<p>I know that many colleges will accept student's art portfolios - I am wondering if I could do the same with some of my code. </p>
<p>I spend a good amount of time working on code for websites, small businesses, and personal projects - I know I can list these as a work experience / hobby of mine, but because I plan to major in Computer Science, do any of you think attaching a selection of my code would be a good idea? </p>
<p>Possibly sending the portfolio to a CompSci. Professor? (The code varies from C, PHP, Ruby, Python, if any of you know what those are, so maybe someone at my prospective colleges would be interested to view it) </p>
<p>I think that some of it could impress the right person and help me in some way. </p>
<p>What do you guys think? Will they care? Will anyone actually look at it? Am I delusional to think anyone cares about what I've created? :P</p>
<p>It won't hurt, as long as you're confident of your code's integrity and quality.</p>
<p>However, don't overload the admissions office. I'm not sure whether sending the portfolio directly to a professor would be the best option, however. Most professors are very busy with their work, and they might not view a random submission from a potential prefrosh - unless your work is something that's very advanced and stands out. </p>
<p>But it definitely won't hurt to try - just don't go overboard with it. I'm not sure whether the admissions office would be happy to receive 50+ pages of computer code. =p</p>
<p>Haha, thanks for the reply. I am working on the implementation of an encryption algo. now which might stand out, so I will probably include that if I finish up in time. </p>
<p>I'll try to limit the amount of code I send in to only the best ;). What format do you think they would be most likely to want it in? (Should I make up a pretty powerpoint to go with it, or should I just print out the raw code and send it in)</p>
<p>I think the raw code would be sufficient. (maybe in addition a CD that includes your code in computer form, for actually running)</p>
<p>Basically, I think what the admission office would do is that they would glance at your code, and if you're academically qualified for the school, they might send the code to a compsci prof for quality verification.</p>
<p>I doubt they would have the time to run your PPT. Might be more concise and time-efficient to just send a paragraph describing what your code does to the common lay person without compsci knowledge (eg. the adcoms) on top of your raw code. This way, the adcoms can quickly know what your code does without wasting too much of their time and they would also have your code to send to the profs if they want.</p>
<p>Use lots of comments in your code. And not just the "\int a is needed" or something. Oh, and before every function you should probably write what it takes and what it outputs. Eh, in other words, follow conventional standards.</p>
<p>I try to do that most of the time, Didnotfaillife - but I as most others slack on that a bit sometimes ;). Thanks for the advice, I'll remember to run through and make sure I have commented where necessary.</p>
<p>Do you guys know what they might find more interesting? I'm up to coding something new if it would be looked at as more advanced. Would an adcom want to see something cool + realistic, something to do with encryption that sounds more advanced (and probably is more advanced code), or something visual - maybe a game.</p>
<p>Also, I forgot to mention that I haven't taken any programming courses at school (learned it all on my own) so I think that's another good reason to show that I have experience. Do you guys think that getting Zend Certified ( Zend</a> PHP 5 Certification - ZCE - Zend.com ) would be a plus on my application?</p>