My Experience as a GHP 63 Computer Science Major

Hannah Liu

July 18, 2026

The Georgia Governor’s Honors Program (GHP) is an intensive, four-week residential summer program for high school students across Georgia. It’s designed to provide instruction that goes significantly beyond the traditional high school classroom in many different content areas. I attended in the summer of 2026 as a Computer Science major, and it was one of the best social and academic experiences of my life! I learned so much throughout those four weeks, and so I’d like to share my experience with other people who might also be interested in applying.

Table of Contents

Imposter Syndrome

During my first few days of GHP, I have to admit that I felt a ton of imposter syndrome. There were only 15 students in our entire CS major, so it made sense that everyone there was EXCEPTIONALLY qualified. Everyone around me seemed to know so much more about CS than I did and have so much more experience than I had. But when I talked with the other students, I found out that most of them felt the exact same way as I did, and that this uncomfortable feeling was just something I had to get used to. Everyone in my class had different areas of expertise, so it made sense that certain concepts were newer to some people than others. Plus, in a field as rapidly changing as computer science, I had to learn to be comfortable with this feeling, so this was a great experience for me to step outside my comfort zone.

Class Structure

During the first few days, I spent a lot of time in my dorm after class just going over the content we learned that day to understand the concepts in more depth. Luckily, our instructor, Ms. Beekman gave us no homework, as her teaching style involved a mix of more laid-back lectures with hands-on projects. Ms. Beekman is a Caltech graduate (so very cool, big brain, and knowledgeable) and an AMAZING instructor who specializes in Databases, Networking, and Distributed Systems.

I really enjoyed listening to stories of her extensive experience in the industry, as it was something I’ve never thought much about before. Additionally, I remember some of my friends from other majors often complained that their instructors went through content at crazily fast paces, but Ms. Beekman explained each topic super clearly and was very open to answering questions. The activities she planned and slides she presented were also really engaging and interesting to learn about. She taught us about distributed systems, systems design, algorithmic complexity, ACID, thread safety, security, crypto, and more.

Because of the small scale of the class, we all got to know each other really, really well throughout the four weeks of GHP, and our class developed a tight-knit friendship. We had a ton of fun together, and I learned so much from the other students in the CS major.

I’d also like to add that the majority of all code we wrote in class was in Python, though you had the flexibility to choose whatever language you liked best. Some students used Java, C++, C#, or other programming languages for certain in-class activities, but you would be completely fine if you just used Python for everything (which is what many students did). In many cases, Python was the preferred language anyways because there are so many libraries with extensive documentation for you to access. If you aren’t already familiar with Python, I would strongly recommend learning it before attending GHP (just get familiar with the basic syntax and you’ll be good because it’s pretty self explanatory).

Content Breakdown

During Week 1 of GHP, we had lectures on distributed systems, systems design, heartbeats, RPCs, web crawling, and complexity analysis. One of my favorite activities we did in class took place in the first week when each student built a (somewhat working) custom RPC that sent heartbeats to each other's computers. Our class was able to get (almost) everyone connected to the network, though it wasn’t a very reliable connection and would stop working after a while (shh but we don’t talk about that). We also built basic web crawlers, then a more advanced personalized web crawler that could have any functionality of our own choice (as long as it was legal lol). I ended up choosing to build a web crawler that solves Wikipedia races (along with a few other students) and I’m proud to say that my web crawler won (yeah take that Sebastian)!

During Week 2, we learned about ACID properties, thread safety, locking, cryptography, and cryptocurrency. One of our in-class projects was to create a 3-node ACID database server building off of the RPCs we made in Week 1, which I really enjoyed implementing. After we learned about crypto, one of the students in my class ended up choosing to build a (totally legal) distributed crypto casino for kids as their final project.

During Week 3, we had a guest instructor who was invited to teach us about AI and ML. Unfortunately, there was some drama that took place this week within the CS department, so we didn’t end up covering a lot of content this week, but all the CS majors bonded over our impending doom and unemployment within the future of the CS job market. We also had some extra time to work on final projects this week, which was greatly appreciated because everyone ended up procrastinating.

Finally, during Week 4, we had the opportunity to tour the Georgia Southern University Data Center and present our final projects at the Majors Fair. We also had some special lectures over Computer Hardware/Architecture and Operating Systems, Leetcode/Coding Interviews, and Quantum Computing (a joint class with the Physics majors), though we didn’t go very deep into any of those topics.

Final Projects

Throughout GHP, students in the CS major were tasked with working on a final project, which could either be creating an application or programming something research-based. Some of the projects from previous years have been posted here, but I’m not sure how up-to-date that website is. Funnily enough, everyone in our class originally wanted to work in groups for their final project, but over time, every single person ended up working individually.

Personally, I focused on a research-based project related to the sport of fencing (which I compete in). My project involved scraping tournament and fencer data from the official International Fencing Federation website for academic purposes, and analyzing how the official ranking system compared to two alternative mathematical models (specifically, PageRank and TrueSkill). You can learn more about my project here if you’re interested!

As a word of advice, PLEASE do not procrastinate your project to the last minute! You’re supposed to be consistently working on your project throughout the program in your free time (though we are given a reasonable amount of time in class to work on it as well). I would recommend having an idea by the first week (or maybe even before the program begins) and beginning to program by the middle of the second week. This way, if you come across any hurdles that you hadn’t expected in planning, it’s not too late to switch to a more reasonable project.

After your project is complete, you will be expected to create a 3ft x 2ft poster to present during the Majors Fair in Week 4 as well as record a video demonstrating your project.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, I learned an immense amount of advanced computer science concepts that I never would have encountered in a standard high school environment. GHP forced me out of my comfort zone and gave me a realistic look at what working in the actual CS industry would feel like, which is something I hadn’t considered much before. All in all, I am so incredibly grateful to have been able to spend four weeks surrounded by such an inspiring and brilliant group of peers and to learn from an instructor as knowledgeable as Ms. Beekman.

If you’re interested in hearing about my application experience, feel free to reach out to me in the comments or directly at byhannahliu@gmail.com. I’m also planning on writing a blog post that goes into more detail about my application experience, from the district applications to the finalist interview. And of course, if you have any further questions about my experience at GHP, please don’t hesitate to let me know!