Aditya_Aditya

This is my profile: Under Grad, B.Tech CS GPA: 8.04/10 (Third tier Indian college) Masters CS GPA: 3.33/4 (Rutgers University, New Brunswick) GRE: 322 (156V + 166Q, 3.5) TOEFL: 114 No papers. Been working at a FAANG like company in the US for the past 3.5 years on a distributed trading platform. C++ heavy job. Making upwards of 150k an year in TC. What are my chances of getting a Ph.D seat at National University of Singapore for a PhD in CS? I am interested in Machine learning, Deep learning, Computer vision and NLP problems.

What type of certifications? I am genuinely wiling to put in the effort if it helps me!

So this has been on my mind for a really long time. I was born in a middle class family in India. People around me were average joes. I want to school with people who are not exemplary. I did not get into some marvellous institute for undergraduate studies. I think maybe one guy out of all my high school friends managed to get into a prestigious college in India. He was always the gifted kind. Maybe it is because of his upbringing or genes or something else. The point is, that I was always surrounded by average people. I am myself average too. I went to a third tier college in India. Got a GPA of 8.04/10. GRE of 322. Came to the US to get a master's degree at Rutgers. Barely focused on the curriculum and got a 3.33 GPA out of 4. At no point in this whole journey, I was aiming to get a Ph.D or to publish a paper or something. 21 year old me back then simply wanted a 100k job offer in the US. All I did during my masters was grind Leetcode. I didn't care about networking or asking my professor for a research project or tried to get a research internship or anything. I always felt that they are off limits for average people like me. There were two to three batchmates who got into Rutgers PhD program. But I never hung out with them. They didn't hung out with me either. I was surrounded by people like me, who wanted to get a job and get out. Now, I have been working for 3.5 years doing some mundane software engineering tasks like moving a service from one cluster to an another. Changing some code to display a different error message to the user. Every now and then I get to write a 200 line patch to implement a feature and half of the team tries to rip it apart. I have to justify every single decision I made to them. None of the cool teams, companies that are actually working on futuristic technologies that involve machine learning, computer vision want to touch me with a 10 foot pole ? I am more than wiling to go back to college to get a Ph.D but none of my professors even reply to my email. They can't remember who the hell I am. I don't blame them for it. I really hated siting in their classes, doing assignments and not earning money. I had 200$ in my bank account those days and all I could care about was paying my house rent. I didn't come from abject poverty and I am grateful to be earning a crap ton of money, to be leading a comfortable life in the US. But at the same time, I cannot work on anything cool at all. If there is anything remotely cool that humans are building, say for example writing the software for Mars Rover bot. Unquestionably the software engineer who will be calling all the shots on all the major engineering decisions that go into designing the software for the Mars Rover will be someone with a BS from Carnegie Mellon with a Ph.D from Caltech. It will never be some average idiot like me with a B.tech from GITAM and a MS from Rutgers University. All throughout my life I was told that if I work really hard, I can turn my life around at any point. The problem with that statement is that everyone is willing to work hard. But only a few of us know where to put in that hard work or how to organize their effort for maximum effectiveness. People who can figure that stuff out already have a BS from Carnegie Mellon. Maybe they are naturally smart or maybe they were surrounded by people who molded them into ultra smart geniuses. Today, the reality is that, no matter how badly I want to get into a Ph.D program. There are very few opportunities for me to turn my life around. The only moment when I really was in control of my destiny was when I was 17 years old and I was writing those stupid IIT-JEE exams or AIEEE or BITSAT or whatever. At 17, I didn't give a shit about those exams. I ended up in a mediocre college. I had very few role models. At 22, I wrote GRE and came to America, hoping to earn a 6 figure salary. Today I realize the things I was supposed to do at 17 and 22. But it's too freaking late. I am already not eligible for half of the opportunities in the world. It is so depressing and heartbreaking to know that no matter how hard I try today at 29 years of age, there is a very miniscule chance that I will ever be even considered for something as cool as writing software for Apollo spacecraft in the rest of my life. I really like Computer Science and given the opportunity I am willing to work really very hard, but it is almost guaranteed that I will have to live the rest of my life working on some mediocre, mundane projects, that nobody gives a shit about. I just wish I could die tonight in sleep and not wake up tomorrow morning. I don't want to live any more.

So I did my masters from Rutgers University, US in Computer Science. I have been working as a software engineer for Bloomberg for the past 3.5 years in the US. I was never really into research that much when I was working. I basically thought of masters as a way to getting a job in the US. My profile is not that great. Masters GPA: 3.33/4 Under Grad GPA: 8.04/10 (Third tier Indian university) GRE: 322 (166 + 156, 3.5) expired. Toefl: 114 I don't have any publications. I am strongly thinking of doing a Ph.D from National University of Singapore (NUS). This is the only university I am thinking of applying to. Do I realistically stand a chance of getting an admit?