Can I show off a project when applying for a computer science major?

Applying to College
1

STATS: 32 act (33M,32R,31S,31E), URM, male, 3.85uw/4.45w, 21% rank (I know my rank sucks :frowning:

My intended major is computer science, and I want to maximize my chances of getting into the following colleges (descending priority):

USC
Carnegie Mellon (I know, I won’t get in)
Brown
Harvey Mudd (probably wont get in)
UIUC
UMD (instate)
UVA
CU Boulder

This summer, I decided to create a checkers program in visual basic (on a whim). It turned out to be more work than I expected, and it ended up at about 1200 lines of code - I’ve fixed every bug I came across. Would somehow showing this in my application help or hurt my chances? If it would help, what section of the common app would I put it in? And what should the link be to (should I have them download it or see the code in the webpage?)?

2

Bump

3

Unless a college specifically asks you to upload a project, etc, I think it is better to discuss the project in one of your essays and talk about the challenges, what you learned by doing it, how it influenced your decision to major in CS, etc. On the Brown application, for example, you could discuss this in the section of supplemental questions for STEM majors. Most adcoms aren’t really equipped to evaluate coding projects.

4

Thank you.