High School Classes Gap

Last year I took AP CSP and this year I’m taking AP CSA.

What do CSP and CSA mean?

Is there anything I can do to continue practicing or any resources that would allow me to keep up my education?

Internships! Take advantage of the time you have to get some early mentoring. Since you're in high school, I would ask around local companies and nonprofits if they're willing to take you under their wing. Don't worry about getting paid, it's about learning at this stage.

Personally I worked part time during my senior year of high school at a nonprofit doing web design. Following that I worked remotely for a Kickstarter campaign that I reached out to. Following that, the summer between high school and college I was able to get a paid internship at Oak Ridge National Lab via their "HERE at ORNL" program for rising college freshman. There I was able to do HPC/supercomputing research. And all of this was as a a high schooler in Tennessee, so don't worry about not living in a tech hub. You can definitely gain work experience right now.

I know I’m being paranoid but I wanted to go to CMU and their acceptance rate is insanely low.

Internships will definitely help with your college apps. Check out /r/ApplyingToCollege if you want to start working towards the goal of attending CMU. But also know that even if you don't attend a top school, if you come into college with an exiting resume of experiences, you'll be ahead of the curve. Despite being a freshman at Florida Tech, since I had 3 internships on my resume, I was able to get an offer at Facebook. Going to a top school is one way to attract attention to your resume, but it's not the only one if you're willing to work ahead as a high schooler.

/r/cscareerquestions Thread