The first computer science degree was introduced in the 1950s, and the first Computer Science Department in the United States was created in 1962 at Purdue University. This is very recent in the world of college majors, but computer science went on to take the world by storm. Before too long, it became one of the most popular majors in the country and attracted hundreds of thousands of students to an opportunity to gain a degree that offered almost certain employment with outstanding starting salaries.
With popularity, though, came competition. Many of the top programs have become extraordinarily competitive and difficult to gain admission to. Simply taking computer science courses in high school isn’t enough to get into a top-tier university as a comp sci major. You have to do more than that. A strong application is grounded in exceptional grades and scores, but presenting yourself as the strongest applicant possible also requires evidence of independent study, leadership, teamwork, collaboration, and creativity. These things are best shown through the things you do outside of school. In other words, your activities.
In this post, we’ll outline the key areas you need to be focusing on as a junior interested in a computer science major, along with the things you should avoid. Making time for what matters will open up opportunities for growth, development, and success — and, eventually, impressive application outcomes.
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If it is your junior year, or you’re planning ahead for next year, you’ve already been involved in a bunch of activities at school related to what you are passionate about, but especially connected to computer science. If you have been, then what we are doing is building on an existing foundation of experience. If you haven’t been, though, that can make it a bit harder to show commitment and enthusiasm on your applications. You only have two years (junior and senior) to underline your interests and strengthen your applications, and only a sliver of senior year will even make it into your college applications. This means that we have to move very strategically to strengthen your profile as an applicant. You aren’t in trouble if you move quickly and deliberately to address the buckets below.
LEADERSHIP
One of the most important things on your college application is a strong illustration of leadership. If you are on a robotics team, this may mean becoming a team captain, but that isn’t the only way to show leadership — especially if you haven’t already been involved in clubs, or on teams, related to computer science.
We recommend that our students, whether they are already immersed in computer science or brand new to it, look for at least one leadership role outside of the field of computer science. This could be in addition to the robotics team captain position, or, if you will not become captain because you’re a recent addition to the team, serve to cover the leadership gap on your application. Consider running for student government or rising to a leadership role in another club that you are part of. Becoming captain of a team sport is great, too, but does not replace an academic or student government leadership position.
INTERNSHIPS & EMPLOYMENT
As a junior, you’re now at a great age for accessing a computer science-oriented internship or part-time job. This work is crucial to strengthening you application, and we work with our students to secure prestigious, and often paid, internships with well-respected national and international companies.
An internship doesn’t need to be flashy, though, to make an impact on your applications. What matters most is what you do and what you take from the experience, far more than how well-known the company you are working with is. A summer-long paid internship with a local cyber-security firm is far more impactful on an application than one-week unpaid with a big name tech company. If you can do both, that’s stellar, but if you have to pick one, we’d nudge you towards the summer-long experience.
This is because of where internships come up in your application. For the vast majority of college applications, and every school that uses the Common App, the activities section is painfully succinct. You have one very short sentence to describe a role or experience, and that’s it. The only places deeper stories come into play are the main college essay and the supplements. If you choose to write about an internship in a supplement or your main essay, it’s important that you have stories to tell that speak to depth of experience and development of knowledge, both of which come from long-term immersive engagement. A few years ago, a student wrote about getting lunch with her co-workers during a summer-long full-time internship at an aerospace firm. The essay played a pivotal role in an early acceptance by Stanford. We say “the essay” here purposefully. The internship alone didn’t get her in. How she told the story mattered.
INDEPENDENT PROJECTS
We encourage our juniors who are interested in computer science to pursue independent projects that develop their skills and that are, ideally, fun! This can include building apps, programming systems, or creating tools that make their life easier or improve the lives of those around them. The most important thing, though, is that they can be taken to a finish line. This doesn’t mean that you have to have an app in the app store necessarily, although kudos to you if you do. Rather, we see an MVP, or minimum viable product, as the minimum ideal end point. Basically, could you show it to an admissions officer if they asked? Now, it is extremely unlikely that you are going to be in a circumstance where an admissions officer asks to see what you built. However, it isn’t impossible, so it is good to have something in your pocket.
If you publish a final product as an app or website it is, however, critical that it actually works. We’ve seen a surge in students applying for computer science or similar programs who put a website online or make an app live, and then emphasize in on their application, only to have it simply not function. The impressiveness of your hard work is, in such a case, immediately undercut by the frustration of a “large format desktop optimized” webpage that doesn’t function properly on a smaller screen.
SUMMER PROGRAMS
If you are looking for ideas on what to build, a summer program can be a great place to find them. There are hundreds of high-caliber summer programs that immerse students in computer science. Even more importantly, they offer community and collaboration beyond what most high schools provide. These programs can be extremely helpful for students, but it’s important not to see them as a ticket to an acceptance — even if the summer program is affiliated with a university. Doing a summer program does not, in the vase majority of cases, improve chances of acceptance by a school. On the flip side, not doing the summer program at a school does not decrease your chance of acceptance when you apply for first-year admission.
We advise our juniors to pick computer science-focused summer programs that speak to their particular interests within the field, and that they can use as a launching pad to greater intellectual adventures.
This really is the theme, though, for the whole picture of how juniors who are considering a major in computer science should think about their activities and extracurriculars. It’s ultimately all about exploration of a niche, leadership, and adventure.
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