Advice for Prospective CS Majors
This was an excerpt of a 10 page guide that I wrote for next year’s CS TA’s at my school. As shown by my last post, it’s clear that I’m quite opinionated about the whole college admissions process. By no means am I trying to undermine anyone’s successes, and I hope that I am not offending anyone with this short post. The stuff I say are not facts, just my opinions.
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you also want to major in CS. I might as well include my thoughts into that as well. I don’t necessarily consider myself to be the smartest student. I don’t have a perfect GPA or ACT/SAT scores. My extracurricular activities (ECs) kinda sucked compared to most of my peers (I did a lot of band stuff like marching band and jazz). And being an Asian male going into CS is probably the hardest thing you could ever imagine.
At the moment, CS is an incredibly competitive major, and I can’t even fathom how bad it’ll be in generations to come. I think the biggest advice I can give for prospective CS students is actually work on CS outside of school and develop CS ECs. There are so many kids applying to CS but have never done CS related things outside of their classes (one of my biggest pet peeve). You’ll already stand out if you start now. When I realized this, I went to as many hackathons as possible, and I also chose to become an intern. Not only did these give me CS ECs, it also made for easy college application topics. I also started working on a lot of independent projects (outside of my independent CS class). You can seem some of them on my GitHub (check around 2018–2019).
I even started a blog on some of my CS projects that focused more on CS fields that I was interested in: machine learning and statistics. I actually submitted one of my blogs to some colleges as part of my portfolio and at the moment, it’s my most viewed blog: Does Luck Play a Role in Typeracer?
Unless you truly enjoy computer science and programming, I wouldn’t recommend applying to colleges under CS. College admission officers can easily tell through students’ applications when they’re merely applying as a CS major for the money. Because CS is such a popular major, they’re trying to find reasons to not accept you. CS isn’t for everyone, and apparently, most kids in college end up switching their majors anyways. If your main focus is to just get into a good school (like a T20 school), you should focus more on your academics and stuff you’re really passionate about. That’s what makes your application shine.
This whole application process really made me ponder if computer science was the right choice for me. I felt that I would’ve been significantly more successful had I chosen stats or math as my major. Because I wanted to go into data science anyways, I believed that those majors would have given me the same opportunities as a CS major. Do everyone a favor and rethink your choice, ESPECIALLY if you’re an Asian male. I’m not trying to discourage you away from CS, but you need to keep in mind that you’re practically playing this game with a handicap. For me, this was an incredibly humbling experience, as I received back-to-back rejections each week in March.
Personally, my college application journey kinda sucked. I got into 3 schools (UIUC, Northeastern University, and Purdue) and waitlisted/rejected to the other 20 schools. Yes, I really did apply to about 23 schools: this includes most ivies, Stanford, CMU, MIT, etc. I applied ED to Northwestern (not Northeastern) because of the proximity and the ability to easily change majors/double major. Unfortunately, I got rejected from Northwestern in December, but the day after, I got into UIUC! I was glad that I finally got into a school, but I found out that it wasn’t for my intended major. My first choice major was for computer science in the engineering school but I was placed into my second choice major, aerospace engineering. At the time, I had an incredibly large ego, and I thought that CS engineering was significantly better than CS+X. I honestly believe that if I chose CS+X, I most likely would be going there right now. Believe me on this one, there really is no difference between CS+X (or CS in an arts/science school) compared to CS in an engineering school. In fact, if you hate physics/chem, then CS engineering isn’t for you, since you’re required to take those classes.
Anyways, the day after I got into UIUC, I found out that I was deferred from MIT. I was pretty indifferent about the result, especially since most of my peers who applied also got deferred. However, one of my close friends got in which is super impressive.
After that, I pretty much just spent my winter break writing a bunch of college apps. I think the biggest reason why I had such poor results (besides the less-than-stellar grades, ACT, ECs, Asian male CS) was because I never really had an opportunity to get my essays read and edited. School was out so I couldn’t ask my teachers. During the regular decision season, I got into Purdue and Northeastern fairly early. I expected to get into Purdue (I considered it my safety), but I was surprised to hear that a lot of my friends that applied for CS/other engineering majors got waitlisted/rejected. If it was between Purdue and UIUC, I still would have chosen UIUC mainly due to price, even if I wasn’t studying computer science. I also got into Northeastern which was a nice surprise, since I completely forgot that I even applied to this school because their application process doesn’t require any writing supplements. While I was glad that I got into their CS school, I also put this in my back pocket since I was shooting for the stars with Stanford, CMU, and Yale (my top schools at the time). After that, however, each rejection/waitlist only made me numb to the process. In the end, I didn’t make any school after Northeastern. Ultimately, I chose Northeastern due to a combination of price and intended major. Various sites rank Northeastern in CS between #15–46, so I knew that it had some reputable programs. One of my other Asian male CS friends also chose NEU, so it felt nice to have another friend come along with me. It’s actually really easy to sell people to come to NEU for CS, especially since it’s in Boston (great networking) and the COOP program, which gives you an easier time to access job experience (needed in the tech industry).
Wow, this ended up being extremely lengthy. I’d be surprised if you manage to read the whole thing and not fall asleep. In the end, I would be lying if I told you I had no regrets throughout this process. However, I wouldn’t want to go through this process again. I believe that you deserve the college you end up going, and trust me on this, none of this will matter in a couple of months once you’re actually off to college. While it may be harder to get into top schools as a CS major, the undergrad you go to doesn’t really matter. I know tons of people that have been successful in the tech world, and many of them went to schools I’ve never even heard of. Just do me a favor, and don’t be too confident. You have to remember that each year, people are getting more and more competitive. It isn’t enough to just have good stats, ECs, and essays; they need to be phenomenal. Many of my friends have 4.0s, 36s, won state competitions, only to get rejected by every T50 (not just CS majors).
A lot of this stuff I’m telling you right now is stuff I wish I knew when I was applying. I was too blinded by the idea of prestige, I ended up wasting a ton of time applying to schools with lousy CS departments only because they were a T20 school on USNews. I hope you take this information to heart, because if you took the time to read all this, then I know you’ll become successful in whatever you want to do.
Good luck.
Patrick Yoon
