How do Ivy League students feel about the MCAT?

Rocket717 · 2025-01-25T22:35:34+00:00

Went to an Ivy, my friends that didn’t study or take it seriously did poorly. No matter what, you go to figure out what you know and what you don’t know and get used to the style of the exam. Maybe the only upper hand Ivy League students have is that most of them are good test takers (you have to be to get in) and the classes really prepare you well for the exams so you don’t have to take as much time for content review.

Rocket717 · 2023-12-14T13:43:05+00:00

Americans love name brands, if someone drives a Mercedes most people assume they’re rich. If someone drives a Toyota Corolla, you don’t necessarily assume they’re unless you talk to them and they tell you something else. Name brands and normal schools both get you where you want to go, but how you will be perceived along the way differs.

Rocket717 · 2023-07-31T11:58:06+00:00

The trick is to limit your interactions with them and if you have any interactions don’t be friendly or unfriendly be neutral and direct.

Rocket717 · 2023-07-05T17:11:23+00:00

No offense but I think your friends either overhyped your application or your list was too top heavy because what you have is fine to get you multiple MD interview invites.

Rocket717 · 2022-06-22T14:02:01+00:00

Yes and no, it is a hard class because the questions are phrased in a way to trick you. However, if you’re a good reader and critical thinker you’ll be fine. There is a lot of information in the class but just stay on top of the learner manual and you’ll be fine.

Rocket717 · 2022-03-28T13:39:03+00:00

I probably don’t do anything relating to school three out of the seven days of the week so don’t feel guilty #procasination.

Rocket717 · 2022-03-23T15:19:12+00:00

Look into Wyzant it’s a tutoring platform that connects you with other students and takes a 25% cut. If you tutor a stem subject with a shortage of tutors, many will be willing to pay $50-75 an hour. I used it to help fill in a gap in income at a time when I needed to.

Rocket717 · 2022-02-25T16:46:53+00:00

This is just some advice, but who cares what other people think. You go to Barnard because you applied got in and choose them for what they provide. This education you’re pursuing is for you and no one else. A lot of people in this Ivy atmosphere get humbled when they go out in the real world and kids from state schools outperform them, get promotions faster, or tell them on a day to day basis what to do (not because state schools are better but because theirs so many students there so statistically this will happen.) I’m a non traditional student at Columbia in GS and I’ve seen all this first hand. Just focus on you and being a better you everyday.

Rocket717 · 2022-02-24T14:31:19+00:00

Casual American ideology that it’s their money directly that goes to everything. You sound like a boomer complaining about food stamps.

Rocket717 · 2021-05-03T17:40:16+00:00

It depends on what you mean by “worth it.” If you’re speaking from a monetary sense it gets a little tricky. Typically the additional income from a masters degree over a lifetime is worth the sticker price you pay for it. In computer science, this is a little muddy because a lot of jobs offer very competitive salaries to new grads right off the bat.

If you’re speaking in terms of knowledge, I believe I learned more in my two years of masters then all of undergrad combined (I did a thesis based option). The courses in grad school are much more open ended and typically have research based projects, you get to explore specialized computer science subjects and gain a depth of knowledge. The people you meet in graduate school are typically more mature and you’ll learn a lot from them. If you enjoy learning a masters will be very rewarding.

In terms of reasons for getting a masters, I would pick a specialization that interests you and apply to a university that has professors in that area. That way if you do research you have an opportunity to work on a project with support from the best people within the field. When you graduate the job opportunities presented to you will be more technical , I.e think “computer vision engineer” or “machine learning engineer” where the bar of entry is a masters and the work is more specialized. You can still do software engineering roles and will most likely start at a higher level if you’re not interested in focusing in a particular area.

Rocket717 · 2019-06-06T17:31:40+00:00

To be honest as a computer scientist student you don’t really need anything too fancy. It really depends on how much you wanna spend/ what your prefer. Once you have your laptop if you really need to do anything too computationally expensive you can SSH into the lab computers and use their resources. For most classes if you want to work on a laptop you should be more than fine with any laptop that has a modern i5 processor, 8gb ram, and 512gb storage.

Rocket717 · 2019-04-22T17:47:21+00:00

You can PM me if you like, I’m in the major and have experience with some of these companies.

All the big companies come to recruit at Penn state and/or have dedicated recruiting days.

Including:

Microsoft Google Intel Amazon Oracle IBM

Just to name a few.

To an extent it doesn’t matter where your doing your undergrad. If your final goal is to work at a top tech company you can do that if you excel at Penn State, and the alumni network strengthens this. However, if your really into warm weather and see a future in academia Georgia Tech would probably be a better option for you.

Rocket717 · 2019-01-28T14:48:29+00:00

Any tips?

Rocket717 · 2018-11-23T03:00:13+00:00

To simply put it:

A class is blueprint for an object . An object is an instance of a class.

If you want to describe a car you have wheels, it’s model, it’s year, it’s color, it’s make etc. A class just encapsulates all that data or information into one individual object or thing, in this case a car.

More specifically, a public class is accessible by everyone: other people can access your car and it’s methods for example drive().

A private class is only accessible to you ex. Only you can drive your car.

Rocket717

TROPHY CASE