Non-classical admission to university

The story of how curiosity, knowledge and timely post on Habré can give a pass to ITMO University

/ Photo hackNY.org CC-BY

How it was

The hero of this story is Ilya Glebov, a schoolboy from Monchegorsk, a small town in the Murmansk region. In the forty thousandth city there are several secondary schools, a gymnasium, a lyceum and not so many good tutors - so when the family was talking about preparing for the Unified State Exam in computer science, Ilya decided to rely on Internet resources. And, as it turned out, I did not lose - I scored 97 points on computer science. But in this story the preparation process turned out to be even more interesting than the result:

Everything really happened when I was preparing for the exam on computer science. There was a task number 27. The point is that there were a lot of parameters in it - x1, x2, x3, x4, x5 and so on. We had to try, sort out.
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And I was so sick of doing it, that I just decided to take a break and read something. I stumbled upon an article about vulnerabilities in Facebook and decided to try this method on VK

- Ilya Glebov in an interview with ITMO.News portal

It worked - Ilya really managed to find a critical vulnerability, which affected not only Vkontakte, but ICQ as well. Ilya described in detail an example of the attack and the whole process of searching for vulnerability in his post on Habré :

• We send a request to send SMS to subscriber A with session_id C, he receives the code 1234
• We send a request to send SMS to subscriber B with session_id C, he receives the code 1234
• Now, if subscriber A knows the telephone number of subscriber B, he can restore his page.

It was possible to restore only that page, to the number of which the last SMS came with a similar session_id.

First, Ilya reported a vulnerability in a report on HackerOne. Vkontakte responded quickly and eliminated the vulnerability after 17 hours, after which the Mail.Ru Group holding, which includes Vkontakte, paid Ilya $ 3000 - two thousand for finding the vulnerability and another thousand for the bug bounty program from ICQ (messenger used the same ilbverify library as Vkontakte).

From the post on Habré to enter the university

In July, having passed all the exams, Illya wrote about vulnerabilities in Habré. This material became his debut at the site, collected almost 70 thousand views and, of course, interested ITMO University:

Ilya's post very quickly got into the top of Habr's day, and then weeks, and I, like many of my colleagues, regularly visit specialized resources. Therefore, the very next day after the publication, we in the telegram-chat of the department discussed both the record itself and one of Ilya's comments, where he, answering the question about choosing a university, listed St. Petersburg universities, but did not mention ITMO.

- Nikolay Pshenichny, head of the department of vocational guidance and work with talents of the Strategic Communications Department

In a conversation with Ilya, it turned out that the problem is only in the 60 points of the Unified State Exam in mathematics he received - Ilya believed that because of this he would not have the opportunity to study at ITMO University, except on a paid basis. However, a misfire on one exam should not be fatal, especially when it comes to the student who demonstrates not school knowledge in a specialized subject.

The post on Habré Ilya wrote on July 9th. Four days later, he met with representatives of the Admissions Committee and the dean of the Faculty of Information Security and Computer Technologies at ITMO University.

Danil Zakoldaev (dean) noted that in terms of knowledge, Ilya is not inferior to other strong applicants. Moreover, he understands such disciplines as "Software and hardware information protection" and "Web programming" at the student level 3-4 courses:

Ilya's knowledge in some subject areas significantly exceeds the requirements imposed on children of his age: there is an obvious interest in reverse engineering and a desire to develop, including independently. We expect that he will withstand a serious load of basic disciplines in the first year of study and will be able to reveal his talents in the field of information security.

- Danil Zakoldaev

In ITMO, Ilya recommended submitting documents for training in the educational program "Information Security Technologies" of the mega-faculty " Computer Technologies and Management ". Since the sum of the Unified State Exam did not allow the student to pass on the budget, the university management offered him to study at the university's expense, and later, if Ilya would study “good” and “excellent”, transfer it to free education.


Alexey Itin, Danil Zakoldaev, Ilya Glebov, Natalya Glebova (Ilya's mother) and Nikolai Pshenichny. Photo of ITMO University

“Ilya is not the first applicant to whom ITMO University offered to study at the expense of the university. Proactively working with schools and finding talented purposeful schoolchildren who are not winners of competitions or high scores is one of the strategic objectives of the university. Within the framework of the development of the unified community of the ITMO.FAMILY University, a separate program for the search and support of such applicants is planned for the next year. We are waiting for new “stars” at Habré, ”says Anna Veklich, first deputy chairman of the Admissions Committee, head of the Department of Strategic Communications at the ITMO University.

Talent search

The team of the ITMO University is carefully studying the materials that go on Habré. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to organize a search for talents in habrapos:

A systematic search for applicants at Habré is impossible for objective reasons: although IT-competence is obedient to all ages, but most often the youngest habrizhiteli, if they participate in discussions and publish records, they do not focus on what else they learn in school [...]

It is important to understand that the history of Ilya’s admission to ITMO University is a coincidence made possible by the fact that the staff and students of our university regularly read this blog. If you want, then we can say that the post fell into the right hands of an employee of the Admissions Committee. I seriously recommend such a path in the future, perhaps we would not. But it is also impossible not to encourage such achievements of motivated students. As always, you need to look for the golden mean.

- Nikolay Pshenichny

If you regularly share your ideas and ideas with the community, you can, first of all, get feedback from other developers about how relevant the topic is and how it can be developed, people will tell, in terms of knowledge, sometimes not inferior to your teachers. . And the experience of creating strong materials and feedback from the community will help prepare reports for scientific conferences, such as, for example, the Congress of Young Scientists of the ITMO University. By the way, participation in the Congress is one of many individual achievements, for which we give additional points to the USE.

So, how to declare yourself to a talented entrant:

1. Try to go beyond the "comfort zone" - that is, in the case of applicants, outside the school curriculum. The history of Ilya is a great example of the fact that not only USE scores are important for entering a university, but also your curiosity, perseverance and hard work - as well as your interests in those areas that are not included in the school curriculum.

2. Pay attention to what you are really interested in - in addition to solving the "mandatory" tasks. Develop your hobbies, find friends in thematic communities, participate in specialized online activities, do not be lazy to spend strength on the Olympics, the results of which can be credited in the universities of your dreams.

3. Do not be afraid to declare yourself on specialized resources like Habr - share your knowledge and experience, not paying attention to age. You don’t need to hide that you are still studying at school - remember that ITMO University appreciates and reads Habr carefully.

4. Unfortunately, high karma alone and a large number of posts on Habré for admission will not be enough. The case of Ilya in this case is a rare and successful coincidence of circumstances. On the other hand, your post on Habré can turn into a report at a profile conference - and this is a significant and guaranteed contribution to entering the university.

5. In many universities, individual achievements are valued at admission - they can play a role in enrollment. For example, at ITMO University there is a whole list of achievements for which you can add points to the results of the USE. Among them are the Olympics “ITMO.Vkontakte”, “Tournament of two capitals”, language certificates, achievements in sports and much more.

6. And most importantly - choose what inspires you. If it is IT, new technologies, robotics, photonics, bioengineering - we will be happy to see you among our students!