[varispeed]

I don't think a freshman CS student could afford to apply for a patent. This is only reserved for big companies or engineers backed up by wealth. You also often get things patented that nobody thought about patenting as they are that obvious. It's just a mechanism to gate keep and secure profits for big guys. I have a friend who has multiple patents and their investor only agreed to put money in their project if they patented it and shared all revenue. They were not actually interested in the product itself apart from likelihood the patents will bring money. The project is now dead, but patents stay blocking anyone from trying the same idea.

[japes98]

Actually, speaking from experience, you can do this yourself (or mostly yourself with some guidance from professionals). Nolo press has a book ("Patent it Yourself") on the topic.