When I walked into my first computer science class in freshman year, I had no idea I'd fall in love. At the time, I held about as much interest in and knowledge about computers as the average teenager. My initial trepidation was only compounded by the discovery that I was one of only three girls in a room filled with males, most of whom already had programming experience. I felt somehow that I was already behind on the first day.
But as I moved past the confusion and frustration of coding and debugging my first Java programs, I found that the process had grown on me like climbing ivy. With each class and every successful program, I was more overcome with a sense of the limitless possibility that programming skill entailed. I felt that given my faculty for logical thought and by amassing enough knowledge, no creative challenge I devised or software problem I discovered would be insurmountable.
Although schedule conflicts prevented me from taking more computer science classes until senior year, that initial spark of interest compelled me to continue exploring computer science outside of school. I honed my programming skill and expanded my reportoire of languages by learning Python and delving into front-end and server-side web development. Through an after-school program at Columbia College, I also gained valuable exposure to circuitry, robotics, and artificial intelligence. These learning experienced converged, producing an intense curiosity about the theoretical underpinnings of the programming languages and concepts I use regularly and a certainty that I should pursue a degree and career in computer science.
Going forward, I aspire to utilize the abundant research and educational opportunities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the pursuit of my passion and the advancement of the field, and to encouragement of others in underrepresented groups to do the same.
I wanted to mention that I'm also black, which made me feel even more alone in my freshman class (and in the classes I'm now taking) because I've always been either the only black person there or the only black female, and I always got the sense that certain people were talking down to me or assuming that I didn't know what I was talking about even though my answers were usually correct. I would say something and people would disagree or doubt it, but then someone else would say essentially the same thing and they'd all agree.
How can I express this without it seeming forced/like I'm just trying to make myself a more desirable candidate by being a URM?
Holt Educational Consultant - / 14,801 
4780 Taysha, there is no reason to mention race or color in this essay because that is not the kind of experience being referred to by the prompt. Rather than the class experience that you spoke of, what you were expected to present, was your experience in the field of computer programming if any. So the fact that you were the only girl in class, the discomfort that you felt, and the other personal information regarding your experience in the classroom isn't what you were expected to present.
Instead, you were supposed to discuss why you are interested in the field of computer programming. What was the first program you ever used and what function did you develop using it? How did you feel the first time you successfully created a program? What experience do you have using other programs? The essay is about your academic experience, not your classroom and peer experience. I think you accidentally confused the two so you ended up writing a different essay from the prompt.
Thank you for your advice, but I think you've misunderstood some key things.
To begin with, I'm not majoring in computer programming, I'm majoring in computer science. Computer science is a theoretical and mathematical field which explores the limits of computation and the possibility (or impossibility) of certain techniques, scenarios, etc. Computer programming is the practical application of computer science's concepts. To talk extensively about programming and get into specific detail about programs I've created would be off-topic for an essay expressing my interest in computer science. I guess it's a common mistake that people make when they don't understand the distinction between these two things
Why would I talk about my experience using programs? What do you mean by that? The internet browser in which I have this tab open is a program that I use. Spotify is a program that I use. The file explorer in Windows is a program that I use. The Atom text editor by GitHub is a program that I use. What relevance do any of those things have to my experience and interest in computer science? Perhaps you meant programming languages, in which case I already talked about having taken a class in Java programming and learned Python as well as web development (which requires a separate set of languages) on my own.
I think I'm going to use your advice on talking more about how programming in general makes me feel and how that made me interested in computer science, rather than discussing that specific class experience or how I felt as a black female, but not the rest of it. Sorry.
