Chance me and need some advice

[RuiWangeEECS]

Hi all, I am an international student at Purdue majoring in computer engineering and I am now currently a freshman. I now have a GPA of 4, which I know is not impressive since I am a freshman, but I am getting ahead of the usual schedule, so there should be more time for me to do some research stuff in sophomore, junior, and senior years than usual students.

So I am doing research this summer in Beijing, China, with a well-known Chinese professor whose h-index is more than 67 (lowered because he has two accounts in Google Scholar with the other one 54) in, hopefully, machine learning from May to August, 2018. By hopefully I mean he told me to prepare the knowledge of machine learning and a new structure of machine learning (I am not going to say which is that), but he also said something I am not sure whether is related to machine learning or not.

Also, there is a professor in the ECE here at Purdue whose research interest is machine learning. I plan to use my 2018 summer research experience to ask him for a research position in his team.what

 

So assuming I have a shot at the top programs, what do I need to do? When do I take the GRE test? Is there a difference between a GPA of 3.9 or 4.0?

[Elephas]

I'm curious as to how as a freshman you've decided that you want to attend graduate school? I didn't realize it until much later so I'm curious. What do you want to do with a graduate degree? Are you going for the assumed prestige or do you have a vision for the end results?

As for your chances? That's really up to the programs you apply to, strength of letters of recommendation, and how your overall productivity is during your undergraduate career. Personally, I'd worry about chances later and focus on being the best student and classmate you can be.

Anyway - (Take all advice with a grain of salt)

• Establish good relationships with at least 3 professors or lab supervisors during your undergraduate career. This way you can ask for a letter of recommendation down the line and not be nervous about who to go to by the time you're a senior.
• I'd say start preparing for the GRE during your Junior year so that you can take it early in the summer after Junior year, and if you feel that you need to retake the exam you will still have time to study before retaking it.
• The difference between a 3.9 and 4.0 student is program dependent however with GPAs that high I don't personally see a difference between the two. A different comparison is between a student with a 3.5 and a student with a 3.9. When comparing a 3.9 student who hasn't been very involved on campus and did research in comparison to a 3.5 student who was very active and also did research (in your case activities like IEEE would be a good place to start and any professional society such as NSBE, SASE, SWE, SHPE) it would be more departmental fit from there. Would you be a good person to interact with the POI? How do you collaborate with others? Do you ever practice public speaking? Things like this are all great and can be gained from activities. Attending professional society conferences allows you to practice interviews, gain help with resumes
• As a student at a large school like Purdue you should definitely reach out to your school's career center as they should have a large repertoire  of resources about questions such as these.
• When you work in a lab also feel free to discuss your questions with those current or past Graduate Students as they probably have a lot of advice and feedback that you'd find helpful.
• Lastly since I'm not sure of the competitiveness of labs at Purdue I'd consider reaching out to the professor you're interested in working with this semester, establishing a relationship and mentioning your future summer experience and how you'd love to talk again in the fall about your experience at the lab (and then maybe segue this talk into how it can connect with that professors research)

If you have any other questions or want me to clarify or expand (on my opinions) feel free to PM me.

[spamhaus]

I'm a Purdue alum, welcome. Glad you're interested and motivated!

I am going to assume you are interested in a PhD as you do not explicitly state that, but do reference research. I echo @balaenopter_a in questioning your desire for graduate studies mainly because I wonder how much experience with research you've had at this point as a freshman. That said, it seems like you are poised to get research experience, which is great. Hopefully after experiencing it, you can be better informed regarding your desire and aptitude for it.

This excellent document by Mor Harchol-Balter, a professor at CMU, details lots of important facts regarding getting a PhD in Computer Science. Here a some choice selections from the document:

• Research is very different from taking classes. Many students never make the transition between taking classes and doing research – in fact, at most schools only 1/2 of the students who enter the Ph.D. program leave with a Ph.D. (at CMU, about 3/4 end up with a Ph.D.). Keep in mind that we’re typically talking about students who came in with 4.0 GPA’s from a top undergraduate program. (This is why I question whether you've done enough research to know it's what you want to do for at least 5-6 years)

• When applying to a Ph.D. program in CS, you’d like your grades in CS and Math and Engineering classes to be about 3.5 out of 4.0, as a rough guideline. It does not help you, in my opinion, to be closer to 4.0 as opposed to 3.5. It’s a much better idea to spend your time on research than on optimizing your GPA. At CMU the mean GPA of students admitted is over 3.8 (even though we don’t use grades as a criterion), however students have also been admitted with GPAs below 3.3, since research is what matters, not grades. A GPA of 4.0 alone with no research experience will not get you into any top CS program.

David Andersen of CMU also wrote a great document about graduate admissions (once you get to that point).

BTW as a Purdue alum, I initially thought I wanted to minor in EE, but hated EE 201 my freshman year. I additionally wanted more experience with AI, but when I graduated a decade and a half ago Purdue was woefully behind in the field. Robocup was fun, but I remember ECE 473 was a terrible experience with Dr. Siskind (be warned if you decide to take it). It was mostly classical AI, i.e. logic formalisms. At the time the course had two parts, 1) labs and a 2) two question final which were worth 50% of your grade each. Which means each question on the exam is essentially worth 25% of your grade, i.e. missing one question on the final gets you a 75% in the class, i.e a C...

Rather I ended up with a dual major in CS and Math with a minor in Psychology. While ECE is a close enough field for pursuing a PhD focused on machine learning, I'd make sure you take CS fundamentals like Data Structures and Math fundamentals like Linear Algebra in order to have the best understanding of the material as you will be expected to know them for machine learning.

Best of luck!

Edited February 8, 2018 by spamhaus

[RuiWangeEECS]

On 2/8/2018 at 8:56 AM, spamhaus said:

I'm a Purdue alum, welcome. Glad you're interested and motivated!

I am going to assume you are interested in a PhD as you do not explicitly state that, but do reference research. I echo @balaenopter_a in questioning your desire for graduate studies mainly because I wonder how much experience with research you've had at this point as a freshman. That said, it seems like you are poised to get research experience, which is great. Hopefully after experiencing it, you can be better informed regarding your desire and aptitude for it.

This excellent document by Mor Harchol-Balter, a professor at CMU, details lots of important facts regarding getting a PhD in Computer Science. Here a some choice selections from the document:

• Research is very different from taking classes. Many students never make the transition between taking classes and doing research – in fact, at most schools only 1/2 of the students who enter the Ph.D. program leave with a Ph.D. (at CMU, about 3/4 end up with a Ph.D.). Keep in mind that we’re typically talking about students who came in with 4.0 GPA’s from a top undergraduate program. (This is why I question whether you've done enough research to know it's what you want to do for at least 5-6 years)

• When applying to a Ph.D. program in CS, you’d like your grades in CS and Math and Engineering classes to be about 3.5 out of 4.0, as a rough guideline. It does not help you, in my opinion, to be closer to 4.0 as opposed to 3.5. It’s a much better idea to spend your time on research than on optimizing your GPA. At CMU the mean GPA of students admitted is over 3.8 (even though we don’t use grades as a criterion), however students have also been admitted with GPAs below 3.3, since research is what matters, not grades. A GPA of 4.0 alone with no research experience will not get you into any top CS program.

David Andersen of CMU also wrote a great document about graduate admissions (once you get to that point).

BTW as a Purdue alum, I initially thought I wanted to minor in EE, but hated EE 201 my freshman year. I additionally wanted more experience with AI, but when I graduated a decade and a half ago Purdue was woefully behind in the field. Robocup was fun, but I remember ECE 473 was a terrible experience with Dr. Siskind (be warned if you decide to take it). It was mostly classical AI, i.e. logic formalisms. At the time the course had two parts, 1) labs and a 2) two question final which were worth 50% of your grade each. Which means each question on the exam is essentially worth 25% of your grade, i.e. missing one question on the final gets you a 75% in the class, i.e a C...

Rather I ended up with a dual major in CS and Math with a minor in Psychology. While ECE is a close enough field for pursuing a PhD focused on machine learning, I'd make sure you take CS fundamentals like Data Structures and Math fundamentals like Linear Algebra in order to have the best understanding of the material as you will be expected to know them for machine learning.

Best of luck!

Thanks for the advice. It is so nice hearing from a Purdue alum! I actually just finished the first midterm of 201!

And you are right I am going for a Ph.D here, or at least for now.

My thoughts about research are that right now even knowing the smallest break through in this field excites me, and I know it is not like I have done it or experience it before, but that excitement is what got me thinking and is what motivated me to contact that professor for that chance. I am not saying that I am definitely going for research, but I think it is somewhat more likely than rest of the choice. Who knows, maybe we will see after that summer research.

As for math class, after this semester I am done with the requirement of CmpE math requirements, which includes everything you said except Data Structure which is in ECE courses, but I am thinking about taking some more math classes to lay a solid foundation in math. Do you have any suggestions?

Also for ECE 473, I was thinking about it until you told me about it. It is still this instructor who teaches the course as well as ECE 570. Do you have any suggestions about more classes? Because I have to earn enough credits each semester to be on campus as an international student.

[spamhaus]

1 hour ago, RuiWangeEECS said:

Thanks for the advice. It is so nice hearing from a Purdue alum! I actually just finished the first midterm of 201!

And you are right I am going for a Ph.D here, or at least for now.

My thoughts about research are that right now even knowing the smallest break through in this field excites me, and I know it is not like I have done it or experience it before, but that excitement is what got me thinking and is what motivated me to contact that professor for that chance. I am not saying that I am definitely going for research, but I think it is somewhat more likely than rest of the choice. Who knows, maybe we will see after that summer research.

That's a great way to look at it! It's good that you have an initial interest in the field and I hope your experience doing research in the summer reinforces your pursuit of a PhD. Though, sometimes it's hard to know before you've done something whether you'll like it, which is really all I was pointing out.

Additionally, not all research experiences are equal, so the more diverse research opportunities you are able to pursue, the better idea you will have of the expectations required when conducting research for a PhD. Especially, when you are starting out as a freshman conducting research (or an undergraduate in general), often times you are not the one guiding the direction of the research, but rather experiments with the ideas of others. When conducting a PhD, you will be the one required to come up with topics to research. Considering it's a five to six year endeavor for most people, it's good to know ahead of time that it's something you're eager to undertake.

 

1 hour ago, RuiWangeEECS said:

As for math class, after this semester I am done with the requirement of CmpE math requirements, which includes everything you said except Data Structure which is in ECE courses, but I am thinking about taking some more math classes to lay a solid foundation in math. Do you have any suggestions?

I would consider Intro to Probability (MA 416) and Ordinary Differential Equations (MA 366) or Analysis (not sure the course number as it changed since I took it). In addition to Data Structures, I'd make sure you've had some familiarity with an Algorithms course that teaches big-O notation such as CS 381.

 

1 hour ago, RuiWangeEECS said:

Also for ECE 473, I was thinking about it until you told me about it. It is still this instructor who teaches the course as well as ECE 570. Do you have any suggestions about more classes? Because I have to earn enough credits each semester to be on campus as an international student.

Unfortunately no. I graduated from Purdue nearly a decade an a half ago, and as I mentioned, they were not on the forefront of AI/ML back then. In fact the only course on neural networks was a graduate course taught by a professor in ECE that was retiring, so I wasn't able to take the course (it filled up, and there wasn't even enough space in the classroom to try to audit it). Rather, I'd look at their current course offerings and see if they have any machine learning courses.

Good luck!

[RuiWangeEECS]

On 2/8/2018 at 8:00 AM, balaenopter_a said:

I'm curious as to how as a freshman you've decided that you want to attend graduate school? I didn't realize it until much later so I'm curious. What do you want to do with a graduate degree? Are you going for the assumed prestige or do you have a vision for the end results?

As for your chances? That's really up to the programs you apply to, strength of letters of recommendation, and how your overall productivity is during your undergraduate career. Personally, I'd worry about chances later and focus on being the best student and classmate you can be.

Anyway - (Take all advice with a grain of salt)

• Establish good relationships with at least 3 professors or lab supervisors during your undergraduate career. This way you can ask for a letter of recommendation down the line and not be nervous about who to go to by the time you're a senior.
• I'd say start preparing for the GRE during your Junior year so that you can take it early in the summer after Junior year, and if you feel that you need to retake the exam you will still have time to study before retaking it.
• The difference between a 3.9 and 4.0 student is program dependent however with GPAs that high I don't personally see a difference between the two. A different comparison is between a student with a 3.5 and a student with a 3.9. When comparing a 3.9 student who hasn't been very involved on campus and did research in comparison to a 3.5 student who was very active and also did research (in your case activities like IEEE would be a good place to start and any professional society such as NSBE, SASE, SWE, SHPE) it would be more departmental fit from there. Would you be a good person to interact with the POI? How do you collaborate with others? Do you ever practice public speaking? Things like this are all great and can be gained from activities. Attending professional society conferences allows you to practice interviews, gain help with resumes
• As a student at a large school like Purdue you should definitely reach out to your school's career center as they should have a large repertoire  of resources about questions such as these.
• When you work in a lab also feel free to discuss your questions with those current or past Graduate Students as they probably have a lot of advice and feedback that you'd find helpful.
• Lastly since I'm not sure of the competitiveness of labs at Purdue I'd consider reaching out to the professor you're interested in working with this semester, establishing a relationship and mentioning your future summer experience and how you'd love to talk again in the fall about your experience at the lab (and then maybe segue this talk into how it can connect with that professors research)

If you have any other questions or want me to clarify or expand (on my opinions) feel free to PM me.

Hi, thanks so much for replying. The thoughts are in the previous reply I sent to @spamhaus.

Just to make this clear, I am going for a Ph.D so does 3.9 and 4.0 make a difference?

I have sent an email to that professor I am interested to work with with no replies yet. I am going to send another email about my summer research.

[spamhaus]

3 hours ago, RuiWangeEECS said:

Just to make this clear, I am going for a Ph.D so does 3.9 and 4.0 make a difference?

You must not have read the excellently written document from the CMU professor regarding pursuing a CS PhD that I linked to. It covers this point pretty explicitly. I would highly recommend reading it all the way through.

[Elephas]

I did take a look at @spamhaus 's article and it sums it up quite well. I also think you'd find it worth your time to review this forum as it shines perspective on the importance of GPA and how others are achieving their dreams despite not having the 3.9 or 4.0. For reference I had a 3.52 at the time of application(currently a 3.54 which no longer matters) and have been accepted into the majority of programs I applied to. 

 

[RuiWangeEECS]

1 hour ago, balaenopter_a said:

I did take a look at @spamhaus 's article and it sums it up quite well. I also think you'd find it worth your time to review this forum as it shines perspective on the importance of GPA and how others are achieving their dreams despite not having the 3.9 or 4.0. For reference I had a 3.52 at the time of application(currently a 3.54 which no longer matters) and have been accepted into the majority of programs I applied to. 

 

Yes I have read through the whole document this afternoon which turned out to be indeed excellent!

I have one concern though. I am not a CS major so I cannot take the machine learning courses, do you have any suggestions regarding this? Like can I apply for a permission?

[Elephas]

I would speak with your academic adviser for the best advice on taking courses outside of your major and possibilities of minoring in computer science as regulations vary by school.