Patrick Cao, ECON & CMSC '21

We asked Patrick Cao, a soon-to-be graduate of economics and computer science from Gaithersburg, Md., a bit about what brought him to BSOS, plus where he plans to go next.

Why did you choose to major in Economics?
I took my first ECON classes in spring 2020 and I picked it up originally because I wanted to have more context about how economic policies affect us. I think economics is a field of study that’s applicable to all of our daily lives. We’re all affected by the state of our economy, so I didn’t want to be clueless about everything you see in the news. 

When COVID hit, there were a lot of drastic monetary changes that I can understand the reasoning behind. That made me appreciate it a lot more. 

What have been your favorite memories during your time at UMD?
I really enjoyed my experiences with UMD’s Taiwanese American Student Association (TASA) during my underclassman years. I was pretty involved with them and met a lot of really nice people—despite the fact that I’m not Taiwanese. Everyone’s very welcoming. 

One of my favorite memories was going to the University of Pennsylvania for a coast-wide TASA conference, which was TASAs all across the East Coast. Exploring a new city and meeting people from other TASAs was a super fun experience. 

What hands-on experience have you received in the field?
I would say my best experiences were my internships with Facebook. I was a software engineering intern for the past two summers: the summer of 2020 and the summer of 2021. Working there has been such a great experience because everyone there is so smart, and working in a leading tech company, seeing how everything works there, it’s made me a lot more experienced and a better software engineer. I have had some ECON classes where we’ve had to use some programming, like Python, to analyze some data, and economics has a lot of data analysis which is very applicable to [my software work], too. 

What are your post-graduation plans?
I’ve accepted a job at Facebook in Seattle after I graduate, so I’ll be working there for at least a couple of years. But later in the future I want to explore some of my other options. For example, quantitative finance is a field that I’m interested in. It might be a field where both my economics and CS degrees are relevant. Or, maybe potentially try to build a startup. 

Responses have been edited for length and clarity

Published on Fri, Nov 19, 2021 - 2:05AM