Ayushi Sangoi METUCHEN — While many of her peers may be making a splash by practicing their cannonballs this summer, 16-year-old Ayushi Sangoi will be going in like a wrecking ball to smash stereotypes and pursue her dreams in the tech world.
The 11th-grader at the Middlesex County Academy for Allied Health and Biomedical Sciences in Woodbridge won the opportunity to learn coding for two weeks through the Kode with Karlie Scholarship.
“I am very excited for this opportunity to learn to make apps at no cost to me whatsoever,” Ayushi said. “This is a rare opportunity that I am grateful I received.”
Named for supermodel Karlie Kloss, who started the scholarship to encourage young women to learn computer programming, the program offers high school girls a chance to attend Flatiron School’s Pre-College Academy for its Introduction to Software Engineering course at a variety of locations over the summer.
Ayushi is among 21 winners chosen from more than 3,000 applicants.
“I was truly inspired by all the applicants for the Kode With Karlie scholarship,” said Kloss, who also studied at Flatiron. “Their depth, creativity and thoughtfulness is a testament to how these young women will change the world through code.”
While Ayushi said many young women at her school are pursuing fields related to science, technology engineering and math — with a particular focus on health care — she added that she would like see more females enroll at the Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies.
“This lack of females in the engineering school disappoints me,” Ayushi said. “I want females to not experience the primary shock that I received sometimes when I told people I was coding. I want to provide more opportunities to females to explore technology and innovation in classes.”
Initially planning to be a health care clinician,
Ayushi’s goals steered her toward the high school she chose. After taking the Principles of Biomedical Sciences course, however, she realized that she wants to become a biomedical engineer.
“I want to create various technologies to provide ease in performing activities of daily living to patients,” she said.
Ayushi was creative in capturing the scholarship, crafting her video application around Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” changing the lyrics to convey her passion for coding.
“It’s not difficult, break that stereotype, I can make my own apps,” she sang in the 90-second production.
The Flatiron School’s Pre-College Academy won’t be Ayushi’s first foray into the tech world.
“I have always enjoyed puzzles, and figuring out how to use different technologies was always fun,” she said, adding that she recently began coding with Khan Academy’s Hour of Code and through Coder- Dojo Metuchen, a free, community-based coding club for kids and teens launched locally this year.
Ayushi has also begun learning JavaScript, HTML and CSS on codeacademy.com, another free learning site. The self-starter will learn more about HTML and CSS, along with Ruby, another programming language, with an aim toward building web applications.
Ayushi said she is hoping to attend the academy’s program at the Wardlaw-Hartridge School in Edison, which takes place in August. If that program is full, she said, she will commute to one of the school’s New York locations.
To register for the program, visit precollege. flatironschool.com/summer-2015.