Supplemental research/github upload – when does it help/hurt?

Applying to College
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Looking for guidance on whether I should upload a research paper I co-authored. Paper was in the general field of AI and social science. It has been peer-reviewed and accepted to an IEEE conference, and has the name of a credible professor at a major university. I conducted much of the CS-based research and writing myself, and I have the python files to prove it. However, I don’t think the paper makes any new or particularly impactful contributions, and I’m worried that a faculty member in the field would be unimpressed if they actually dug into the paper.

And about those python files–would it be worth uploading a GitHub link with some of those, as well as some other things I’ve coded? No huge projects or anything super impressive, but I have some cool little programs like chess engines in both Java and Python, and I taught myself C# to make a Terraria mod.

Will these things help my application? Is there a risk if the readers don’t like them?

If it matters, I’m applying to mostly t20s for Computer Science/Econ/Data Science and I have adequate stats

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In the US, undergraduate admissions are handled by a centralized “admissions office” and not by individual colleges or departments within the university. It is very unlikely that your research paper or GitHub code submissions will be reviewed by a CS or Econ faculty member; and typically, those working as admissions officers and application readers do not have the appropriate background (or frankly, even the time) to dig into the details of your research. So I think you are worrying too much.

Good luck. But don’t forget to have a balanced list that goes well beyond the “T20”.

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