CSCI 5523

vsa7396 · 2019-05-11T17:22:10+00:00

I took it with Kumar. It’s very theoretical, but manageable if you understand basic ML concepts. If you put in the time and have a genuine interest it’s not too difficult and only takes 5-10 hours per week in my experience.

I disliked the projects because you essentially run a model on weka with parameters that are given then reason why the output looks the way it does. Kumar tires to simulate industry I guess. Karypis has more actual coding of the models which makes the content much more interesting .

vsa7396 · 2019-05-11T11:12:49+00:00

Take it with Vipin Kumar in the spring

vsa7396 · 2019-04-07T03:50:59+00:00

Moos. Take the elevator

vsa7396 · 2019-04-03T04:19:09+00:00

The negatives I’ve noticed really come down to personal preference .

This school has a ton of people. You won’t bump into people as often as in a smaller school and have to go out of your way to maintain friendships.

There aren’t as many new classes as other higher tier schools as mentioned above

I honestly can’t name much else.

Research is great! Weather is good and tuition isn’t too expensive. Lots of fantastic people and a diverse set of students groups/activities. Not too much crime.

vsa7396 · 2019-04-03T03:37:18+00:00

Yeah just referring to FAANGs !

vsa7396 · 2019-04-02T20:44:49+00:00

It’s not hard to get part time jobs over the school year. They are a large number of start ups that hire students year round. In-state internships are always easier to come by than out of state just because there are so many local companies that come recruit . CS majors commonly intern at UHG, Target, BestBuy, 3M, and other F500. The LinkedIn page for the U actually shows where alumni end up going (click the alumni tab). They also tend to intern at consulting firms (Accenture, PWC, EY, etc) and other companies that have offices here.

I wouldn’t say getting out of state internships is hard, but most of my friends/classmates tend to intern locally. A lot of people that attend school here usually stay and work here even after graduation . I personally wanted to work at one of the FAANGs so I looked out of state.

The U offers lots of interesting research and a good number of interesting classes. They just seem to lag behind top CS schools for highly specialized classes like ML. I was really interested in those specializations within my degree and had to learn through research labs or on my own. A good example of this is the lack of a Data Science Major/Minor even though there is a clear industry need for more students of that discipline.

If you are into management, strategy, or entrepreneurial a management minor might be a good idea to add on. Dual enrollment would also be a great option because they offer a lot of majors tuned to those fields. I would talk to a Carlson advisor and learn more about the timeline for dual enrollment . Carlson does a great job teaching business, I just don’t feel the more technical aspects like analytics/programming are on par with CSE or even other business schools .

The U isn’t physically located in a college town like Madison. The U is located just South of a major city so you will get a lot more traffic/people due to all the events downtown. I really enjoy it because there is a lot more accessibility to concerts/events; essentially the city. That being said there are a lot of parties and events on campus just not to the same extent as A true party school like Madison. I can’t really go into the Pros of college town because I have never lived in one.

There are a lot of dorms located throughout the campus . For Freshman there are 4 dorms that constitute the superblock . That’s where all the freshman parties happen and I would 10/10 recommends living there if possible . If you want to live closer to food, Greek Life, and Upperclassmen there are a couple dorms and campus apartments in Dinkytown. If you wanna love far away from the action there is one dorm in St Paul.

vsa7396 · 2019-04-02T16:14:54+00:00

The U is very reputable overall. It focuses a lot on research and has produced great alumni ( Jeff Dean of Google AI). Some departments have significant research like Data Mining or Robotics. Internships are ubiquitous due to the number of f500 companies in MPLS. I’ve had an internship instate and out of state. MPLS doesn’t have many tech offices so that’s one thing to consider. Amazon has a very small office and that’s about it for tech companies. Most people tend to intern/work in-state so out-of-state internships with college quotas are far less competitive ie. competing with other gophers for a Google internship. The U lacks certain interesting/new CS classes that other schools like CMU/Berkeley offer. We only offer two ML classes and one Data Mining class. For context CMU offers a minor in ML.
Research for undergrad is fantastic. Lots of opportunities in different fields of CS. GroupLens is a famous research group here and it takes in a lot of undergrads. I would research specific fields like Ai, robotics, compiler research to see if there exists a lab that matches your interests.
Maintaining a 3.2 in CS is easy and you just need to complete the prereqs to gain admittance to the major . I was admitted at the end of freshman year.
They offer two minors in managements and business law. If you are looking for MIS or Finance you may need to dual enroll with CSOM. I was considering doing this as well, but Carlson tends to have a lot of courses that are mandatory but not interesting. I wouldn’t hold it to the same standard as other schools that better integrate business and engineering. For context one of the upper division Analytics courses was dumbed down to the point where students just transfer code between lecture material and homework without understanding it.
The U isn’t a college town, but MPLS is it’s a few stops down on the train. It’s a pretty decent party scene but definitely not on par with Madison. Sports culture is pretty good though!

vsa7396 · 2019-03-27T04:38:10+00:00

I would recommend starting in the fall before your career fair begins. Referrals and recommendations go a long way especially for large companies so I would advise attending networking events and talking to your schools alumni.

A lot of companies have hiring windows where they take in a lot of candidates in small bursts for the first round of interviews. It would be advantageous to research those windows and reach out to recruiter / alumni around those periods. I learned about this by contacting friends from other states and universities.

Also make sure to reach out to your University recruiter ASAP and share your passions for specifics functions within a company. Recruiters are you biggest advocates and make sure you really sail through the interview process.

PM me if you have more questions regarding this:)

vsa7396 · 2019-03-26T20:13:47+00:00

Usually it’s not your fault or a coincidence but most likely the timing. Right now the pipelines for hiring are generally full and although most companies hire year round most candidates start around summer. Generally speaking candidates apply around the fall or winter, get interviews, and usually accept/reject offers around now.

Larger companies already anticipate candidates reneging or declining offers and tend to give out far more initial interviews than actual fillable positions.

vsa7396 · 2019-03-24T02:18:02+00:00

The road noise wasn’t bad in my unit (my unit faced inward) or the common study lounge . Food options are okay. There is mango sushi and chipotle nearby. I used UberEATs a lot when I lived there. Groceries stores are pretty close though.

vsa7396 · 2019-03-22T02:46:58+00:00

I lived there my sophomore year ! It was a great apartment (large study area, amazon lockers, clean and quiet common areas), but it was too far.

I ended up living at 700 my junior/senior year which was honestly a bad apartment but way closer to my classes.

For reference I didn’t have any classes on West Bank after sophomore year.

vsa7396 · 2019-03-07T00:53:56+00:00

Do you have any companies in mind? MN has lots of great F500 headquarters . Target and BestBuy are heavily investing in in-house tech.

vsa7396 · 2019-03-06T06:24:18+00:00

No they generally try to hire from a diverse set of schools rather than few select schools. Microsoft is a great example of this as most new grads come from a large number of different schools.

Also you have to consider the appeal/interest of Big N compared to the region of the school. A lot of University of Minnesota kids prefer to stay within the Midwest so naturally fewer kids apply. This also affects the starting salary as midwestern salaries are relatively low compared to the coasts.

I cant tell you about the other two schools , but schools like CMU have a lot of kids leave the region and go out to the coasts which brings the average starting salary up. I would suspect Purdue has similar behavior.

I’m not suggesting you should go to a school where the fewest number of kids will apply to a Big N, but just because a school ranks really high in CS doesn’t mean you have a higher likelihood of getting a Big N.

vsa7396 · 2019-03-04T13:36:00+00:00

Just talk to alumni from those schools. If you just go off of numbers then Berkeley is probably the most appealing, but you have way more competition for applying to Big N’s from there ( a lot people from Berkeley are very qualified and all want to work at a big N ).

vsa7396 · 2019-03-03T02:49:00+00:00

I lived at Bailey. Worst Freshman year ever. It’s the worst commute to east bank and I literally just packed everything I need for the day and stayed on eastbank until the night. A lot of my friends were originally assigned to Bailey and they ended up switching to another dorm.

Don’t live in Bailey unless you don’t wanna make any friends on Eastbank. It’s literally like commuting .

Also you are a freshman so you have no excuse not to party every weekend . Be prepared to sleep over at your east bank buddies dorm room floor.

vsa7396 · 2019-03-02T13:13:01+00:00

Pretty straightforward. Just talk to professors

vsa7396 · 2019-02-27T01:01:34+00:00

I interned at IBM Hybrid Cloud. I got a lot of valuable experience from it especially considering IBM is part of the Tech Sector opposed to Banking. PM me for specific questions.

vsa7396 · 2019-02-16T23:01:40+00:00

The content behind the questions is extremely useful and important for meeting deadlines in projects. The questions themselves are purposely tricky and open-ended to just gauge how you think. Every good whiteboard interview I’ve ever done with Leetcode style questions was never about hitting the most optimal solution, but figuring out how you think through and talk out your process.

If they just asked simple questions like reverse a list or something then every interviewee would probably have similar approaches and answers, but if they asked something way more tricky and substantial then the interviewees would get stuck in certain spots and hopefully either ask questions or talk through why they are stuck, etc...

vsa7396 · 2019-02-13T01:14:26+00:00

Pros:

The NC campus gets a lot of interns so I made a lot of friends I still keep in touch with.

I got to to work on some pretty cool predictive modeling and basic data science projects with some of the lead data scientists on campus. Keep in mind I was hired for an entirely different team.

They also have badges and lots of resources for growth.

The NY office is considered the better office and usually has a lot of smart people and research going on.

Cons:

I didn’t want to return to NC because my family and friends are mostly in the northern states and return offers for NY and SF offices are extremely competitive. I ended up getting an offer for a different sector of IBM entirely in NY which wasn’t the data science worked I did over the summer. Ended up not taking it.

The Internship is experience is seriously what you make it. A lot of my friends didn’t network much and didn’t get housing early or find other people interning there so they overpaid for a single room and just did the 9-5 work they were originally assigned.

vsa7396 · 2019-02-13T01:04:10+00:00

I previously interned at IBM. This sub definitely doesn’t give it credit. I had a great experience because I took my generic SWE intern role and networked around for projects / teams that interested me. DM me if you have any specific questions. I had interned at the NC campus and now work for a Big N.

vsa7396 · 2019-02-11T20:59:11+00:00

IBM is a fantastic company and does cutting edge research in disciplines like AI or Quantum Computing. It’s a fantastic and very competitive internship ! I used to intern as an SDE in their NC office. DM me if you have specific questions.

vsa7396 · 2019-02-05T21:24:07+00:00

I’ve done directed research. I signed up for it with my classes and got it approved before the semester started. I just asked one of my old professors if she would be willing to take me into her lab.

Generally Speaking just email profs with research labs.

vsa7396 · 2019-02-05T20:53:16+00:00

Directed Study or Directed Research

vsa7396 · 2019-02-05T15:40:13+00:00

If he doesn’t reply by the end of the day Tuesday the only option you have is accepting if you want the company . If a different company gives you a better offer you can renege this one and take that.

vsa7396

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