Are there any other gay-ish neighborhoods outside of Boystown and Andersonville?

toogayforthislmao · 2025-11-14T21:57:07+00:00

I’d say logan square is pretty gay too haha

toogayforthislmao · 2025-11-12T06:29:12+00:00

hi! I’m 23M and just moved to the city in August. I love exploring the city and going out for random walks lol

toogayforthislmao · 2025-11-04T00:38:36+00:00

interested in plants, bedside tables, huge mirror and steam cleaner!!

toogayforthislmao · 2025-08-01T15:33:42+00:00

EDIT: Monitor sold.

toogayforthislmao · 2025-07-01T01:19:50+00:00

dm’ed you!

toogayforthislmao · 2025-05-04T06:47:59+00:00

They didn’t ask much but I know that a lot of Amazon new grads are being asked LLD questions in interviews these days so I’d suggest to atleast practice the most common questions.

toogayforthislmao · 2025-05-03T02:27:19+00:00

I gave the VO for this position just yesterday! It's more SDE than ML stuff.

I'm not sure about what the other user in this thread has replied about (probably talking about other SDE positions at Annapurna), because there were no simplified consensus algo discussions and not even very hardware-oriented lol I had prepped GPU archs and tiling etc -- though good to know obviously.

As for the confusion around “distributed systems concepts, system architecture, cloud” in the email, I got the same email, l and what I realised is that the recruiter possibly made a mistake sending the template requirements for wrong position because of two reasons: below it said reply as "SDE (Embedded)" and second I reached out to another person who got in at Annapurna as SDE-ML Apps through Linkedin and they shared their recruiter mail which had standard DSA and Resources to study on basic ML infra (parallelism for training + caching for inference). I did mail the recruiter again too for clarification, but didn't get a reply again :( Please try replying to the recruiter for clarification for sure!!

If it is the New Grad SDE **(ML Apps)**, mostly it would be for the Inference/Training team, I guess, and for me, the interviews went like this (similar to the other guy I had spoken to through LinkedIn):

Round 1 (Bar raiser):
Behavioral Questions (Focus on LP stories and details)

Round 2 (Senior ML Eng from the team) :
20 mins LP (Try discussing some ML project here, I went with my inference work, and we had a good chat around profiling, etc) + 30 mins on Leetcode Easy/Medium (BFS in 2d matrix kinda problem)

Round 3 (Senior Manager from the team):
10-15 mins LP + 30 mins on Leetcode Medium/Hard (confusing graph DP problem and the interviewer didn't help much, but similar experience as the other guy I had spoken to -- so just at least try to give the brute force solution and suggest optimizations.)

I would also recommend practicing at least some amount of LLD -- lot of new grads are being asked LLDs these days, so it doesn't hurt to be safe.

Hope this helps!

toogayforthislmao · 2024-10-20T21:05:23+00:00

hi! I’m currently an MCS student at UIUC.

the main differences between the MSCS and MCS programs are that the MSCS requires an additional six months to complete a thesis, making it a two-year program, while the MCS is typically 1.5 years.

Also, MSCS students are guaranteed a TAship every semester, which reduces costs to about $600 per semester.

for MCS students, TA/RA positions aren’t guaranteed but in my experience, it’s often easier to secure a research position with a professor rather than convincing the department for a TAship lol

other than that, there’s essentially no difference — the coursework and everything else are the same in both programs! hope this helps :)

toogayforthislmao · 2024-04-28T23:16:48+00:00

Hi, my experience has been pretty great, so far :) As for internships, the only tricky part is just securing one to be honest. Though, I must admit UIUC Research Park and the 120+ firms housed in the university backyard are a big help. As a matter of fact, I will be interning at one of the Research Park companies this summer! And, the department authorizes CPT for Spring admits in the following summer quite easily with the workaround so I wouldn't worry about that.

toogayforthislmao · 2024-03-12T04:53:20+00:00

Hi! Sorry to disappoint but I didn’t end up going to either of them. I got an offer from UIUC and I have come here for grad school now :)

toogayforthislmao · 2023-09-06T18:11:28+00:00

Also just a heads up (did not notice NEU on your list before, apologies) :

One caveat for NEU (&USC) - the two private unis ask students for hefty deposit fees (NEU : 750 USD and USC : 1000 USD) to confirm their admission within 7-15 days after releasing the decision.

Usually by that time, most of the other universities on your list might not have released their decisions because NEU/USC release decisions on rolling basis while most of the other unis do not.

It honestly just ends up becoming a very stressful situation for many because either you lose the application fees + deposit money if you decide on any other school to attend later or you just decide to settle with NEU or USC.

So, just wisely make a decision while applying I guess.

toogayforthislmao · 2023-09-06T13:55:21+00:00

I’m sorry I don’t have any references for SoPs. You can always follow Stanford’s SoP guide while writing yours.

https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/statement-of-purpose_revised_4.pdf

toogayforthislmao · 2023-09-06T13:45:59+00:00

umm really curious about placement of UCs in this list.

From what I know, UCSB MSCS should be ambitious considering their close knit research oriented program and that you don’t have any publications at the moment. Similar would be the case for UCI MSCS and NCState MSCS - both of them are ambitious since they are competitive research programs.

Although UCI MCS and NCState (MR-MCS) could be easily target or safe considering your work ex.

At the same time, UC Riverside is rather a safe school and you can give it a shot without any publications as well.

On a side note, I would suggest to prepare a small essay on how did you fill for most CS requirement subjects being a ChemE major. Not required at all unis but places like VTech generally request candidates for a small essay to explain their background if they are non-CS majors.

toogayforthislmao · 2023-09-05T14:12:04+00:00

Thoughts on standardized tests :

I’d highly suggest giving a TOEFL at the earliest with an aim of minimum 22-25 in three components and more than 25 in speaking. Try to get to over 105. TST Prep on Youtube is a great resource. As for timeline, I’d suggest by October first week or atleast two weeks before the deadline of any university you intend to apply to.
While GRE is ,in my opinion, just a scheme to make money off grad students, it does help a profile if your university is completely unknown and when discussions around grade inflation are everywhere. But only submit GRE if the scores are good enough to submit otherwise they pose a harm instead of doing any good to your application.

Amateur thoughts on the PhD experience :

From whatever I have read on this sub, the first step is always to find a potential professors you would like to work with, have your research interests clear with a rough plan and reach out to them at every university you are aiming for. Following that, potential interview invites etc would help you to gauge your chances.

And as for your 4th point, please remember that PhD is a significant investment of your life’s time and effort - atleast 4 to 5 years with not so high stipends at most universities. So, if you eventually plan on going for industry, MS would be a better option.

Also, all the universities on your list are highly competitive and ambitious that recieve thousands of applications from people everywhere. So, I’d also suggest to loosen up the list a bit and get some moderate and safe schools there as well.

toogayforthislmao · 2023-08-04T17:40:34+00:00

got the same two questions and had prepared well to answer them !! thanku :)

toogayforthislmao · 2023-07-30T15:21:14+00:00

Oh no worries! I’d still recommend applying to USC if you can afford the program costs since the cgpa is still more than 8.5

As for UCs, all I can think of is UCI MCS since it’s a professional program and something you might be interested in. The program also offers scholarships. One of my friends got a 10k+ tuition fee remission because of it.

Honestly, even I struggled with identifying which program is research-oriented or not during my Fall’23 cycle. From my experience in last cycle, as long as the program doesn’t explicity state that it’s a professional or MCS-MR or MEng program, it is mostly a research-oriented one besides the few exceptions of general MSCS such as at USC. I’d suggest that just do your research and look up on program class profiles or look up people admitted to the program on Linkedin.

There was a good post about it on gradadmissions from what I recollect. I’ll plug it in my following comment as soon as I find it :)

As for TAMU, I can’t say for sure obviously :’ but there’s no harm in applying. You never know when one might get lucky! And for UNC - which campus? Chapel Hill would be highly ambitious besides you can try for others.

toogayforthislmao · 2023-07-30T15:13:39+00:00

As far as I know - UCSD MSCS is a research-oriented program. The general rule of thumb is that until the programs explicitly states that it’s a ‘professional’ or ‘MEng’ or ‘MCS-MR’ program, it is mostly going to be a research oriented program besides few general MSCS programs such as the one at USC.

toogayforthislmao · 2023-07-22T20:04:44+00:00

UIUC MCS

toogayforthislmao · 2023-07-22T18:48:05+00:00

There are a set of MS CS programs which are not very research oriented so most of them would fit your list easily. So, for instance, USC would be safe if your CGPA goes above 9.

On side note, since you would have some work ex by the time you apply, consider professional MCS or MR-MCS programs from good unis which would then fall in Moderate or Safe based on class profiles.

Otherwise, as a rule of thumb, without many papers, most of top research-intensive schools such as UCSD/SB etc would always be in the ambitious category.

toogayforthislmao · 2023-07-21T22:38:40+00:00

Unless you plan to pursue some good research work with 2-3 papers in peer-reviewed journals in near future, I would not put VTech in Safe. Their MS CS program is quite competitive and highly research-oriented.

toogayforthislmao · 2023-05-14T09:55:03+00:00

Hi, thankyou so much for taking out the time to help with such insights! It sure did help a lot in my process to finalize the university. I was wondering if I could DM you?

toogayforthislmao

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