Student Panel Blog

• Short reflection
• Key Takeaways
  • Communication
  • College Applications
  • College experience
  • Internships
  • Others

Short reflection

At the panel last week, I enjoyed being able to meet some highly successful students and gain tips from them. I got to learn important information about college, bettering my communication skills, and organizational skills.

Key Takeaways

Communication

• Explaining and presenting how your code/project works and your process is very important in college
• Clear communication is important when talking to recruiters and companies
• You should have a very concise list of points when talking to someone to be seen seriously by companies
• Live review communication skills help in “tell me about yourself” questions
• Documenting issues and being clear is important

College Applications

• Think about what AP credits the schools you apply to will take
• AP CSA projects can be good things to talk about
• Understanding the school you apply to (its culture and general info about it) a bit is useful when you write essays
• Look at what your university provides in your major
  • For example, if there is a really cool class in the university in your major, talk about how you want to be a part of that
  • Show passion in college apps and why you want to go to the uni how you want to make an impact through being there
  • Look at course catalogs so you can see what classes are there for your major

College experience

• Joining clubs is good since it helps you get friends
• Taking community college classes is useful
  • Getting community college credits is good since they give you more credits than APs
  • Even if you need to redo the course in college the course will end up easier if you’ve taken it before
• GPA isn’t as big of a thing in college as it is in HS

Internships

• Finding internships
  • Search on LinkedIn job postings
  • Message people on LinkedIn
  • Easier for early college or high school students to do this at small startups
• It’s useful to have a website to have a portfolio with your projects

Others

• Always starting with a flowchart (or with UML or “usecase diagrams” with how the user uses your app) is useful
• Cold emailing professors for research