PhD in CS - General and AI Interview questions

[foreignstudent]

I have already posted this topic in the Waiting it Out forum, but decided to post here to get more CS specific answers.

Recently I have been contacted by a Prof  who wants to talk over skype regarding my PhD application. I have mentioned my interest of working under this Prof in my SOP. I have no research experience which I know is a serious handicap but apart from that I would be really glad if anybody could tell me what questions I can expect from CS related fields in general or related to game programming and AI.

 

Would I be quizzed on Mathematical and algorithmic concepts?

Should I brush up on my basic CS skills in algorithms and data structures as it has been some time since I last used them academically

 

Any pointers would be great

[CSallday]

Sure - I have had a couple PhD admission interviews and I am interested in AI/ML so here is what I have found in my experiences: 

 

They did not quiz me on any specific concepts related to AI / algorithms, like you would expect in a technical interview for Google or something. However, they asked me about any projects I have worked on related to AI and I had to know enough to talk about it for a couple of minutes. I had one POI ask me "so...what do you know about machine learning?" and I started explaining the basics of ML until it was clear to him that I knew what I was talking about.

 

You should be comfortable enough with the aspect of your professor of interests' research that you can ask intelligent questions during the interview. In all my interviews, the profs spent a good amount of time describing their research and wanted to know if I had any questions. The questions were the starting point for some lively discussions. (Hint: read up on the professor's research and skim over some papers before the interview in order to come up with smart questions beforehand, because you may be too nervous to come up with good questions on the spot...or at least I know I'm that type of person).

 

Anyways, congratulations on the interview, and best of luck!

Edited January 27, 2015 by CSallday

[foreignstudent]

Thanks a lot this sounds better.. some of the posts in other forums and stackexchange were talking about solving problems and such. It sure made me very nervous and anxious. My plan is to understand once again the profs research interest and projects and to  look through all the projects I have done in game programming.

 

The questions to the profs is another worrying aspect as I dont want to sound too stupid and also not to irk them regarding their methods or techniques. Hope I dont blow this away