BLYTHEWOOD – Blythewood High School senior Abhimanyu (Abhi) Sailesh has received offers of full four-year scholarships to eight major universities including the Air Force Academy where he will study aerospace engineering. He also received nominations to West Point and Annapolis.
Sailesh’s other offers were from Georgia Tech, Purdue University, University of Illinois (Urbana Champaign), Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, and University of Maryland – all among the top 10 aerospace engineering programs in the country – as well as full rides to study computer science engineering at The University of South Carolina’s Honors College and Clemson University’s Calhoun Honors Program.
Sailesh said one reason he chose the Air Force Academy is the opportunity he will have as a cadet on holidays and summer break to learn to fly F-16’s at Shaw Air Force Base.
“This appointment is awarded to only about 1,200 of our 9,700 applicants,” Arthur W. Primas, JR., Colonel, USAF and Director of Admissions to the Air Force Academy wrote in a letter to Sailesh extending the scholarship offer.
“Your previous accomplishments indicate you have the potential to meet the demands and challenges of the Academy and you should be extremely proud of your appointment as only the best of the best are so rewarded.”
BHS Principal Matt Sherman echoed that assessment of Sailesh.
“We pride our school on instilling in our students three core principles – to show respect, take responsibility and build relationships,” Sherman said.
“I can’t think of a finer example of this than Abhi. He’s worked so hard for so many years for this opportunity. He had a clear vision and he has focused on applying those core values,” Sherman said. “And he got the result he was looking for.”
“Abhi’s interests have always spanned multiple disciplines, including aerodynamics, astronomy, computer science programming, history, politics and mathematics,” his father, Sailesh Radha, said.
And he excelled in those and more, including sports and community service, while holding a number of part time jobs throughout his high school career, including working 12 hours a week his senior year as a sandwich artist at Subway.
Besides being a member of eight different honor societies at BHS, Sailesh was named an AP Scholar with Distinction and completed 11 AP courses as well as two dual-enrollment courses and college credit courses in Physics I and II, Calculus III, Differential Equations and Java Programming.
Sailesh has also authored two research papers that were published in the prestigious IEEE Xplore digital journal and presented at the 2018 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence.
He has also held office in a number of clubs at BHS during his high school career, including president of the Model UN Club. He played steelpan drums in the school orchestra and band and ran on the BHS JV cross country team and the Academy Club Soccer team.
He also gave many hours of his time to community and volunteer activities including tutoring and laying wreaths on the graves of fallen American soldiers.
“He’s just a remarkable young man,” Sherman said. “I can’t wait to see what he does next.”
