To the Ross Mathematics Program Admissions Committee,
It’s rare to meet a student for whom mathematics isn’t just a subject, but a way of observing,
interpreting, and shaping the world. Over the past year mentoring Aadit Baheti for mathematical
Olympiads, I’ve watched him grow from a talented problem-solver into something more rare: a
thinker who questions deeply, revises willingly, and returns to problems not to conquer them—but to
understand them more beautifully.
Aadit's number theory and algebra strengths are evident, but what really sets him apart is how he
handles uncertainty. During our sessions, he won't settle for reaching a correct solution and being
done with it. He'll come back to problems a day or two later with new drawings, analogies, or
frameworks that indicate a change in thought. At one point, while solving a divisibility problem about
quadratic residues, his initial attempts resulted in dead ends. Instead of abandoning the problem, he
redefined the whole problem with modular thinking, built edge cases, and ultimately arrived at a
solution that was not only correct, but exceptionally beautiful. That's just like Aadit—no shortcuts for
him, but the path that also teaches him something in the process.
His learning style is based on tacit curiosity. He poses questions that may not always have
straightforward answers—"Why does this approach work here but fail in that situation?" or "What's
the underlying intuition behind this symmetry?" He's particularly interested in problems that appear to
be simple on the surface but expand into greater territory, and he's learned to appreciate those times
when his initial reaction doesn't work—because that's where the real understanding starts.
One place where I viewed this growth particularly vividly was in the application of complex numbers
to Olympiad geometry. Initially, Aadit found the abstraction unsettling—rotations and arrangements
in the complex plane didn't seem natural, and solutions early on leaned heavily on algebraic brute
force. But instead of trying to circumvent the subject, he sat with it. He started to imagine problems
on the Argand plane, converting algebraic manipulation to geometry motion. Gradually, his
comprehension grew. I recall a breakthrough in a cyclic quadrilateral problem when he applied Euler's
formula to simplify what had previously been abstract into something visual and dynamic. What was
an area of weakness turned into an area of insight—not because it was easy, but because he shifted the
way he was thinking about it.
What is so remarkable about Aadit is how easily he transfers this kind of thinking to practical
contexts. In a predictive maintenance research project, he collaborated with factory data—following
tiny shifts in temperature, vibration, and electrical current—to look for patterns that indicate
mechanical failure before it occurs. It was the type of data that resembles noise at first glance, and he
needed to figure out what to ignore and what to pursue. I was amazed at how he handled this in the
same mathematically meticulous way he does for Olympiad problems: eliminating irrelevant noise,
simulating behaviors, and recalibrating his analysis when the trends did not pan out. He handled the
machines as if they were problems to be solved—each of them with its own logic to be unraveled.
Aadit is unflappable in collaborative settings. He listens carefully, frequently expanding upon
someone else's thought with a soft rephrasing or a more pointed illustration. He is not attempting to
demonstrate that he is the genius in the room; he is attempting to create something worthwhile out of
the people in the room. Whether troubleshooting robotic motion control systems or deconstructing a
difficult combinatorics problem with classmates, he is attracted to the same: how pieces mesh, where
assumptions are concealed, and how precision gradually reveals itself.
Aadit doesn't need validation in the form of shortcuts or speed. He's the student who will hang on to
an idea while others have moved on, who goes back to a problem because it still has something to
learn from him. That's the type of student I think will flourish in an environment that celebrates rigor,
collaboration, and developing mathematics from the ground up—one that reflects the values of the
Ross Mathematics Program.
I will be glad to discuss further if necessary.
Yours sincerely,
Sandipan Misra
Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
[email protected]
