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

#31

Post by whitenoice »

You are doing great! Don't let institution name bother you, it does not matter much, it helps in getting interviews etc, but if you work smartly you will get that anyway. Few things I would focus on:

1. Build a strong CS and Math background, especially since you are interested in AI, ML. Academia is the best place to do this. Look at the curriculum of top engineering schools like mit, cmu for your sophomore year and see how you can complement it with the courses you are taking. This will pay you dividends in future. You are already doing that, which is great! Try to add more structure to your execution.

2. Take advanced courses on the topics you are interested as you get to your senior year. A lot of MOOC’s have entry level courses but lack on advanced topics. You will find these scattered across university lecture videos, you already mentioned OCW.

3. For prototype projects try building things from the ground up. For e.g. Taking an Operating systems course great, build a simple filesystem from scratch. It will help you in understanding the complexity involved in production grade software and why certain design choices are made.

4. For the projects that you are passionate about deep dive into it, its great to see people talk about their projects with deep technical insight, pros and cons of design choices made etc.

5. Personally I would avoid learning every new language that comes up, focus more on programming language concepts (there is a course of Coursera on this) and learn few languages well.

6. For internships look for startups that are working on interesting ideas.

7. More than the certificates the projects what you did in those courses are more valuable.

8. Enjoy, make good friends, stay healthy and active.

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

#33

Post by RangerScience »

I've been watching a friend follow their passion (food); what they do, and what I do/think in response. At this point - anything and everything to do with food, my first thought it - What's Veronica's opinion on this?

You want the people you know (and who know you) to have their idea of you intertwined with what you want to be doing; now, everything they encounter that has to do with that will get funneled your way.

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

#34

Post by bernardino »

I am glad to see a question asked from college student. I am always interested to hear from others in college. I am twenty-one-years-old, attending a community college in the states and studying a bit of computer science.

I am going to go off on sort of a tangent and offer you some general advice:

1. Do not worry about what other people think. You mentioned in the beginning of your question about being looked as "second class undergrads", and that is completely false. As Rainer Maria Rilke once noted: "Your life is so inexpressibly your own..."

2. Build things you are passionate about, and not because they'll help you land a job but just for the sake of building things. If you are interested in artificial intelligence or machine learning, learn about them and build something. Better yet, keep a blog and write about the process of learning about AI, ML, etc. Don't be afraid to email some people you look up in the industry for guidance.

3. Keep learning, learn about anything that sparks your interest. Nothing is boring in its deepest essence. There's always something to learn. And if you know a lot, teach it or write about i.e. set up a repository for other people to learn more about it in an easier way.

Above all: Just be you. Don't label or attach yourself with certain identities. Build great things just for the enjoyment of building things. Love the process of building things. Collaborate with friends and colleagues. Go boldly.

Learning, building, etc. is all a joy. Don't try to be the best _____, just build stuff that matters to you.

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

#35

Post by MarkMc »

amandavinci wrote: post #15
liquidise wrote: post #13

You have already mentioned the top one for me: passion. Colleges rarely teach you what you need to know professionally - they can't, tech moves too fast. Instead, they teach you how to learn what you need to know. This is an important distinction because it should inform your approach to your professional growth. 1. Stay passionate both about software and your own growth/education in it. 2. Start some personal projec…

I'm following the first two points earnestly and I'll start with the third one as well. And the mentor aspect is what I'm missing right now. So, I have planned to contribute to open source and/or apply to GSOC '17. Any other ideas how to find suitable mentors?

It's worth putting your contact details on your HN about page

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

#36

Post by akarambir »

Hey,

You are already on right track. Just complete the Graduation as it is required by many companies(and visas if you need any in future). Go for fundamental courses more on MIT OCW and others. I also studied in a private engineering college from India(2010-2014). My rant at the time here: https://nainomics.blogspot.in/2011/11/welcome-to-indias-high...

I just focused on my learning. Some professors were encouraging. That helped.

One anecdote: I made a heroku style PaaS for my final year project(like dokku). My professors couldn't understand what it does and why is it even necessary. Their main point was we have "shared-hosting" services to do these(I had to go from php to java/python example then :P). Now after two years they have their industry peers saying docker all over and have called me several times regarding that.

I am now Backend Dev building APIs with Python(Django) and Elixir at a small company. I also have small Open source contributions under my belt. Contact me if you need someone to talk to

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

#37

Post by shubhamjain »

Having completed graduation in India with a college much less in glamor than VIT, I would advice you to give yourself some slack and continue working earnestly on interesting stuff. When I graduated, I was deep-down with anxiety to get proficient in frameworks like Rails / AngularJs. Apparently, what were web frameworks in my time are AI / Big Data these days — the skills insinuated as requisite to be taken seriously.

But things are much simpler than that. Programmers solve problems and even the most revered programmers are just solving other programmers' problems. If you are building stuff, irrespective of size, scale or complexity, you're on the right track. Snub the anxiousness of not studying in the top-tier college; it won't matter few years down the line. I certainly can relate to zealousness of solving complex problems, but in my view, it's certainly not a prerequisite for personal fulfilment, or success, for that matter.

In day-to-day work, I am yet to use anything related to AI but every now and then, I find immensely time-saving project that just solved an insignificant problem.

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

#38

Post by captn3m0 »

Few tips:

1. Apply to startups. If you are looking to apply to the big four, make sure you do your diligence and work hard at coding contests. 2. Practice peer-teaching. VIT is a huge college. There are more people like you, and you can easily help each other by doing projects together. 3. The industry, in general, rewards freshers who have worked in large teams and projects before. 4. Make sure you get a good internship. Shouldn't be hard for you, but if you are interested, drop me a mail (Razorpay, Bangalore) 5. Go for depth first and then pick your specialization within software. For me it was Web Development and Software Security. Could be anything for you, but make sure you have tested the waters in other fields before picking one. The one benefit of College Life is that you have time to experiment and fail. You can try out projects in all these different fields, and then decide what you are really passionate about. 6. GSoC is a great option. I'd recommend trying for a experienced org over a new one. 7. Avoid freelancing, unless absolutely necessary. It rewards short term gains, over long time learning. You can make much more money cloning WordPress themes and reusing them across projects then learning a new programming language. The latter would help you much more.

I'm very interested in Software Education in India, and if would like to talk more, drop me a mail (email in profile).

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

#39

Post by gh1 »

I checked out the game you developed...looks awesome.

Look - since you are passionate about solving problems and making things, why don't you just create sources of passive income or build some business from the ground up? This way you will be able to bypass any reputation issues that your university has and focus on your creativity instead.

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

#40

Post by amandavinci »

MarkMc wrote: post #35
amandavinci wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm following the first two points earnestly and I'll start with the third one as well. And the mentor aspect is what I'm missing right now. So, I have planned to contribute to open source and/or apply to GSOC '17. Any other ideas how to find suitable mentors?

It's worth putting your contact details on your HN about page

Just did that :)
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