Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 68 posts

Re: College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

#31

Post by slackingoff2017 »

cyberpunk0 wrote: post #28
slackingoff2017 wrote: post #27

Nothing in there about money? Here's one I figured out a couple years too late... You got average grades and nothing unusual about you that would lead to scholarships? If you go to school the "normal" way you're likely to end up in huge piles of debt. Even if you go to community college first. An open secret is location. Find a place in the country, or even another country, where college is subsidized for residents.…

Soooooo fuck over the town for selfish, egotistical means. Got it.

I fail to see how moving to a place with better benefits is either one of those things.

Isn't that the reason that pretty much everyone moves? Better jobs, better schools, less crime, etc...

I guess it can be seen as egotistical and selfish if you're the kind of person that doesn't like anyone to build housing that spoils your view. The NIMBY archetype

Re: College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

#32

Post by ACow_Adonis »

mcguire wrote: post #6
sgeisenh wrote: post #2

I disagree with a good bit of this advice. And I suspect it varies with the discipline of study. In a field like computer science, time is better spent working on personal projects, hashing out ideas with peers and exploring research opportunities than aspiring to get an A in every class. A's make for boring, one dimensional students. People who make priorities based on more complex factors than an arbitrary letter g…

College is the one time you have direct, easy access to all those things that those who didn't go or didn't take advantage of are now struggling to learn on their own. Books, videos, and websites are a poor substitute to having someone who knows sit down and explain stuff to you. Don't waste the opportunity.

Swapping from IT to economics was one of the best things I could have done to promote my understanding of computer science.

Not because I learnt anything more in economics about CS, but because my first CS courses focused on Eiffel and object oriented programming: it was going to solve all our problems! We all think about objects naturally, so we should all program that way! It's the future of industry and science!

Instead, everything I learnt about CS has now been through trying to solve actual practical problems and applying them to the real world. I now have more experience with stats languages, taught myself lisp, and an employed doing analytics, a field and course that didn't exist and wouldn't have been treated seriously had I raised my objections to the curriculum back at uni.

Academics are more fad driven and fearful than they like to admit, even more so today now that industry dollars and popularity has increasingly permeated the academic system.

My story is a unique point in history you say, and it's unlikely to happen again?

On the contrary, I think it's even more likely to apply to today...

Re: College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

#33

Post by CalChris »

I agree with everything in the article. However, it was written from the Liberal Arts POV and I was in Engineering.

Get all your reading done before class. Class is review.

If you have a paper due get a draft done a week ahead of time. Then you can hammer on it over the week.

Shop for TAs the first week. In a big lecture class, your TA will make the class.

Avoid bad teachers. I never didn't get into a class. But I dropped three classes the first week because I thought the lecturer was weak. There was something else better to take. I missed a class that was only taught once a year but the prof sucked. Nothing is worth that. There is another way, always.

If you're in STEM you'll have to take some LA classes for breadth. Make these count. These aren't classes you have to take. These are classes you get to take.

Hit the gym. A lot.

Re: College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

#34

Post by wrigby »

slackingoff2017 wrote: post #27

Nothing in there about money? Here's one I figured out a couple years too late... You got average grades and nothing unusual about you that would lead to scholarships? If you go to school the "normal" way you're likely to end up in huge piles of debt. Even if you go to community college first. An open secret is location. Find a place in the country, or even another country, where college is subsidized for residents.…

This. I did this accidentally - that is, I didn't move to a new place, because my state already had a system that works really well for this.

The Virginia state schools are very inexpensive for the quality, and I did two years in the community college system and then transferred to James Madison with guaranteed admission (because of agreements between the state universities and the community college). JMU wasn't a noteworthy CS school at the time, but I also had the option to head to Virginia Tech or University of Virginia, both of which have great programs (JMU offered a minor in music business, which is what made my decision).

Tuition was <$4k/semester for residents at the time (class of 2011).

Re: College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

#35

Post by hprotagonist »

jsemrau wrote: post #17
hprotagonist wrote: post #14

My top 3. 1. Show up to office hours. Even if you sit there and do nothing, TA's notice -- and TAs will absolutely spill the beans on what to prep for for exams, even unintentionally. 2. If you're so brainfried that you can't study any more, go to the gym. Not only is exercise generally good, I'm real convinced it's good for memory consolidation too. 3. If you're attending an expensive private university, networking…

>3. If you're attending an expensive private university, networking is effectively what you're buying. Exploit ruthlessly. This is how I got into my job. It's never too late. Bring yourself out and talk to people.

you and me both.

my first graduate school advisor took me on as a full staff member 5 years out of undergrad. It turns out he knew exactly who i was and was keeping tabs on me in industry, waiting for me to reenter the market. I don't know what I did to deserve that, but I'm eternally grateful.

Re: College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

#36

Post by yeukhon »

CalChris wrote: post #33

I agree with everything in the article. However, it was written from the Liberal Arts POV and I was in Engineering. Get all your reading done before class. Class is review. If you have a paper due get a draft done a week ahead of time. Then you can hammer on it over the week. Shop for TAs the first week. In a big lecture class, your TA will make the class. Avoid bad teachers. I never didn't get into a class. But I dr…

> If you're in STEM you'll have to take some LA classes for breadth. Make these count. These aren't classes you have to take. These are classes you get to take.

I regretted I didn't. I consistently find myself unable to have any meaningful conversations with anyone on anything outside of Computer Science (even then I am only comfortable discussing security and infrastructure; ask me about compiler I can tell you the basics and that's about it). Good teachers teaching LA can prepare you becoming more full-stack in life :) Good LA classes are usually more discussion-oriented (but I REALLY HATE WRITING PAPERS).

Re: College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

#37

Post by akhilcacharya »

> . Recently I learned that my niece Dara, a sophomore at New York University with a 3.7 G.P.A. (and a boyfriend), was offered a week of travel in Buenos Aires as part of her honors seminar. I was retroactively envious to learn that a 3.5 G.P.A. or higher at many schools qualifies you for free trips, scholarships, grants, awards, private parties and top internships

For some reason I don't think this is common.

Re: College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

#38

Post by Tade0 »

I barely made it through college and I can tell you what eventually was the most valuable thing I that was doing there:

Networking.

I didn't fail linear algebra because a friend explained one important concept to me twenty minutes before the exam.

I got my first(not related to my education) job because I helped a friend with calculus(his father was a manager in a company and hired me shortly after his son passed his exams).

I got my first paid internship because I bumped into my friend while I was visiting some other friends in their dorm(apparently the said friend's manager was looking to spend his budget - or so it seemed given that the hiring process was a formality really).

I got my first "real" job because a friend of mine ran a company and was in need of devs.

I could go on and on. Basically connections were the thing that jump-started my career.

So my advice would be: try to be likable and hang out with people with grit.

Re: College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

#39

Post by Alex3917 »

ianai wrote: post #12
Alex3917 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Books, videos, and websites are a poor substitute to having someone who knows sit down and explain stuff to you. For subjects like math and CS, these things are great substitutes. For things like mycology or religious studies, less so. I think there is something to be said for using your time in college to focus more on the subjects that are basically unlearnable via other channels. For things like CS though, just…

As my math advisor said, even subjects like math are best conveyed person to person. There are subconscious and nonverbal communication factors that can’t be reproduced in a video or book.

Sure, I was mostly referring to calculus and the other subjects you study as an undergrad though, where the trade books you can get on Amazon are generally much better than the textbooks that the university courses use.

Re: College Advice I Wish I’d Taken

#40

Post by CalChris »

yeukhon wrote: post #36
CalChris wrote: post #33

I agree with everything in the article. However, it was written from the Liberal Arts POV and I was in Engineering. Get all your reading done before class. Class is review. If you have a paper due get a draft done a week ahead of time. Then you can hammer on it over the week. Shop for TAs the first week. In a big lecture class, your TA will make the class. Avoid bad teachers. I never didn't get into a class. But I dr…

> If you're in STEM you'll have to take some LA classes for breadth. Make these count. These aren't classes you have to take. These are classes you get to take. I regretted I didn't. I consistently find myself unable to have any meaningful conversations with anyone on anything outside of Computer Science (even then I am only comfortable discussing security and infrastructure; ask me about compiler I can tell you the…

I used to hate writing papers, especially in HS. But what I was really hating was the night before it was due, thinking somehow the magic would happen. It never did.

The key is getting a draft out, literally a raw simple draft of what you're gonna say, a week ahead of time. It's kind've like pseudo code. Then fill that in.

Then I'd hammer on my papers over the week. They'd start out raw and get better and better. I'd tweak. I'd find a better word. (Is this sounding familiar?) I'd work on it.

When I turned it in, I knew I was getting an A. I had two papers quoted in lecture. Hey wait, I wrote that! I don't think I ever got less than a B+, generally A's.

Writing isn't magic. It's work. In fact, what 'they' do isn't really that much different from what 'we' do.

Post reply on HN