Engage Engineering Scholarship Essay

I heard about the Engage Engineering program through a connection at my current institution, Bowdoin College. He informed me that there was a Pinterest recruiter, whom also was a Bowdoin graduate, interested in applicants with my skill set for a perspective summer internship. I looked into more details about the program and became excited about the opportunity of working for an organization that values diversity in the computer science field.

I am currently in the process of declaring a major and minor. I have decided that I will be declaring a Computer Science major in conjunction with a Philosophy minor. Coming into college my intention was to become a computer science graduate, because I have a passion for technology and enjoy challenging myself in terms of computational problem solving. I, however, never envisioned myself as a philosophy minor, but
due to a wonderful professor of which I have taken two of her courses, she has inspired me to further pursue philosophy.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that I am the only African-American male which aspires to graduate a liberal arts institution with a computer science major and a philosophy minor, whom also comes from a disadvantaged socio-economic environment, and in his spare time plays lacrosse at a predominantly Caucasian college.
I have been fortunate enough to see and experience many things in my life, and I value those involvements. So in the event that I become a member of the Pinterest workforce, I plan on utilizing my diverse thoughts to provide a fresh outlook on solving every problem that crosses my path.

I have not specifically worked on a “coding project” in a group setting, but I have worked with a group to solve a coding task. During my research experience at Washington University in St. Louis, I worked with two other undergraduates to improve the efficiency of the machine learning algorithm built into the educational software Looking Glass. As a team we worked to improve the efficiency of their Python based code, and ultimately increased the percent efficiency of their machine learning output from 67% to
73%.

Just wanted to note that there is a typo in this Google Form, in the previous question, "into" I believe was supposed to be "intro". In regards to myself, I feel as though I have not been able to express my passion and curiosity for computer science. I have been fascinated with the technological space for as long as I can remember, and now that I have managed to earn the status of a student at great university, I have fully taken advantage of the resources available to me. I love self-teaching new coding languages and learning about the newest things happening in technology and I am excited to learn about how Pinterest can further expose me to computer science.

I believe that Pinterest is a great tool for learning and discovering new ideas, but I have found that many individuals that are minority, male, or do not have access to this resource have shied away from using Pinterest, how does Pinterest hope to tackle this problem in the future?