81–90 of 91 posts
Excellent and I hope you acquired Proxima Nova legally. If not, better make that right.
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I second this. Summers should not be spent studying for the SAT. Also, a good internship will look much better on a college app than a few extra points.
Also, a good internship will look much better on a college app than a few extra points. Sadly, nope, unless you're applying to a high-end private school. I know the UC system doesn't care at all about your work experience, and even if you founded a company when you were in HS, that would at best be worth 150-300 SAT points. Now that I think about it, it's scary that I still remember this.
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I think I should study for the SAT, because I'll only be giving up one of my summers (I can intern during my Freshman, Junior and Senior summers)
I'm looking to go to Stanford upon graduating high school (like you also expressed an interest to do), and from what I have heard, they definitely value SAT scores very high, but if there isn't anything besides that (like your development/internship experience), they honestly don't care much about your scores. And also, I'm pretty sure the SAT takes place senior year, unless of course you are going to be using your g…
Stanford, MIT, and the Ivies see the SAT as more of a threshold score. I.E. there's not much difference between a 2300 and a 2400. As long as you have above a certain range, you should be fine. The SAT doesn't make or break people.
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Like I said, I agree with his conclusion that lots of kids still watch cartoons, just pointing out that his knowing a few kids who do isn't proof of this. To put it into HN cliché phrasing: the plural of anecdote is not data, even if the anecdote matches the data.
How is what yeukhon stated anything other than an anecdote?
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> Interning is a way for me to use my skills in the outside world versus just working at home. > working at home. > working
...I realize I kind of sound like a dick there. Good on you for the internship and all, but if you think of it as work you're gonna burn yourself out. Ah who am I kidding you're not gonna listen to any of this, lol. You'll figure it out on your own, I guess, and then take a 4 year break from programming, partying and doing a lot of drugs. And then come back to it after realizing that you liked programming the whole t…
Hey Shalin, wonderful to hear from you. It's lovely to see your passion and focus. I'm curious to hear about your peers. Do you have a group of friends your age that you hang out with, or do you spend most of your time with older people? Also, random, but what kind of music do you listen to?
I usually listen to the billboard playlist while coding. http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100
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I had an engineering internship when I was 14. Definitely missed out on whatever kids my age were doing that summer, but I was too much of a nerd to even have wanted to do anything else. I think it worked out for the better, and I hope it does for Shalin too. To Shalin: Kill those SAT's and get into the school of your dreams. It is absolutely worth it.
I'm currently 17 and have done internships for both of the previous summers. Although getting experience was both edifying and fun, there was still a huge opportunity cost. I would have preferred to spend a bit more of my summer indulging my personal interests. Although it was certainly a great experience, I'm unsure about whether or not I'll look back in ten years and wish that I had taken advantage of my summers. A…
College is a great idea because it's entirely possible his interests will change in school (I almost switched majors like 3 times) and for everything other than programming, college is still a prerequisite.
Edit: Oh when I was 17 I also thought applicants were super prepared and it was intimidating. In reality most kids at elite schools didn't have a scary level of preparation, and a lot of those kids with perfect resumes never got in. Admissions are still a mystery to me.
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I had an engineering internship when I was 14. Definitely missed out on whatever kids my age were doing that summer, but I was too much of a nerd to even have wanted to do anything else. I think it worked out for the better, and I hope it does for Shalin too. To Shalin: Kill those SAT's and get into the school of your dreams. It is absolutely worth it.
I'm currently 17 and have done internships for both of the previous summers. Although getting experience was both edifying and fun, there was still a huge opportunity cost. I would have preferred to spend a bit more of my summer indulging my personal interests. Although it was certainly a great experience, I'm unsure about whether or not I'll look back in ten years and wish that I had taken advantage of my summers. A…
> I'm unsure about whether or not I'll look back in ten years and wish that I had taken advantage of my summers.
The grass is always greener on the other side. Most high school and college students who did not do internships/research over their summers regret not doing something more productive/useful during their HS summers.
There are a variety of reasons to go to college, not all of which deal with academics and vocation. The social aspect is not to be underestimated.
It's amazing that the culture can be so different. Going to college in a European country, I never did an internship. I barely even worked summer jobs, I did maybe one summer's worth of work spread out over a few years, just to get some money. Even college summers were spent LANing with friends, fishing, watching movies, swimming, traveling, reading, some recreational coding etc. Just enjoying the summer, not worryin…
>I can't see how it helps much. Seems mostly like a way for Google et al to fish for young talent before they graduate.
There is tremendous value in summer internships. You get to "test out" companies to work for after graduation. You get to learn a ton about actually using technologies in production and/or at scale. You get to learn from engineers who have years of industry experience. You get to work on technologies you would otherwise never work with (e.g. big data) by yourself. By the time you graduate, you will already have 9 months work experience, rather than 0, which makes starting a startup a more feasible option than before. I'm a little bewildered as to why you (or the culture in Europe?) find these internships pointless.
If what you say about the culture in Europe is true, I find this to actually be a competitive advantage for students/companies in the US.
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I second this. Summers should not be spent studying for the SAT. Also, a good internship will look much better on a college app than a few extra points.
Also, a good internship will look much better on a college app than a few extra points. Sadly, nope, unless you're applying to a high-end private school. I know the UC system doesn't care at all about your work experience, and even if you founded a company when you were in HS, that would at best be worth 150-300 SAT points. Now that I think about it, it's scary that I still remember this.
Yes, public schools care more about standardized numbers (SAT/GPA), but you don't need a very high SAT score (in strictly relative terms to private schools) to get into a top public school, even the top UCs.
Put it this way: An elite public school might weight SATs 40%, but the median SAT will only be 2000 anyway.
Whereas an elite private might have a median of 2150 with a weighting of 20%.
The fact is that public schools will give more weight to SATs, but the threshold for what above average for admission is already lower.