Raj graduated with a Masters from the University of California at Berkley and started working with Microsoft as a Applied Machine Learning Engineer from June 2020. Studying at a top notch US university was a dream that Raj nourished since the time he started his computer engineering program at a local college in Pune. Raj says “When I joined my engineering college, I was a bit disappointed that I did not have a brand-name university for my undergrad. I was, however really determined at making it to Berkeley, Stanford or a CMU kind of university for my masters. I started preparing from my second year itself. I started participating in extracurricular activities which would add to my profile. I also started learning Data Mining via online courses. In my third year, I started doing small projects with professors based on my MOOC learning. These two years added a lot to my profile, as well as built a strong relation with faculty who could then write strong”
“When it came to applying, I realized that getting into the core Computer Science Masters program at most of these top schools is very competitive. While researching about these universities, I also realized that they offer several specialized programs that covered specific aspects of computing. For instance UC Berkeley offered the Master of Information Management and Systems (MIMS) program, CMU offered programs in AI,HCI, Machine Learning, Robotics, Software Engineering and a few others. So at these top schools, I applied to such specialized program rather than the generic CS program.
Amongst the admits that I received the top two best ones were the MIMS program at UC Berkeley and MS in CS from UCLA. I chose UC Berkeley because: (i) There were professors who were working in exactly my field of interest (ML + Security), (ii) When it comes to job opportunities, the name of the degree hardly matters; the coursework does, and the University name matters and (iii) Proximity to the bay area”
Takeaway:
1: Graduating from a top school even from a non core program gives you equally good opportunities when it comes to your job search.
2: The brand of the university stays with you for life.
Co-Founder of Academy One