2 ms·

If you want to go into academia: Get very good grades especially in math and cs. Do research for credit or money. Get a summer research position. Don't worry t

If you want to go into academia: Get very good grades especially in math and cs. Do research for credit or money. Get a summer research position. Don't worry too much about authorships your first year; you will hopefully end up as an nth author. In later years you're going to want to get a few nice publications (either high profile as nth author or ok-levle as first author) to get into a good grad school. If you want to go into industry: Prioritize getting an internship with a good company over all else. Get good at solving algo/DS problems. The big household-name tech companies will open doors for you if you have them on your resume, and they have special programs for freshman-sophomore students. Regardless: Take academic courses instead of practical courses. University practical courses (e.g. web dev) usually lag behind industry, and you will have ample opportunity in your career to learn new practical skills. You will probably never be in a state of mind or environment where you can get as much out of academic subjects (e.g. statistics, AI, theory of computation, etc.) as you are in now. Always always always prioritize conceptual understanding over trivia you can just google.

alexhutcheson 7y ago
> Take academic courses instead of practical courses. I would caveat this with: Make sure you have some structured activity that forces you to write a bunch of code. If you're not competing in ICPC or doing something similar, you should be taking courses like Operating Systems, Compilers, etc. that require significant coding assignments almost every semester. Theory classes like Discrete Math, Theory of Computation, Algorithms, etc. are great, but it's important to have structured practice to make sure you're developing your coding skills as well. Most students won't actually complete coding projects on their own time, so it's good to put yourself in situations that force you to do it. Overall great advice though.
- opportune 7y ago
  Yes, fully agree. I think getting good at algo/DS is essentially the same as doing ICPC. Personally, the limited amount of time I spent on ICPC has probably had the greatest benefit/cost from college in my life so far.

alexhutcheson 7y ago

> Take academic courses instead of practical courses. I would caveat this with: Make sure you have some structured activity that forces you to write a bunch of code. If you're not competing in ICPC or doing something similar, you should be taking courses like Operating Systems, Compilers, etc. that require significant coding assignments almost every semester. Theory classes like Discrete Math, Theory of Computation, Algorithms, etc. are great, but it's important to have structured practice to make sure you're developing your coding skills as well. Most students won't actually complete coding projects on their own time, so it's good to put yourself in situations that force you to do it. Overall great advice though.

opportune 7y ago
Yes, fully agree. I think getting good at algo/DS is essentially the same as doing ICPC. Personally, the limited amount of time I spent on ICPC has probably had the greatest benefit/cost from college in my life so far.