Ellie Cook: Becoming a Cooke Young Scholar with edX

Last year, edX and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Young Scholars Program collaborated on a scholarship challenge for advanced middle school students. Scholarship-eligible seventh grade students who successfully completed a selected edX course secured a semi-finalist position in the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Young Scholars Program.

In November, we proudly announced that 10 of the 70 Cooke Young Scholars were edX learners. Read on to learn more about Ellie Cook, an edX learner who is now a Cooke Young Scholar. Join us in congratulating Ellie on her achievements!

I took the Programming in Scratch course as a part of the Jack Kent Cooke Young Scholars edX challenge. This course looked interesting, applicable, and fun. The course was sometimes hard, sometimes easy, sometimes frustrating, but it was doable in the end. I learned a lot of basic coding functions from the instructor, as well as some more creative functions and even a tiny bit of Java.

Over the course, there were certain parts that were harder to understand. Sometimes, there’d be a type of homework that involved looking at a very long script and figuring out.

One thing I did really like was the music mini-unit, where we learned to use coding to create rhythms and songs.

My goals in taking this course were not only to help advance myself in the Cooke Young Scholars application, but also to learn more about programming and Scratch. This course definitely helped my application, but it was also helpful later as I’ve done a bit of programming with Scratch, and now better understand how computer programming works.

I first learned about edX from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, through the edX challenge.

I am so, so proud to be selected as a Cooke Young Scholar. I’m very excited, too. I think this will be an amazing opportunity and experience. As soon as I can, I want to travel as much as possible.

A few things I’m interested in studying are genetics, psychology, international relations, and languages and/or cultures.

As for new edX students, my advice is this: The point is not for it to be easy. But, it can be fun. So, be sure to have plenty of time set aside for it (don’t procrastinate!), enjoy it, and learn as much as you can.

Last updated: January 2016