Supercurriculars for applying to Imperial/Edinburgh/UCL CS undergrad

I've been trying to do supercurriculars to explore my interest in CS and AI (the specific CS niche I'm interested in). I've won a gold award in national AI innovation project type of competition, won couple of awards in an 'exchange activity' in AI while being the leader of the 16 people team (8 from my city, 8 from the capital). I'm also interested in going for STEP support programme and youtube videos for the maths and competitive programming as a hobby (maybe joining some competitions for fun).

I've heard that reading books is an exceptional way to show my interest in a subject. But to me, really practising, creating something, or perhaps solving problems practically are much more interesting, so reading books might not be the supercurricular I'll be doing. But if I don't do it, I'm afraid that it will put me in a disadvantaged position (I'm not so sure how those 3 unis value my supercurriculars compared to reading books).

Anyone can give me suggestions on what should I do?

Reply 1

aranon

Original post by Ben123123123

I've been trying to do supercurriculars to explore my interest in CS and AI (the specific CS niche I'm interested in). I've won a gold award in national AI innovation project type of competition, won couple of awards in an 'exchange activity' in AI while being the leader of the 16 people team (8 from my city, 8 from the capital). I'm also interested in going for STEP support programme and youtube videos for the maths and competitive programming as a hobby (maybe joining some competitions for fun).
I've heard that reading books is an exceptional way to show my interest in a subject. But to me, really practising, creating something, or perhaps solving problems practically are much more interesting, so reading books might not be the supercurricular I'll be doing. But if I don't do it, I'm afraid that it will put me in a disadvantaged position (I'm not so sure how those 3 unis value my supercurriculars compared to reading books).
Anyone can give me suggestions on what should I do?

you don't 'need' to read books as part of supercurriculars. admissions staff do not have a checklist when they look through your personal statement. they consider everything that you have written, and if your supercurriculars are relevant and impressive, then that is fine

Reply 2

vnayak

Original post by Ben123123123

I've been trying to do supercurriculars to explore my interest in CS and AI (the specific CS niche I'm interested in). I've won a gold award in national AI innovation project type of competition, won couple of awards in an 'exchange activity' in AI while being the leader of the 16 people team (8 from my city, 8 from the capital). I'm also interested in going for STEP support programme and youtube videos for the maths and competitive programming as a hobby (maybe joining some competitions for fun).
I've heard that reading books is an exceptional way to show my interest in a subject. But to me, really practising, creating something, or perhaps solving problems practically are much more interesting, so reading books might not be the supercurricular I'll be doing. But if I don't do it, I'm afraid that it will put me in a disadvantaged position (I'm not so sure how those 3 unis value my supercurriculars compared to reading books).
Anyone can give me suggestions on what should I do?

I think I will be of some help here. 2024 applicant. I had offers from Imperial, Edinburgh and Manchester (rejected from Cambridge and Durham). I didn't apply for UCL.

STEP support programme - I mean this constructively (I'm not trying to put you down in any way), but no one could care less. This is an admissions test programme for you to prepare for the STEP, so it's not really a supercurricular and if I'm being honest, you might also just dig your own grave here because if you have an interview (not entirely sure whether they do this anymore, but we had it for my year), they could ask you a STEP question in it since you mentioned in your personal statement, and trust me, STEP is not for the faint-hearted (had to do it this year as part of my offer from Imperial. Didn't get in because I didn't meet their STEP requirement).

I didn't touch a single book as part of my supercurriculars (I did look at a research paper related to AI so I guess you could count that, but other than that, I didn't touch any research material or anything), so you don't have to do it, but it is a way you can show supercurriculars.

Things I did:
Societies, Maths Olympiads, essay competitions, problem solving courses, programming courses, Project Euler, personal projects, industry standard projects, work experience and many other things.

Academic competitions (Essay competitions etc.)- you can find loads of them online through doing a quick Google search, though ideally you would've finished most of them by now because this is the time of year where you don't really find that much to do. Have you done the UKMT Senior Maths Challenge? this is where you can mention this sort of stuff.

Have you done any problem solving courses related to compSci and Maths? Represented your school in anything related to problem solving?

Project Euler is a problem solving website that is generally liked, but it's fairly common to do it.

Any programming courses? have you gone above and beyond and done any programming courses online? Have you consolidated your learning through doing a project after completing the course? You don't have to pay for the certificate at all because they're after the knowledge you've picked up, not a piece of paper that says "Congratulations on spending X amount of money". Certificates may be valuable as evidence later on, but even then, I'm not entirely sure about it.

Have you done any industry standard projects? This is a really great way to show your interest because it shows initiative and desire to learn more about the current innovations and it shows you would like to contribute towards it.

Any work experience? Even if you can't organise some work experience in person, there are so many websites now that give you virtual work experiences for notable companies like Fujitsu, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan etc. so go and do some research yourself and see what you can do. It's a really good way of showing interest.

But while all of this is important, there are other factors which are probably more important. I can't stress the importance of this first one any more than I already I am:

SMASH YOUR ADMISSIONS TEST - you are applying for some super competitive courses and so expect the level of competition to be high. There will be people who will have far more activities and far more impressive applications (again, not to put you down, but it's the truth) so you will have to find other ways to impress. As a result, to level the playing field and really separate the best of the best, the universities put in admissions tests for you to complete as part of their admissions process. Really grind your admissions test (the TMUA for Imperial, the STAT for UCL and Edinburgh doesn't have one) and that way, you can really make up for not having the best personal statement. That being said, I'm sure your personal statement will be AMAZING.

TMUA is in October and January (I'd recommend doing it in October just to get it out of the way) and the STAT is in April I believe.

Good luck!