Academic Scholar Chloë B-B reports on two fascinating study programmes that she undertook during the summer of 2019. Three days at the University of Southampton Inspire Girls’ Residential – a mixture of exciting hands-on activities and personal development sessions in Science and Engineering, were followed by a three-week course at Princeton University entitled AI4ALL – a combination of lectures, hands-on research projects, field trips, and mentorship on the subject of Artificial Intelligence.

Chloe (back row, second from right) on a field trip to Washington, D.C.

The Princeton AI4ALL experience for me was primarily about exposure. My naivety around what studying computer science would be like was definitely changed after the programme. Although I am still thinking about whether or not computer science is what I want to pursue, the course has enabled me to get a glimpse of what studying the subject at university level is like, and how much more complicated it gets!

I learnt heaps within the programme, and would say I developed a solid base of knowledge in the subject area, which will be useful in the future. Many of the computing concepts we learned about are taught to 2nd/3rd year college students at Princeton University. However, I believe I acquired a decent understanding of the overall concepts of different areas such as logistic regression and Naive Bayes, which will be developed upon if I do decide to study the subject.

I would say overall this was a great experience because I gained insight into what a typical course may look like, what the professors are like, and on top of this what studying at Princeton would be like (due to the undergrads who were councillors for the entire programme). I would say my best ‘take-aways’ from the programme are the realistic exposure to computer science, university life, and of course my life-long friends!

The Southampton programme was short and sweet. I would highly recommend for any student in Year 11 or 12 who is unsure of what they want to study, or just wants to have a taster of a specific university. My programme was engineering focused, hence I got exposure to different types of engineering during my stay. It was beneficial for me as it gave me more information about what each course contains.