Meet Srikanth Bandaru. He’s a tall, talented techie, and an entrepreneur. He’s currently pursuing his Master’s in Computer Science degree at the Seidenberg School, Pace University, in New York. Take it away, Srikanth…
Like many teenagers who dream of making it big, my dream was to become an engineer. I attended university back in India, and loved tinkering around with computers and the Internet. The subjects I chose exposed me to a variety of programming languages, which, mind you, I picked up faster than the English language! During my second year at university I signed up for a national level technical conference and won first prize – before I knew it, I was developing websites for every department on campus!
I co-founded my web development company, Color Layers, the very next year. We help clients bring their ideas to life through design-oriented solutions. I work as a web strategy consultant and specialize in front-end development. I focus on solving clients’ problems with technology. To be honest, I never dreamt of how big we were going to be, but I knew we were onto something.
Last year, I decided to do my masters so I could expand my horizons and enhance my personal development. My driving force is to increase the reasoning powers of intelligent agents to improve the way an interface agent interacts with its environment. I am particularly excited about the fields of quantum computing, big data and network security. So that’s reason enough to do this, right? RIGHT?
But… why NYC? Why Pace?
Getting accepted is a great feeling. Getting accepted by your first choice – that puts you over the moon! But let’s be realistic – you have to apply to more than one! The novelty wears of the minute you see the tuition bill! College education comes with a cost. So I had to really debate the idea with my parents. Though I did receive a scholarship to attend Pace, I still wasn’t 100% ready. The next step I took was doing A LOT of research. I looked at a bunch of videos, Tumblr accounts and websites just to get an idea of the campus life at all the universities. Not only were academics one of the most important aspects in making my decision, the culture of campus life and the location mattered as well.
Long story short, these were the main aspects of Pace that won me over in the end:
- Outstanding academics overall
- Personable, incredibly intelligent professors
- So many opportunities in terms of networking/internships/job experience for students (which makes it worth the investment)
- Students from all over the world (I love meeting new people from different cultures)
- Extracurricular, volunteer, and internship opportunities – more than you can count in one sitting
- Beautiful campus (The city is our campus and yeah, NYC IS BEAUTIFUL)
There’s always a bit of uncertainty that comes along with every big decision. But now that I’m in NYC and have started at Seidenberg, I know I’ve made one of the best decisions of my life. I could talk about it all day… but for now…
Peace out everyone!
— Srikanth Bandaru