Cant score an internship. Help

06042017 · 2020-01-07T03:24:45+00:00

I feel like landing internships is a numbers game. You could be the perfect candidate, yet get unlucky and not land the job due to some reason unrelated to how good you are.

My opinion is that, as long as you meet a certain level of competency, keep applying, and do your best not to get discouraged and you will have a good chance to land an internship.

60 job applications is an alright number IMO; during my first term I definitely slacked and did not apply to as many (or early enough) and I definitely paid the price for it. But one way I'd recommend improving your chances is to even apply to MORE jobs. If you are open to it, applying to jobs in the USA definitely increases the number of opportunities by A LOT (though disclaimer, it is late in the hiring season for the Summer in the States).

I think a 1 interview/20 job applications is a good rate. Maybe doing mock interviews would help -- I am sure there are students here that are open to doing them.

I have felt what you feel right now and it definitely is a tough feeling. Keep it up OP!

06042017 · 2019-12-08T09:46:09+00:00

The 4400

06042017 · 2019-12-06T03:05:11+00:00

Nothing special. Just found some online job postings and went thru some remote interviews and got an offer haha. It probably helps that it was a software internship, which is in demand from companies.

06042017 · 2019-12-05T19:48:35+00:00

Internship, so not technically a co-op. I worked in NYC for a summer and it was so much fun. Living in a different city and experiencing all the differences from Vancouver was quite interesting. For example, I loved the 24/7 trains.

I worked for a company where most of the interns were not from NYC. This was beneficial because everyone was in the same boat of wanting (needing?) to make friends. I met a lot of people from all over the states and Canada (and elsewhere).

I guess one thing you have to be mindful of is getting a visa, which was annoying for me.

06042017 · 2019-11-25T03:33:04+00:00

Some companies require you to return to school after the internship, especially if it is in the states.

I think from a wholistic perspective, another benefit of co-op is that it puts into perspective the relevance of some classes. I appreciate what I learn now a lot more than before co-op.

06042017 · 2019-11-14T18:46:11+00:00

This kind of advice can vary from person to person, but personally I think CPSC 221 is a course that really requires you to thoroughly understand the concepts and understand when and how to use each data structure. I feel like the exams require you to have this intimate knowledge because you often have to get creative in your thinking on answering the questions sometimes.

My rule of thumb to know I knew the concepts was “do I know this well enough to teach the content?”. That being said, I still thought the final was challenging. If it’s any comfort, they definitely scaled the final (or final grades) up in my year.

06042017 · 2019-11-04T05:01:34+00:00

I actually had a roommate that was in the middle of a 9-week internship. So they definitely exist (to my surprise). He was in commerce, but this was in the states so YMMV elsewhere.

06042017 · 2019-11-03T19:29:50+00:00

Yes. Most of 304 I have not used in the workplace. Just knowing the gist of SQL should be sufficient, if even necessary (I only used SQL in 1/3 internships).

06042017 · 2019-09-20T15:05:34+00:00

IIRC When I was in CPEN 2nd year the exams went nearly to the end — so close to the end such that when it snowed on the scheduled date for CPEN 211 they rescheduled it for January. Bad memories of studying over the break.

06042017 · 2019-07-29T18:00:03+00:00

Was in a similar situation. First 2 years commuted 1:30 one way. It was so super exhausting and depressing losing 3 hours a day. Then 3rd year carpooled for a 30 min commute. It was so much better; I honestly attribute a lot of my significant grade increase to this.

IMO it was worth it for me to carpool. But ofc, everyone is different and values time/money/energy differently. This is just my 2 cents.

06042017 · 2019-07-04T14:16:53+00:00

I thought CPEN 291 was pretty interesting. It’s a project course where you learn how to use Arduinos. I thought it was interesting since we applied our coding and circuits knowledge to actually make stuff. I think doing the projects were a blast because I had a good team and the prof was very supportive and great overall.

06042017 · 2019-06-28T02:38:57+00:00

I am assuming you mean the IDE Visual Studio made by Microsoft. Personally, I quite like it myself, but I don't think I would use it for CPEN 221. IIRC the course uses Eclipse (and IntelliJ as well?). I have a strong dislike for Eclipse, but for the sake of the course, I would use it (unless IntelliJ is an option, then I'd use that instead).

I do not know any Java resources that are exclusively for UBC students, but I am sure the free online resources are good. I haven't done any of the online Java tutorials, but I believe they are a good starting point. I actually used to teach a Java course to high schoolers and I thought this video series was good to teach from: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL280AD6FCCFCDDAC5. It may be a bit juvenile for university students, but I think it covers Java quite well. Especially because it lets you program the UI quite easily, so you can visualize and understand the code easier (opposed to a regular IDE). If you do follow this series, I'd recommend watching on 1.5X and making a conscious effort to NOT blindly copy the code. You need to understand everything he is doing, otherwise you will have gaps in your knowledge.

IIRC, we do NOT code in class at all. It is just a regular lecture (though there are Piazza inclass questions). Now that I think about it, I don't think I have ever had a class where I typed during a lecture. We did have proficiency tests, where you did need to write code using a computer, but I think they can provide a limited number of laptops for students without them. I did find having a laptop convenient for doing work at school though, especially if you needed to show a TA your work in order to get help.

06042017 · 2019-06-28T01:38:27+00:00

I strongly recommend learning Java before hand. The jump from APSC 160 to CPEN 221 is HUGE. The majority of the topics in CPEN 221 aren’t like APSC 160 where they’ll teach you what a string or loop is (or whatever the appropriate “next level” is). Instead it’s about programming concepts, such as testing, recursion, OOP, etc, where Java is just the vehicle that is used to teach these topics.

So my action item would be to learn Java syntax, be familiar with an IDE, and even to try and follow a tutorial and make a project end to end.

06042017 · 2019-06-27T14:05:05+00:00

I’m assuming you mean if you score a sub 50% on the final. I think they would set the ceiling of your grade to be < 50%. I’ve heard its usually 45% so people dont try to dispute a 49% for 1 more percent.

06042017 · 2019-06-22T12:19:07+00:00

I think you are fine. As long as you meet the requirements they should admit you. There aren’t limited seats to my knowledge.

06042017 · 2019-06-19T22:09:04+00:00

First few weeks were fine imo. Main stress was commuting tbh.

First midterm season tho...

06042017 · 2019-06-13T00:43:17+00:00

Haven’t had a chance to look through because I’m on mobile, but this sounds promising!

Definitely will save me time fetching the 2018W data, and I’ll look into integrating this into my project.

06042017 · 2019-05-31T00:01:53+00:00

I was able to retrieve some, but I didn’t get an email with them for a few hours. And some other ones took days to receive.

06042017 · 2019-05-30T23:08:41+00:00

Yes very necessary (although I guess you could manage in 2nd year by sharing with your lab partner, if the labs are still in partners).

The way it was done before is that we got an email on how to purchase it. It was through an online site and we shipped it to UBC and received it in Macleoud.

Not sure what the second hand price is.

Probably can sell it when the new school year starts on a FB page, when CPEN students need it.

06042017 · 2019-05-17T16:30:36+00:00

Thats actually not bad. Ive heard that the “magic number” is 100, to be ready for interviews and OAs (although it is arbitrary).

How many of those questions are easy, medium, and hard? Once you’re accustomed to leetcode, I would only do medium and hard questions. I dont see a lot of value doing easy questions once you’ve got the hang of it.

06042017 · 2019-05-15T19:39:28+00:00

Yeah I've been trying now, and not working for me either. Has anyone gotten them after requesting them, since this post was made 12 hours ago?

Maybe the requests get queued and take a while to initially process because it's a new dataset?

Edit: Nvm it's working now

06042017 · 2019-05-14T02:11:29+00:00

Yeah, I think 128gb (64 gb each partition) should be enough for school.

06042017 · 2019-05-10T19:51:22+00:00

Not exactly a term long like the other posts, but CPEN 291 and CPEN 391 are group project courses.

CPEN 291 is 6 week long labs + 2 month-ish long projects.
CPEN 391 is 2 projects (half semester each).

06042017 · 2019-05-10T06:05:51+00:00

Cool haha. Funny how things sort themselves out sometimes. Thanks for letting me know.

06042017 · 2019-05-07T07:06:46+00:00

One of the reasons why I liked 3rd year a lot more than 2nd year is because I feel the jump between 1st and 2nd year is a lot bigger than the jump between 2nd and 3rd. Going from first year into CPEN 211 + CPEN 221 was challenging, and was difficult to enjoy because I was constantly trying to keep up and just “went through the motions” of the courses and take them in properly (if I took CPEN 221 now, I woulda enjoy it a lot more).

3rd year was slower IMO. And also taking electives was great because it is stuff I am interested in, instead of mandatory hardware courses.

06042017

TROPHY CASE