what is happening
If life isn’t a race, then why do I feel so behind?
Actual content may or may not be coming soon.
August 2012
1 post
April 2012
5 posts
College admissions: the conclusion (probably)
Congratulations on your admission to Berkeley and to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (pronounced “eeks”)! The 2012 entering class, selected from over two thousand applicants, will be one of the most highly qualified in history. You are entering a field with limitless prospects and unbounded intellectual excitement. We look forward to sharing that excitement with you.
I’m going to UC Berkeley, unless I get off of Caltech’s waitlist, which is very unlikely. It’s one of the best schools for computer science and mathematics (and just about anything else, really), it’s a comfortable distance from home, it costs half as much as Carnegie Mellon, and most of my friends are going. Realistically, it’s pretty much the best school I could go to.
I’m still disappointed in myself, though.
If I had gotten rejected by all the private schools I applied to, I’d feel pretty bad too. But that Caltech, Cornell, and Mudd waitlisted me shows that while I definitely had the potential to get into those schools, I just wasn’t good enough for them. (Hell, I even thought that I would get into Cornell and Mudd.) It feels like it was my own fault that I didn’t get in, not that I wasn’t a good fit for these schools. And I’m still upset about not even getting invited for an interview for Berkeley’s Regents scholarship. (I feel like that was my fault too.)
The thought goes: if I had studied harder for that English test, or started doing math competitions earlier, or done any of the many other things that could have boosted my chances, then I would have gotten in. The fact that I was too lazy, or too shy, or too <negative characteristic here> to do these things makes me pretty angry at myself.
Talk about first world problems.
March 2012
42 posts
College Admissions: Final Results
I received 7 acceptances, 3 waitlists, and 2 rejections.
Admitted
- Carnegie Mellon University (School of Computer Science)
- University of California, Berkeley (Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences)
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign (Mathematics and Computer Science)
- University of California, Los Angeles (Computer Science)
- University of California, San Diego (Mathematics and Computer Science)
- University of California, Irvine (Computer Science)
- California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo (Computer Science)
Waitlist
- California Institute of Technology (accepted place on waitlist)
- Cornell University (College of Arts and Sciences, Computer Science) (did not accept waitlist)
- Harvey Mudd College (did not accept waitlist)
Reject
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Stanford University
I have completed my review of your institution, and I am so sorry to tell you that I am unable to attend your school.
There were many qualified candidates this year, so I have had to decline the vast majority of applicants. I know this news is disappointing to receive, and for that reason I will not send a duplicate decision letter by mail. I am complimented by your interest in me and thank you for the hard work your decision represents.
I am very sorry to bring you this news, and I wish your institution the very best as it continues to educate students.
Derandomized: BAYES NET BY EXAMPLE USING PYTHON AND KHAN ACADEMY DATA →
derandomized.com
Bayesian networks (and probabilistic graphical models more generally) are cool. We computer geeks can love ‘em because we’re used to thinking of big problems modularly and using data structures. But better than being cool, they’re useful. Especially if you have the kind of problem that involves…
Hmm. I’m thinking that I’ll stick with PGM-class, not NLP or Crypto. (Never mind that I haven’t done the homework for NLP or Crypto yet.)
Play
Create Content: The Psychology of Tackling Hard Problems →
davidvaldman.com
The thing about hard problems is that there are many difficulties and few solutions. Sounds obvious, but what’s often overlooked is the psychological component to this asymmetry. There’s a simple reason why tackling a hard problem can lead to depressive symptoms: you’re necessarily wrong 99% of the time.
How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known Freshman Year: A Guide to American University Life for the Uninitiated →
jseliger.com
The only problem I have with this essay is his attitude regarding science classes. Clearly he hasn’t taken any good science classes.
OK, maybe it’s not such a good idea to take all the MITx/Coursera/Udacity courses. I need As in Data Structures/Algo, LinAlg, DiffEq, and Discrete, and Bs in everything else. So let’s look at this problem from a time-based perspective. I think I’ll be able to handle at most two (maybe three) MITx/Coursera/Udacity courses before my ability to get anything out of these courses drops.
Based on what I’ve seen so far, circuits and electronics aren’t quite as inspiring to me as the CS topics that Coursera and Udacity are teaching, so MITx’s course will probably be the first to go. (I do think they have a pretty good course format, though.) Beyond that, I’ll have to try out the other courses enough to get a sense of what I care enough about to work on; I think I’ll go for one Udacity course and one Coursera course, to get a balance between Udacity’s focus on practical knowledge and Coursera’s slightly more theoretical bent.
- 6.002x homework due tomorrow.
- Crypto homework due Monday.
- NLP homework due Tuesday.
Crap.
