When Sishir Adhikari arrived at Fern Creek High School in the fall of 2021, he had no idea his high school journey would lead directly to the University of Chicago. Surrounded by passionate educators and driven peers, Sishir found an environment where he could push his limits, blending rigorous coursework with hands-on technical exploration.
Through Fern Creek’s Ivy Plus program and the Computer Science pathway, Sishir built a deep foundation in programming, mathematical analysis, and leadership. Now a second-year student double-majoring in mathematics and computer science at UChicago, Sishir entered one of the nation's most demanding academic environments with immediate momentum.
"In my first quarter of computer science, a lot of it just felt like review," Sishir says. "I was one of the few kids who already knew how lists and dictionaries worked. A lot of the questions I asked were more for my curiosity rather than clarity."
Sishir visits Mr. Tennyson’s class to speak about his college experience.
Discovering a Direction in Computer Science
Like many incoming high schoolers, Sishir entered ninth grade unsure of what career path he wanted to follow. Drawn to mathematics, he enrolled in both engineering and computer science pathway courses to test the waters. By junior year, scheduling limitations forced him to narrow his focus, and the choice became obvious: code was where his passion lived.
"What the pathways did for me—and for a lot of other kids—is tell them what they might be into in terms of a large bucket of careers, and tell them what they know they're not going to like," Sishir explains. "I ended up dropping engineering and sticking to computer science. It meshed more with me and my personality. I enjoyed the work more, and even within engineering, I kind of liked the parts where we coded more than the actual hands-on building parts."
Under the guidance of computer science instructor Quincy Tennyson, Sishir completed an intensive five-course sequence, culminating in a double-block of advanced coursework his senior year.
For Mr. Tennyson, that focused clarity is the core mission of the Academies model: helping students test-drive real-world disciplines before they ever set foot on a college campus.
"The goal is not to give them some impossible edge, because computer science at the collegiate level is quite a bit different than high school," Tennyson explains. "But what he achieved is priority number one for this pathway: CS1 felt like review. He could walk into college ready to play ball."
Finding Community on the Mat and in the Hallways
Fern Creek also gave Sishir a genuine sense of belonging. The collaborative atmosphere of the Ivy Plus program connected him with students who held high standards for their academic growth, while teachers created an environment where students felt actively championed.
"I found a group of people here who also had high expectations for themselves," Sishir shares. "More than all that, the teachers here are just great. Everything felt warm, and it felt like the teachers really loved teaching. That’s what made me have a much better outlook on myself, the school, and my next four years."
Wanting to branch out beyond the classroom, Sishir joined the Fern Creek wrestling team during his sophomore year—a choice that deepened his ties to the wider school culture.
"Community really showed for me whenever I did wrestling sophomore year," Sishir notes. "I got to meet a lot of new faces who I hadn't seen before. Our coach was great. It let me be part of a Fern Creek that wasn't just, 'Go to school, get the grades you need, come back home.' I felt like I was able to be part of something much bigger that frankly matters a lot more than what's on paper."
Real-World Experience and Industry Exposure
Beyond the classroom, Sishir actively built up his soft skills and professional portfolio. Starting his freshman year, he worked at Woodhaven Country Club, eventually serving as Snack Bar Supervisor. Over four summers, he trained over 40 employees, coordinated front-of-house customer service and back-of-house kitchen operations, and helped manage catering for events with more than 1,200 guests.
During the summer before his senior year, Sishir attended the Governor’s Scholars Program (GSP) at Centre College, followed immediately by the competitive Neubauer Phoenix STEM summer program on campus at the University of Chicago.
After graduating at the top of his class with a 4.0 unweighted GPA, Sishir served as project lead for a summer internship with TECH-Nique Inc. There, he took coursework in artificial intelligence and UI/UX design, taught robotics and circuitry workshops to local youth, and led the development of a generative AI-powered dietary prototype to combat food insecurity across Louisville neighborhoods.
That foundation paid off immediately when Sishir arrived in Chicago. Drawing on the work ethic and technical fluency cultivated at Fern Creek, he secured remote software engineering internships with emerging tech startups like Timing and KindEd during his freshman year—debugging production PostgreSQL pipelines, building mobile OAuth authentication systems, and resolving backend data-corruption bottlenecks.
Ready for the Future
Now stepping into his sophomore year at UChicago, Sishir is pursuing pure mathematics and computer science with an eye toward financial markets, data science, and technology. Looking back on the trajectory that carried him from a public high school classroom to an elite university research setting, he sees his Academy preparation as the catalyst that allowed him to compete with confidence alongside students from top preparatory schools across the country.
"If I've come this far, it's really hard to say what I can't do," Sishir reflects. "We often underestimate how much we can do in three or four years. High school students have so much more time and agency than they think. If people just spend 30 minutes to an hour a day thinking about what they want to learn, how they learn, and how they think, they will get so much more out of their education than they thought possible."