(Episode 3 of 5: "Local Tech Culture Impacts College Expectations") In our last episode , we broke down the "Proximity Pressure" of growing up in the tech capital of the world. We talked about how seeing the finish line of a Google or Apple career every day can make a sixteen-year-old feel like they’re already behind. But as we transition from navigating the "Tech Career" myth to looking at your future, we have to address the elephant in the room: how this local pressure foll

Episode 2 of 5: Tech Careers for San Jose High School Students In most of the world, "tech" is just an app on a screen. But for you, growing up in San Jose, tech is the wallpaper of your life. It’s the logo on your neighbor’s jacket; it’s the reason your commute to school takes 40 minutes instead of ten. When tech is this close, it stops being an exciting frontier and starts feeling like a giant, looming scoreboard.  In our last episode, we talked about why AI feels heavy. To

Introduction: Is learning AI Important for High School Student This is the first part of a 5-episode series  designed to help Bay Area students navigate the noise of the tech world without the burnout. You’re likely used to the hum of it by now. Maybe it’s seeing a driverless car cruising down San Carlos Street  while you’re grabbing lunch, or noticing how your TikTok feed seems to know exactly what song is stuck in your head before you even search for it. Living in San Jose

Introduction: A High School Student’s AI-Powered Personal Finance Project Most students learn finance as formulas, definitions, or abstract case studies. Budgeting examples are clean, predictable, and disconnected from real life. But personal finance is rarely neat. Income fluctuates. Expenses are emotional. Decisions are often made with incomplete information. Admissions officers understand this. They also understand that finance, like healthcare, is a high-stakes domain . M

Introduction: How a 9th grade student made an AI Medical Misinformation Detector Project Artificial intelligence is everywhere in healthcare discussions, yet one of the most dangerous problems rarely appears in high school projects: medical misinformation . While many students build chatbots or image classifiers, few confront the reality that incorrect health information spreads faster than verified medical guidance and causes real harm. Admissions officers are aware of this

Introduction: Project to stand out in College Applications Most students learn to code with a simple goal in mind: make it work. If the program runs and produces the right output, it feels complete. In real engineering, that is only the beginning. Professional engineers think in terms of efficiency, scalability, and tradeoffs . They ask questions like: Is this solution fast enough? How does it behave as inputs grow? Where does it waste memory or computation? These questions r