Help with College List - Computer Science major

traveler98
Sun, 21 Jan 2018 21:08:22 +0000

@njmom2019, it may take some digging but check with either your local universities (for day camps) or if the budget permits you can look at residential programs as well. If she’s interested in learning about cybersecurity she might like to check out GenCyber, which offers camps at universities around the country and may even cover the program cost for attendees. My son attended a residential GenCyber program at WPI during the summer of 2016 and the full cost was covered by a grant from the NSA and NSF:

https://www.gen-cyber.com

My son also attended several weeks of coding camps at UT Dallas during summer 2017, with two goals in mind. He already planned to apply there for college, so he wanted to check out residential campus life in addition to exploring his interest in CS. He learned a lot of good CS concepts and loved the college so much he decided not to apply anywhere else, which saved him a huge amount of time and stress last fall during his first semester of senior year.

Another option, depending on what you have available locally, is to help your daughter look for a CS internship or job shadowing. Where I live there are several local companies that are happy to have high school students come in to do various types of CS work or job shadowing. Some students are even fortunate to get “real” jobs that involve actual coding and are paid. Our local community college is also very open to high school students coming in for research and internships. Something like that can help your daughter figure out if CS is something she can see herself doing as a career, and help her home in on which areas of CS she likes or doesn’t like.