Sitting down with Samuil Mladenov (’26) as he prepares to leave AUBG is bittersweet. On one hand, having such an accomplished student is inspiring, on the other, seeing such a devoted student saying goodbye to the AUBG Campus life is always heart-touching. But he promised to be one of AUBG’s most active alumni for the years to come.
Graduating with only one major, Computer Science, is unusual, he admits. But ever since stepping foot on the AUBG Campus, he has been 100% sure he wants a degree in computer science. His thoughts about a second degree, though, were “all over the place”. At first, he wanted to pursue a self-designed major in Film and Theatre. Then, he briefly thought about doing a second major in Economics but in the end opted for a minor in the field, due to the interconnectedness between data science and Econometrics.
Lessons Learnt
Although our conversation is not chronological and structured, Samuil is one of those interviewees you just want to keep talking to, because everything they say is inspiring. The learning experience at AUBG became a recurring theme throughout our conversation.
While he came prepared as an active student and citizen, his biggest lesson at AUBG was in time management.
“It’s a balancing act,” he says.
From working and studying at the same time, volunteering and developing student clubs, through to playing sports and planning one’s “social outings”, for four years at AUBG he never stopped for a second. But the full experience taught him a lot, especially “how to live the life”.
“It showed me how I can manage life in the future, because it’s just the beginning. My life is just beginning, and I will have to juggle family, work, social life. That was kind of a preparation for those times. It also showed me my limits, where I should draw the line before I crash and burn. And it showed me that, at moments, how I may be stressed, I may have a lot of stuff, but I’m not alone. It showed me I have great friends around me. It showed me how other people have problems too.”
His background as well as his various positions at AUBG also helped him become a better person.
“I want to be there for people. I want to treat people with kindness and help them grow. It always feels good when you see a friend of yours or a person that you talk to often just succeed.”
One of the latest major achievements according to Samuil was the Honors Convocation, when he was “happier seeing my friends get an award than me actually getting an award. And I felt so proud of them for the people they’ve become for the past four years and the impact they had in my life. It always feels better for me when people succeed that they’re close to me than even my success.”
Beyond the academics and the extracurriculars, AUBG taught him life skills.
“I go out of this club meeting and I may be angry because something is going on in my life. But then I realize that people in front of me have the same problems or even worse than mine.”
This was a takeaway for him to build up on his skill of being compassionate and the kind of leadership he wants to embrace.
And he continued building on it as a Student Representative to the Department of Computer Science. As a student, he was seeing the University’s efforts to provide a quality education and the community devotion. He had ideas on improvement and he was surprised to see the engagement on behalf of the faculty members and how they integrated him in the discussions.
“The first meeting I had with the department, I was ready to be a bit defensive even, to kind of be neglected, nothing like that. They took me as a part of the community. They listened to my ideas and the struggles that the students have. And I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, and I love seeing that.”
Life before AUBG
The first time I heard about Samuil Mladenov was from an article in a paper. Samuil was awarded among the outstanding Bulgarian high school students of the year for his many talents, participations in national and international competitions, volunteering and work in the NGO sector. On top of this, he had won the second place in AUBG’s MultiTalent Quest and the special Medal of Honor for his active citizenship.
“The award for outstanding student was kind of unexpected for me. Since when I started at AUBG and I saw all the ambitious people and I was like, ‘I am far from those people.’ I have not achieved anything. I felt kind of imposter in the whole AUBG community in my first couple of months.”
“And then the news came out and I was like: ‘Maybe I do have a place here.’”
Looking back at his personal and professional development though, one can be really inspired by his growth. He has been involved with the speech and debate through the BEST Foundation since 8th grade. He has held nearly every position within the organization, including as one of the two project managers and working on the software “because that has always been my passion”. It was his involvement with BEST that led him to AUBG and paved his way as an overachiever.
“My mother always jokes that the night I came back from my first BEST competition, was the night that she saw a different person coming home. She saw the spark in my eyes finally being lit. And after that, I was signing up for everything that my heart desired. I went to Georgia and Belarus for science competitions. Doing science was something new for me back then. And that’s the moment I figured that science is the path for me.”
Back home, in the small village of Mirkovo, Samuil was not the person he later became. “I was not ambitious. I was not studying hard.” That is how he ended up in high school, focusing on English and Geography and it was his English teacher that “started the fire”:
“She saw that I was kind of struggling academically, but there was something that should be explored. The magic happened after that.”
It was the extracurriculars that opened his mindset.
“Like there is a higher purpose in everyone. And that’s the thing that motivated me to just chase my dreams.”
Broadening the horizon at AUBG
Samuil continued with the same ambition, if not even more, during his time at AUBG. As a President of The Hub, Samuil took a personal passion of his and experimented with the Hackathon topic, devoting it to Astronomy.
“Astronomy is a really hard topic, but I love it. And I wanted to see what the people can develop. And it was really, really cool.”
Joining The Hub was a certainty ever since he first heard about the club in high school but he was unsure if he’d get in due to his inexperience as a programmer.
“Not that the hub is a place where only good programmers can go. We’re always welcoming to all types of people. If you’re just starting to program, this is the place for you. You will learn so much from the amazing people inside.”
While his project management and event planning skills got him an “in”, his devotion to The Hub outran even his most ambitious plan: “I had a plan for how I want my four years in the hub to look like. My plan was that I want to have such an impact in my first year that in the second I’ll be head of logistics, which was kind of ambitious. In my third year, maybe a VP, and in my senior year, maybe a president, if things come to that.
“[But in reality] In my second year, I was a vice president and head of logistics, and in my third year, I was a president.”
From The Hub to the baseball team AUBG Sharks, Samuil always took the opportunities as they would come. In his first year, he “randomly saw a poster” about a baseball team that sounded interesting. On a whim, he signed up to see if he liked sports “and I did. I truly loved it.”
In a similar manner, he ended up working for PwC for two years to date. As a freshman, Samuil went to the Job & Internship Fair, organized by AUBG every spring, and there he met with representatives from PwC. They were just starting a data science team and gave him a business card to keep them in mind in the future.
Almost a year later, Samuil was thinking of doing an internship in data science, as that was the field he wanted to work in, and remembered the talk with the PwC HR.
“I found the card. It was back home. I was not even looking for it, but I randomly found it,” he says.
What followed was a shot in the dark message, three interviews, an internship, and eventually a job in data science.
AUBG Academics
Samuil admits he is not one to doing things just because he has to. That is how he chose his GenEd courses, too. Two of them turned out to be part of top three courses he took at AUBG.
“I always try to do what my heart says, what sounds most interesting to me. All the courses that I have chosen were because I see something there and I saw something that’s reaching out to me.”
First comes the Creative Writing course with prof. Michael Cohen. Then, a literature course about Edgar Allan Poe in his second year, taught by a Fulbright visiting professor, “lit a fire inside of me I didn’t know was there”.
A devoted computer scientist and “not the most literature person out there” wrote a paper on health ethics and found his “vocation through a paper for Edgar Allan Poe”.
His third most favorite course is IOT with the late prof. Anton Stoilov. He interlinked the knowledge from these three courses on healthcare and computer science for his senior thesis.
“I built a working device that tracks health data from a person, from scratch. I got the sensors, I got the PCB that was needed, and I built it myself.”
Again, on a hunch, he decided to apply for health informatics master’s degrees around the world and the unbelievable happened. He was accepted to one of the top five medical universities in Europe – Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, where he is excited to pursue his Master’s degree.
“The university that chooses the Nobel Prize winner for healthcare. And I’m going there. It feels like a divine intervention. ”
That is what Samuil says happened to him twice at AUBG. First becoming a President of the Hub as a Junior, and later being accepted in top ten medical universities globally after barely deciding to even apply for a master’s degree.
“And after this, everything happened so easily. Both my application, the way that they accepted me from even the first ride, I was not even in the waiting list, I was in the first group that was accepted. The way I found housing in Stockholm. It kind of shows me that this is the right path for me.”
Thinking back
Through all the challenges and sad moments, through the happiness and success, AUBG lit a spark in Samuil that is never going away.
“The love and care in the community kept me going during the last four years.”
“Those four years were something that I will for sure not forget. Something that, maybe now the moment is a bit bittersweet because we had the great moments, but we also had terrible events happening in our personal lives and in the community.
But for sure, this is a place that I may sometimes complain about stuff. But if I have to go back and make a choice for the place I should go for my university, I will not change my choice, even knowing what’s going to happen.
I know this was the place that I should have come. It met me with the people that I am sure that will be on the first row of my wedding. I know that here I found what I want to do in my life. I want to help people in the medical field, in the personal matters. I just want to help people.
And it met me with amazing, amazing professors, amazing friends, amazing advisors that I will, that for sure made the change in my life that I will bring with me wherever I go. There is not a point in me where I am sad or angry that I chose AUBG. This was the place for me for sure. “
