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Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

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Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#1

Post by amandavinci »

I'm a student of VIT University, India. Everyone in our country, from academia to industry, looks at us as second class undergrads.

I'm passionate about solving problems and making things, especially AI and game development. But due to some bad decisions I ended up dropping two years after high school and could not get into the IITs i.e. the top colleges in India. Ever since I started college and found the sub-par level of CS education here, I have tried to take my education into my own hands. I'm an autodidact by choice and here is the strategy that I have followed for the past one and half years at college:

- MOOC : I have studied all the important CS courses from popular MOOCs like CS50, MIT OCW, etc. I have earned a certification in an AI MOOC taught by the IITs and completed the Machine Learning course from Coursera too.

- Projects : I have done some good projects and open sourced them at https://github.com/AmanDaVinci

- Others : I have worked as a two man team to publish a game on Play Store and we also sell our plugins, tools and assets on Unity3D asset store. I have organized and instructed successful game development workshops as I plan to start a Game Dev club in our college.

Considering the experience and expertise of the HN crowd in the engineering field, what more could I do to be at par with the top students of the world?

1) Should I invest in AI / ML nano degree certificates?

2) Should I work more on real software projects like open source AI and games?

3) Can I do anything else to improve myself?

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#3

Post by amandavinci »

asafira wrote: post #2

At the risk of sounding cliche', just do work at something you enjoy. If you think there will be valuable knowledge in the degree certificates, go for them. If you have a cool idea you want to explore, go for it.

Yeah exactly but I always feel like I'm short of time. Like just a few years more and I'll have to look for a job. Mandatory attendance at boring classes doesn't help much too.

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#5

Post by nickbauman »

Code that solves a real problem or runs a real (viable) business is more important than any degree certificate you will ever get. 93% top most successful corporations in America are managed by people who come from 2nd and 3rd tier grads. Steve Jobs was a college dropout.

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#6

Post by Hydraulix989 »

amandavinci wrote: post #3
asafira wrote: post #2

At the risk of sounding cliche', just do work at something you enjoy. If you think there will be valuable knowledge in the degree certificates, go for them. If you have a cool idea you want to explore, go for it.

Yeah exactly but I always feel like I'm short of time. Like just a few years more and I'll have to look for a job. Mandatory attendance at boring classes doesn't help much too.

You seem like you are really on top of your game though. I'm impressed. It's sad to see so much weight on brand name schools.

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#8

Post by greenmoon55 »

First, you need to think about what you want to do after graduation, such as becoming an Android game developer or a graduate student focusing on AI. Then figure out what you need to do to achieve your goals (such as work on projects or do research) and keep working on it. Everything will be fine and you can be at par with the best.

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#9

Post by amandavinci »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #6
amandavinci wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah exactly but I always feel like I'm short of time. Like just a few years more and I'll have to look for a job. Mandatory attendance at boring classes doesn't help much too.

You seem like you are really on top of your game though. I'm impressed. It's sad to see so much weight on brand name schools.

Thanks a lot. I found Paul Graham's essay on the credentials and pedigree quite reassuring. :) http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html

  "Admission to the right university can make or break an ambitious young South Korean."

Re: Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best?

#10

Post by morganvachon »

amandavinci wrote: post #3
asafira wrote: post #2

At the risk of sounding cliche', just do work at something you enjoy. If you think there will be valuable knowledge in the degree certificates, go for them. If you have a cool idea you want to explore, go for it.

Yeah exactly but I always feel like I'm short of time. Like just a few years more and I'll have to look for a job. Mandatory attendance at boring classes doesn't help much too.

If the classes are boring, it's either because you aren't close to the level of knowledge you should be, or else you're far ahead of the curve. Given what you wrote about your education so far, of course the latter is true.

I envy you actually; I never had a head for higher math and programming, my talents lie in hardware hacking and electronics repair. I'd love to learn some proper CS, but my life took a different track before college and now when I try to learn anything beyond bash scripting or simple microcontroller stuff in C, my mind turns to mush.

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