<p>What are some good/interesting extracurriculars for a high school freshman interested in computer science and math? I'm currently working on developing an application for the iPhone/iPad, but does anyone have any other ideas or know of anything? Thanks in advance. :)</p>
<p>Why not start a Comp Sci club? If AP Comp Sci is offered at your school, you can ask the teacher to be the adviser for it. Though you may want to wait until you’re in the class and know the teacher before asking.</p>
<p>Math club is a good choice too!</p>
<p>USACO 10char</p>
<p>Thank you all for the suggestions! However, I’m already in both comp sci club and math club, haha, and I don’t think I’m a good enough coder to do well in the USACO. Does anyone have any additional suggestions? I’m really just looking for random, maybe out of the box ideas to demonstrate my passion for computer science. :)</p>
<p>Zero Robotics. It’s a strategy-based programming competition that I did this year with a couple robotics kids I knew. Google it! You need an adviser, but it is really fun. Finals are at MIT.</p>
<p>(Context: I’m majoring in Math and CS at a university where the CS curriculum tends to be very theoretical.)</p>
<p>I think you’d be surprised how helpful math is in computer science. I’m pretty sure that the admissions department for computer science at my university looks mostly at how good the applicants are at math–you don’t really need much previous exposure to CS. There’s a CS weeder course at my school that’s essentially 4/5 math 1/5 CS, and every year some students end up dropping the CS major because of this class. I’m sure it depends on the university, but in my experience, if you’re good at math, it’ll make all your CS classes easier. I think that math extracurriculars are more beneficial than you might expect, even if you just want to do CS. The AMC competitions are a very good way to practice, and they if you do well in that series of competitions it looks very good on your application.</p>
<p>I would also second entering the USACO. That’s one thing I didn’t do in high school that I think would have been helpful. Even if you don’t think you’re good at coding, you’re only a freshman, and I’m pretty sure most people are bad at coding when they first start, so I think it would be worth a try.</p>
<p>One thing you might try to figure out in the next several years is whether you’re more interested in the practical side of CS (e.g. designing applications, coding, web programming, user interfaces) or on the more theoretical side (e.g. algorithms, complexity theory, artificial intelligence). In my opinion, the skills used in these two areas can be quite different, although there’s definitely overlap. The extracurriculars I suggested are more geared towards the theoretical side, since that’s what I’m more comfortable with. I think writing an iPhone app seems like a great way to get some experience with the more practical user-oriented side though.</p>
<p>I know this gets said a lot, but I wouldn’t spend too much time trying to impress colleges. If you excel in school and do things you enjoy, your application should be fine. I don’t think you need to do something creative just to “demonstrate” your passion–do it because you want to, even if no one else knew about it. When I was in high school, I thought this kind of advice was sort of silly–I didn’t want to jeopardize my chances at getting into top colleges. However, looking back on it, I realize that the things that I did just to impress colleges seem really pointless now, and did almost nothing to improve my application.</p>
<p>What is USACO?</p>