply from India. For the general approach, read our main guide to profile building for college admissions first.

Why applying from India needs its own plan

There are a lot of you. According to the Open Doors 2025 report from the Institute of International Education, there were 363,019 Indian students in the US in 2024/25, up 10% on the year before. India is now the largest source of international students in the country.

That's encouraging, but it also means admissions readers see many applications from Indian students with very similar shapes: high marks, an olympiad or two, Model UN, a school club role and a summer course. If your profile looks like that, it has to work harder to stand out.

The good news is that the fix doesn't require more activities. It requires different ones.

What US universities look for in Indian applicants

The same things they look for in everyone, read in context.

Yale calls the high school transcript the single most important document in an application. Stanford says it reviews achievements in context, looking at how you've taken advantage of what's available to you in your school and community. It also says depth in one or two activities may show more passion than minimal participation in five or six clubs.

For an Indian applicant, that means three practical things:

• Your marks matter, and so does the difficulty of the subjects you chose.
• Your context counts. A reader will try to understand your school, your board and what opportunities you had.
• Depth matters more than breadth. One serious commitment beats a long list.

Five mistakes Indian applicants make

1. Letting coaching swallow Class 11 and 12. If you're preparing for JEE or NEET as a backup, that's sensible. But many students arrive at Class 12 with nothing outside academics because coaching took every evening. Start your main project by Class 10 so it's already running when the pressure arrives.

2. Listing school events. Inter-house debate, annual day anchoring, a school exhibition. These are fine, but they're things the school organised. Readers want to see something you started.

3. Collecting certificates. Online course certificates and participation certificates add very little. I'd rather see one project with ten real users than ten certificates.

4. Family-contact internships. A two-week "internship" at an uncle's company, with no clear output, rarely helps. If you do one, make sure you produce something real and can describe it in specific terms.

5. Essays that list instead of show. Indian applications often repeat the activity list in paragraph form. Use the essays for one story that shows how you think.

I led go-to-market for Classplus in South-East Asia, so I've seen from the inside how education products get packaged and sold. Be sceptical of anything that promises a "guaranteed profile" for a fee. If it can't show you what past students actually built, skip it.

How to build a profile for US universities around a packed school year

Time is the real constraint. So plan around the calendar you actually have.

Class 9: explore. Try two or three things seriously. This is the lightest academic year for most students, so use it.

Class 10: commit and start. Board exams make the second half busy, so start your main project early in the year. Aim to launch a first version within a month, even a rough one. When I was building Binge Digital, the biggest lesson was that a small thing in people's hands teaches you more than months of planning. The same is true of a student project.

Summer after Class 10: grow it. This is often the best window you'll get. Put in focused weeks on the project, a research question or a real internship.

Class 11: build evidence. Keep the project going at a steady pace, even three or four hours a week. Track numbers. This is also the most important academic year for US applications, so protect your grades.

Summer after Class 11: the main push. A research program, a serious internship or a big step forward on your project. Then start drafting essays.

Class 12: finish and tell the story. Board exams and applications overlap, so have your evidence ready before the year starts.

What does a strong project look like from an Indian school? Maya Patel at Dhirubhai Ambani International School built TradeIt, a marketplace for students to trade textbooks and other items, which onboarded more than 300 users across three schools. Aryan Sharma at The Shri Ram School built TrafficPop, analysing city traffic data and presenting his findings to local government officials. Both started from everyday Indian problems. You can see more in our passion project examples, or pick a starting point from our passion project ideas.

CBSE, ICSE, state boards and IB

No board is automatically better for US admissions. What universities want to see is that you took the most demanding subjects reasonably available to you and did well.

IB students already have CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) as part of the Diploma. Use it as a starting point, not the finish line. Many IB students list CAS activities without going deeper, which puts them right back in the "busy, not committed" pattern.

CBSE, ICSE and state-board students often have more rigid timetables and less built-in project time. That makes an independent project even more valuable, because it shows initiative the school didn't require.

If research interests you, our guide to research opportunities for high school students covers routes that work from India, including science fairs affiliated with Regeneron ISEF.

Explaining your context

US readers may not know your school, your board or what's normal in Indian education. Help them.

Your school counsellor's letter can explain the curriculum, the grading system and what's typical at your school. The Common App also has an additional information section, which is the right place for short, factual context: a heavy coaching schedule, family responsibilities, or a school with few extracurricular options.

Keep it factual. "My school has no robotics lab, so I built my first circuits at home with parts bought online" tells a reader a lot in one sentence.

What to do this month

Sit down together and list every activity your child does. Mark each one as either "school organised" or "started by me."

If the second list is empty, that's your project for the next six months. Pick one problem from everyday life, find ten people who have it, and launch the smallest possible version within four weeks.

If you'd like a mentor to guide that work, see how Experiment Labs helps students build profiles for top universities.