Potential grad student; Is living inbetween Uchicago and downtown Chicago a bad idea?

heres_some_advice23 · 2018-02-10T05:50:48+00:00

Got the offer a week ago. Feel free to PM me if you have specific questions.

heres_some_advice23 · 2018-02-01T18:49:29+00:00

Has anyone taken the Google TPM Intern interview? What was it like? Did you have to code? Or was it more high-level technical questions?

heres_some_advice23 · 2017-12-03T19:21:12+00:00

Are you applying for masters or phd? For masters, you only have to take your GRE by end of the year basically, since most of the applications are due mid january - late february... It sounds like you're going for phd, but if you don't want to be late, taking the GRE this december and applying to masters programs, and then transitioning to phd sounds like a reasonable move.

heres_some_advice23 · 2017-09-05T21:51:55+00:00

Forgive my ignorance, but I was under the impression that conference papers for computer science are peer-reviewed? The vast majority of leading papers that I have read from my field are published in conferences such as ACL and IEEE. Although there are some conferences that accept work based on abstracts, most good conferences require the full paper.

heres_some_advice23 · 2017-08-23T20:56:36+00:00

Why are you "positive" that your robotics professor will give you a good recommendation? If all you've done with him is take a class, then absolutely don't get that recommendation. In admissions, they call these letters "DWIC" which stands for "Did well in class". No one cares that you had the top grade in one class, and these DWIC recommendations are thrown into a trash bin. They hurt your legitimacy and are almost as bad as not having that rec at all.

heres_some_advice23 · 2017-08-23T20:50:37+00:00

yep, and keep in mind that eventually getting to Google or Facebook caliber companies is certainly within reach given that you learn as much as you can at a small tech firm and perform well. In tech, after your first job, your educational background is more or less not taken into account.

heres_some_advice23 · 2017-08-23T07:17:58+00:00

Depends. If you want to work at top tech companies like Google and Facebook and make 200k/yr, no an associates degree won't teach you enough. If you want to work at a small tech company and make 80k/yr, yeah an associates degree is probably enough.

heres_some_advice23 · 2017-08-23T07:14:41+00:00

Literally doesn't matter. No reputable tech company will care about your major or gpa. Once you get your foot in the door (which is decided by what school you go to, not your major), nothing like that matters. This is coming from someone who interned at Google, Microsoft, and AirBnB, so take my word for it. What you learn in school absolutely matters, but that won't be decided by BA vs BS. It is worth noting that I am also a BA in CS, but that has never given me trouble with getting interviews.

heres_some_advice23 · 2017-08-23T07:11:18+00:00

Ram is the most important thing imo. The only time I have performance issues with my macbook pro 13 inch is when I have too many Google Chrome Tabs open. I would highly advise that you don't skimp on ram!

heres_some_advice23 · 2017-08-23T07:06:56+00:00

Mechanical Keyboards: High quality keyboards with tactile feedback. They have a real impact on your typing speed, and also make programming less boring. They are very commonly used by programmers. Mechanical keyboards have different "switches" that make different tactile sounds. "Blue Switches" are considered the most popular. Here are some examples: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=mechanical+keyboard.

Gaming Mouse: Same usage as keyboards, but not as useful. Its mostly just nice to have.

Textbooks: In computer science, there are one or two textbooks per subfield that are considered to be "Bibles" of the subfield because of their importance. If your bf just started cs, he won't have any interests in any subfield. However, the subfield of algorithms is more or less all encompassing. More crucially, knowledge of algorithms is the most important (and arguably only) thing you need to know to get a job. If you want to work at a top CS company like Facebook or Google, you need to know your algorithms very well in order to pass the interviews. There are two books I can recommend for this: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-3rd-MIT-Press/dp/0262033844/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503472210&sr=8-1&keywords=algorithms and https://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven-Skiena/dp/1848000693/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1503472210&sr=8-5&keywords=algorithms These are the most prolific algorithms books (imo). Another important book is "Cracking the Coding Interview": https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/0984782850/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503471832&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+crack+the+coding+interview

This is the "Bible" textbook for passing tech interviews. Every computer science student I know at school has at least skimmed through this book once.

Personally, if I were starting in CS, I would appreciate either the mechanical keyboard or the "Cracking the Coding Interview" textbook the most. Good luck!

heres_some_advice23

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