I was thinking about making a programming club at my school (I’m an upcoming junior), but my mom says that making the club will only look to college admission officers as trying to “bulk” up my EC’s without having significant meaning. Is this true?
After looking at my EC’s list, what do you guys think I should do to try to come off as unique and as a leader?
My goal: University of Washington Computer Science / UCB Computer Science
I agree with your mom. College admissions officers are used to seeing a bunch of people pad their resume around junior year when students being to panic at their lack of leadership roles.
It’s better you do not start another club, seeing as (according to your other thread) you are already playing active roles in 2-4 other clubs and sports. Don’t spread yourself out too thin! If colleges see that you are doing too much, they may assume that you didn’t actually play that big of a role in the activities you named–some sceptical admissions officers go as far as to call your counsellor and verify that you were indeed part of those many school activities (not that I’m doubting your role in each of those activities).
If anything, focus on strengthening your outside of school activities. It looks like you’ve been doing some open-source? Build your GitHub and put out apps onto the app store. Learn new languages because there are A TON (Vue.JS, React, React Native, Ruby, C++, Swift, Java, just to name a few.) Offer to code websites for non-profits and apply to work at a few startups! You don’t need to start a club on campus to show that you care about CS.
Also, a ton of my friends have gotten into UoW by doing far less than you and having worse scores. I, personally, would use UoW as a safety school. The acceptance rate is high enough that you could get in with minimal effort. Best of luck!
@marvelousmarvel Thanks for the comment and advice! Are you talking about UW Computer Science when you talk about your friends’ admissions? From what I know, the admission rate is at around 5% for the program, while the rest of the school is much higher.
I agree with your mom. She seems quite knowledgeable with admissions. Ad-Commitees can tell if your application has extracurriculars just for the sake it. Focus on the 3 or 4 things that your passionate about. Remember the extent of quality, not the number of activities.
Thanks for all the comments. I guess next year I will try to focus on strengthing my current extracurriculars and adding more depth.
I’ll probably try to make it to State with Tennis and add some of my projects to Github to make my portfolio.
Do you guys have any other suggestions for how I can add more depth?
Thanks @Puzzeled101@twogirls@skieurope@bjkmom@marvelousmarvel
@Jonah12K I think that working to make it to State with Tennis and adding projects to Github or the App Store are good and sufficient goals. As all the previous posters, and your mom mentioned, don’t try to do too much. Spend some time in the next few months working on those essays too!
@Jonah12K My friends got into both the ComSci department and others. I think you have a fairly good shot at admittance.
Some specific suggestions:
Even self-studying new languages using resources like MIT OpenCourseWare and YouTube show a lot of dedication to ad-committees. They’ll be sufficiently impressed by that, especially if you have GitHub projects to back it up!
In my experience, it isn’t too hard to upload new apps to the Google Play Store (you only have to pay a one-time fee of $25 as opposed to Apple’s annual $99 membership fee lol). You can either use hybrid-mobile-app frameworks like Ionic 4 or use Java. You also have the option of building progressive web apps through Ionic 4 - here’s a quick tutorial on how to do that: https://alligator.io/ionic/pwas.
Another thing you can do is make coding tutorials or run open-source blogs, like Alligator.io (the link cited in #2) or DevTronic.
Also, there are a ton of adults out in the coding community that can be very helpful older mentors. If there are any tech meetups or coding nights near where you live, I would highly recommend joining and networking. It’s kind of scary walking into a crowd of “experienced” adults as a high schooler, but remember that they were once like you too! Those networks are valuable and can lead you to internships/externships.
Hackathons!! Join hackathons, dude. They’re super fun and, again, great places to meet people. Plus, even if you don’t win, the experience is super enlightening and you can still get approached by the sponsors. For example, at a Twitch hackathon I was at, my group didn’t win but was asked to join a startup incubator by UMG. (Also, hackathons always have sweet swag. )
Finally, with your coding knowledge, you can apply to intern at university research departments. Maybe even cold-email a few professors at the University of Washington. You never know!
@marvelousmarvel thanks man for all your suggestions! I think I really should do the hackathons, but I don’t think I’m there yet with the coding knowledge. I’ll try to work on it more by self-studying online courses and doing my school classes.
Also, even if you feel like you don’t have enough coding knowledge, it’s still fun to check out hackathons. There’s a lot of people there that can teach you new stuff. Bring a friend with you and it should be pretty fulfilling.
PM if you want to talk code or need more advice! (coding is da best & I can possibly introduce you to a few ppl/resources)
She’s right.
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I hope that helps.