This story is my recollection of the events leading up to the creation of DJ Unicode, a student organization that trains other students in programming, software development, and building free and open-source software. I co-founded this venture back in 2017 alongside friends from my undergraduate program and the program has been thriving (if I do say so myself), with over 250+ students trained so far (considering our batch size is 120 students each year, this is a significant fraction of the cohort over the past few years). Our members have achieved quite a bit since then, with international internships and hackathon wins, Ivy league college admits, funding for Masters degrees, research publications at top venues, job offers at FAANG (or should I say MANGA) companies, and more. But the really interesting takeaway is we’ve successfully transitioned out the management committee and co-founders to an advisory role (pretty loosely used, since we barely offer advice once or twice a year when needed), and activities are wholly managed by a new team of incoming final-year students (you might call them BE students or senior undergrads). Every mentor at Unicode is a volunteer–they don’t really get paid to do their jobs (although teams are free to take up contract projects to generate their own revenue; and many now do). The team rotates each year and yet we’ve managed to develop a culture that promotes teamwork, leadership, giving back to the community, and peer-teaching and learning. It’s really fun to have been part of this story from the start, and eventually founding Unicode Research to advance the same for conducting and publishing impactful research. But that’s a story for another day.
We’ve not shared the origin story before this to my recollection but I figured it was a nice tidbit to send out close to an important date in Unicode’s history, September 18th.
Before there was Unicode, two of our friends ran a separate IT Solutions company focused on Android development called The Pixel Factory while Rudresh, Avais and I ran a small web dev shop called CCDevs or Cutting Chai Developers, named after our shared love of cutting chai. At a certain point in CCDevs’ history we were doing quite well with a bunch of clients under our belt, building websites in India, China, Dubai, and elsewhere. We reached an inflection point when we got a pretty big offer at the time, roughly 2L to build a site for a client who actually took us out to Cafe Coffee Day for a business conversation and offered to cover food. It was so funny that neither of us actually ate any food out of either nervousness, overwhelming suspicion (we had just nearly been screwed over by our last client resulting in a time challenge battle to recover the hosting that we had not been paid back for, by guessing the password his new web developer would set up — a thriller for another time), or just surprise that someone might offer three undergrads expensive free food.
We asked for time to mull over the offer as we left that conversation with mixed feelings. At face value, this was a fantastic and very viable path forward for CCDevs, but surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, if you knew us) as we walked out and looked at each other there was a lot more to explore that we hadn’t gotten around to doing.
]]>This essay does not explicitly cover cold emails because that’s a slightly different ball game, but I will say there are similar principles involved that require you to write short, thought-provoking emails that make the other person want to write back.
You do not need to read this section to understand the rest of the article. No, really. It’s arguably straight-up narcissism, but I’m leaving it in because it is an accurate depiction of my state of mind.
In June 2017, I posted an update to my LinkedIn profile, adding a position with the title “Openlab Intern” at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. As an undergraduate student of Computer Science studying at a Tier-2 institution in India, it was a rather amazing opportunity to get an international internship at CERN. To top it off, my project was focused on anomaly detection, a topic of much interest across various disciplines, and funded by an industry sponsor.
While I had been active on LinkedIn since years, I hadn’t really been inundated with requests like I did immediately after this update. My inbox had practically ten new requests each day for a short period of time (it doesn’t sound like a lot but for me that was huge). To be fair, it was quite the ego-boost for a while but I realised soon enough things are not that simple. I started noticing some details about the people sending me connection requests. A lot of the accounts didn’t have profile pictures, education, experience, or even capitalized names (I’m rather finicky about this stuff so I tend to notice). About 1% of them were people I knew while most of them were students from random (and remote) institutes that wanted to add me as a connection for some reason. Some were people with thousands of followers but very little information listed on their profile, no posts, and sparse, generic activity. Given that I used the LinkedIn app, it became painful dealing with ‘manually vetting’ requests after a point and I started ignoring requests from people I didn’t know and those with incomplete (or ‘barely complete’) profiles. I was afraid most of these would turn out to be fake accounts and embroil me—as part of the legitimate nodes in their network.
The problem with ignoring all the requests was that there were a lot of students who simply wanted some advice regarding some projects, fellowships, and internships—most notably the CERN Openlab Program. If I filtered out their requests, that meant their questions would remain unanswered. Now, being an avid Quora user, I’ve always tried to use my knowledge and experience with the application process at CERN to guide students by writing answers on Quora. I tried to cover as much as I knew about the process for different programs since I had applied and received three separate offers from CERN between 2017 and 2018. I had assumed this would reduce the number of people who used to send me messages since they now had access to the information already. Well, as it turns out, many of the people who wrote to me did actually end up reading my website beforehand and the overall quality of questions I got did improve. But in recent times, it came up in a discussion with a friend, that some people who try to reach out just ask questions that can be answered with a Google search for the same question typed out. Case in point, if you’re looking for graduate school advice there are so many websites, blog posts, podcasts, and tweet threads out there that you’re doing yourself a disservice if you ignore these and come in with zero understanding of how to make a decision while reaching out to some specific person. On the other hand, I’ve come across the same question many times–should I take up graduate school or pursue a job. This is a very personal question and unless you provide me with a lot of context on yourself (which takes a longer conversation, and thus time), I cannot give you an answer. However, if you ask me why I pursued either of them, then we have an excellent starting point for a conversation. Why do I say this? Because I was in the exact same boat a few years ago and asked a few folks about their own MBA journeys before explaining my backstory and that worked out much better than making it all about me.
Noone truly enjoys ‘vanilla’ questions just as noone likes a plain pizza base. You need to add layers to make it worth the time spent answering them.
Let people talk about their own stories, most of us love to do that. And if they have already spoken about their back-stories, for instance in a podcast (wink, wink), then please listen to these beforehand to ask them better questions so as to not make them repeat the same things again!
I realize that a nonzero number of people are reading my blog, after having received a few messages about it. So I decided to write an article that I can point to when I deal with questions that I have answered before–and hopefully this helps students create lasting engagement with the folks they try to reach out to for advice.
Yes. Controversial opinion. But there almost always are bad questions in every conversation.
To me, ‘bad’ indicates sub-optimality. It means that you are not exploiting the full potential of a conversation by keeping it limited to surface-level discussion. Imagine having Walt Disney sitting next to you on a flight and asking him if free coffee is served to Disney Imagineers. Sure, there are worse questions, but is free coffee really what you want to talk about? And I should clarify this is an example that you might call a hyperbole because by no means is every conversation supposed to be optimized. But when people talk about first impressions mattering, I believe that is strongly correlated with asking great questions and making your conversational partner participate in a two-way information exchange as opposed to being a standalone contributor. Here are some things I have learnt by asking my own set of bad questions over the years:
The most common reason for ignoring your message has nothing to do with you. It’s simply that most folks don’t have the time to monitor social media and LinkedIn tends to have a lot of noise ever since it turned into a self-promotion network that now has everyone and their mother posting their ‘Today I Learned’, and other humblebrags (I’m equally culpable). My own Ph.D. advisor didn’t respond to my LinkedIn message until a year after taking me on as a student. Don’t take it personally!
Aside from a lack of time, the most common reason that I think conversations fail is because your question is asking them to save you the hardwork you should be putting in to get your answers. Most of them don’t want to discourage you by shooting down your question, but they want to help you out in a more impactful manner that doesn’t involve them spoonfeeding you the information you seek; a ‘teaching man to fish’ moment if you will.
Sometimes it is the case that your messages lack basic courtesy. I cannot emphasise how important professional etiquette is to establish the comfort level especially given that tech is an industry that treats men and women very differently. This doesn’t necessarily mean calling someone “Dear Honorable Sir” or “Respected Ma’am” but conveying a certain tone of respect and gratitude for their time that is hard to frame as a set of to-do’s.
The next most-likely reason is you causing someone ‘explanation-fatigue’ by asking them a question whose answer is already available on public platforms. They might point you somewhere or they might answer you anyway, but if you could ask ‘newer’ questions, at least for my part I’d appreciate the challenge of thinking through an answer.
Your questions were too personal or probing. Questions about salary details are a no-go (unless that is the pre-determined topic of the conversation)! It is also awkward to ask someone about their personal life when you are discussing professional career choices especially in a setting where they are taking time out with no fiscal or other incentive to do so. It is not nice to put someone who is trying to help you in such a position, and while many people I spoke with were very willing to discuss the personal factors affecting their lives, I always did my background reading about their work and prefaced my questions with ‘no obligation to answer’.
Good questions require a lot of thought to be put into them and a lot of reading to be done beforehand. If you take away one piece of advice, it would be to consume heterogenous information. Do not ever read things with a goal. Relax, do what you enjoy, and let the information come to you–if you’re like me, you’ll have fun as it does!
Concretely, I think there’s a set of levels at which our questions operate and I can probably only speak to the levels I have explored personally.
Now we get to that part about actionable advice on where to get this ‘information’ that I speak of other than to read newspapers and magazines. In case it slipped through, I should mention that this is also an opinion, and I’m probably being one of those people who talk too much without saying a lot (cf. Mokokoma Mokhonoana). For starters, I would recommend listening to some podcasts–I am biased by the content that I’ve recently consumed and will recommend corresponding videos because I remember them the best. Here is one of the podcasts that I enjoyed, as an Indian-origin engineering student, about a similar person who writes well and whose life I generally appreciate knowing more about:
The Early Twenties Podcast: Guest Episode with Debarghya (Deedy) Das!
I also enjoy the structure of Andrew McAfee’s podcasts particularly the points where he is alert enough to actively ingest what the interviewee is saying and churn out thoughtful comments and questions in real-time, even on topics where he is clearly a layperson.
The point I’m trying to drive home is not that that you’ll have to step into an interviewer’s shoes and match the amount of preparation that has been invested into a single conversation. But rather my point is IF you do invest that much effort into a conversation, I can almost guarantee you will end up winning their respect and establishing some really meaningful connections for life. I know that there have been some mentees that I have gone above and beyond for, in terms of time, effort, and sheer life-force expended to discuss their career outcomes, purely because they forced me to think, avoided all manner of generic questions, ‘knew their shit’, and just were nice people! In general, at least spend an hour or two looking into someone’s personal websites, their social media (Twitter, maybe LinkedIn), their research, their interests, and any articles they have written that are publicly available. For my part, this helped me place folks on a grid that allows me to define the parts of my life and career that they are best qualified to advise me on. Not everyone is able to speak knowledgeably about all topics and particularly when you want good advice, it isn’t helpful to try and push your mentors to step outside their area of expertise (although there are some merits to that, I would suggest you save it for a second conversation).
I have said this before but it is important enough to repeat. Genuine curiosity is impossible to feign. You can only pretend to be interested in someone for about ten minutes/five messages before it becomes evident that you don’t have any real questions that you want their help with. You probably just want to try and network or maybe use them as a stepping stone to some other goals. While this isn’t wrong, it’s not a nice feeling and definitely not interesting enough for the other party to continue the conversation. I strongly believe everyone has non-zero good advice to offer, and the onus is on you to direct the conversation in a manner that allows them to share it with you. If you feel a conversation was unhelpful, most likely you were underprepared for it. So before you go off finding random folks online to seek advice from, try to find your friends and get their perspective on things you want to discuss. Try to talk to seniors at your institute, professors that might just know a bit more than you do about career goals through sheer volumes of students that they have seen pass through the same corridors year after year.
Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve asked my fair share of bad questions (and been ignored) and my main challenge was verbosity or wordiness. I simply did not understand when to stop typing a message, because I just assumed everyone would be interested in reading through paragraphs of information. Well, surprise surprise! They’re NOT.
When I was an undergrad, I had this fantastic opportunity to choose between summer school + research with a professor at Stanford vs. a summer internship at CERN which was unheard of at least at my institute in the past. There were awesome folks to work with on both sides and I was extremely torn because the offer from CERN came through after I got the Visa for Stanford’s summer school and was mentally prepared to go through with it. And to top it off, I actually got two offers from CERN–one as a summer internship and the other for a year. It was a dream come true! Naturally, I wanted to make the most of what I had but I couldn’t decide and as with all my blog posts, I was too verbose in writing to folks that I sought advice from. Ultimately, my CERN guide said he’d help me do both (if it was feasible) and the Stanford professor said I should take CERN which I agreed with in large part because all else being equal, CERN was paying me a neat stipend whereas I would have to pay Stanford for the summer school, and I wasn’t a fan of making my folks pay through their noses just to see me take a few classes abroad. In hindsight, it was a no-brainer but hindsight is usually 20/20 and the excited schoolkid that I was would not have been able to reason that out in time.
A bit later I was selected for a Reliance Fellowship that would fund me if I got into Stanford for an MBA (I was super interested in capitalizing on my people skills–still do think about it) and I reached out to a bunch of Stanford GSB folks who were very kind and immediately set up calls to discuss my goals. They did ultimately dissuade me from going into business school too early and without strong direction so it was quite helpful to hear from the people in the best position before making a career-defining decision.
On the other hand, it might just be the platform because most of the time I got ignored was on Quora whereas LinkedIn had a much better response rate. I would guess LinkedIn restricting me to a 300 character message made the difference! I did improve my follow-ups and some of them are highlighted here.
This section had screenshots but I’ve been lazy whilst switching over machines and those are now lost in an abyss of bits.
Replicating the careers of your role models is nearly impossible simply because even the exact same combination of factors will not provide the same results at such different points in time. You’re not going to be Zuckerberg because he will either offer you a billion dollars for it, or copy your features, or (more likely) both. You cannot have another Steve Jobs because Apple’s supply chain efficiency beats the crap out of your mobile device startup’s business model since they are already manufacturing at scale. You cannot be Elon Musk because Tesla will buy out your battery company for its patents. You cannot be Yahoo because, well, do you really want to be them? (maybe Yahoo in the 2000’s, yeah). The point is we are told all these great stories that are 50% exaggeration, 25% PR-cleansed stories, 25% fact. For instance, how many of us were told that Bill Gates’ mom was a friend of IBM’s CEO (they sat on a board together) and it is plausible that he may have gotten the defining contract for the company through this connection (not going to share links because they’re also just opinions). Very few people talk about this and heck, it might be misinformation for me to say this given that there is little to zero evidence of this, but there is enough evidence of his mother playing a strong and supportive role in his life at every point, and that of her being a reasonably well-connected woman. This doesn’t mean Zuckerberg, Jobs, Musk, and Gates are not visionaries or ruthless business moguls, it simply means that they are outdated role models to try to emulate! With full credit to their accomplishments, I am saying that luck and external factors may have played a far more important role in most of their lives than we tend to picture in our heads. So fangirling/fanboying is perfectly fine, but remember that all your role models are human and thus flawed. They became who they are through the combination of a rigorous work ethic, opportunism, knowledge, and determination, along with a fair bit of luck. Respect them for what they achieved, by all means. But don’t put them on a pedestal claiming they’re perfect because no good ever comes of it.
I guess the point I was trying to get to was I’ve had moments where I thought some people did some incredibly awesome stuff listed on their CVs, and wrote to them all googly-eyed. But that is not a measure of who they are. Eventually I learned to just lead with the direct acknowledgment of their achievement(s), express my interest in their advice on a specific topic related to achievement, and started the conversation there. This led me to learn a lot more from them by treating them as people first and awesome later. And a crucial experience is that most secure, successful people will have disarmingly honest, often serendipitous stories about how that little glowing embellishment on their resume came to be. So my advice to you advice-seekers is to try to connect with people, talk about both of you, learn from their mistakes, but do not try to emulate their success. You define what success means to you, and fight to achieve it on your own timeline. Let noone tell you otherwise.
]]>Applications open really early, around August 2020 for Summer 2021. It is madness, I agree. But it is what it is. Usually just requires a resume and details, so no prep necessary.
Two page-resume preferred although senior Ph.D. students can go longer (I presume).
I’m going to sidestep general resume-editing advice because there’s a ton of that on the internet. If you’re lazy (like me), you will create one general-purpose resume applicable to ML research + engineering positions. Why bother about engineering? Because everyone loves development experience, especially given that everyone applying to Ph.D. research internships will have some research experience. Differentiates you from the rest.
Get referrals. Exploit your network. I didn’t in my first year and struggled but got lucky eventually. The next year I started by asking for referrals and immediately noticed the difference–instant replies from recruiters! It’s just to get you past the resume filtering stage, and sometimes skip a pre-screen. Rest of the process is the same regardless of referrals.
Interviews are not as hard as you might imagine. Some companies don’t have any coding rounds, most do. Standard SWE/SDE interview (advice available all over the internet), except they also add a 20-minute discussion of your research interests plus a real-world research challenge discussion in place of/in addition to your coding challenge. Typically one or two-round interviews tops. Some exceptions.
Was able to answer basic questions about recommender systems and effectively navigate what I would do to deal with real challenges like a cold start problem, generating item embeddings, etc.
No coding round, interestingly enough.
Was able to effectively convey what work I was doing and what practical applications it could have. Clear, concise discussion of my past work and projects helped a lot.
I had a F. Data Science and a G. AI Research interview in 2019 that didn’t go well because I was rusty on time management and on machine learning basics in general so here’s some feedback that I would give myself.
Be prepared to answer questions about why specifically you want to work there, and potential project ideas are always good to be prepared with. Still, don’t be too specific unless you are certain it is a project they will be interested in.
The questions will be easier than the ones you prepare for, just start solving them directly and keep an eye on time. For instance, I caught the trick in the question early on, but still wasted time whiteboard-ing a solution and got the correct answer but ran out of time coding it up.
Brush up your very basic statistics + ML questions. Choice of regularizer and consequences, what to do when there is class imbalance. FWIW if you have the interviewer’s details beforehand (even minutes before an interview), look them up. The questions will focus on their area of research (since they’re free to choose their own questions and most gravitate towards basic questions from their research areas).
I wasn’t too familiar with dequeue and heap, but it would help if you know more than just list, dict, set in python. Especially list comprehensions and other one-liners like sorting based on a lambda expression, etc. Standard SWE/SDE interview prep stuff.
It is easier than you think it is. All your friends got through tech interviews and so will you.
It is not your job to impress the interviewer with your vocabulary. Keep it short. Keep it simple. But most importantly, keep it relatable! It is their job to be interested in your research description, but it won’t hurt if you throw them bone after bone to ensure they don’t feel like you’re a bad candidate for their team. This relates to number 5 below.
Game the system. I don’t mean this in a negative sense at all. I am just saying that the interviewers are people; especially people on your side because if good candidates are hired, the are doing their job well. Pick up on the clues they drop. If they ask you questions, think about why they would be asking those specific questions. Correct your mistakes if they interrupt you right after you have made one (this is usually the case, they don’t have the time to wait for you to make a major mistake).
Always remember Occam’s razor, ESPECIALLY when you speak. This is maybe just Swapneel-specific advice, so ignore it. You tend to talk too fast usually. People might follow, but don’t assume they do. And if you think they are not following (which is 99.99 percent your fault), pause and ask if they are with you. THEN LET THEM SPEAK UNTIL THEY WANT. This is crucial: it is a conversation, not a monologue. The only way you will get good at this is - (a) read more papers and understand your own research area well enough to be able to connect it to practical problems for any third person/at their organisation. In fact, as a side note, brainstorm problem areas of their interest in advance; it helps drive the conversation and can potentially also lead them to discuss a closely related problem that they have worked on as part of your interview questions (and the bonus for you is you’re prepared for it). (b) talk slowly, it gives you more time to coherently string words together.
To beleaguer this point, you need to practice turning your theoretical research into a generally relatable area with easy descriptions of problems you could apply it to. That is definitely not clear from your current explanation of it (as of October 2020). Where is it applicable? What is the extent to which it can be applied? If I give you an industry research team like ‘Core Data Science: Graph Science and Analytics’ who is interviewing you, be prepared to answer questions like why do you want to work with us? You will have to know what they do and how you can contribute. Again, relatability of research area is key.
You need to know more than just lists and dicts. Specifically, there is queue, there is dequeue, there is set. Practice using at least these three things, and you will be golden. You definitely need more experience with stacks, queues, and sets wrt knowing their properties and predefined functions to exploit quick use when whiteboard coding a solution.
Again a bit Swapneel-specific but your original (and true) ‘stumbled into one great opportunity after another with an open mind’ story is the best way to explain why you are open to exploring new areas of research if you fail to come up with a better explanation. Stick to this, don’t try to change your story because that’s never going to end well. This also helps answer the final few questions presented above in (5).
Explain your research + Discuss how to deal with a churn prediction problem
What stood out and what I missed
Find the minimum difference between two sorted arrays of integers. Pretty simple problem, but I got stuck debugging while loops. Fortunately got some extra time and was able to submit it immediately after the final interview (~20 min extra). I was allowed to use a local IDE but unfortunately my PyCharm license expired.
Two main questions:
Am. sent me the interviewer names beforehand so I had a good chance to take a look at their work profile and a really good expectation of the kind of questions they would ask me. Even though I did not explicitly prepare for the interview, I did read one very unrelated (to my interview) robot chassis design paper by the interviewer just out of curiosity, and asked him a question about it later that he gladly clarified.
The questions were good riffs on the usual suspects: describe a time you faced a challenge and how you dealt with it was turned more specific and I don’t remember exactly what it was but I remember feeling like it was a more personal question that I was glad to answer.
A follow-up to the question above that went into how I approach problems I have no clue about (since I brought up high-energy physics). He also seemed to have read my resume properly (surprisingly few interviewers seem to do that) and again I recall feeling like it was a good set of questions and a very healthy air of discussion as opposed to interrogation that interviews can often turn into.
The interviewer asked me about deeply technical details about my CERN project on physics + ML and I liked that he prefaced it with “can you talk about it” (I think because I had mentioned my A-bobby NDA previously, or maybe just because he may have thought it was an old project, idk). I dove deep into more of the challenges I faced while working in that area especially answering his question about how I dealt with tight timelines.
After a set of three or four behavioural questions probing into how I deal with time-management, lack of domain knowledge, and conflicts, he offered me a chance to ask a question which I deferred to after the programming aspect (I’ve messed up coding interviews based on time and I did not want a repeat).
The coding challenge was extremely simple, in fact a one-liner. Design a 4-way traffic intersection. That’s it. It’s that simple. I launched right into writing what entities I was dealing with after a very brief conversation about the setup and assumptions. It was very simple initially, just two traffic signals, each regulating one of North-South or East-West, to paint a clear picture of the problem. What was tricky was actually writing down the time-delays between one light going from red to green to yellow to red and the other going from green to yellow to red to green (try it out and you will see what I mean).
Once I wrote some code, iterated over it, caught the trick, and completed that code, we jumped into a discussion of how I could use machine learning in this setup. It was a fairly straightforward discussion and we discussed some corner cases before a final question about causality that seemed more like a sanity check than anything else. It was about a feedback loop existing between the time from red to green and the vehicle speed at the intersection being used to determine the time from red to green using machine learning. That would create a cycle in the DAG resulting in a violation of the acyclicity constriant.
This interviewer worked on forecasting and I expected those sort of questions from him. Interestingly that was a very small fraction of the problems we discussed. We started with a set of similar behavioural questions albeit my answers for some reason were different. We drilled into a technical problem that I worked on at CERN that was based in high-energy physics and involved the use of graph neural networks as part of these questions.
The major thrust in this interview was a problem discussion that pertained to predicting the disease probabilities given the smptoms for an individual and I feel like I started off great, faltered, then picked up again. He had mentioned that we have not only symptoms but also demographic information about patients. I realized this was more of what we discuss as overlap in causal inference so you want to make predictions on “similar” individuals and not “different” ones. I cannot use a New-York-only dataset to predict a disease from the symptoms of people from Flint, Michigan, (known for groundwater pollution) because I’m likely to get very bad estimates if there’s no “matching” in our historical anonymized data (i.e. New York patient data) and the new individual (i.e. guy from Flint, Michgan). I answered that the simplest option was to start with regression models after creating subgroups of individuals based on the additional demographic information could help. So a separate regression for each subgroup. After a bit of discussion he asked about how to interpret the outcome of the regression as a probability and I wasn’t sure because honestly I have never done that practically, so I got stuck for a while.
The saving grace came when I started thinking aloud in terms of more complex models (“throw a deep neural network at it for a multi-class classification problem”, I said those words, and he probed me about what is the objective, how cross-entropy loss works, and so on) and in speaking out loud about what a neural net does and what activation functions are I realized oh right, the answer is a softmax. That’s how I use a neural network for multiclass classification. It helped that I had just worked on this in my recent internship so I was able to quickly recall how I built the model. So that was it on the problem discussion, more or less. Then he got into almost exactly the same rapid-fire ML question set as I’ve mentioned in the Mycroft interview process above (that involved slightly more discussion and slightly less questions). That was the end of the it. I asked him a question about the challenges they face translating causality from theory into practice and he had a very nice answer where he went into the details of how outcomes of interventions are affected by practical factors downstream so we have very noisy observations at every stage. It was very cool to have that pointed out and I definitely gained a lot from that last question I asked him.
This comes first because people often tend to ignore this very relevant section.
There is obviously no single way to achieve a successful outcome for your application to graduate school and this post comprises mainly of opinions that I hold based on no evidence other than a product of my personal experience with the process (which is limited, to say the least). All I’m trying to do by writing about this is to give you some perspective to enable you to think for yourself before you embark on the arduous process of applying to grad school. Goodluck!
Needless to say, please refrain from plagiarising the content. You know how badly a few lifted (and/or uncited) lines could mess up your application (and academic career), right?
Look at this set of personal statements, instead, as the quality of essays that your competition writes (these are for a mix of Ph.D. and Masters programs) and use it as positive reinforcement to ‘up your game,’ so to speak.
I’m going to cite Prof. Ben Y. Zhao from his Quora answer: “As a faculty member who’s been working on admissions for nearly a decade, and my other colleagues from other schools will confirm this, the SOP is often the LEAST useful and impactful part of your application. The short version: 99% of SOPs sound identical. Either avoid wasting time on it, or make it original by doing something different. But know that in all likelihood, it will likely have little impact on your admission chances.”
The US University Admissions process is well-known to be a ‘black box’ (largely uninterpretable). You and I may draw our conclusions but nobody can provide a binary answer with 100% confidence as to whether a given applicant’s chances of getting in.
For a detailed breakdown of this process, please read Karthik Raghunathan’s Demystification of the Graduate Admissions Process. While applying to grad school, you will get conflicting pieces of advice from people based on what has worked for them. It is natural for people to claim they have a hack to explain this ‘black box’ admissions process. However, my advice is to take their advice with a pinch of salt. But that too, is yet another piece of advice.
Prof. Andy Pavlo at Carnegie Mellon University provides some brilliant pointers in ‘How to Write a Bad Statement for a Computer Science Ph.D. Admissions Application’ (it is Ph.D. specific, but you can extrapolate most points to Masters applications).
Admissions are variable but it is clear that top schools always look favourably upon relevant national and international awards, and publications at top-tier venues especially when they filter applicants for competitive programs like CS (AI/ML).
Weaving stories in your statement, as stated before, may make or break your case depending on who reviews it. Ultimately I believe it’s a math.random() process because there is a human on the other end, and human intelligence - not unlike many manifestations of artificial intelligence - is highly unpredictable. I wanted to share some links for reading before you start writing. But before that, I’d like to try and highlight the most important part of your statement of purpose - your research!
A natural question that plagues most MS and often Ph.D. applicants (myself included) is “What is Research?” Having started my own Ph.D. in 2019, I find that sections 2.3 and 2.4 of Prof. Mor Harchol-Balter’s fantastic breakdown of the Ph.D. Application Process give a very accurate description of the process. In addition, the entire document is pretty insightful as a demystification of the Ph.D. Application Process.
Research Statements from professors/research scientists/Ph.D. Students often yield insight into not only their goals, but also areas of active research in general which is why I’m including some samples for candidates to read in order to ‘get a better idea of their field’ before writing their Statement of Purpose.
Mainly because this was the first (and only) Statement of Purpose I read before applying for a Masters in Computer Science right after undergrad (although I later decided not to jump into it, but work at CERN for a year instead).
Before you read this set of statements, I’d like to explain my reasons for highlighting this one.
It clearly depicts how an SoP evolves from a story woven around nascent experience working in tech and aimed at a short-term goal into a research statement that focuses on a specific field and hopes to achieve a long-term goal.
As an Indian B.Tech. student at Mumbai University, I could really identify with this as it was written by a fellow B.Eng. graduate from Pune University.
It’s a good example of progress and change of plans coming from a student who went on to do a Masters at Stanford and a Ph.D. at MIT and then dropped out midway to found a company called Instabase.
Another disclaimer: please do not treat this as a single representative example of how to frame your statement of purpose.
A lot of these people and a lot of the advice you will see states that they know the exact field they wanted to work on. That is false. Nobody knows exactly what they want to to for the rest of their lives. Very few actually know the general area they want to work on. Most people have only a fair idea and as Ph.D. programs often state on their websites, that is OK. Most of your ideas will change with experience anyway.
For instance, if you like X a lot but you’ve never tried doing Y, how do you know you don’t like Y and how can you say you won’t like Y more than X once you try it out. That’s understandable. However, you will see that all of these people have one thing in common - clarity. They possess a high degree of clarity in their research focus and know that there are one or two fields that they would definitely like to pursue. All they have done is explain why this is the case. And their innate clarity made the rest of the work they did fit into the theme of their ‘stories.’
Essentially, what you’re trying to do in your essay is explain one or two directions that you would like to take, back your claim up with evidence (yes, material evidence - including grades, research, and/or projects) of why you would do well in those directions, and finally state what you see yourself doing once you actually get into that direction. Clarity of thoughts is way more important and the only reliable way to get that is to actually be aware of what that direction is; follow active research areas and people working in that direction, and finally, at least have some ideas of what you would do if you were given an opportunity to work there. Write confidently; you don’t necessarily need to highlight why you failed or justify any misses if you can focus on the hits. It’s not necessary that your statement of purpose would have to ‘make up for why you’re not as good as you could have been’ as opposed to ‘focus on how good you can be based on what you have already done.’
The statement of purpose is one of the most critical parts of your application and while I have provided some examples of what I consider a great statement of purpose by people who achieved objectively good outcomes, it seems non-obvious to distill the principles that make for a good application essay purely by reading a few good examples. I decided, therefore, to write an addendum describing how I would go about editing my own (first draft) statement of purpose to make it sound better. I use excerpts from the document and critique it in the sections to follow with the goal being to establish my approach and elucidate my thought process through qualitative examples (which is far from perfect).
My main advice would be twofold:
Every line should be framed such that it applies to you, specifically. If you are using anecdotes, do not use them unless you feel it is uncommon enough to justify their use. You don’t have to be one of the millions of kids who were “introduced to a computer at eight years of age and immediately fell in love with it”. You’re not coming across as special if you “saw the potential of software to impact millions of lives”, or “realized that technology is the salient factor stimulating the progress of civilization itself”. I would discourage quotes that you’ve rummaged off the internet unless you’ve read a specific quote in a book and feel compelled to use it to bolster your vision for the future. I would lean towards encouraging contrarian views highlighting the pitfalls of technology as long as the direction you are taking with the rest of the essay (in some sense) advocates solutions for it.
I will use the term ‘too generic’ a lot in this case study so I should explain what it means. Think about yourself as a reviewer faced with several hundred student essays to go through within the span of a few days. Are you going to remember each of the applicants with the motivation of ‘I luuurve computers and software oomg so coooool’ or the one guy that skipped that part and said look I may have had an indifferent initiation into tech, but I ended up building this cool product at this company that helped them raise their revenues 3x? There is no rule stating you have to be inspired by computers from your childhood, in fact (this is an opinion, but) I would argue that if you were really one of those people, I would implicitly tend to expect a bit more from the rest of your essay. Like, okay, you learned about computers by eight, so what did you do that was driven by this passion for the next decade? So don’t try to fake a motivating story if you don’t have a compelling narrative. Your work can do that for you.
By keeping it simple, I mean to discourage the use of esoteric newfangled lexicons that not only evade the reaches of your vast intellectual faculties but often sound hyperbolic and characterize an undue disparity between the vision you possess and the impression you furnish. I trust this sentence made the point clear, but if not, I mean that any sentence that you need to do a ‘search and replace with smarter-sounding words’ for should be triple-checked for pretentiousness quotient and ambiguity.
I spoke about simplicity but how do you write a compelling essay? First, think hard. Why are you pursuing grad school? Is it to contribute to your field of research? Is it to gain access to better prospects for yourself? Is it just to make more money or get a job in a different field? There is no wrong answer, but there are unsellable answers. The bottom line is to ask you if the reasons are noble enough to sell in an essay (make no mistake, a grad app is a sales pitch and you are the product) or will they need rephrasing? If they need rephrasing (most of us are in this category, no shame in admitting it), what is the best alternative storyline for your pitch? These are extremely important high-level questions to answer for two reasons. The first is that very few of us at 18-20 years of age actually have a long-term goal other than becoming financially, professionally, and personally stable. Most of us spend the majority of our lives seeking these three things, and why shouldn’t we? It is fair. But it is not easy to sell to an application reviewing committee, so we need a bigger vision; a better storyline. And that’s where reason number two comes in: storylines come from ideas, and ideas are hard. Coming up with good ideas is easy, just Google a bad idea and you will find alternatives that are much better. Coming up with great ideas is exponentially harder, because then even Google can’t churn out related search results. That’s when it becomes dubious to tell whether you’re a genius storyteller or an idiot. And, as you might imagine, not a lot of us are good at telling them apart. I would say that there is your opportunity.
The answer to the questions about your motivation combined with how you choose to (re)phrase them will dictate your ‘connecting story’; the theme that weaves in all your experiences regardless of how (un)related they might actually be and your reasons for taking them up in the first place. It is important to mention that this theme cannot entail motivations that are unrealistically technical (‘I want to build artificial general intelligence by 2050’). At the same time, they cannot be something generic, even though that may be true (‘I love learning new things and taking on advanced coursework so grad school is the next logical step’) because then you are stepping back into being one of the million other applicants who, like I mentioned earlier, “fell in love with a computer at eight years of age and never looked back.” The theme should be unique to you as a candidate with a diverse set of experiences and that is why I cannot offer generic advice as to creating this theme. I can, however, write about what I did so that’s what I will do.
While I may have thought otherwise back then, I definitely would warn you that it does not look pretty to me anymore. Here it is, raw and unedited.
Gartner’s hype curve holding true even in the backdrop of Nostradamus’ contentious predictions of an apocalyptic future implies that this decade has some sensational breakthroughs in store for us. As I leaf through the pages of my journal, a repository of diurnal records and moonshot concepts dating back nearly a decade, I imagine the future I want to build based on my understanding of the present as a time reinforced by the omnipresence of artificial intelligence.
The final version of the essay I wrote back in 2018 adopts this theme of ‘reading back pages of a diary’. I have mixed feelings about this, in hindsight (obviously). That is because I have gained some experience in the few years since I wrote this statement of purpose. I’m no longer a fan of the ‘make it a story’ approach because I find it often distracts from the point–I want the reviewers to focus on my competencies and the idea of reading back pages from a diary describing all the cool things I did doesn’t read as well as I had hoped it would (and I would argue it gives off a showboaty vibe). Another issue is, as we discussed earlier, the first paragraph is extremely non-specific about my goals or my motivations. The saving grace keeping it from falling into the ‘generic’ bandwagon is the fact that it is more about the diary and theme of the essay than about any description that is commonly used by applicants to talk abotu their motivations to pursue graduate school. So maybe, just maybe, it is different enough to pique the reviewers’ interest.
Reading page 11, I reminisce about my schooling, the math, science, and cyber olympiad experiences and ranking 25th in India. My undergraduate education in Computer Engineering focused on applied mathematics and exposed me to the concepts of data structures, operating systems, compiler design, network security, database management, and computer architecture. An open-source development enthusiast, I won awards at national and international hackathons organized by Barclays and the Computer Society of India in addition to a Google and Tata Trust Scholarship. We have been offered incubation by the Indian Space Research Organisation and the Indian Institute of Management for our project built for the Ministry of Agriculture. My distinguished academic record resulted in being selected for the prestigious Indian Academies of Science Fellowship, a prestigious award offered to select undergraduates across India, by the Indian Institutes of Technology, Science, and National Institutes of Technology. On page 13, there are sketches of database architecture and system designs from 2015 when, as a sophomore, I built over ten websites for diverse clients from a variety of sectors ranging from education to healthcare. This freelance venture, Cutting Chai Developers (CCDev), served as an impetus for myself and my team to take up full-stack web-development, providing unique foundational training with technologies that proved instrumental in igniting our careers.
Reviewing the next two paragraphs the upside is I talk about concrete experience and achievements in a continuous manner, but the tone seems more like showboating to me now rather than a genuine description of my work. and that is critical because I have only one shot with a reviewing committee; they will take the first impression and walk with it, not necessarily giving me the benefit of doubt if they feel something is not right. Finally, and this is nitpicking, but the tense switches between past and present and that’s subtle but off-putting to me when I re-read it carefully.
Encapsulating my sophomore year on page 18, I mention how my academic credentials and unique exposure to web-technologies, led to being offered a Microsoft Research (MSR) project at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B), developing a farmer-welfare Android e-commerce application named ‘Lokacart’. Apart from adding features as directed, I took the initiative to integrate a Google Analytics dashboard with the application, commended by Ms. XYZ at MSR India. I continued my association with IIT-B working on a project with Dr. X involving the automation of assessment for Blender assignments. This research led me to train a classifier for grading assignments based on geometric parameters. I am working on integrating this into a real-time system for 5,000 students. Developing an interest in machine learning, I interned with a California-based AI and IoT firm, Z. It served as an introduction to pattern recognition algorithms as I worked with an international team on open-source codebases applying reactive programming in Python, Java and Javascript. Page 28 commences with my exploration of concrete opportunities to work with machine learning algorithms at A. I tested Markov chains and edit-distance based approaches for hostname generation as part of a dynamic workflow for their product. Publishing research talks as part of the Stanford Scholar Initiative by Dr. B, leading the Machine Learning Team—a group of international academics and researchers—spurred me to work with state-of-the-art neural network models. An invitation to undertake industry-funded research at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) served to provide a solid grasp of unsupervised learning as my project involved developing models for the detection of anomalous database connections. Guided by Mr. C, a senior member of the IT/DB Group at CERN, I worked with data streaming using Apache Spark and Hadoop Distribute File Storage, applying an ensemble of temporal, distance and density-based clustering methods and classifiers to accurately flag outlying database connections. It was this summer experience to interface with academics ranging from incoming doctoral students at MIT to postdoctoral researchers at Caltech and professors at Stanford, that reinforced my ambitions to pursue a Masters degree in Computer Science.
This reads slightly better to me because I shift focus from the theme of the diary to concrete achievements, project descriptions, and internship experiences. I am able to quantify the work I did and show that this work was done under the supervision of able researchers/organisations (just to validate my efforts and confirm to the reviewers that I am not misrepresenting my knowledge). There are minor issues with sentence structure, but overall it is continuous, clear, and concise. There is an unnecessary mention of MIT, Caltech, probably because I was fascinated by seeing all these fancy scholars around me, and working with them was a huge achievement for me. When they tell you that as a reviewer you have to ‘step out of your own shoes’, these are the kinds of empty statements you have to be able to identify, detach from your sense of accomplpishment, and edit out. Still, it’s not the worst idea if you forget and it’s left in there. Just don’t overdo it. Avoid things like ‘I took Stanford’s online course on Coursera and I did really well with a 90% score and accreditation’. There are millions of students who will say exactly that, if not a version of it. Instead, use the ‘real estate’ (space on paper, quite literally) to talk about what real-life problem the knowledge and skills you gained from the course motivated you to apply yourself to. That is where you come out ahead of the majority that took the course; not all of them will have a detailed, real-world application of machine learning to talk about because that is an unstructured problem, and as we have discussed earlier, unstructured problems are much harder to solve.
In this excerpt, I have been extremely technical, without providing an explanation for everything and that is okay to do because you can expect the reviewer to understand basic Computer Science lingo. However, if you have done something special, don’t undersell it. Talk about it briefly, but accurately. Similarly, if you have done something generic, don’t pretend you changed the world with it. It is not hard to tell that you are exaggerating when a single essay will have ten different applications of machine learning through internship or research projects that ‘totally changed the way the company operated before it was created’. And if you have actually done those things, provide the metrics and evaluation to validate your claims such that someone can believe you without having to Google if you said the right things. ‘I built an feature into their trademark lead generation product using an open-source GPT3 implementation to build a chatbot that can resolve customer queries. As a direct consequence, our response time for incoming queries halved and costs reduced by a factor of 1.8.’ This would be an excellent statement to make because it is technically sound, plausible as an internship project within a 3-month timeline, and achieves easily understood outcomes with quantification of impact. On the other hand, ‘I conducted research on applying deep neural networks to predict climate change and its impact on the short-term weather conditions based on agriculture data in a specific region with the goal to achieve farmer welfare.’ Okay, you did something but it’s unclear what the data looked like, what model(s) you used and in addition, what the outcome was. Even if you published work, try to summarize the findings, and especially mention the venue where you published it and whether it received any awards.
Delineating how knowledge base construction from dark data presents an interesting challenge, page 42 articulates my interests, and challenges that I see myself addressing. With a marked surge in pattern recognition and cloud-based services, data is fast becoming the currency of the tech industry. Research at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory as well as startups including the likes of Diffbot and (recently) Clarifai situated in Silicon Valley, is poised to lead breakthroughs in these fields. During a visit to ETH Zurich, I had the pleasure of discussing a former project—DeepDive—with Prof. C. He spoke highly about the research environment at Stanford adding that it is the people, more than their projects, that make the experience extraordinary. As the synopsis on page 48 elucidates, a Masters degree would not only impart relevant skills but also afford me the opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research in a suitable capacity. On its completion, I would seek a role with a small to mid-sized organisation in the Valley, where I’d be responsible for the development cycle of the product from ideation to launch. My short-term goal would be to gain breadthwise exposure collaborating on a large-scale data analytics and pattern recognition project. I would prefer to work with a startup where I could exploit my arsenal of domain-specific skills as well as business acumen in order to achieve organic growth. The domain I would work in would likely be at the nexus of machine learning and cybersecurity, since the digital age is symbiotic with data security. With increased reliance on cloud-based storage, providers face rising incidents of outages and data theft, setting the stage for the necessity of secure data pipelines. Building on my past experiences, my product would leverage automated and dynamic intrusion detection strategies as I worked on providing intelligent protection systems as well as distributed data security as a service. Finally I would endeavour towards my long-term goal of a bootstrapped startup in India to corner the potential market of a billion-plus users, as they seek reliable, intelligent systems to aid their migration into the digital age. I believe an education at Stanford would enable me to shape the future of computing in India, and eventually the world.
Interestingly, this last part focuses entirely on my motivation for a Masters degree and the future. At first glance, I feel like this is too long a statement of purpose since there is usually a two-page/1200 word limit but maybe I edited this down at some point? Anyway, I am quite specific about where I want to apply the knowledge I will gain from a Masters. In fact, I even outline career trajectories for myself. Maybe that’s a bit too specific because I know I wasn’t this sure about machine learning for cybersecurity (although I had really enjoyed working in cybersecurity more than my other internships up until that point). But I provide strong evidence in favor of my possession of the knowledge that would make me an excellent candidate so I probably figured that was a viable direction I could take and worked with it.
Some criticism for this section would include the theme of the diary again. It is distracting to keep ‘reading from the pages of my journal’, instead just mentioning what I want to do could be more direct and appealing. Short essays are not bad essays, and longer ones just add more opportunities for you to slip up. Still, it was a theme choice I made early on, one I clearly favored at that point. And I can say now that I have the results of my applications that not every school disliked it because one of them admitted me to their graduate program (although that could just have been due to my recommendation letters or some other factor).
In the interest of full disclosure, I did get iterative feedback from a career counseling team so I didn’t create this essay entirely by myself. Now, they were not consultants with a technical background but they had seen enough (top B-school) application essays and successfully counselled applicants to top business programs to develop a sense of what makes for a good/bad essay in general. So the way they operated was to have me write everything myself and simply point out high-level flaws or directions I could take to improve the flow of the essay. This happened over three rounds of iteration, and the output was the essay I published above. I also had the luxury of a job offer from CERN so I did not even consider applying to safe schools. The outcome of my Masters application process that year was an admission into the MS in CS program at the University of California at Los Angeles, while I received rejections from those at Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, ETH Zurich, EPFL, and Carnegie Mellon University. For completeness’ sake, my application package also included recommendation letters from my supervisors at CERN, IIT-Bombay, and from the Head of my Department at DJ Sanghvi College of Engineering.
This post has been composed by using publicly available documents shared by a fantastic set of researchers in an effort to help those that are seeking such information. I’ve simply listed them as they are, linking back to the original references.
If there is any issue with this, please feel free to contact me via email and I will be happy to remove the link(s) from this post.
]]>This is the last post in a 2-part series. While the first part highlights the preparatory phase, this post focuses on how life is different from what I expected when I first went abroad; it highlights the ups and downs based on a set of anecdotes and experiences.
“Freedom!”
My first thought when I stood facing the immigration counter at Mumbai airport, en route the next phase of my life in Geneva, Switzerland.
Like many Indians going abroad, I considered this my chance to be “independent” (often synonymous with ‘wild and free’). Freedom from the oversight of my parents; Freedom to spend my money where I want; Freedom to travel the world; essentially, freedom from the bucketload of socioeconomic constraints affiliated with the average ‘stay-at-home’ Indian student’s existence.
In my head, I was planning all sorts of activities - I had travel plans lined up to Madrid, London, and South Africa. They were mainly machine learning summer schools; a combination of work and studies. Maybe that was why I didn’t give a second thought to the life that I was leaving behind and the people waving goodbye from the other side of the window at T2, Mumbai International Airport. Maybe I was so excited for what lay in store that I didn’t feel sad for what lay behind me as I headed into a jostling crowd of ‘foreign’-bound Indian aunties and uncles.
Everyone tells you leaving home is a life-changing experience; most stories conveniently omit the ‘hard’ bits of their experiences. Suddenly, you’re thrust into a world of possibilities. It could mean that you travel the city, meet new people, share new experiences, and try out new cuisines. This worldview meets with a counterview called ‘reality’ pretty soon. All these ‘new experiences’ sound pretty awesome until you realize that they could also mean you’re stranded on the tram stop at 1 am with no mobile network, as you squeeze your way out of the crowded bar of puking partygoers after a meal of tasteless, parboiled vegetables that constitutes a ‘traditional’ supper. Life is funny that way.
For the most part, I believe it is a great idea to be excited about new phases in life - temporary or permanent; good or bad. But on the other hand, it is unnecessary to have the wrong expectations of people and places you’ve never been to. A lot of my friends ended up getting an inaccurate idea of the responsibilities associated with moving abroad and they were more often than not in for a rude shock rather than a pleasant surprise. They seem to have coped well, but then not everyone is that lucky.
In an era where ‘living my best life’ porn has hijacked the purpose of social media, I think it grows increasingly important to provide a reality check to counter this gold-plated fantasy people assume everyone else lives. Calibrating the right expectations at least for the peer groups I am a part of is what I hope to achieve in this post.
This is as much a reflection of the experiences of my friends in the United States as it is an observation of life in Europe. Its suitability for extrapolation to life in other countries would depend on regiospecific patterns and nuances, but I hope some of the ideas I highlight can calibrate expectations on the right scale. For my part, I definitely believe I have had (and continue to have) a well-balanced life at CERN, but I concede there have been lows to match the highs. I will utilise these as anecdotes to highlight some common misconceptions that I had and how they impacted my life.
Of course, my opinion might be too cynical for many (including myself) to take seriously, but I hope the readers can make that distinction for themselves.
In retrospect, I emphasised the setting for this article twice (once in the disclaimer) but I feel in the current light of a blind mass-migration of Indian engineering graduates abroad this is a really critical point to drill in.
I left my home, my people, and my country behind in search of opportunities to launch a career as a computer engineer; full of an effervescent joy for the life that awaited me.
I am just another kid trying to make a living for himself and his family. I genuinely believe I am lucky to be on a path to make useful contributions in my line of work - artificial intelligence. Early on, I had a lot of vague ideas about ‘changing the world’ that eventually gave way to narrower, quantifiable, concrete goals within a ‘grand plan’. In fact, I have this ‘Book of Ideas’ that highlight some mind-numbingly awesome plans I came up with as a kid along with a commentary on the pros, cons, and obstacles for each. Funnily enough, some of these plans have already been “copied” by startups that are doing really well for themselves. But I take solace in the fact that this serves as validation - some of these crazy ideas actually had substance to them!
Coming back to my goals, I’d get a bit technical here if I were to highlight specifically what I’d like to achieve when I say ‘change the world’ but I’ll save that for a more detailed post later on. For now, let’s just say that there are always tweaks and improvisations to this ‘grand plan’, but I am happy that I am somewhere in the vicinity of realizing it in the next decade or three.
I think excitement comes naturally when we consider living abroad - exploring new cities, cultures; working or studying at elite universities and leading an Instagrammable existence. I was no different. It was a fantastic country to live in, wonderful friends that I already had, brilliant researchers on my team, and extremely supportive parents. What could possibly go wrong?
A lot of my friends heading to the United States were similarly quite pumped about learning from top-notch faculty, engaging with a wonderful set of classmates, building a global network of professionals, and receiving opportunities to work at firms at the bleeding edge of the tech revolution that AI is leading. I think it was a fair set of ideals to bear in mind, but most of us were not prepared for the point at which the tsunami of reality hit us. Lectures were hard; assignments took a significant amount of time and effort eating into the major part of the day; classmates and roommates were not the most helpful, often creating issues when living together; and the job market was dismal given the sheer number of applicants for the same post, factors including the political climate, arbitrary hiring practices, and the role of plain old luck in acing a standard programming interview. It takes a bit of time to realize this world is not as glamorous as it is made out to be. It is rewarding, but only after months of hardwork, weeks of sleepless nights, and almost daily battles with annoying roommates. To be perfectly clear, these are a cumulative set of issues over a short period that affected the bunch of friends and people don’t have to deal with all of these at once (unless they get really unlucky). But these issues do crop up from time to time and it takes a nontrivial amount of effort to address them.
Independence comes with its own set of freedoms and the freedom to manage your own finances is one of these. A lot of people heading into grad school underestimate the mental impact of having to pay back a loan has on a candidate that is going through the grind of assignments and exams on a daily basis. If you are like me, you are constantly reminded of the exchange rate whilst purchasing groceries at the local supermarket. They have all these sayings that really don’t make sense to you until you are thrust into situations where they apply. Managing finances reminded me of how responsiblities and freedoms were two sides of the same coin, and how real shit could get if I had been the sole breadwinner for my family. Sure, I was relatively lucky because I was generating a comfortable income, but had I been in a situation where I had no income but only expenditure I daresay I would be under considerable mental strain as well. I cannot possibly fathom the amount of stress that one would have to deal with if one’s family depends on their future income - that’s real adulting right there. It impacts work; it impacts studies; there is nothing you can do about it except hold on to the idea that you will eventually get a job and pay everything back. That will make all the sacrifices and risks worth it.
Solitude is a great place to visit until you realize nobody might be waiting for you back home.
Everyone likes the idea of having ‘me-time’ and the best part about living on your own is the ability to determing where to spend your time outside of the classroom/workplace. But on occasion, it also feels nice to have people around. This hits hard (at least initially) - particularly for those of us moving from a very active familial environment to a studio apartment living in a room with housemates who might not be around much. You move from constantly having somehting to do into an environment where you might actually have nothing to do for hours on end (unless you’re like me :P) - or at least nothing you’d rather do.
Loneliness hurts, and most of us are afraid to talk about it; afraid of seeming weak and desperate. In my opinion, it’s a factor for a lot of mental problems that people claim to suffer from. I’ve been there for a short while and it isn’t a great place. Luckily, I have friends who never let me feel lonely for really long (annoyingly lovable pricks), forcing me to speak with them, do something I enjoy (sketching, cooking, running) or simply go out and meet new people. Find yourself a friend circle that will help you stay strong, engaging with you when you need them while giving you some personal space otherwise. At the same time, reciprocate the favor and do make time if you feel your friend(s) need(s) you. Most people just need for you to be there on the other end of the line and they’ll handle the rest.
I feel like I’ve been a bit too serious throughout the post so I’ll share some lighter views before heading into the next part of the article.
Life is worth living, no matter what.
For all my claims of having developed a melancholic worldview, I think moving out of your home is a critical experience for moulding a wholesome personality. As we grow up, most of us mature into young adults (I didn’t). This maturing doesn’t come about on its own - it is a product of experiences (and bad ones matter more than good ones), learnings, principles, and practice. Living and studying abroad is a really fast-track way of achieving a ton of experiences in a limited time span. It teaches you lessons in a way nobody ever could have imparted the same ideas. I genuinely believe it’s worth a shot, for the right reasons, and in the right situations. Everyone isn’t immediately going to be able to move out of their houses, but if you ever get the opportunity, do try it out!
One of the best parts about living in a new city is that traveling anywhere even within the city is basically a vacation with very little travel time. Plus, you can make trips to friends in nearby cities which makes for a very active set of weekends.
In practice, at least during the semester, this isn’t going to work well mainly because the fatigue is often not worth the weekend of fun. Sure, if you can manage to make the time and you find it worth it then by all means go ahead. All I mean to say is that it varies with people and situations. On the whole, though, Spring Break and Winter Break make for wonderful week-long trips that result in a significant amount of Instagrammable content (for the future influencers reading this).
No more adult supervision because you’re the adults now. Oh… crap!
Nobody is around to shout at you for coming home at 2:30 am anymore. No more lectures on how you’re missing out on umpteen health benefits because you don’t eat eggplant curry. Nobody around to check that you’re studying and not bingewatching Game of Thrones on the night before your exam (I aced that exam, okay!).
For Indians with the typical familial restrictions on dressing, partying, drinking, or dating, this is a gold-mine of opportunities. I’ve had quiet, docile friends turn into alcoholic partygoers. That’s an exaggeration, to be fair, but my point is that this opens up the doors to a lifestyle most would never have access to if they continued to live around imposing families. You can now go out when you want, party as much as you’d like to, stop drinking milk (I’m surprised how much that comes up) and eating stuff you don’t like, watch movies late into the night, call your significant other over, maintain an active dating life, or whatever the heck you want. There is nothing to stop you save for the fear of consequences arising from poorly reasoned life choices.
Fortunately, my parents aren’t controlling in any sense (and neither were most of my friends’ parents), but I do know of the occasional case where the kids lashed out at years of unhealthy restrictions by taking every opportunity they got to engage in activities that were not accessible to them before. It usually didn’t end well but those are a result of their decisions alone. So it’s a fine line between freedom and anarchy that is entirely dictated by the amount of responsibility one would decide to exhibit when ‘let loose’, so to speak.
Life is an uphill ride. Pedal hard, because you’re sitting on a bike with no brakes.
Life is going to be hard, but the fruits of your labor will be just as sweet. It is really cool to survive all these experiences. When you look back at the arduous path you took navigating a series of situations in the best manner you could, it feels really satisfying that you ended up where you did. For a change, mom cannot take as much direct credit (although she will try) for your success albeit their presence did make a critical difference everytime. You can actually feel happy about adulting like a real adult, something that tells you you’re probably ready to grow slightly older and more mature than you were before.
Frankly, I doubt I have grown any more mature than I was two years ago, but I have definitely learnt a ton of vital lessons about living, loving, and losing. Obviously, as a professional I have developed far more than I would have imagined, courtesy a wonderful team and encouraging community. That would probably be another post at a later stage - highlighting how 2018 has been one heck of a rollercoaster ride. But I would say I genuinely enjoyed this journey and look forward to the next chapter starting later this year!
I have frequently used the term ‘abroad’ where I really mean to imply ‘away from home’. I realize now that the same arguments apply in situations where one moves to a new city albeit within the same country. For India, where cultural diversity varies drastically from region to region, moving to a new city may as well be equivalent to moving abroad.
I have utilised examples for both working and studying abroad and it should be noted that there are subtle differences between the two where I have painted the picture in broad strokes than would highlight these nuances.
Switzerland, for the most part, is just plain wonderful. In comparison to many other countries, we have little crime, little poverty (if you’re poor and homeless, you really can’t afford to live in Geneva), lots of mountains, valleys, rivers, and a big-ass lake. I spent a week traveling around with my family and can confirm it is, for the most part, composed of a charming and picturesque set of villages and towns with a dash of modernism added here and there. Swiss chocolates and cheese are renowned the world over and finally I can claim to understand why.
I live in a village on the French side of the Franco-Swiss border called Saint-Genis Pouilly (‘saun-genie-poo-ey’) and bike down to the Swiss side where I work (yes, border crossing is chill out here). It’s cheaper, less travel, and closer to the beautiful Jura mountain range than the options I had available in Geneva. However, there are understandably fewer social events, gatherings, and parties in Saint-Genis if you’re new to the area as opposed to Geneva that actually possesses some semblance of nightlife. It isn’t as important initially, but this lack of socializing opportunities might get to some people later on.
The working week is about 40 hours, with some ups and downs based on your personal preferences. My team is pretty relaxed about how I manage those hours although I am usually at my office for about 8-10 hours a day. I also have side-projects and personal commitments that I work towards in the additional time I have. Evenings are usually meant to cook dinner, chill with my housemates (we recently realized we share a love for chess!), or simply watch a few episodes of Fresh Prince of Bel Air (I just started BoJack Horseman, though). Finally, on the weekends there are usually outings planned, parties to attend, places to be, or a few movies to watch. Incidentally, this weekend I’m spending on wrapping up some incomplete blog posts. I get enough time to spend on myself and I signed up for Taekwondo lessons at CERN about three months ago. Turns out CERN has everything from a finance club to a sailing club for its members to subscribe to. That makes it really convenient and affordable to find activities for your spare time!
There are a lot of pros to living in Switzerland: firstly, the standard of living is pretty high. You will be enjoying top-notch services wherever you go; discomfort is rare and usually addressed quickly. Next, the weather is pretty mild throughout the year. To be clear, there are rainstorms and snowstorms but the frequency of these and (judging by Mumbai standards) is really not much. The temparature reaches slightly under freezing on a bad winter day but it isn’t too bad to step out of the house, almost ever.
There are mountains to hike up and valleys to ski down. Water sports open around the summer and adventure activities are aplenty. Geneva also has a lot of festivities around the few months of summer although it reduces around the winters. I had a lot of fun learning ice-skating this winter (two lessons and I can skate without falling), courtesy a friend who proved an encouraging mentor.
Finally, and most importantly, the crime rate is almost zero (if not zero). Like, there is literally no danger if you walk through the city unaccompanied at even 3 am in the night (I know because my friends and I have done this :P). Sure, there are some areas where it might be unadvisable to do this but for the most part, it is perfectly safe to hang out anywhere at any time. This has its advantages because living and traveling is much easier when you don’t have to worry about the safety of yourself and your belongings. Small things like if you have to visit the ATM at an odd hour, you don’t have to think twice about your safety which is not what I heard about many other cities around the world.
There is a price to pay for everything and boy does Geneva take that adage seriously. It costs between 10 and 25 Swiss Francs ($12 - $28) to have a fairly decent meal and travel costs about $16 if I’m going to and from the city (passes make it cheaper in the longer run). I’m not the partying type but I have been to parties and I can confirm that booze is not cheap either, so if you like having a good time, be prepared to shell out for it. The price isn’t as much of an issue because most people here are also paid well to live in Switzerland (well, we aren’t paid as richly at the student level but it’s still a comfortable wage). But it takes a while to adapt to the cost of living (I know it did for some of my friends and myself).
The main issue I faced coming in as an Indian student working in the summers versus working in a year-long contract was that the summers were all fun and frolic which didn’t serve as enough preparation for what comes later. The nature of the work environment at CERN is that most of us are temporary hires (‘temporary’ ranging from a few months to a few years). You barely get used to a certain set of friends and suddenly, people are leaving and you have a completely new peer-group to hang out with. In my case, it took a huge mental effort to convince myself to go out, attend parties, network and expand my friend circle. I’m not so much an introvert as plain lazy to engage in these activities but my housemates were really active in this sense, and the atmosphere even at home was quite lively most of the time. On occasion, they dragged me off to parties that ensured I maintained a healthy social life. I was fortunate enough to keep bumping into crazy friends (man, did we have good times!) but this always came with the regret that the time we had to hang out was finite. It was the only issue I ever had with life out here, but I also understand that they hire us in fixed-contract roles for a reason and it’s really not that bad to get to know new people from time to time. On the bright side, this ensures I have friends in most major cities around the world. That is pretty useful when you’re couch-surfing on vacation ;)
I have attempted to provide a complete picture of life abroad as an Indian student. Sure, I write this in my limited experience and capacity but it’s a start and I hope to be able to expand on this as I move to the next stage of my career starting grad school in a new country.
I fully understand there might be biases that creep in and experiences that others might not share. I have tried to keep it rather broad bearing in mind the audience for this post and I hope you found parts of it relevant to your respective situation(s)!
]]>I haven’t traveled a lot by conventional standards - I do not (cannot) claim to represent the broad generality of travel in my views. But I did take a whirlwind tour of summer schools and conferences across London, Madrid, and South Africa across a month that gave me reasonable insight into the world of travel.
Craziness is what my mother called it; adventure is my preferred description for traveling the way I do.
My view of travel has its nuances based on my expectations of what an ideal trip is, and as I said before, these expectations are bound to vary with people of different ages, cultures, professions, and backgrounds. Sure, having fun is top priority but I like to make travel about more than just ‘fun’. For me, it’s a process of distilling interesting parts of diverse cultures and peoples and using it to inform my perspective. I find that following this principle helps me have a far more lasting impression of a place than my Instagram handle does.
Note: I don’t have anything against Instagram (or for that matter Facebook or Snapchat) - in fact I do have the occasional post to my own handle. It’s just that I felt (at least in my social circles) people are overdoing it and not in a good way. Sharing happiness and momentous occasions are fine but we (especially the younger generations) start drawing a sense of fulfilment and validation from making our lives seem picture-perfect. In the longer run, this could have far-reaching psychological consequences which scares me away.
In the past year, I have scoured the murky depths of price-comparison websites for last-minute deals, booked flights on seedy airlines, missed connections, been denied a Visa until hours before the flight, been dropped off to my hotel by kind strangers, and been mugged (without loss of any valuables; sucks for the robbers). I’ve learnt a few lessons about travel that I hope to share in this post.
Everyone has a story to tell but most people don’t bother trying because they lack good listeners.
I like stories. I always have. From Disney’s Golden Book Collection of the classics to Roald Dahl and Ruskin Bond, I am fascinated by the occasional novella. This quirk morphed into my proclivity for people’s life stories, and travel, I quickly found, was a wonderful opportunity to do this. All I had to do was ask nicely and listen carefully!
The conversations began quite formally but took surprisingly interesting turns. Following one of my flights, I found myself being dropped off to my Airbnb in Madrid by a kindly aviation official who said I reminded her of her son. We’re now friends on Facebook and LinkedIn. On another, I chatted with a recruiter from an investment bank about opportunities to work with them. On a third, I found a Ph.D. student working on pretty cool Linguistics stuff and was offered advice on pursuing one. In retrospect, most of this happened simply because I broke the ice as opposed to putting on my headphones and switching on a movie in the flight. It also worked out because they didn’t do the same right upon taking their seats. But most importantly, it worked out because I tried.
Don’t run through the fields so fast that you can’t stop and smell the flowers.
Unless you’re biking in the mountains, travel is meant to be relaxing (some would argue biking is more relaxing which I find fairly reasonable). Find what makes you happy and keep doing it.
If you like taking pictures, go the fuck ahead and take them. If you like eating a burger and fries at a French Restaurant, ignore the waiter’s judgemental looks and order that damn cheeseburger! Stop worrying about what people say or think about you. I know it isn’t as easily done, but when you’re happy you will be surprised at how easy it is to let go.
I really wanted to experience firsthand how summer schools work: from the structure and actual delivery of the lectures to things like organising outings, I think it is incredibly cool that machine learning schools are popping up across the globe offering us a firsthand experience of lectures from a diverse set of academics. So I clubbed travel with summer schools because I realized that satisfied my definition of ‘traveling with a purpose’ and brought me joy. In my understanding of travel, I preferred attending lectures by day with the evenings reserved for hanging out with participants hailing from all across the world discussing quirks in our cultures and traditions. I also received critical feedback on my poster about our work at CERN and a ton of advice on going about a Ph.D. that was quite useful as I set about applying to grad school.
We explored the cities, heading off in search of cafes and pubs that were known for their local fare. I didn’t mind missing out on the most popular tourist spots as long as I could learn about a bit of the historical significance, find some cool cuisines, or simply enjoy the city and its architecture. It brought me joy and I didn’t care what people thought of it (I got comments along the lines of being a workaholic which I might agree with, but I had way more fun than I would care to admit so the tradeoff was quite worth it).
Things do not always go according to plan.
Plans do go awry more often than you would imagine. Traveling is like trying to eat a piece of pie precariously balanced on the edge of a knife - it looks delicious but before you know it, it might tip over and splatter across your trousers (I have absolutely no idea why I used that analogy but belated Happy Pi Day, everybody!). For instance, being a vegetarian, you are almost certain to have to compromise on available food options, and trying to travel cheap almost always ends in discomfort. On one occasion at Oxford, I was stranded about three miles out from my hostel in the middle of the night while it rained and the streetlamps blew out all because I wanted to see a pretty sunset and lost my way to the river. Another time in Madrid, we missed the bus meant to transport us to Segovia and instead took a train and raced it down to the destination (turns out it was so much fun that it ended up being the best experience we had in all of the two weeks we spent in Madrid). I have been hiking while we ran out of water; freezing cold on top of a mountain in the rain; bathed with freezing cold water in the chilly winters for over a week. I never complained frankly because I didn’t see the point - it would have solved nothing anyway. The only solution was to adapt and move on.
These are just a small subset of reasons that force you to adjust in terms of comfort and familiarity or force you to think on your feet and come up with viable solutions to address the situation. Improvisation can be the best and worst parts of travel depending on what you choose to make of it!
Don’t die. That’s about it.
This is the part where a lot of us take things for granted and end up in bad situations. I am careless, I will admit that. I do not keep track of my belongings and on occasion, I end up paying a heavy price for it. For instance, I ended up overpacking my bags on a few occasions and whilst removing some belongings at the very last gate right before boarding, I dropped my wallet at London Heathrow, realizing this right after the flight took off. I was extremely lucky to get it back with cash and cards intact, but things could have gone very wrong had I kept my Swiss Card in that wallet.
I will not shed more light on this via anecdotes but suffice it to say I have seen my fair share of unsafe experiences mainly on account of my own stupidity. Don’t be like me. Be smarter. Thanks.
With that, we come to the end of this brief article and my learnings from a summer of travel. I do hope to travel a bit more over the next few years so I expect to update this with more lessons and interesting anecdotes soon!
]]>Note: This post contains a healthy dose of sarcasm.
Most of this article can be represented by this meme.
Expectations are aplenty when you study Computer Science
In this case, however, we are going to bring alive the What I think I do part. We’re going to pump our terminals full of steroids and make it spout pointless nonsense that — to the non-CS folk— makes us look like we know what we are doing.
And we will do this in less than 30 minutes, starting now.
Didn’t see that coming, did ya?
The essence of most work we do as programmers boils down to a simple aspect of our lives — the terminal. Sure, we have graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that make life easier for the non-geeks among us, but the mark of a true Computer Science Major is that you have spent 4 long years learning how to open and operate the terminal.
If you wish to open the GUIs, instead of doing it visually by clicking on the icon, open a terminal and type the command that launches the GUI. I guarantee you will feel greater satisfaction about being a CS major than you currently do.
On a more serious note, until a while ago I realized most of us seriously under-utilise the terminal at the early stages in our career (and also look extremely uncool doing it). We could use a pointer from the people who have spent years working on this stuff just to help noobs (such as myself) feel much better about being geeks.
So you’re using a Linux distro (or Mac OSX)? That’s awesome. But you’re still using the plain old bash terminal? Probably something that looks like this.
Good old Bash :’)
Or you’ve become a programmer and modified the default profile to something that is actually colorful. Good job. In that case, you’re looking at something of this sort.
Homebrew has profiles that you can activate (Photo Credit)
What if I told you that you can get from these terminals to this next one in a matter of about 29.7 minutes (average case, varies with innate geekiness quotient).
The “OMFG THAT LOOKS AWESOME” Terminal
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the Z Shell.
The idea is basically to use a bunch of plugins and themes that help you modify your terminal into a beautiful piece of art that you want to stare at all day long. There’s also the added functionality like auto-completion, command history, but that’s less important (editor’s note: sarcasm).
Just look at how pretty it is.
The short explanation is just as you have your default bash shell, you have a version of this that has been customised via plugins and themes that make it much easier to code, navigate, and generally exist in the terminal (as most real programmers do).
As history goes, the Z Shell was brought to earth by angels that wanted to enable Artificial Intelligence to take over the world decades before the Rosetta Stone prophesied it would.
Show me, Master.
Okay, fine. Now that you’ve made it until this part, I’m going to share the codebase that enables you to do this to your terminal. I’ve added customisations for your Vim text editor as well in case you want a change in scene from Sublime Text 3 (the decision to switch comes with the added bonus of looking much geekier than ever before). Have at it!
Here’s your Stairway to Heaven.
Now before you jump to it, I’ve added a considerable amount of theoretical explanations underpinning the files/code that you’re modifying. Do yourself a favor and go through these to avoid destroying your system configurations (just kidding, or am I?).
(editor’s note:he was not kidding)
What exactly are dotfiles?
tl;dr
Configuration files on unix, or ‘dotfiles’, often begin with a dot. For example, .vimrc stores your vim settings, .bashrc stores your bash settings, etc.
In UNIX file systems, dotfiles are text-based configurations files that stores settings of almost every application, service and tool running on your system. These files control the behavior of applications from boot to termination and everything in between. People create backups and elaborate setups of their dotfiles and often share them on GitHub or other code hosting platforms. Helping them setup, their systems faster and restore their configurations when needed.
These files are basically used to define environment variables and append paths that you would require for installed applications. When you run source ~/.bashrc
, you are just refreshing the definitions of the variables in the file. The same goes for your ~/.bash_profile
or ~/.zshrc
folder.
In the case of your .vimrc
file, it contains specific configurations for settings and plugins that are used when you open your text editor with the vi
command. Each time you modify it, you probably need to shut and reopen the vim editor to refresh those settings. There are also ways to do it from within vim (without shutting it) such as :so %
.
Reference: How to reload .vimrc without shutting vim
Stack Overflow: The difference between .bashrc, .bash_profile, .environment
.vimrc
file and rename it to init.vim
for your Neovim to use (it must lie within ~/.config/nvim
). But you get that it is the same idea - define custom settings in an rc
file and then source
it whenever necessary.Why do we need them?
Now, imagine I destroy your laptop in a way that the data can’t ever be recovered. (Pretty dark, right?) and ask you to restore all your little shortcuts, tweaks, and settings that you took hours to configure in your applications. An impossible task. Not really. This is actually where dotfiles come in, these nifty text files that you save, contain thousands of key-value pairs defining each and every aspect of your applications. You can restore your system back to that point in a matter of minutes. (answer by Vipul Gupta)
Quora: What are dotfiles
Read more: What is the difference between bash and sh
Z Shell on Source Forge
Usually, when you log into your personal computer, you have ‘administrator privileges’ or ‘root privileges’ i.e. you can run the sudo
command. This gives you a lot of control over the installation but also holds you responsible should anything go wrong. Technically, you could actually wipe the entire system clean (delete literally everything). Please don’t try this.
Anyway, this root privilege means you can create and install files in the system directories, /usr/bin
, /bin
, and so on. That also means that when you run sudo make install
, your software also gains privileges to copy and create files in the corresponding system directories. That’s why it doesn’t require much manual copy-pasting labor to get it installed and running.
However, often whilst configuring this stuff on a new system, you do not have root privileges (and never will, in the near future). In this case, you need to understand some concepts in order to debug the installation should you run into issues (which you shouldn’t, but we all know you will).
When you run a command, the system searches for it on the path. What is this path I speak of? Well, the system stores all its ‘commands’ which are basically files that are run in the shell in a folder called /bin
, which, on different systems, is symlinked (symbolically linked, or ‘points to’) /usr/bin
, /usr/sbin
, or whatever else. The point is, all your code to be executed when you type ls
, or echo
, or ifconfig
is stored in such directories that are then put on the system path.
The system path is essentially a variable that contains a list of ALL the locations/directories to search for a command. You can add, remove, or delete all the paths (please note the original content of the variable before you clear it). Try using echo $PATH
to see how this works on Unix. You should see a list of directories that contain the code to be run following each command you type.
For instance when you type python xyz.py
, the system first looks in bin
, or whatever directory is first in your $PATH
variable and finds a link to where the python installation is. Then it executes all your code in xyz.py
accordingly. This directory called bin
is common for all users of the system. So the same code runs for all of them when they type ls
.
Now you get why you cannot allow anyone to modify the bin
folder. It’s simply because the next time User X types python
, or ls
, you don’t want this modified code by User Y to start downloading the latest episode of Sacred Games (or maybe you do) or worse, a computer virus.
So, as a non-root user, when you try to install things, there are some directories where you cannot write files to. On top of it, some restrictions also mean you cannot sudo apt-get install
or brew install
, or yum install
packages. In such a case, you can usually just download the packages from Github (or elsewhere) and manually install them. The instructions vary by package.
The idea, however, is that you can always install in a random directory (in this case, we prefer the $HOME
or ~
directory) and then add the file to your $PATH
variable. This tells the system that it has to also look in (for instance) ~/neofetch-5.0.0/
to find the neofetch
command (in case you have not installed it using brew
or apt-get
).
The same goes for neovim, where I have first added the path to neovim installation to the $PATH
variable and then added a line called alias vi='nvim'
which means the vi
command which I conventionally used to open the vim
editor is now replaced by the nvim
command which is searched for on the path and found in the neovim directory:
# added by NeoVim
export PATH="$HOME/neovim/bin:$PATH"
# Remove this line if you do not have neovim installed
alias vi='nvim'
I’m a recent graduate of Computer Engineering working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). I got into a “US top-15” school for pursuing a Masters in Computer Science starting 2018 but chose to work as a Technical Student for a year instead. My goal in spending this year at CERN is to to gain more perspective and better understand my interests before diving straight into graduate school. As I worked on projects at the CMS Experiment, I really developed a strong liking for problems we face in high-energy physics. This series of posts will serve as a reflection of the people I have met and experiences I have shared over the past summer.
The year started on a mixed note; I was excited about working at CERN, but also wondering what directions to take in order to prepare for graduate studies. My aim is to learn by doing and make the most of opportunities that come along. So I decided to figure out how to improve my knowledge of machine learning that was essentially self-taught—taking online courses and working on a project aiding the deployment Tensorflow models in production on the CMS Software Environment. I spent two weeks researching and applying to machine learning summer schools with my supervisor (and former supervisor) supporting me with reference letters wherever necessary.
The schools had some really cool speakers lined up which I thought would make for a great introduction to subjects like gaussian processes, natural language processing, causal inference, probabilistic methods, bayesian non-parametrics, and optimisation. The application process for the schools was fairly straightforward (often doing away with the reference letter) and encouraged students to present posters of their ongoing/completed projects. I ended up visiting two schools - Machine Learning in High-energy Physics Summer School (Oxford, UK) and Machine Learning Summer School (Madrid, Spain), apart from the Deep Learning Indaba (Stellenbosch, SA). My poster on our work (DeepJet) was presented at MLSS and the Indaba.
Note: I learnt later how presenting posters forms a critical part of the experience; it fosters discussions on a plethora of interconnected domains promoting quick and reliable knowledge transfer. As Jeff Dean said in a talk at the Deep Learning Indaba, “If I had a choice between reading one research paper in great depth or just skimming through ten papers, I would choose the latter because that gives me a broader idea of the problem space that I can then build upon.” Poster presentations accomplish pretty much the same goal and in addition foster collaboration and interest in relevant work by others you may not otherwise hear of.
Note: I also learnt later how lucky I was to have qualified for these events that are otherwise primarily targeted at an audience of Ph.D. students (except for the Deep Learning Indaba). This gave me an invaluable set of opportunities to connect with researchers and graduate students who were perfectly equipped to offer relevant advice to me (a lot of people can offer advice, but very little is often relevant).
Here’s a brief outline of each of these events along with what I learnt from each of them. In this post, I’ve focused on the Fourth Machine Learning in High-energy Physics Summer School.
The Machine Learning in High-energy Physics Summer School was organised by researchers from Yandex, Skoltech, and HSE at Oxford University in the UK. It is an event targeted at Ph.D. students and Professors in Physics seeking a foothold in machine learning to find applications to their respective problem statements. However, given that I was working on a project along similar lines, it served as a pretty good primer for me.
The Codalab Challenge
That was probably my breaking point.
Then, I binged on a box of Pringles and reevaluated matters
So I did.
smehta
, that’s your username right?”
“Oh, right. Well, shit.”“Can the user smehta
please come up and explain their approach?”
“I’ve never used a Message-passing Neural Network and I wanted to see how it works so that was my main motivation in participating in this challenge. My first few tries failed which was when I updated my preprocessing pipeline. The core principle I used to tweak my training parameters was basically what Andrew Ng said in Coursera Machine Learning, Week 4 - ‘If you are approaching a minima you need to adjust your number of training steps and learning rate such that you neither overshoot it nor converge too slow.’”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call machine learning (sarcasm? maybe).
Stay tuned for more posts about experiences from the two other events that I had the privilege to attend this year - Machine Learning Summer School (Madrid), and the Deep Learning Indaba (South Africa).
]]>Last summer, I told my mom that I’d be traveling to live in a new country: in this case, France.
“You will die of starvation.”
She seemed supportive.
The next few weeks were spent teaching me to avoid dying of starvation and it would seem mom made it work.
Having been through the process, I’ve got some tips and tricks to share for students going about this the first time around. I’ve tried to use broad strokes and avoid region-specific concerns but you can feel free to email me about them.
This post is meant to serve as a guideline for traveling like a beast — obtaining maximal efficiency with minimal luggage; learning the ropes of survival on 35kg of baggage allowance. It incorporates elements of preparedness for moving to a new house, living alone in a new city, with new people around. I’ll try to use examples of my own practices although, fair warning, I’m no expert and still need to sit on my bags to shut them. But at least I don’t have to haggle with the check-in crew for extra kilos anymore (I lied, I still do).
As an Indian boy, especially a Gujarati (we’re known for our affinity with food), traveling abroad I honestly had one single concern.
How much of my kitchen can I possibly stuff into my luggage?
Like it or not, it’s a trade-off between carrying that prized cardigan or a pack of freeze-dried paranthas (Indian flat-breads). In my case, I had about 35 kilos of luggage allowance, but evidently even two bags of 23kg are not enough for some whilst migrating to a new land. A lot of my rather affluent friends purchase additional luggage to transport a sizeable chunk of India along with them.
This post is basically me trying to tell you (and parents possibly concerned about your survival), “Chill out. You’ll live.” (Not) Planning
The first time I traveled to Switzerland for a couple of months, I didn’t bother to plan. That’s a really bad idea.
Last summer, I carried along a lot of stuff that I could actually have bought for cheaper in France/Switzerland compared to India. This included a truckload of clothes, some food items, and spices that I never ended up using. Let’s take a look at these items:
Now that you know how that works, let’s move onto the actual planning that would help optimize your packing efficiency.
Packing is all about prioritizing what you need. Some things are vital, others just aren’t.
Rule of thumb: Food is ubiquitous. People eat food everywhere. Don’t look so surprised, it’s true.
Before I left, I had no clue what kind of food I’d rely on in Switzerland, so I did what anyone with half a brain (and little use for it) would do: I brought my kitchen with me. Every single spice I could lay my hands on, I stuffed into the bag. However, when I actually spent 15 minutes searching for alternatives once I arrived in Switzerland, I was able to find a decent set of brick-and-mortar Indian stores in pretty much every major city from San Francisco to Delft, and Boston to Geneva. Apart from that there’s online options available in the USA as well as Switzerland.
We did eventually end up ordering online via a store called Swiss Rasoi that gave us a decent discount since we found 4 other Indians and ordered products in larger quantities.
Pro Tip: They have a sale each month, email them about it.
Of course the trade-off for buying this stuff abroad is that you pay a lot more than you would in India. But if you’re moving abroad for a longer duration, you’re going to have to bite the bullet at some point.
Know thy City: The internet is at your fingertips. Don’t just search for places, search for people already there. Ask for suggestions unabashedly. Figure out the hacks that can help you live an easier life; I don’t just mean free refills of soda at the local fast food joints.
Know thy Weather: Having knowledge of the kind of weather you are going into is very helpful because it can help you plan the kind of clothing you require. If you’re traveling in the summer, you can purchase winter clothes on sale, saving yourself copious amounts of both, cash and luggage allowance.
Know thy Locality: Even within cities, it is often a diverse landscape and some neighborhoods may be better than others (also more expensive). If you’re traveling, try to use Google Street View to check out the locality, the local stores, and most importantly whether Amazon delivers to the ZIP code.
Know thy Public Transport System: A systematic public transport system is extremely crucial in saving your time and can help you figure out the feasibility of traveling to local stores. Most of the times, you will find that Google Maps offers a fairly accurate picture of the schedules and means of transport but this is not always the case. Try to figure out the apps that help track local bus, tram and train schedules and check your connectivity to assess how likely it is that you can shop for groceries daily/weekly.
Know thy Roommates: I got lucky to find the best roommates ever. We cooked, cleaned, worked, and traveled together. Connecting with your roomies beforehand enables you to split essentials, manage your packing e.g. not everyone needs to carry that mini-pressure cooker or the same old bunch of spices. Besides, it helps to know you’re not living with serial killers. Mostly.
Know thy Telecom Providers: International packs from India cost me between INR 2,500 and INR 4,000 and gives me maybe a hundred minutes of calling to India, a couple of gigs of internet and so on. A Freemobile (yes, it’s a company) costs me 25 Euro (~INR 1,600) and gives me 50–100GB of pan-Europe internet, and unlimited calling to international* numbers (including India). It’s always simpler if you know the plans in the country you’re moving to because eventually you’re going to be getting them anyway. *maximum of 200 different phone numbers, but it’s still a lot.
I required a Schengen Visa for my work in Europe, but before that I was planning on attending school in the USA so I had an active F1-Visa that I later returned following the return of my I-20.
The Schengen Visa permits travel within 26 countries situated in EU and Switzerland (Switzerland is not officially a part of the EU but for practical purposes, you don’t need to worry about it).
This also means the Swiss use the Swiss Franc (CHF) and not the Euro. Some places accept both, but offer bad exchange rates for Euro to CHF conversion so you’re better off carrying CHF in advance.
For the Visa Application in India, VFS is a courier company that collects your application and biometric details and sends it off to the Swiss Embassy in New Delhi. Some tips for the application for the Swiss Visa:
Be clear about your Visa-type. For students, it’s usually the <90-day Visa or for longer stays (e.g. 1 year), the Type D National Visa (at least at CERN).
Based on the Visa-type there are checklists available for the supporting documents required. Go through these thoroughly before doing anything else. Read a few different checklists if you’re like me and want to get a better idea of what you might need (even though you really won’t).
Preferably book an appointment 6+ weeks before your travel dates. It barely takes a few days for your Visa to arrive but having a buffer period is safer.
In some cases, you need to get a bank statement verified by an official that shows you have some funds to sustain your lifestyle. For most banks this takes a few days so get it done early on.
Get your bookings in order; especially residence. You can use Booking.com or Hotels.com for at least a temporary accommodation solution until you finalize the details of your stay. I booked my return-trip flights in advance but I’ve been told it’s not mandatory.
It’s not a very “stringent” procedure because it’s not “an interview” — as per my understanding, VFS acts as an intermediary, and is supposed to help you out with preparing your application for the Schengen Visa. So no need to be nervous.
The US Visa
For my F1 Visa Application, I have a vague recollection of the procedure so I’ll be brief; please confirm these details before proceeding:
It had (understandably) a far more detailed application form than the Schengen Visa. They asked me about all the times I had visited the USA in the past and I had to dig up my expired passports to look up the exact dates.
They require an I-20 if you’re applying for the F1 or (if I’m not mistaken) J1 Visa. The I-20 must also be presented at the time of arrival in the USA (at immigration).
Here, the fees are to be paid online and cost me somewhere around $160 (INR 10,000) at the time of application. There are two separate appointments: one for collecting your biometric details and another for the actual “interview.” Yes, this is an actual interview and if you do not answer to their satisfaction, they reserve the right to refuse your Visa without justification.
As per what I have seen and heard, your finances matter here. I can’t offer any “magic combination” to pass all scrutiny but simply be clear about what you are saying and avoid falsifying information at all costs.
I have a hunch that your institute matters because I was going only for a summer but I was given a 5-year F1 Visa. My I-20 was from a highly reputed institute so maybe that made life much easier for me. Or maybe I just got lucky (although I ended up returning the I-20 and Visa).
Booking flights isn’t always about getting the cheapest travel option.
Okay, it mostly is.
As a student, it is easy to just go for the cheapest options but if you’re looking to go a little deeper think about it this way: if you travel smart, the more you travel, the cheaper it gets.
So a slightly more expensive flight option now will get you not only more comfort and luggage allowance now but also help you improve your traveler status and increase the probability of free upgrades in the future.
I will avoid going into details but you can read more about airline alliances that comprise of 3 major groups of airlines that allow you to earn miles when you fly any of them in the same group. Later you can redeem them for vouchers, discounts, and of course free flights. Alliances also have tie-ups with some credit card companies and car rental services to help you earn free miles so take a closer look and maybe you’ll find yourself traveling business class on a free upgrade before the end of the decade.
Another important factor is to request student status, a provision most carriers offer. At the very least you get extra luggage allowance, but sometimes you might get good discounts. Student tickets are often non-refundable so ensure that you’ve got a solid plan in place before finalizing.
Pro Tip: If you travel like I do (overfilled luggage; prepared to haggle at check-in counters), it helps to transfer most of your weight to the ‘laptop bags’ or ‘purses.’ They have never bothered to ask me about the big-ass laptop bag I carried with me (I travel Emirates, in case you’re wondering). Update: Based on a friend’s experience, Etihad did charge them for extra kilos at Abu Dhabi. Avoid pushing your luck.
I used to be very excited about flights (note the past tense). The first time I booked my trip from India, I picked a Lufthansa flight to Geneva with a 9-hour layover in Munich because why the heck not!
I had a plan, and a backup plan.
I will take the Lufthansa shuttle into Munich and then figure out where I can travel around. I never looked into the places I could visit — I would have data or at least free WiFi and I could figure it out. The Backup Plan
Munich airport is rated 2nd in the World. It has a mini-golf course and a spa, among other amenities. It costs about 6CHF which is decent. Worst case, I play 9 hours of mini-golf. Not a bad way to spend the day.
Data pack was inactive. No network.
“No problem, I have free WiFi.”
WiFi isn’t connecting and there’s nobody around that speaks English to help. In fact, there’s literally nobody around except a few security guys and cleaning staff.
“It’s alright lets skip the city shuttle and enjoy the mini-golf and spa.”
It’s a Saturday morning. The activities are in another terminal and that’s shut for the time being.
“Fuuu…..”
Yes, that happened.
Eventually I managed to figure out the location of the shuttle stop at the airport and reach the city center. A kind stranger bought me a train ticket and I roamed around some park; I still don’t remember the name. I ate at an Indian restaurant handled by jovial Pakistani dudes (it’s way more common than you’d think). Turns out the city is pretty lively towards the afternoon and I was served some crappy Lebanese brunch (“Sir, your vegan food”) whilst strolling around the farmer’s market before heading back to the airport. Pretty great layover overall, but things could have gone very wrong that day.
The second time I traveled to Geneva, I was a seasoned veteran of air-travel (mostly just in my head though).
I still ended up over-packing, rearranged my baggage at check-in, haggled with the personnel, and successfully managed to carry the other half of India into Switzerland.
This time around, I was more aware of what I should carry along and the items that had most helped the past summer:
Cash: It isn’t really necessary in the USA since most stores accept card payment, but in some places around France we still are required to pay in cash so it becomes necessary to carry sufficient cash or find an ATM assuming you have low fees for international withdrawals.
Universal Travel Adapters: Mostly due to my Macbook (USB-C ftw), but also travel adapters are mighty useful to have in general. They can get pretty expensive to buy on airports or souvenir shops so be sure to carry a spare.
Essential Spices (bare minimum):
Pro Tip: you get sugar, pepper, and salt literally everywhere, including the airplane!
Vacuum-sealed Stuff: The first time I went, mother made some rotis, theplas, and paranthas (different Indian breads) at home and had them vacuum-sealed at the local grocer. It lasted around 2 months since I put it in the freezer immediately once I reached France. It’s a temporary hack, but it works. She also made me a minced chilly mix that I didn’t use as much but was helpful when we ran out of green chillies.
Cooking Appliances: The Pressure Cooker is infinitely useful. It is indispensable unless you have enough time to spend in the kitchen boiling rice and potatoes in a pan (this doesn’t take as long as you’d imagine). Get a small one along, it is worth the effort. I tried to carry a Roti Maker this time but unfortunately when I tried it out, the voltage shorted it. Sucks. But I can make roti without a roti-maker (that’s a lie, I’m too lazy). Okay fine, I will try again and update this post. Next, there’s the Pav Bhaji masher — I’m unaware of its exact name but hopefully you get what I mean. Finally, carry a good thermos along for the daily beverage or simply hot water, if you can spare the luggage space for it.
Old Passports: If you intend on traveling to multiple countries, some places ask about your travel history for the Visa Application. It isn’t mandatory, but it helps if you have your older (even expired) passports to carry along.
Driving License: One big plus is that if you can drive in India, you can drive pretty much anywhere (in theory). Your license is valid between 6 months to 1 year, but it is advisable to get an international license made because it’s much cheaper in India. It’s amazing how empty the roads are, but ensure you know the road rules. Parking spots are a pain to find and more importantly understand. Fines are hefty. Also, don’t drink and drive. You can’t afford it. It’s that simple.
Photocopies of Documents: At the office, I can take free printouts. But outside, photocopies aren’t priced at a rupee for a side. Carry attested/sealed copies of at least your mark-sheets, passport, and Visa in case it is required on short-notice.
Passport-sized Photographs: Carry about thirty. I’m not kidding; Schengen requires a different format from the standard passport-sized photographs. Get the standard as well as Schengen-format photos printed so that you save time and effort spent on getting them made abroad.
Munchies are awesome. Food here is bland, and most of my junk food comprises chips. “Mobile” Khakhra (Roasted flatbread) is a welcome break when I’m too lazy to get snacks at the cafeteria. Mother dearest found me packs of kurmura (puffed rice flakes) I wish I’d carried Soya Sticks but I believe it should be available at the local Asian store. Update: it was not :(
Energy Bars: They’re available in a range of varieties at almost all grocerie sand they’re extremely easy to carry around. I have 2 in my bag at all times. Usually I prefer to buy them from abroad instead of carrying them from home. But it works either way. Nature Valley is decently priced if you buy the larger packs off Amazon.
Parachute Coconut oil (small bottle): Easiest remedy for dry hair after days of daily shampooing. Honestly. Silky Smooth Amazeness.
Toiletries: While most of these are unnecessary in large quantities, you would do well to carry the tongue cleaner. It’s pretty useful if you don’t find a toothbrush that fits the bill. Seriously. Also nail-cutters; tiny, but very useful once every two weeks (that’s what she said). As a cleanliness freak, I carry a hand sanitizer wherever I go. I just have to.
Backpack: Invest in a sturdy, light-weight backpack that can be useful on both a regular basis as well as weekend trips. Nobody likes lugging suitcases around. You could figure out decent options once you arrive in case you’re aware of good sales. I know for a fact France has great offers during the summers.
Electronics: If you don’t like spending a lot on electronics, carry a decent set of headphones, extra USB cables, and universal adapters. I like to exercise so bluetooth headphones are a necessity. For backups and other data storage. It could actually be cheaper to purchase hard drives in flash sales (or holiday sales) abroad, but we all know the sources of the ‘data’ that you need are of questionable legality outside the country so you’re going to bring one along anyway.
Shoes: If you’re going to indulge in adventure activities please bear in mind that healthcare costs skyrocket pretty easily. If you’re covered by insurance, that’s fine. But since I started play squash, football, and running, I’ve spent a bit of money on good quality running shoes that enable me to run on concrete without the jarring impact to my knees. I’m still dicey on skiing though.
So that covers pretty much all of the basic items you’d require to survive comfortably in a new environment. I’ll update the post with relevant information over time. But for now, good luck preparing for your travels!
]]>Disclaimer: The views represented here are solely my own, and do not reflect those of my employer.
Over the past summer, I worked as an intern at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). It is an international research collboration working on high-energy physics and computing, set in a picturesque location cradling the borders of France and Switzerland. I have been receiving a lot of messages about the application process and this post is an attempt to try and address some queries regarding the experience.
I had filled out a highly detailed application form last October, wondering if I had a snowball’s chance in hell to get selected into one of the most prestigious international internship programs at a research collaboration that was truly unparalleled in its domain. After a few months of sleepless nights and particle-filled daydreams, I received the much-awaited email from CERN…
It was a rejection email from the Summer Student program.
It was a disappointing week for me as I tried to move on and apply for other internships. All of a sudden, there was a ray of light shining through this darkness, in the form of an offer to undertake research at Stanford University. I jumped at the marvelous opportunity and initiated the formalities necessary for the process.
As I finally completed my US Visa Application and acceptance of the Stanford offer, I received yet another email from CERN.
I still remember that was the day I was discussing something with my mother who was cooking. I was leaning against the door then, and we were casually chatting when the notification popped up.
I had read in novels about someone that ‘fell flat down’ on receiving some news. For the first time it actually happened to me. I literally just dropped down to the floor in a cross-legged position and told mom:
“Ma, I got into CERN”
“Huh, what are you saying? And get up, who asked you to sit there!”
“Ma… I got into CERN!”
“What is that?”
“CERN, Ma! The internship that I applied to in Switzerland?”
“If you keep going around like a fool applying to all these places how do you expect me to remember!”
My mother, ladies and gentlement.
Getting back to the story, I spoke with my potential advisor at CERN and the Professors at Stanford discussing at length about what would be a better idea for me. Despite not knowing me beyond our email threads, the professors were extremely generous with their time and supportive of my decision to accept the offer from CERN. My Openlab supervisor even offered to accommodate dates of the program such that I could do both! It was then that I knew that I had struck gold in terms of people.
To be fair, CERN was paying me while Stanford required me to (more or less) support myself. More importantly, the professors were open to discussing potential opportunities in the future. That made my decision slightly easier to make. Anyway, fast-forward to a month later, and there I was sitting on the Y Bus traveling from Geneva Airport to my hotel in Saint-Genis Pouilly, France (yep, work in Switzerland, live in France - the CERN life ;))
The City of Geneva
My internship at CERN has been an amazing learning experience not just in terms of the work but also in terms of people — each with a unique story to tell. These factors have contributed in no small part to the life-changing experience this has been. I arrived as a wide-eyed teenager, and left as a wider-eyed teenager, with an insatiable curiosity to learn more.
CERN drives you to push a little harder, seek a deeper understanding, and try to find a better solution to the problems you work on.
My work was understanding, modeling, and ultimately solving a problem — also about addressing the complexities that arose when we attempted to expand the solution to a broader set of applications. With an organisation of this scale, there are going to be multiple problems of a similar nature, with fine lines of separation. As my supervisor told me, it’s a personal decision whether you’d want to focus on a microscopic solution that can address a niche problem which may impact macroscopic issues intrinsically, or to attempt to create an an inherently macroscopic solution that could potentially be tweaked to address challenges affecting narrower segments of work in greater depth. CERN afforded me the opportunity to choose my path in spite of being just one of many hundreds of summer students. Amazingly enough, I learnt over the course of the summer, this was a privilege extended to all members of CERN regardless of position or responsibilities.
The credit for a fantastic summer belongs, in no small part, with my supervisors, both of whom were the driving forces constantly challenging me to research and review better practices and improve the models for my project — Anomaly Detection in Database Connections. Mr. Prasanth Kothuri and Mr. Daniel Lanza Garcia helped me figure out the research subjects that aligned with my interests and constantly supporting me in terms of resources and domain expertise. If Mr. Kothuri was doubtful about the solution to my issues that were seemingly esoteric, he would encourage me to find others at CERN who possessed the domain-specific knowledge and even accompanied me to some seminars in order to seek the same understanding as I would — and eventually figure out a solution together.
It was really encouraging to find this kind of support being extended and responsibilities being shared with us in one of the most active and experienced groups at CERN compared to the common treatment as ‘just an intern.’
The Globe of Science and Innovation — emblematic of the values CERN embodies (Picture Credit: Jessica Wallis)
The project I was working on involved detecting anomalous database connections in order to serve multiple purposes including but not limited to analysing and deriving insights from usage patterns, monitoring the number of connections, and ultimately database security. With no real benchmarks or training data in this field, we set out to find a solution and use various machine learning practices and models to apply unsupervised learning and arrive at a conclusive result. We managed to utilise an ensemble of different models that measured deviation based on differing metrics. Further, we cross-verified results and extracted common anomalies that were then flagged to be verified. Through my interactions with my peers within the same program, I realized a lot of us were working on the same problem with different forms of data. I was motivated to move beyond the scope of my project and build an intuitive system that could not only provide a common base to leverage these models, but also offer an intuitive interface for non-technical users, seeing as a lot of CERN staff include physicists that may not be familiar with cutting-edge computing practices. It was a start towards utilising the research that has gone into multiple Openlab projects into a single end-user application.
On the personal front, this experience has taught me a lot about people and the way they look at a problem.
I had always been reading about how it helps to have different perspectives towards the same problem and I often wondered what it meant. Meeting students literally from the other side of the globe has taught me that there is a lot of truth to this statement.
I was lucky enough to have probably the best roommates I’ve ever had — notwithstanding the fact that these are the only roommates I’ve ever had. We have cooked, cleaned, driven, trekked, hitchhiked, played, and somersaulted off boats together. Openlab has really provided a unique platform that has resulted in friendships across continents and a network that encompasses most countries across the world. It leads to a sense of security — no matter where we go on after this experience, we will have friends nearby that we can count on in times of need or maybe just to blow off some steam over the weekends.
A few Openlab Interns at one of the Experiments
I could rave about the past summer until the end of time because it’s hard to out all my experiences into a single blog post but I figure I have to sum it up at some point so I would like to conclude with some quotes from one of the wiser role models in my life, Master Shifu from Kung-Fu Panda, as answers to some of the common questions people have been asking me about getting into CERN:
What is CERN looking for? What do I write on my application? How did you get into CERN?
“Your real strength comes from being the best you you can be. Who are you? What are you good at? What makes you, you?” “There is no secret ingredient”
Write about yourself, your experiences, your projects, and trust the universe to align the rest of the factors. Maybe you get in, maybe you don’t. All I can say is that you need to ensure you research every detail about CERN before applying because my motivation for applying was derived from the nature of work being undertaken within the specific department that ultimately accepted me. Keep trying until you make it, because honestly, if I did it, you can.
How was your experience at CERN? Is it really worth it?
(in case the blog post wasn’t clear enough)
I would do it all over again, twelve times over. Because thirteen is just an unlucky number.
Are the other programs similar? Is it worth undertaking other opportunities at CERN?
My perspective is rather biased because like I said, I’ve had an amazing summer. I would always want to go back to CERN (and I did get back as a Technical Student for a year following Openlab). However there are periods where I’ve been told there’s very little activity, when the climate isn’t all that great, and there are hardly any people on the streets of Geneva. It’s not ideal, but your work is undoubtedly going to remain challenging and interesting regardless of how it is outside the window. It’s just that life becomes slightly slow. You must learn to adapt at some point, and this is a great place bustling with activities ranging from Zumba and Krav Maga to lunch hours with random people in order to get to know them better. It’s such a diverse environment that you never going to be bored with so many different nationalities around!
What is the format for your resume? Can you share it with us?
(added this since there have been so many students asking me about this)
Pretty much a no-brainer, there is no single acceptable format for the resume. All they ask for is a document that carries your experience, achievements, and possibly projects in a succinct, neat format. It is really a pretty simple document to create using the infinite wisdom of the internet.
I have been selected as a reserve candidate. What are my chances of getting selected?
The nature of selection at CERN (Openlab, Technical Student, and Summer Student), as I probably mentioned already (or maybe not) is that they have unique projects each year, for which they require a diverse skillset. There is no single set of skills for which they have an opening each year.
Furthermore, each supervisor proposes his/her own set of students — there isn’t really a centralized selection committee to filter through the thousands of candidates that apply (although there is one to oversee final selections). So again, nobody can really tell you what your chances are based on past candidates or projects. Please refrain from spamming people with emails regarding this particular aspect because when most of them say they aren’t aware, they really do mean it.
Specifically for the ‘reserved candidates’ I am unaware of the exact process — all I can tell is that it is not an outright rejection but neither does it imply with certainty that your selection is imminent. That is all I know of at this point.
With that, I’ve reached the end of the tiny window that I’ve provided into my work and life at CERN. It was an amazing eight weeks and I look forward to seeing more of this place in the near future!
Update: I am back at CERN, working as a Technical Student so I’ll probably be updating this article to eliminate any inaccuracies for posterity.
If you’d like to know more about Openlab or CERN in general please refer to some of the answers I’ve written on Quora or check out my presentation on Internships:
How did Swapneel Mehta become a Summer Intern at CERN? What did he do in the internship?
What is the process for being selected as a summer intern in Summer Student’s Program at CERN?
How do I get back to CERN? I spent a few months there when I was a computer engineering student.
What are the kind of projects that students work on, during their summer internship at CERN?
What might be the cost for a Bangladeshi student to join the Cern Summer Programme?
Can Indian engineering students apply for summer internship at CERN?
What specific skill set should an undergrad possess to land an internship at CERN?
Cover Image: One of the experiments at CERN.
Picture Credit Quantum Grid
Originally published at Punintended 404 on April 7, 2018.
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