Christy Smith is not your average girl. The sophomore computer science major and communications minor is an avid comic-book reader, Veronica Mars fan and early 2000’s television fan. But perhaps the most interesting thing about this Elon student is that she recently got accepted to compete in a coding challenge run through Credit Suisse in New York City this upcoming summer.
She found out about the challenge through her computer science teacher who encouraged to apply.
“It wasn’t too hard of an application, there were some puzzles online that you had to complete before reaching a separate application. One of the puzzles had a riddle that said something like “to find the code, go to the source.” It turns out that the source code had a specific set of instructions in it you had to find. Once you completed the puzzles, you reached a separate application which basically entailed submitting your resume,” Christy says.
Smith said that she felt a lot of pressure to get an internship, so when an opportunity arose to do something for the summer, she decided to grab it.
She also said the prizes were somewhat of an incentive. Among those included: an interview with members of Credit Suisse for a competitive internship the following summer.
“Credit Suisse is a big, appreciated company and certainly something that will look good on my resume. Also, I just think the challenge will be fun.”
She says she is having trouble anticipating what the challenge will entail, but is mentally preparing herself by becoming familiar with more code.
The challenge will take place on May 19-20, and Christy says in the meantime she is doing as much coding and watching of Veronica Mars as possible.
She urges all Freshman computer science students to apply for the challenge in the upcoming year.