summer – Berk @Nisky

June 2023

I attended the Summer Program at Sabanci University in Istanbul. The program was designed for High School students who would like to take college level courses and experience college life. The courses were in English, taught by actual college professors. They have shortened and condensed the actual introductory course to a 2-week curriculum, 10-hours total.

There were 700 high school students attending the Summer Program at the same time as me. Each student had selected their own 3 courses to follow. We stayed at the dorms, ate at the cafeterias, and had our own daily course program to follow. Each night after dinner time, they had some activities for kids to entertain like live music, DJs, cinemas, or sports events.

It was really a good experience. I made new friends, some from the US like me, some across other parts of the world, and some from Turkey.

I completed the following courses:

Psyschology
Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence
Entrepreneurship & Innovation

June 2023

Sabanci Summer Course Soccer Tournament.

This was a 4v4 tournament on a small field with no goalies. After hearing about the tournament hosted by the college with the prize of free Sabanci hoodies for first place me and my 3 friends instantly joined. While most of the people we were up against were older and much bigger than us we never gave up and managed to go the first match 7-3. This overwhelming win meant that we passed the semi-finals and went straight to the final match. However, this was a difficult match since not only were we facing people double our size, but the other team also had 6 players allowing them to sub out 2 at a time to rest. We tried our best and I had a lot of fun along the way but in the end we came second place.

Placement match score: 7-3
Final score: 8-12