General

  • Ambassadors from Cal State San Marcos
  • They have many past failures, but they still end up succeeding
  • Cal State San Marcos has a lot of local industries for internships
  • CSSM Has a lot of stairs
  • Also has many pathways
    • CS, Cybersec, physics, etc.
  • Easy to transition between majors, similar classes
  • They have a lot of clubs
    • Robotics club
    • Cybersecurity clubs
    • Physics club
  • Internships are easily available
    • local companies
    • tight knit communities/bonding
    • How to find
      • Check emails, go to campus events
    • avoid unpaid internships, go for paid
    • apply even if you feel unqualified
    • always ask for help
    • Summer interns ar good, peaks interest/allows for payment
    • Programs:
      • Summer Scholars Program (10 weeks, 6k)
      • Quantum Research PRogram (4 weeks, 1.5k)

College

  • Scholarships
    • Grants are government funded
    • scholarships are privately funded
    • It is on you to get scholarships
      • California Scholarship Foundation
    • Pay back 6 months after graduation
    • There are options for paying it back efficiently
    • Unsubsidized vs subsidized
      • Unsubsidized includes interest while you are at school
      • Subsidized doesn’t include interest while you are at school
  • Life after college
    • Go straight to next path (credential program or get paid at graduate programs, go to grad school)
    • You should get paid while getting your credentials/getting phd

Reflection

The panel opened many informative and interesting insights into college and the lifestyles of CSSM students. The speakers, John and Ashley, described how it would be like to go through a STEM related field at their college and gave us advice on how to proceed when we end up going into a STEM field at whichever college we end up at in the future. Being almost 100% certain that I want to go into CS as a major, I will definitely take their valuable insights to heart, and I hope that I can apply them to my future college life. The project we did with the toothbrush bugs at the end was really fun and interesting! It was a great way to end the panel, and I hope that we can do more projects like this in the future with other panels. Overall, this was a great panel, and I will definitely plan on attending more panels like this in the future!