How should I represent my unconventional background on my Georgia Tech application?

Colleges & Universities Georgia Institute of Technology
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Hey everyone,

I’d love some advice on how to best represent myself for Georgia Tech. My background is a little different from the traditional STEM applicant, and I’m trying to figure out how to tell my story in a way that makes sense.

I started as an artist professionally as a teenager in 2006 at the NYC High School of Art and Design in Manhattan. Back then, I thought my life’s journey was going to be in art. And for a while, it was. I attended SVA and took a break to recover from illness. Then inn2022, completed my AAS/BFA in Animation and Game Design from FIT. 1 year after I’ve worked professionally and even reached the point where I moved to Miami to join Pudgy Penguins as an illustrator, one of the fastest-growing Web3 crypto companies. That was a huge milestone for me. proof that I could succeed at the highest level in a very new industry. where my art has helped gain attention and earn the company astronomical amounts of money. Money most don’t recognize or understand today, but money none the less :rofl:

I went on to design assets for pudgy penguins animation and video game production pipelines and marketing campaigns. I took what I learned there to contribute to similar web3 brands, albeit lesser known. One of which earned me an at the time life changing amount of money to fund moving my mother, a life long New Yorker to Georgia where she lives happier now.

But as I got deeper into the entertainment and creative industries, I realized the downsides. Artists in big studios, like animation, often feel expendable and treated like pawns. The real money and stability are in senior management, decision-making, and production. At the same time, I noticed that people’s attention has shifted. Social media, memes, and streamers often get more focus than the art itself. Going fully independent is too unstable, and while I have the skill and talent to do it, I don’t want that life anymore.

Now, I work in sales at AT&T. It may sound unrelated, but it’s actually taught me something really valuable. Learning sales made me realize how much better I could have marketed myself as an artist if I had those skills earlier. I’ve always been entrepreneurial and self-driven, but this role sharpened my ability to communicate value, connect with people, and think strategically.

I feel like I’ve closed a chapter. I “book-ended” my art career, I built a brand, contributed to an industry many people still fear or misunderstand, and finished what I started. Now I want to pivot to something new: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Georgia Tech, with an interest in Robotics and the Threads program.

What excites me is the idea of making technology personable, something I already did in Web3 with my art, but I want to come at it from a new angle, with a stronger technical foundation. I’ve overcome a lot to get here: health challenges, financial struggles, career pivots, and the courage to admit when it was time to change directions.

My question is: how do I represent this background in my application without it sounding scattered or unfocused? I want to show that my path has been consistent in terms of creativity, persistence, and entrepreneurship, even if the fields look different on paper.

Would love any insight from people who’ve successfully explained unconventional journeys like this on their applications.

Thanks!

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I don’t have much math in my transcript since I attended art school. And I’m too far past hs for sat scores. I laser focused on my major in college so not many extracurricular activities as many did not interest me at the time. So I don’t have much record that is a 1 to 1 match for my intended major at ga tech. Just examples of personal responsibility and drive to overcome illness which was a huge part of my educational career.

I chose electrical Engineering/robotics because I see a growing need for it as the United States is moving to bring manufacturing back domestically. It is yet another trend I am spottign and passionate to take on. I also see potential to marry my new STEM skills with my education in entertainment. Weta studios and James Cameron are set to release dozens more Avatar films. And people like him always move the industry forward through tech. I see myself Naturally participating in that trajectory.

However, Is the lack of 1 to 1 match as bad for me as I think? Or is my intent and proof of work in my field already enough?

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I am not sure that your journey is all that unconventional. It is entirely normal that we try a bit of this and a bit of that before we figure out what we want to do with our lives. Your journey may be a bit unusual, but so was mine, and so was the journey for the next person that you happen to meet. Your journey, and how you think about it, does make sense.

Also, one thing to keep in mind about software engineering: Writing software is largely about showing computers how to do things that people used to do, or that people used to wish that we could do but we couldn’t because we didn’t have the computational power or memory. In showing computers how to do things, a bit of this involves a computer language, a lot more involves knowing how to structure software and problem solving, but a huge part of this is understanding how to do something that humans typically do. Thus this might involve art, or physics, or math, or finance, or just about anything else. Since there are so many things that we are teaching computers to do, there are that many things that someone somewhere needs to understand very solidly before we can show the computers how to do it.

And “making technology personable” is huge. No one wants to use a computer system that is tortuous to use. Computer systems need to be tailored to the user.

To me your description of your path makes a lot of sense, and serves as a strong motivation for what you want to do next. This motivation can help a student do well in university. When a university is a lot of work, it can be very helpful for a student to understand why they want to put in that effort consistently over several years.

Depending upon how much math you do have, this could be an issue. You might need to take some relevant math courses, for example at a community college, before starting university and quite likely before applying. How much you need might depend upon what level of university you want to be starting at.

Edit: One thing that is worth adding. Math is a subject where what you are learning now often depends upon what you learned last year and the year before, and what you will be learning next year is likely to depend upon what you are learning now. This is an area where understanding the prerequisites is important. You will probably want to carefully evaluate what it is that you know and what it is that you don’t know in order to fill in the blanks properly. This might take a bit of effort to figure out but is likely to be worth the effort.

If you are intending to be a regular undergraduate student for four years at a top high-tech-oriented university, then you might for example want to at least be ready to start taking calculus when you show up at university. This would suggest the need to fully and solidly understand the prerequisites for calculus, including high school algebra, trigonometry, and pre-calculus. If you are going to be coming in with one or two years of credits, and hope to get a bachelor’s degree in two or three years, then you might want to have first completed calculus and differential equations. Linear algebra is also something that sounds likely to be useful in your case, but is something that a university can teach you if you are going to spend four years there (I think that I took this at the beginning of my sophomore year of university, and I was a math major – a major that can also lead to any one of a large number of possible career paths).

Georgia Tech is a very high end, very stressful high-tech-oriented university that is full of very strong students. However, there are lots and lots of other universities that are also very good. The large majority of these other universities are not quite as stressful as GT, and not quite as hard to get admitted to. You might want to be thinking about which universities are the best fit for you. There are lots to choose from.

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