How to Choose the Right CS/Tech Story for Your Essay
By Lan N.
Supplemental essays are an opportunity to showcase your most meaningful experiences. Depending on the prompt, your focus might shift between personal growth, a favorite extracurricular, or an academic accomplishment.
These days, many students are interested in computer science or tech programs. If that’s you, your resume likely already includes an internship, a club leadership role, or a technical personal project.
The challenge is picking the best one to answer a supplemental essay prompt like one from UT Austin last year: “Think of all the activities — both in and outside of school — that you have been involved with during high school. Which one are you most proud of and why?”
If you are proud of a CS or tech achievement, it can be a fantastic fit for this prompt. To decide if a project is “the one,” ask yourself these four questions. If you can answer “yes” to most of them, you’ve found your focus.
1. Are you excited to share this story?
When you describe the robot you built to fold your laundry, do you become bubbly with excitement? You’re going to spend hours drafting and redrafting this essay; make sure it’s a story you want to tell. Your natural enthusiasm will show in your writing.
2. Did you take direct action?
Maybe you landed an internship at a massive tech company, but spent most of your time shadowing employees. While you learned a lot, if you didn’t write your own code or build a functional feature, it’s probably not the best story to tell. Instead, choose the project where you wrote an algorithm or assembled hardware. A story rich in details about servo motors or debugging is much more interesting.
3. Has the experience influenced how you think?
Another way to look at this: Have you applied what you learned to something else? Transferring knowledge is a powerful sign of an important learning experience. For example, can you show how you applied the logic of unit testing to break down the planning of your school’s homecoming dance into smaller, executable chunks?
4. Have you grown from the experience?
Completing a technical project is a great achievement, but its true significance lies in how it changed you. Reflect on who you were before you built that manually-powered lamp for a village needing an alternative to oil lamps that produce toxic fumes. How did that process change your perspective or your character for the better?
By filtering your experiences through these questions, you will select a CS or tech essay topic that balances technical skill with the story of your growth.
