UT-Austin Turing and Computer Science Major Short Answer Examples
A day at the office in Maninoa, Samoa
Computer Science is one of UT’s most popular majors. Universities nationwide have experienced exponential growth in their CS application numbers. Ten years ago, UT received less than a thousand CS applicants. Now, it wouldn’t surprise me if more than 6,000 applied for an admissions rate of less than 15%. For fall 2019, 729 CS applicants gained admission with 403 enrolling. Related majors like Electrical/Computer Engineering are similarly competitive.
Even academically perfect applicants with little to no STEM or related CS experiences in their resume will have trouble gaining admission. Competitive applicants will rank at least in the top 10% scoring a 1480 or higher on the SAT and also have extensive CS/STEM heavy resumes.
Students admitted to Turing Honors are often receiving offers from Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Princeton, and other most selective STEM programs nationwide, so if you don’t feel you’re competitive for those universities, it’s unlikely you’re competitive for Turing either. 90% of Valedictorian applicants will not gain admission to Turing. Consult this post for CS tips and advice.
Computer Science's extremely competitive nature means the essays are especially important. It’s one of the only ways you can distinguish yourself from a crowded applicant pool. Consider these seven examples below of UT-Austin’s first-choice major short answer and Turing essay examples to help articulate your fit for major even if you have few prior CS or STEM experiences.
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Computer Science Self-Taught
Computer science connects many disciplines beyond programming and computing. Machine learning requires calculus, and AP Physics introduced me to how vectors accurately calculate bullet-drop in a video-game. During AP US History, I wondered how the government or polling agencies could move beyond paper surveys and phone calls to gather more accurate data and analyze population shifts.
Some of my programming friends prefer to work alone, but I do best in groups. My favorite moments in school are History and English class group discussions, but my teachers throughout school always tell me we can’t have them very often. Learning happens with exchange and dialog and not rote memorization and emphasis on testing. Moreover, a few students often dominate conversations that subsequently veer off-topic and spawn unproductive arguments.
I’m a debate captain at school, so I wanted to address a lack of classroom discussion civility by creating an online forum www.organizeddebate.com. It’s unique because posts require a logical structure: claim, evidence, implication, and consideration of counterarguments. It also has functionality for teachers to grade students based on participation and effectiveness. My English and history teachers are beta testing by assigning homework and structuring in-class discussions to bridge the online world.
One challenge competing in robotics is identifying and building alliances with other squads. We have limited data, so there’s no way to know their strengths and weaknesses and if a partnership offers a competitive advantage. We created a website that provides scouting forms that automatically analyze tournament reports and offers partner recommendations. I currently serve as project lead.
However, even when I’m not the one coding, computer science allows me to empower others. Working at CodeNinjas, a children’s programming learning center, I’ve designed a curriculum for Java, Python, and full-stack web-design. One of my twelve-year-old students, Nathan Ndisang, is creating a forum for his church. After going through my Python curriculum, Joshua Nathan, who’s only eleven, decided that he wanted to use Python to analyze twitter posts so that he could prove more people were mentioning his favorite game, Fortnite, than my favorite, League of Legends.
Commentary
This is one of my favorite Major short answers regardless of the proposed major. If you had a late start to computer science or related activities like robotics or engineering, it might be possible to leverage your other activities and interests that may not seem to obviously relate to studying computer science. I appreciate that this applicant examines the underlying themes between their interests and connects different domains.
Their approach is also a subtle indictment of the computer science stereotype - introverted, solitary, avoiding public speaking, focuses narrowly on STEM at the expense of breadth in other topics. Emphasis on their communication, critical thinking skills, and broad interests and activities asserts that they will bring unique perspectives to classroom discussions. They also explicitly link speech and debate, for example, with how technical literacy and computer science help contribute to the debate community. Likewise for their discussion-based classes.
Their application as a whole was also an interesting experiment because they emphasized being a generalist rather than the more common specialists who have deep commitments to STEM but little else. They ranked in the top 2% and scored a 36 on the ACT and gained admission to UTCS early, but ended up getting waitlisted at a lot of universities. We agree that we wouldn’t have changed the approach at all, and that he submitted his best applications, but it raises larger questions about whether admissions committees really want curious, well-rounded leaders or if they prefer students who maximize their STEM activities that may or may not be genuinely interested in their activities.
Since they also applied for Turing, they know they have another 500 or so words to discuss their resume and independent STEM projects. Concluding with a discussion of their part-time job teaching young learners coding sets up their Turing essay featured next.
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Turing: Self-Taught
By eighth grade, I created a text-based game that let players explore Algeasia, the setting of the Inheritance Cycle, my favorite novels. I shared my efforts on “Will Eide’s blog,” but nobody ever visited because I didn’t realize it was a desktop HTML file and not a live webpage. It was probably for the best, though. In hindsight, my two-dozen Minecraft mods and fantasy-novel themed games were like rusted out rat-rods pieced together with code from dodgy forums. Unlike some of my friends, neither of my parents were programmers, and I didn’t have middle-school computer science classes.
I’m mostly self-taught. When I was 11 years old, my Dad made me burn hundreds of his old CDs onto iTunes. Tinkering in iTunes led me to its audio visualizer. It fascinated me to literally see music. However, I noticed an issue. The developers didn’t make the visualizer display an image of what I perceive music to actually look like.
Sophomore year summer, I used JavaFX, Java Media Framework (JMF), and Java Sound to create my own audio visualizer. Sound is really just air pressure on your eardrum proportional to the movement of a speaker, itself proportional to the wire voltage. Voltage translates to application bites that transform into sleek graphics.
JMF allowed me to extract the audio data. Java Sound unpacked the data into bytes. A processing thread accumulated and processed those bytes then wrapped the results into displayed JavaFX objects. Literally hundreds of hours and thousands of lines of code later, music appeared as I perceived.
I worked primarily in Java during my freshman and sophomore CS classes; however, I explored other languages in an “independent study” CS class junior year. I already knew HTML, CSS, and basic JavaScript from self-study, so I pursued full-stack capabilities by learning AngularJS, PHP, and MySQL. I created a login system that stored browser cookies for persistent-login, included a password reset feature by email, and allowed users to change their account details.
Second semester, I focused on automation with python. Using twython, a wrapper of the Twitter API, along with the Open Weather Map API and the PIL library, I created a twitter-bot that posted the weather in Katy, my hometown, every four hours as an image. Additionally, using the Reddit API, I made a bot that analyzed subreddit comments for a certain keyword and then processed the surrounding text with the WNAffect library to identify the general sentiment of the comment. I calibrated the bot with the names of politicians to gain a quantitative, visual pulse on hot-button issues.
My Computer Science experiences currently serve me well in my job at CodeNinjas where I oversee creating curriculum for Java, Python, and full-stack web-design classes. It allows me to be a unique value add because my knowledge means I can expand our client-base to older students. Before, we catered mainly to younger learners. Now, with the new curriculum, we have adults taking classes alongside middle schoolers.
Commentary
A common question applicants ask is if UT cares about MOOCs, Coursera, independent studies and projects, or activities and interests otherwise not. Merely having these on your resume doesn’t do too much just as any activity on a resume doesn’t necessarily speak for itself. It’s your responsibility as an applicant to communicate to your reviewers how you’ve gone about your activities, why you explore your varied curiosities, and any barriers to participation you may have encountered along the way.
It’s one thing to have parents with STEM graduate degrees that nudge you towards programming and robotics before you can walk. For some applicants, it’s quite obvious that they’ve had access to a ton of resources and privileges from an early age. Of course, students in resource-rich environments get credit for pursuing and seeing through their commitments, but it’s something altogether to come from a less technologically literate or professionally networked family.
Teaching yourself with few or any resources at home or school looks more impressive and signals to your reviewers that you have internal motivation and curiosity for its own sake rather than padding your resume with fluff. In another essay, they share how their dad sent them to a local programming workshop with a Windows 3.1 book. Moreover, “Even in high school, I was a programming late-bloomer. I took AP Computer Science A my freshman year, but I didn’t know about programming competitions and robotics until my sophomore year was nearly over.”
Nevertheless, they’ve created a wide variety of personal projects across a variety of areas for no other reason than it interests them. Another trait that stands out is their willingness to identify real-world problems and craft solutions. We thought they had a decent chance of gaining admission to Turing given its extreme selectivity, but it ended up not working out. STEM programs would be well-served by students like this.
Math and Logical Reasoning
I didn’t know what “reasoning” meant when I was five. That didn’t stop my mom and me from working through puzzles in a book called “Reasoning Skills.” I relished seeking solutions to math problems with no actual numbers. In first grade, I begged my father to teach me algebra. The following year, I became a “grandmaster” in abacus, an ancient calculating tool. I could add and multiply five-digit numbers in my head. On car trips, my older sister and her friends and I practiced multiplication tables. They offered me many digit numbers to add in my head in a “race against the calculator” on their phones. Most times, I answered accurately and more quickly.
My passion and excitement for applied math and computer science stems from the potential they have to solve countless issues For example, as MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson explained, the best chess players in the world are neither humans nor computers, but teams of humans and machines working together because humans can see beyond raw strategic calculations to identify potentially more creative moves. Our smartphones are an example of this human-machine cooperation model.
Emerging technologies and interfaces apply to numerous industries, medicine, and even how societies are organized. As the world becomes more technology-focused, the best way to move forward is to find solutions for humans to work with computers, not against them. I want to pursue computer science at UT Austin because it provides countless opportunities for me to fuel my interests through clubs like Women in Computer Science(WiCS), Freetail Hackers, and Code Orange. UT has more resources than local North Carolina universities, so I’m excited to find new applications of computer science to solve modern problems.
Commentary
Contrasted with the generalist applicant above, this highly specialized student has myriad computer science and deep STEM commitments. Throughout their application, they played to these strengths although they dedicated their Diversity short answer to sharing their varied non-STEM interests. Like the first example, they examine underlying themes and methods of reasoning that connect their early curiosities to their current interests and activities. Another effective approach is supplying thorough statements sharing why they are applying to UT, particularly as an out-of-state applicant.
In hindsight, I see potential areas for changing content between this Major short answer and their Turing response below. One challenge of applying to Turing is you have to divide up and decide which content you want to place where. Turing reviewers will see all of your applications, but regular admissions reviewers won’t see the Turing essay. That became consequential here because, despite ranking top 10% with a 1520 and state/national level accomplishments, they did not gain admission.
My advice moving forward is to lead with your strongest STEM and CS activities and interests in the regular admissions first-choice major short answer rather than saving it for the Turing essay, particularly if your academics are anything less than perfect. Their Leadership short answer eventually covered some of their STEM activities, but I see now a more optimal strategy would be to move some of their Turing essay below to be in the Major short answer and substituting some of the “softer” analysis to provide commentary to their STEM activities in the Turing essay.
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Turing: Math and Logical Reasoning
Bright sparks flying off the chop saw captured my imagination when I stepped into my sister’s robotics workspace at the age of four. Dust clouds and wooden scraps mingled with little robots racing around the miniature racetrack. Summer after sixth grade, I enrolled in a robotics course at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth summer camp (CTY).
The course challenged me like nothing I had ever encountered before, as it utilized both my skills in mathematics and my creativity to build unique, practical solutions. For four years, I continued taking enrichment classes at CTY, such as inductive and deductive reasoning, mathematical cryptology, data structures and algorithms, and fundamentals of computer science. I also continued my involvement with robotics when I joined my high school’s FIRST robotics team freshman year as the only female programmer.
These activities supplemented my education with material I could have never learned at school, even while taking classes like programming and AP Computer Science Principles. I also took classes online for open source software development methods and self-studied AP Computer Science A in addition to my course load of eight classes my sophomore year. This year, I’m taking multivariable calculus at the local university, NC State.
Last year, I won the 2018 NC STEM High School Student of the year award presented by NC Science, Mathematics and Technology Education Center(SMT), an initiative of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. The NC STEM Center is a joint effort of the University of North Carolina, NC SMT, and the North Carolina State Board of Education, and is sponsored by companies like Cisco, Google, and Battelle. I was the third person to ever receive this award since the establishment of the NC STEM STEMMy awards.
Junior year, I took AP Chemistry, where I wrote a research paper on chemical computing for my final project. It entailed creating a new type of central processing unit with chemical reactions that could form a more secure and cost-effective computer, and possibly form a new kind of artificial intelligence.
Additionally, this summer, I enrolled in the Program in Algorithmic and Combinatorial Thinking (PACT), which is partially funded by the National Science Foundation and hosted at Princeton University. I examined the mathematical theoretical foundations and precepts of computer science, including induction proofs, graph theory, and reinforcement learning. The research I did in my chemistry class and the concepts I learned at PACT sparked my interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning because of how advances in those fields can benefit humanity.
I have also strived to learn more and build my skills in other applications of computer science by joining my school’s CyberPatriots competitive cybersecurity team. As a Turing Scholar, I would love to continue my research by participating in research groups like the AI and Data Mining Laboratories, the Virtual Reality Lab, or the Networking Research Lab. I am especially interested in Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning courses, and it would delight me to work with Professor Mooney and Professor Dhillon
Commentary
Their approach here is to supply as much detail as possible about their varied commitments and accomplishments. They cover thoroughly their extensive studies that go beyond the traditional high school curriculum. They took over a half dozen advanced and specific topics in computer science through CTY and even enrolled in the next calculus sequence at their local four-year university. It’s fairly rare to see such an extensive list of coursework, but they began around age 12, gaining a head start over many other students like the one from our first example.
It’s also clear that they possess an intrinsic interest and curiosity in their interests and hobbies, notably by citing their AP chemistry research paper that looks at the intersection of chemical engineering and artificial intelligence. It’s also impressive that they self-studied for AP CS despite having a full course load. They’ve also done a nice job incorporating Why Turing statements at the end of their essay. If they had ranked top 2% scoring a 1550+, I think they would have had a good shot at Turing. Although they didn’t gain admission to UTCS/Turing, they were admitted into Illinois, which is a similarly strong and competitive program.
Computer Science with Math Focus
I gravitated towards Math early on in elementary school. I love solving logic puzzles, and I enjoyed tinkering with numbers and data. I appreciate that arithmetic has defined solutions with no abstraction. It’s no accident that my favorite sport is baseball. I may not have been our best player, but I knew all of our batting averages and which relief pitchers matched up best against opposing batters.
For my junior league teams, my teammates and coaches came to me with questions about statistics and routes to the playoffs. I follow the MLB avidly and presently try to watch at least some of every playoff game even though my favorite team, the Red Sox, failed to make the playoffs despite leading the league in batting average and runs scored.
My data-driven and analytical mindset made me interested in math tournaments and LEGO robotics throughout elementary school. As a part of the 6th-grade enrichment class, I competed in my first technology competition. I won the competition by creating a calculator on the computer using JavaScript from self-taught Codecademy and Khan Academy modules.
My initial success gave me more confidence and skills to take formal computer science courses. I’ve maximized the number of AP and IB computer science courses at my school. My favorite is the final level, IB Computer Science HL, which focuses on software development. I like that this course teaches us to combine both front end and back end programming to come up with a usable final product.
Looking at my interests and aptitude, both Math and Computer Science are very logical fields for me to pursue. Math provides me a foundation to solve problems while Computer Science allows me to use the theoretical knowledge and analytical framework to create tangible solutions.
Commentary
This applicant has an extensive and deep interest in mathematics. They’ve been tutoring since seventh grade and started a successful summer camp running for four summers now to prepare students for AIME and various math exams/competitions, which they discuss in their Essay A. Their challenge is to connect their interests in math with their aptitude for computer science.
It’s reasonable to think they could have applied to Applied Mathematics or Computational Engineering, but their admissions journey is a good example of how you don’t necessarily need to specialize in CS from an early age. It’s okay and perhaps preferable to pivot in college towards related studies. Their academics were strong, so they determined it was worth the gamble to apply to the more selective computer science program than similar majors.
They communicate effectively their fit for computer science by referencing childhood interests and recent hobbies that may not appear on the resume. Connecting their love for baseball with sports analytics bridges the gap between math and computer science to express an interest in data analytics. Another effective technique is to reference a favorite class or teacher to express an understanding that they have some idea of the various disciplines and differences between hardware and software. That proposes one possible major (computer engineering) and dimisses it for computer science’s emphasis on software.
Turing: Computer Science and Math
Throughout elementary school, I competed in about ten math tournaments every year, including some prestigious regional ones like the Rocket City Junior Math Mania and Vestavia Hills High School Math competitions. I consistently placed in the top five, even when having to compete in a higher grade level. Excited for a new challenge, in middle school I competed in the state-level MATHCOUNTS competitions. In seventh grade, I placed 9th in the entire state of Alabama, and our team ranked second overall. After moving to Texas, I placed 24th at state with a score that would have put me first in Alabama.
In high school, I have complimented all my AP-level coursework in Computer Science with participation in UIL Computer Science. I attended multiple area competitions organized by high schools and tech companies like ARM. My favorite part is the hands-on rounds because I enjoy solving code prompts in teams. Problems ranged from simple ASCII art to creating maze traversal code using JAVA.
In preparation for the Round Rock Invitational, Mr. Mayfield, the IB Computer Science teacher and UIL Computer Science sponsor, would always give us code challenges in class that were formatted similar to yet were much more difficult than what we would see at UIL. The adrenaline rush of trying to solve all the problems in time and hoping that we have the correct answer always was an exciting moment. Our training and teamwork earned second place.
This past summer, I completed an internship with Longhorn Products, a manufacturer of data center infrastructure equipment. One challenge that the company faces is to test and ship new custom intelligent power distribution units rapidly. To expedite testing, I utilized Python and BASH scripts to create a tool that would auto-generate a distinct .ini file for every configuration. Another notable project involved a cross-reference tool that would take any of the existing 350+ standard configurations and provide an equivalent solution on their next-generation platform. Interning at Longhorn was a valuable experience because it introduced me to computer science theories applied to real-world problems.
My AP coursework, extracurriculars, and work experience motivate me to further explore the field of computer science with a stronger focus on areas where math and CS intersect. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Mining are all fields that interest me because I will utilize my algebra and probability knowledge to create algorithms.
With the only school in the country that offers Computational Engineering coursework at the undergraduate level, UT offers innumerable interdisciplinary opportunities that bring together Computer Science and Applied Math. One of the professors that I would be very interested in working with is Dr. Chandrajit Bajaj because research seems to be heavily focused on algorithms and computational mathematics.
Commentary
This response is a straightforward way to address the Turing honors prompt requiring you to discuss your aptitude and demonstrated interests in computer science. Following a continued discussion of their mathematics precocity, the second paragraph demonstrates how they’ve explored their CS interests in school with a quick reference to area competitions. They expand upon one competition to highlight their teamwork and leadership and what it is about competing that they enjoy and not just about how they placed.
The next paragraph discusses the roles, responsibilities, and skills developed in a relevant internship. Identifying a challenge and how they proposed a solution demonstrates that their experience was substantive and not merely something to put on their resume. It also helps them further establish the connection between mathematical concepts and computer science theories to address real-world problems, which provides a nice transition to their next paragraph about curriculum interests. Concluding with a discussion of related courses in Computational Engineering demonstrates that they have a solid understanding of what they want out of their UT studies.
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Minecraft Red Stone and Other Interests
My first-choice major is Computer Science. I want to start my own company that develops new technologies for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics. A degree in computer science is my first step before potentially pursuing post-graduate studies and further specialization. My dream job is working at X Development or Boston Dynamics, which contributes to projects like Google Brain’s Deep Learning AI and the quadruped robot BigDog.
I started early and wrote my first program in fourth grade. Writing Hello World was much more interesting than playing video games and watching YouTube. The next year, I completed a programming camp at the University of Houston, where my programming journey truly began. It didn’t occur to me I was the only elementary schooler in attendance until an older student mentioned it. I made a three-button browser – Home, Back, Forward using Visual Basic Express – much to the pride of my parents who thought of me as some kind of child prodigy.
In middle school, I started playing online multiplayer games. Redstone is an advanced concept in Minecraft, one of my favorite video games. Playing Minecraft is like painting with crayons while Redstone is like mixing your own paints and experimenting with different canvas. Few people go through the trouble of modifying their palettes to suit different needs. Redstone allows users to manipulate the game and its rules through advanced programming. I utilize Turing-complete machines and advanced circuits/machinery with logic gates. Mixing gaming with tinkering enhanced my love for programming.
In High School, I continued my Computer Science journey through the robotics club, UIL competitions, my independent study project, and my internship at CPFD software that I discussed in Essay A.
My favorite part of visiting UT Austin was touring the Gates Dell Complex. I felt at home talking with CS students and attending a lecture. Speaking with Prof Calvin Lin was very exciting because I can visualize doing the same work. I intend to join the Austin Villa robotic soccer team because it combines my interests in robotics and AI. I recently learned about the Theoretical Computer Science and Operating Systems, which I hope to explore further.
Commentary
This applicant takes a linear and straightforward approach to address the prompt by opening with their proposed major, a highlight of professional goals, and a brief introduction of why they’re pursuing CS. Identifying and discussing your dream job if you have one is an effective way to share more about your ambitions and interests. They proceed chronologically with when they initially developed their interests and specific ways they explored them from elementary through to high school.
I learned a lot about the Minecraft mod platform Redstone to help this student communicate what it is and why it’s a relatively complex and uncommon independent project. Our challenge was to communicate to a lay reader its importance, so we chose a metaphor. “Playing Minecraft is like painting with crayons while Redstone is like mixing your own paints and experimenting with different canvas. Few people go through the trouble of modifying their palettes to suit different needs.”
If you’re using technical jargon or discussing an otherwise obscure topic regardless of the subject, constructing metaphors and analogies can be a very effective way to make complex topics more digestible and relatable. Their second to last paragraph flags what they will eventually discuss in their Turing essay and references what they already shared in Essay A. It isn’t necessary to do so, but it can help signpost your reader where they’ve been and what they can expect for future prompts. Finally, they’ve done a nice job identifying a professor that piques their interests and other resources for why UT is their best fit.
Matlab Mentor
“Matlab can perform the Row-Echelon Operation instantly with a single command: ‘rref’.”
My ears perked up. Gilbert Strang mentioned an unfamiliar word. Who is Matlab, and how can he convert a matrix into a reduced row-echelon form so fast? Anytime Strang mentioned something new, I defaulted to my mentor, Tom. He is a brilliant physics major who helped me earn a perfect score on the ACT. We met every week at a nearby Starbucks.
After I finished my ACT, he asked if I wanted to keep meeting for free to discuss advanced math concepts. We moved to Panera, where undistracted from ACT minutiae, we lost time sidetracked on our favorite math and physics topics, like vector spaces and orthogonality. Tom emphasized the importance of linear algebra, so I spent my junior year summer scrutinizing over Gilbert Strang’s online linear algebra courses. I enjoyed self-paced learning because I could accelerate past familiar concepts or spend more time with more complicated themes.
I’ve also learned vicariously through Tom’s journey. He earned a physics degree from Notre Dame but struggled to find employment despite its rigor and prestige. He was surprised to learn that prominent firms were less interested in hiring business majors and more so those with critical thinking and computation skills.
Last summer, I enrolled in a summer robotics course that provided a Python crash course. I liked computer science, but I didn’t think it was an advanced topic worth studying until I heard Strang mention “Matlab.”
Tom explained that Matlab is a computer program that Strang uses in his linear algebra class to store and solve matrices, among many other advanced applications. Coincidentally, Matlab uses Python, our robotics team’s programming language.
My love of physics, math, and computer science lead Tom to introduce me to a new topic: quantum computing. We explored IBM Q, an online resource that gives free access to IBM’s prototype quantum processors and explains quantum topics. UT-Austin is a quantum computing pioneer, especially under Scott Aaronson. Fully utilizing IBM Q in Prof. Aaronson’s classes would be like a dream. Eventually, I intend to apply for the Integrated 5-Year BS CS/MS CSEM Program.
Commentary
I like this example because, although the student had few STEM or CS activities on their resume, they’ve demonstrated their fit for major by expanding upon an influential mentor and independent studies. If you have a thin STEM resume, it will probably be necessary to cite some other life experiences to demonstrate your fit for computer science. It isn’t like they’re applying totally uninformed.
Spending half of their essay discussing their relationship with Tom and how he helped guide the applicant towards developing a late interest in computer science suggests that they will make their most of a bachelor’s in CS. They’re applying as an OOS applicant, so they identify curriculum unique to UT to help demonstrate that they’re making an informed decision to apply. Although they didn’t gain admission to UT, they were admitted to Illinois and Tulane.