Opportunities: What's Actually Available to You¶
You cannot choose something you don't know exists. Most of what shapes a CS degree happens outside the classroom, and almost none of it is announced. Students find out from other students, usually a year later than they'd have liked.
So here is the list, in advance.
Nothing on this page is required and none of it is graded. It exists so that when your Four-Year Plan asks you to name one real opportunity you intend to go after, you're choosing from a menu instead of guessing. Pick one or two things. Not seven. Seven is how you end up doing none of them.
The most important column is when you have to act, because that is the part nobody tells you and the part that quietly costs people a year.
Student organizations¶
The Computer Science Society, the ACM student chapter, Women in Computer Science, and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers all run events, and attending them also knocks out your CS Engagement Experiences.
When to act: show up this fall. Officer elections are typically in the spring, and the people who win are the people who have been showing up since September. A first-year who attends all semester is a plausible sophomore officer, and "officer of a student organization" is a real line on a real résumé.
Current organizations and how to reach them: TCU Student Activities.
Student Government¶
SGA's House of Representatives has 56 seats, elected every fall, and incoming students are explicitly eligible to run. You do not have to be an upperclassman and you do not have to wait.
When to act: ⚠️ earlier than you think. For 2026–27, candidate filing opened Jul 24 and the election was held Fri, Aug 28, which is two days after our first class. If you're reading this after that, the route in is House vacancies, which open during the year and are filled by application rather than election.
Hackathons¶
A weekend, a team, and something built from nothing. You do not need to be good, and first-years go. Teams want somebody who will stay up and keep trying, which is a thing you already know how to be.
| Event | Where | Roughly when |
|---|---|---|
| HackUTD | UT Dallas, about 40 minutes up the road | November. Billed as the largest 24-hour university hackathon in North America |
| WEHack | UT Dallas | Spring. For women, nonbinary students, and underrepresented groups in tech |
| HackTX | UT Austin | Fall |
Full season listings: Major League Hacking. Dates move every year, so check rather than trusting this table.
When to act: registration usually opens four to six weeks ahead and fills. Put one on your calendar now.
Startups¶
Some of you will start a company. Most of you won't, and nothing in this course or this degree requires it. You do not need an idea yet. Almost nobody's first idea is the one that works, and "I want to build something" is a perfectly good place to start.
The big one is here on campus. The Neeley School's Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation runs the Richards Barrentine Values and Ventures Competition, a global undergraduate pitch competition that TCU hosts: teams come in from something like a hundred universities, and more than $100,000 in prizes goes home with them. The money is a prize, not an investment, so nobody takes a piece of what you build. It is open to every TCU undergraduate, any major, any year. You apply online with a video pitch, an executive summary, and a deck, so there's no standing on a stage until you're selected. The idea has to be a real for-profit venture that also addresses a genuine problem.
You are the scarce half. Technical co-founders are what most student startup teams cannot find, so as a CS major you are, right now, the person those teams are looking for. Come talk to me and I'll point you at what's running this year. These events will usually count toward your CS Engagement requirement, but ask me first.
Reading: YC Startup School is Y Combinator's free course, one to two hours a week for seven weeks, written for people who are merely curious rather than already building. It also runs co-founder matching. Paul Graham's essays are the most influential writing on startups there is: free, short, and readable with zero business background. Start with How to Get Startup Ideas.
When to act: the Values and Ventures application window runs from October 1 to late January, which means it opens while you're busy and closes over winter break. That is exactly how people mean to enter and then don't. Dates shift a little each year, so check the site rather than trusting this paragraph, and tell me in October if you want a run at it: I will keep asking you about it.
Research¶
Two different doors, and most people only know about the first one.
At TCU. Find a faculty member whose work interests you and ask. The Faculty Research Lightning Talks session exists to show you five of them in one morning. TCU's Science & Engineering Research Center then funds student research projects, up to $1,500, with applications taken twice a year, early in the fall and spring semesters.
Somewhere else, over the summer. NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates are paid summer research positions at universities across the country, with a stipend and usually housing. Browse the REU site directory.
When to act: REU deadlines cluster between December and March for the following summer, and each site runs its own. That means the realistic first shot is the summer after your sophomore year, and the application happens over a winter break while everyone else is asleep. Note that NSF REUs require U.S. citizenship or permanent residency; see below if that isn't you.
Internships¶
The Center for Career & Professional Development is free, is staffed by people whose whole job is this, and is used mostly by seniors, which is a shame.
When to act: applications for a given summer open the August through January before it. That is the single most expensive thing on this page to learn late. Our Careers, Internships & Résumés session is deliberately placed in December for exactly this reason.
Where the postings actually show up. SimplifyJobs/Summer2027-Internships is a public GitHub repo listing tech internships for the summer after this one, kept current by volunteers and sorted by the date each one opened. Summer 2027 is the cycle you are eligible for as a first-year, so this is your list, not a list to admire and come back to in three years. Star it now and check it once a week; new roles appear at the top all fall. Note that a lot of the postings say "junior or senior standing," and applying anyway costs you nothing.
It is also a nice thing to look at before the open-source session: the whole list is maintained by pull requests from strangers, which is the same mechanism you'll use in class that week.
If the internship you want is unpaid or barely paid, ask the Career Center about the Intern Scholarship Program. Money should not be what decides this.
Teaching somebody else¶
The fastest way to find out whether you understand something.
- Peer mentor for this course. Your pod has one. That is a job, and next year it could be yours: you'll have taken the class, which is the main qualification. Ask me in the spring.
- Tutoring and course assistant roles in the department and across campus.
When to act: spring of your first year, for the following fall.
Study abroad¶
It fits in a CS degree, and the students who say it doesn't are usually the ones who never asked. Planning early is what makes it possible, because it's a scheduling problem, not a money problem or a major problem.
When to act: talk to your advisor in your first year about which semester has room.
If you're an international student¶
Your timeline is different and it starts earlier: work authorization, CPT and OPT, and which employers sponsor. Most NSF REUs are closed to you, but plenty of TCU faculty research is not, and neither are hackathons or club leadership.
Our Thriving in College panel includes a student who has been through this and a dedicated block of time for it. TCU Global and the Career Center are the offices to talk to, and earlier is better in a way that is genuinely hard to overstate.
The part that's actually hard¶
None of this is a competitive application process at your stage. It's an email.
"Hi Dr. ———, I'm a first-year CS student. I heard your lightning talk about ———. Is there any way for a first-year to get involved, even reading papers or cleaning data? I'm happy to start small."
That's it. That is the whole skill. Send four of them and one will say yes, and the three who don't answer will not remember, think about you, or care.
If you're not sure which of these fits you, that's a good reason to come to office hours or ask your peer mentor. That question is much easier to answer out loud than alone.