(electronic dance music)
- Hi, I'm Stephanie.
I am a senior here at Boston University.
I'm majoring in Computer Science
with a minor in Statistics and Dance.
Outside of class,
I'm the president of our Dance Theatre Group here
which is the largest dance group on campus.
I'm involved in a sorority here as well
and just kind of hang out with friends
and see Boston in general.
So a typical day in my life here at BU
would be I would wake up around eight a.m.,
make some breakfast, eat it,
go to class at around 11 or noon.
I have class pretty much the whole day,
grab some lunch in the middle of that at the GSU.
Then I'd probably eat some dinner afterwards
and then head to a rehearsal from seven to nine-ish.
Get back to my dorm room, study hard away,
and then, go to bed at around midnight or so,
and do it all again the next day.
- Tell me a little bit about your major at BU.
- Yeah, so I major in Computer Science.
There's five different groups of classes
that you have to take.
The first three are just like
your general requirements for CS,
so like Intro to Programming, Data Structures,
Algorithms, things like that,
and then, from there, there's a lot of different tracks
of different elective courses
that you can take going onward.
- Have you decided which path you're gonna go down?
- So it's not, so you don't have to
actually choose your concentration
in order to do Computer Science.
So I haven't picked a specific one.
I've kind of been going into more like computer graphics
and linear algebra and that type of route as of now,
but, and software development on the side,
so we'll see.
- [Interviewer] How would you describe
the academic culture at BU generally?
Is it competitive?
Is it cooperative?
- At first, it's definitely competitive,
so like the general requirement courses at the beginning,
when you first start, they're really large, you know?
It's like pretty competitive.
There's like curves that work towards
the way that the class is structured.
So like if a lot of people do really well, then,
and a few don't do that well,
then obviously, that will hurt your score,
but I definitely think once you get past like,
the first competitive aspect,
it's very, very open.
All the professors have office hours,
and if you go to office hours,
you'll find that they're, like, extremely really helpful,
and they really do care,
but I think it's just about making the extra effort
at the beginning.
- Gotcha, so you also have minors,
is that correct? - Yeah.
- So tell me about those.
- So I have a Statistics minor,
which is just six extra courses of statistics.
That kinda just came about because I took statistics classes
and then really like it and had space for it,
so why not? - Right.
- And then, I also have my Dance minor,
which is 20 extra credits.
It's like six dance classes,
and then, some history and aesthetics.
Academic dance classes as well.
- Gotcha, so how do you see all of this sorta
playing into, like, your future career goals?
- Statistics and CS definitely go hand-in-hand, I think.
Definitely going towards like a data science,
things like that, data analytics.
Those types of fields are definitely things
that I'm very interested in.
As far as dance, I think it's just something that I knew
that I was gonna keep up throughout undergrad,
and so, why not get a minor in it
if I'm gonna be spending all that time doing it anyways?
- So what initially drew you to computer science
and statistics?
- Computer science, I actually,
so I came into BU undecided.
- Okay. - I came in.
I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
I thought maybe, like, International Relations,
just because that program's really strong here,
and then, I actually did a summer course in South Africa,
which was web development, and that really drew me to it,
and then, I came back here
and I actually met a lot of CS students
that were really passionate about what they were doing,
and that just made me want to be a Computer Science major.
As far as Statistics, my dad is actually a statistician.
- Gotcha. - So I think
I definitely took that class kind of as like a,
an ode to my dad,
but I think I just,
I really have enjoyed how they work hand-in-hand,
and also, just, I think, just data,
I think, drives so much of today's world,
and I think that's really interesting
and something I want to keep, continue on in.
- [Interviewer] Right.
So what are extracurriculars like at BU?
- There's a lot of them.
So we actually have this thing called SPLASH
at the beginning of the semester,
and all the different clubs go on campus
into Nickerson Field, like the soccer field,
and all the freshmen come,
and they basically just like,
frantically sign up for a bunch of email lists
of things that they might be interested in.
I think we have, like, over 200 clubs.
- Oh, geez. - We have so many
different things, you have - Right.
- like, so if you, if there's something you wanna do,
you can find it instantly,
and I think once you're in an extracurricular,
it's really easy to like become more involved
and like really build your community through that.
- So what has your extracurricular journey
at BU looked like?
- So I actually joined the dance extracurricular group
right when I came here,
and then, within, like, a year, I was on the E-Board,
and since I've been president for two years now of it,
so it's very like driven into one group,
and I think, just because I found like,
the thing that I loved,
the extracurricular that I loved instantly,
but I also know so many other people that have like,
joined, like, five different groups at one time
and then, like, kind of veered off into one or two
that they really found passion within,
but yeah, mine specifically has been pretty great.
It's been like where my best friends have become, come from,
just because we spend so much time together doing things,
but yeah.
- So tell me more about your group.
- So we're the largest dance group on campus.
We perform in a semesterly show.
We have student choreograph pieces,
so basically, how it works is you'll, like,
audition for someone's specific piece,
rehearse weekly at the same time for a couple hours,
and then, we put on a fully, like, professional show.
We work with a lighting designer
to figure out things for our dances.
We have three faculty advisors
that kind of advise us through the choreographic process,
so we actually meet with them
three times throughout the semester,
just checking up with our pieces and things like that.
Yeah, it's really great,
and we also have different master classes every single week
from different professionals throughout the community
of all different genres of dance.
- So you have also studied abroad at BU?
Well, I guess away from BU.
- [Stephanie] Yeah (giggles).
- Tell me about that.
- Yeah, so I studied abroad last fall
in New Zealand, in Auckland.
It was wonderful.
I got to do an internship there actually.
It was at a, yeah, biotech company,
and they were all really, really dope people,
and it was just like a really great environment.
New Zealand is definitely different from Boston.
It's like way more relaxed, I feel like.
- Mm-hmm. - So it's nice to,
like, be in nature and get to hike all the time
and explore, like, a completely different country.
- Right. - Yeah.
I miss New Zealand.
- Very neat, do a lot of BU students study abroad?
- Yeah, a huge amount have studied abroad.
I think, like, the majority of my friends studied abroad
because we have so many different programs.
Like, a really common one is going to London
for communication and things like that,
but we have, I think, in over 40 countries,
we have different programs.
- [Interviewer] So how do you balance, like,
extracurriculars with a pretty big academic load?
- I think it just all comes down to prioritizing
and really, time management.
Most of the people I know at BU
are involved in extracurriculars and academia
mostly because they got into BU
because they were both involved in academia
and extracurriculars in high school,
so I think just continuing that on,
but it's definitely, it's definitely hard sometimes
because the workload of college is different
and not something that you're used to in high school,
but I think just like really prioritizing
what needs to be done on a certain day
and like, actually sitting down,
and when you're sitting down, focusing on what you're doing
instead of being distracted.
So these are the Student Villages.
This is Student Village 1.
This is where I live.
They're really, really nice apartment buildings.
I live in a single with three other roommates,
so we have a kitchen and a common area.
- Why did you decide to come to BU?
- I think the first thing that drew me to BU
was definitely being in Boston,
first of all, was the biggest aspect,
and then, the second part was
just all the different opportunities for, like, traveling
and, like, the size of it.
Even though it's still a public, er, a private university,
there's still a lot of students
and a lot of, like, clubs and opportunities,
and especially the study abroad program, I think,
attracted me the most out of anything specifically,
just to have the opportunity to study abroad for a semester
and have so many options.
I think there's like 40 different countries
that students can actually travel to.
- And what surprised you the most about BU
when you got here?
- I think just kind of like the independent vibe
but also kind of the bubble that we have created here.
So definitely coming to college here,
obviously, you're completely independent.
You're in Boston, which is a very different environment
from where I went to high school,
but at the same time, there's definitely still a community,
and like, all those communities are formed within BU,
which I was really surprised about,
and I wasn't really expecting to be able to find
such tight-knit communities within BU.
- So what advice would you have for like,
maybe like a younger version of yourself
or somebody else who's considering applying to BU
or college more broadly but isn't like really sure
how to go about the process?
- The most important thing is just, like,
really paying attention to your application
just because I do think it's important,
especially like your essays,
and really, like, reading your essays out loud
and trying to hear your own voice
because you are, like, yes,
it's hard to kind of get past the fact
that you're a number through a system,
but at the same time, you wanna, like, figure out
how you can portray yourself through these numbers.
Like, someone's only seeing you on paper,
but you want to be able to see,
er, you want to be able to show them who you are
through all of these essays and papers and external things.
- [Interviewer] So what did you write your essay about?
- So the prompt, the common app essay prompt that I used
was describe an environment that you feel, like, safe in,
something similar to that,
and I kind of just wrote about my family
and this special tradition that we had,
kind of tying in, like, what I do with my family
and how all my roots of, like,
being an Asian-American woman come back to me
and also how that involves,
er, how that comes into all of the different activities
that I did in high school
and how that brought me to like,
do leadership positions and things like that
and highlighting all the different activities that I did.
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