Will IT Certification benefit me?

Hello All!
College bound tech lover here.
As a 16 years old, college is in my immediate future. I intend to choose something in Computer Science as my major, however, I do not feel as though Ive done enough to really set myself apart from the 1000s of other college applicants.

So my question is, do you think that having IT certification will help in my appeal to colleges and raise my chances of being accepted? If college doesnt work out, I'll always have them to fall back on, but Im really pushing for this (and so is my mom XD)

Unless things have changed since I went, college isn't terribly hard to get into (unless you're shooting for the Ivy Leagues). An IT Certification will not really help you get into college. Your grades and test scores will.

I'm in the IT field and I have zero certificates (though if money frees up at my employment, they will be signing me up for some courses to officially make me a network engineer). The important part here is that they are paying for it -not me.

Advice that I can give you that I wish someone gave me: once you're in college take just about any paid/unpaid internship you can get. Of course, take one preferably in your field of interest if you can, but if not, take any.

This will do three important things:
1) Fill some of that blank space on your resume - You can spin any job description to point it towards what you're applying for.
2) It will give you actual work experience. College life will not prepare you for Work life. Holy Hell are they different.
3) You will actually gain contacts / "networking" through your experiences. It is very important who you know ( though never solely rely on other people for your future ).

For college you will be better off doing non-mandated community service (ie a judge didn't mandate it). Certs can help get your foot into a job, but once in they would rather have you know what you are doing.

Thanks a lot for your reply p3t3or! Im not really aiming for any ivy leagues as their cs departments aren't all that. But one of the top colleges on my list is Stanford, and they're acceptance rate is around 5%.

Yeah I am definitely looking into community service and the likes, but I've got quite a lot of studying to do.

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