Christopher decided to apply to BigRedHacks 2017 on a whim one afternoon and was surprised to find out he had gotten in. He distinctly remembers sitting alone in the auditorium far from home and feeling terrified that he wouldn’t be able to find a team. He couldn’t imagine someone wanting a freshman who hadn’t taken a single CS class yet.
After attending the opening ceremony, he went to the team building session and was blown away by the excitement and kindness of the people in the room. Chris quickly found a team of three students and spent the weekend programming, cup stacking, meeting people, and learning new things. He has since attended 25 hackathons.
Hackathons were very eye-opening for Chris. Having started college at a school relatively close to where he grew up, he thought he would follow in his brother’s footsteps and major in finance. During his year at the school, he helped to organize CUhackit and realized that his true passion was computer science.
After his freshman year of college at Clemson University, Chris decided he wanted to transfer schools. He wrote about his hackathon experience in his application essay to transfer to Columbia and he is confident that he would not have been accepted without it.
He has gotten many professional opportunities due to the technical skills he developed at hackathons. Chris has interned at companies such as Tesla, Capital One, and Stripe. This summer, he will be interning at Lyft before starting his sophomore year at Columbia University. There, he will major in computer science and study algorithms, computational complexity, and various areas of theoretical computer science. Chris is interested in working at the intersection between CS and finance.
Chris’s favorite project was at HackTech 2019. The project was called Ride Caring, and it was a service you could use to call an Uber without mobile internet. The intention was to reduce drunk driving incidents in rural areas, where there is oftentimes cellular phone service with no mobile data.
Quick Facts
Christopher decided to apply to BigRedHacks 2017 on a whim one afternoon and was surprised to find out he had gotten in. He distinctly remembers sitting alone in the auditorium far from home and feeling terrified that he wouldn’t be able to find a team. He couldn’t imagine someone wanting a freshman who hadn’t taken a single CS class yet.
After attending the opening ceremony, he went to the team building session and was blown away by the excitement and kindness of the people in the room. Chris quickly found a team of three students and spent the weekend programming, cup stacking, meeting people, and learning new things. He has since attended 25 hackathons.
Hackathons were very eye-opening for Chris. Having started college at a school relatively close to where he grew up, he thought he would follow in his brother’s footsteps and major in finance. During his year at the school, he helped to organize CUhackit and realized that his true passion was computer science.
After his freshman year of college at Clemson University, Chris decided he wanted to transfer schools. He wrote about his hackathon experience in his application essay to transfer to Columbia and he is confident that he would not have been accepted without it.
He has gotten many professional opportunities due to the technical skills he developed at hackathons. Chris has interned at companies such as Tesla, Capital One, and Stripe. This summer, he will be interning at Lyft before starting his sophomore year at Columbia University. There, he will major in computer science and study algorithms, computational complexity, and various areas of theoretical computer science. Chris is interested in working at the intersection between CS and finance.
Chris’s favorite project was at HackTech 2019. The project was called Ride Caring, and it was a service you could use to call an Uber without mobile internet. The intention was to reduce drunk driving incidents in rural areas, where there is oftentimes cellular phone service with no mobile data.
Quick Facts
