I am a sophomore who would like to be an engineer or study CS.
I regularly participate in community service events and such but I would like to start participating in events that relate to what I want to major in? Any suggestions on possible extracurriculars?
You could do some research at a local university, attend a summer program, start coding some apps, attend hackathons, robotics competitions, any of that works. There’s also a USA Computing Olympiad if you’re interested.
Most important is that you find something you enjoy.
Does your school have a FIRST team (http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/frc)? If yes, consider joining; if no, you could work with the administration to try to start one.
I second the previous poster’s recommendation of doing what you enjoy.
it sounds like you want ECs to beef up your app. Nothing wrong with that, but you ought to also be doing things to understand what these fields entail to see if they’re really right for you. You ought to be writing apps on your own, working on open-source projects, developing websites, etc., depending on what areas of CS you may be interested in.
Internships are a possibility. Technical Academies are nice. MATE ROV is what I am participating in this year, last year I had another type of competition. There is a lot of cool stuff out there, but you have to show interest. Also, do well in school, and make sure that Engineering is something you will enjoy.
Like others have alluded to, you don’t HAVE to align your ECs with a potential major (which you won’t have to declare for another FOUR YEARS). How does getting a black belt in karate or playing JV basketball or working at Walmart have do do with any college major?
Take that pressure off yourself. My kiddo is an excelling Comp eng student. The vast majority of her ECs were her devotion to her sport. The only CS related thing she did was develop and admin a forum as a hobby. She taught herself to code and it was simply an exciting hobby she did on the side. But it was her 3rd most important EC behind two exhaustive sports.
A couple kids at my D’s school were able to join a FIRST robotics team at a neighboring high school. They participated as team members for a couple of years to get experience, then started a FIRST team at our school. FIRST is a really great EC if you can get involved (disclaimer: I think it is so great that I volunteer at regional competitions now).
My D also did science projects for 4H and entered them in the county fair, won some trips to the state fair. She was into entomology and wildlife biology at the time, but you can do stuff like rocketry. She didn’t do a lot except projects with 4H, you can be as active as you want to be with a local club. But there is a lot of knowledge there about the nuances of signing up for fair entry, format rules, how judging works, etc.
A kid at my D’s school started a programming club. They made it really welcoming to everyone, including newbies like my D. She learned Python and thought it was fun.
D provided the tech support to a non-profit. She came home after a few days as a new volunteer and said, ‘You wouldn’t believe how primitive they are. Paper files. Computers that don’t talk to each other so they enter data over and over. No data collected on anything so they can’t do any decent analysis. The web-site is a clunker. They don’t use any social media. What century are these people living in?!!!’
A year later, she had automated just about everything they did and trained everyone on how to use the systems. The staff loved her because she’d made their work so much easier. They hired a director of IT when she left.
OP, there are literally dozens of non-profits in your area just like this one. Get on it.