Both sides of the coin: Entering STEM with a background in liberal arts
When I was little, I loved talking a bit too much.
My parents always joked that I would have made an excellent lawyer straight out of the classic legal dramas everyone raved about. Regardless of whether I would have been another Saul Goodman or Mike Ross, I was convinced that law school would be the catalyst of my road to infamy.
Needless to say, that was not the path I chose for myself.
While I was still an undergraduate student at Tufts, I realized that the world I cared about was not found in the courtroom. It was found in a messy yet fascinating collision between technology and governance. As a Political Science and Science, Technology, & Society double major, I spent years writing essays for outdated tech policy frameworks, debating the limits of state power, and learning everything from international relations to information philosophy.
Somewhere between those tight-knit seminars and late-night study sessions at The Sink, I kept finding myself pulled toward a different kind of question: Who governs the internet? What happens when a cyber-attack shuts down the power grid? How can we develop tools that combat cybercrime but also respect basic privacy rights?
All those questions led me to apply for Tufts' fifth-year master's program in Cybersecurity and Public Policy, housed in the School of Engineering and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Yes, you read that correctly. A former aspiring lawyer, applying to an engineering school. If that sounds like a joke....trust me, I felt like I was writing one when I submitted my application.
But here is what I've learned going through this process. Almost everyone in STEM programs like this arrived from somewhere unexpected. Artists, historians, economists, journalists, and even military veterans. The kind of people drawn to the intersection of technology and policy are, almost by definition, people who realized that nothing ever fits neatly inside one box. In the real world, almost everything is connected to a vast socio-technical system that nobody truly understands. That is, until you get out of your comfort zone and investigate it yourself.
If you are sitting where I was sitting, qualified but terrified, here is my honest advice for your Tufts application. In your personal statement, lean into whatever professional experience or hobbies connect you to the field you are applying to, even if the connection feels loose. Build genuine relationships with professors and mentors who can write you strong letters of recommendation that prove your capabilities beyond what a simple transcript says you are. If you need a bridge to get there, the post-baccalaureate computer science, data science, premedical, and math certificates at Tufts are worth considering.
The School of Engineering, and by extension STEM, is not just for engineers. It is for people who want to solve real-world problems. Sometimes the best person for that is someone who sees both sides of the same coin.