Venkat 2018 guidance — Day 0 — Essay question 1

As you all know the Google is looking for students who are passionate in the field of computer science, who care about making the world sustainable and who can leverage computer science to transform systems and lives around us.

General guidance on essays — Your frame of mind and perspective when you approach essay questions:-

So being very specific about your project or cause which aligns to your area of interest / passion in the field of computer science will help you get the attention of the interviewer. Mention the progress that you have made and what stage the project or cause is now — this is the journey part.This way, from an interviewer’s perspective, you will come across as a passionate person who is serious about his / her work and being specific makes your cause unique, thus adding authenticity to your essay. So re read and trim your essay to highlight what you really want the interviewer to know about you and your passion. Think from the interviewer’s perspective, what image will he / she paint of you when they are reading your essay? Does your story touch upon all that what they are looking for and is that what you have penned down? Are all the points mentioned connecting to the bigger picture / your story / cause?

Haven’t you heard dream big!! Now, let me tell you, as students, you can dream bigger, there is no limit to what you can dream / imagine about your ambitions. So don’t be shy and think that this is so unrealistic when you actually are penning down your dream in the essay. But just mentioning about a dream and not backing it up with effort doesn’t help either. So go ahead and mention your small steps that you have taken towards your dream. The story should tie in — what you have done and what you have dreamt / planned to achieve.

Now leadership qualities is something that will add value to your essay. So think of instances where in you have taken initiative and lead activities or programs such as, events, workshops, labs, social causes, imparting knowledge etc. Be authentic and keep in mind that all this should tie to your story.

Part 1: How do you plan to use CS to make the world a more sustainable place?

This essay has two parts, 2 questions, and the word limit is 300 words. So you need to make sure that you answer both these questions within the world limit. You can start of with question one and then take up question two towards the end, trying to connect them to the story of yours.

So you can go ahead and mention a project or work that you have undertaken as part of any community, team, college, internship or just out of interest in the field of computer science and explain how it has made the world a more sustainable place. So what does sustainability mean?

Sustainability is the ability to be maintain resources at a certain rate or level — deals with avoidance of the depletion of resources and efficient use of resources.

These are the 3 types of sustainability:-
1. People — social sustainability activities focus on maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with employees, customers and the community. These activities often have benefits in terms of positive profile and customer and community support.

2. Planet — environmental sustainability activities focus on the potential impact of resource usage, hazardous substances, waste and emissions on the physical environment. These activities may have a direct cost benefit for a business.

3. Profit — economic sustainability activities focus on business growth, efficiency and productivity
Your answer must brief about how technology can be used to make the use of resources more efficient.

Any idea or solution that brings about one or more of the following outcomes can be termed as one that impacts humanity / improves sustainability. In this case, you must specifically talk about ideas or solutions that make use of computer science

1. Reducing Human Effort
2. Increasing Human Output
3. Minimising Human Suffering
4. Increasing Human Happiness

Check out googles sustainability approach here. You can look to align your answer to googles goals as well.

You can write about the contributions you have made and role you played in that project / community. Also, mention the progress that you were able to make in that project. Here you can put in the details of the platform, language, technology etc.

Lets take an example from one of our pervious winners to understand this concept better. If you have listened to Sriparna’s video — link — she was working for a lab which helps NGOs with technical solutions.So their team used to approach NGOs and discuss the problems that they faced technically.

Once they understand the problems that the NGOs face, they will work on it and provide solutions to the same. She was leading this activity at her college and was passionate about CS as she used the technology to solve the problems of NGO.This is what we mean by sustainability; coincidentally, this has a social angle too.

When we talk about technology, one of the previous winners, Rohit — link — he was interested in AI, Machine Learning and Autonomous cars.

It’s not about how fancy or complex it is — it’s just about your passion.It can be as simple and pure as coding in a language — say Java. The important point is how you have shaped you dream / project using the technology, how much progress you have made on the same and what impact you have created and the sustainability.

Now I am no computer science engineer, but recently I did work on a telegram bot for Rethink and it was very interesting learning for me. At least some of you would have used the rethink bot to join the groups right. So I am taking this case study now for my venkat application.

Let’s tackle question 1 in the context of the rethink bot that we developed.

We have so many operational problems that needed to be addressed at Rethink and one of the priority was managing the learning communities.So we decided to develop a bot which will help us automate the process — lesser human intervention and hence lesser errors.So the bot was developed to make our life easier and to get the information of all interested students who wishes to join the community.

What did the bot actually do for us? or What was the sustainability factor that the bot added?

1. It did reduce human effort — right? (Reducing Human Effort)

2. Minimising Human suffering — minimised manual entries, verification and errors.

The automation process was so seamless now that even when we are sleeping, students can join the community and pick up the peer learning process and collaborate.

Part 2: If you receive this scholarship, how will you use it to advance your passion and the goals of this scholarship?

Now this is a section where you can think of will you use the scholarship amount to get ahead in life and enhance your passion, helping you get closer to your goal. You can mention that you will use the money to fund the project that you have already mentioned — if that’s the case and many other instances.

Few examples that we heard from students were:-

• A middle class typical response — Support studies and reduce the burden on parents on the education fee etc
• Self improvement — learning online courses, certifications, workshops, conferences etc (good point)
• Social angle and pay it forward — To conduct workshops to impart learning to juniors or people around us (good point)
• Moving ahead with your dream — To use the amount to fund a project that you are working on (good point)
• Moving ahead — To use the money to inch closer to your dreams / solve a problem that you are working on.

If you have any clarifications or questions, do let us know in the telegram group or drop an email to v@r.

Good Luck!