What are Snap Academies?

"The Snap Academies are nine-week, paid summer training programs hosted by Snap Inc., the makers of Snapchat. [They] provide high-potential students with the technical skills, professional network, and portfolio-building experience needed to launch a career in tech. ... Through four specialized tracks—Snap Design Academy, Snap Engineering Academy, Snap Storytelling Academy, and Snap Lens Academy—students gain hands-on creative and technical skills, receive mentorship from Snap team members, and build meaningful connections that help launch their careers in technology and creative media" (Snap Academies).

What made you choose Snap Engineering Academy?

It really was about timing. Last year December, I had this urge to build my own website to act as a portfolio for all my projects related to my future career. During winter break, I was developing basic widget applications with QT creator, as well as experimenting with HTML and CSS at the same time. Back in high school, I was learning Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as one of my subjects of choice. This gave me a foundational understanding of most HTML tags and basic CSS styling. However, making my website look modern and responsive on all devices was challenging. Despite everything, I was able to successfully launch my own website on my domain name that I had purchased in late March 2026. I would spend all night polishing it to the point where it started to affect my college studies. Due to this newfound WebDev passion ignited in me, I had to choose this Engineering Academy track.

How did you hear about this opportunity?

My school email is subscribed to receive emails from Los Angeles City College (LACC) Career Center. I believe it was right around noon on April 10th, 2026 when I first stumbled upon this in my mailbox. The craziest thing was that it was the last day to submit applications and I already had work scheduled from 5 PM to 11 PM. I updated my resume, GitHub, and LinkedIn before finally submitting an application form in time at 4 o'clock. I had one banana for lunch that day.

Did you make it to Stage 2?

Yes! A few days after submitting application forms and videos, I received an email that they would let me know the decision by April 16th. It was almost 5 PM on the 16th when I received an email congratulating me that I had been moved to Stage 2. I was at school for a Physics class at the time. I was so happy that I jumped around in the hallway like a lunatic.

What was Project Assessment like?

We received a link to their GitHub repository to be used as a template. We had to build a catalog of our choice on top of their template with instructions in the ReadMe file. We were given roughly 5 days to complete this project. We were required to add features that perform data operations. They instructed us to include at least two of the five given examples such as filtering, sorting, searching, updating, and adding or removing cards.

Tell us about your project.

I chose to make a catalog of Kura Sushi menu items. Each card had name, price, type, ingredients, and allergen information. For two tedious days, I was able to create my own images for each food item and add 4 data manipulation features; filtering, sorting, searching, and removing cards. I wanted to add as many features as possible because doing only two, I thought, would be viewed as doing the bare minimum.

View my submission here.

I personally really like how I was able to imitate the moving sushi belt with CSS animation loop. I had fun designing each image with colors, too. The color palette was imported from coolers.co. It does not look too modern, but design is quite compact and good enough for an educational project.

Why did you choose to do Kura catalog?

As a server, I have had a lot of customers asking me about allergen information. I have most of it memorized but we are instructed to direct them to the company website for the latest up-to-date information. However, I feel bad for them as they would then have to scroll down a long list to find their desired information. So, I thought maybe customers deserve a website that performs data operations to quickly pinpoint the exact match. I did exactly that.

Did you make it to Stage 3?

Unfortunately, no. I was previously informed shortly after submission that I would be notified of their decision by Friday, May 1st 2026. I was at work on Friday and I kept checking my inbox till midnight. No signs of news. Then, on Monday, May 4th 2026, right before noon, I received an email stating that they were unable to provide me an interview and that I cannot ask them for individual feedback due to large volume of applicants.

How did that make you feel?

Devastated to say the least. The worst part was the built-up anticipation of a month. The summer I dreamed about was taken away. I was also planning on letting my mom know the acceptance news as a Mother Day's gift.

What do you think went wrong?

A friend of mine went through the same steps as mine, and he was invited for an interview. He assumed that I would for sure get it too and came to give me a few tips regarding my upcoming interview. He seemed surprised to know that I was not offered one.

His submission webpage only had two features of sorting and filtering. After checking out his work, I started to think that maybe I did too much. Perhaps fear of failure got the best of me. I am not one to compare myself with others, but this was the only way to speculate my errors since they were not providing individual feedback or reason for rejection.

Maybe the assessment team concluded that my design looked ugly or assumed that I made AI do all the work. Either way, it'd be a bummer. This friend of mine that I had mentioned also had a prior work experience in Computer Science field. That is probably why. But still, how can I have experience if I was never given a chance to begin with?

Tech job market is difficult to get into. It's been 2 days since the date of rejection. How are you coping with the aftermath?

I try not to think about it. This blog is one of the ways that I came up with to cope with it. I feel like it may be easier to write it all down than to carry the load of blame and burden in my head. The truth is I still catch myself having this delusion that they may change their mind before the end of the month. It is hard to convince myself otherwise.

I also noticed how I have been lacking the usual effort in my college courses due to this overwhelming project. Since the finals for the Spring semester are coming up in a few weeks, I am focusing back on studies to secure a 4.0 this term.

What do you have in mind for the future?

The Academy mentioned that they would teach the interns frameworks like React during the employment term. Since I won't be further considered for this position, I will just have to teach myself how that works. Next year's Summer internship programs will start accepting applicants as early as this October, so I want to be ready for it.

I also have this Robotics club at school where I am programming with Arduino Uno to build a mini car. I have plans to learn Raspberry Pi, Robot Operating System, and Gazebo later on to make and control small boats and drones. This means I will need to look for students majoring in Aerospace Engineering and recruit them into the club for advice on Physics. It will be an awesome collaborative work.

Last but not least, I might run for a position at Associate Student Union (ASU) in July this year. This decision, however, remains undecided.