Graduate / Computer Science Graduate program Application Question - Answer Essay (limited in 250words) [2]

Question: For non-cs major applicants, some of our students wish to take their passion and combine it with tech; others wish to leave their past experiences behind and dive head-first into the computer science world.

What drives your transition into tech?

In the past two years, I have been working as a graphic designer for a traditional Chinese food retail brand. The general manager of the store always expresses to me his ambition of expanding the brand to be nationally renowned. She talked about the limitation of offline sales and we had a deep conversation on how the national shopping trend is shipping toward online and how computing becomes part of everything we do. After the conversation, I cannot stop thinking about the impact of technology in our lives and a sense of curiosity about how websites and mobile apps are developed was aroused in my heart.

It is not until the winter in 2019 that I met a software engineer during a visit to a tech company operating unmanned supermarket that I realized the charm and potential power of computer science. The guy showed me his team and the system of managing different grocery goods they developed. The interface of various machines and the websites seem very easy to be used, but the software development behind them requires hundreds of people to operate and build. After the visit, I started to appreciate the work of software engineers and their contribution to make our life so convenient. They are the creators and translators between humans and computers. As a graphic designer, I have been creating visual communication to draw people's attention and foster people's awareness of what I was aimed to popularize. However, I am not satisfied by what I can do as a graphic designer and desire to build functional products that have practical helps in people's life. I expect myself to use the knowledge of both graphic design and computer science to boost my creativity and innovation and develop user-friendly apps in the future.