Current Upperclassman at Carnegie Mellon: ASK ME ANYTHING!

HSquared2
Sun, 13 Dec 2020 04:33:54 +0000

Hi @ap68ple! Thank you so much for reaching out and posting be sure you’re taking time for yourself and your family; I hope your mom is doing better and you’re doing something fun together. This year has honestly been the absolute worst and my thoughts are with you and your family.

Breathe. Colleges will know that this year was a complete mess and you have had way more important things to worry about than an electronic application.

Also for the record, I’ve not started any nonprofit, or done any national sports tournaments, or done a single math competition (yeah the whole USAMO or whatever haha) in my life, and I’m still kicking it at CMU SCS. A lot of my friends are similar in this way - so I promise you don’t have to do those things to be admitted.

I think it’s totally fine freshman and sophomore year to just explore - you don’t have to know immediately what you want to do! Exploring is totally fine and I highly encourage it.

When you’re applying for college, it’s nice to be “well rounded” but not so well rounded that it makes you seem scattered. So depending on where you’re applying, maybe tailor your app to that school. My common app essay was actually about classical ballet and how similar it is to CS and math in the precision and discipline it taught me. At CMU we love the interdisciplinary of technical and artistic so it might be something fun to explore for you!

That’s so interesting because I was also in HOSA in high school and did Girls Who Code so feel free to PM me if you want to talk further.