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Variety of thoughts and tutorials.How to Apply to a PhD in Computer Science
31 March 2025
Applying to a PhD is overwhelming, especially if you don’t know others who have gone through the process. As someone who has been both an applicant and a reviewer, I have seen the process from both sides. I noticed the trends in “good” and “bad” applications. I have provided individual advice to people, but thought I could share it with others. I hope it’s useful to you!
PhD applications typically consist of four (up to six) parts. These parts all work together to form a cohesive narrative of your experience, your motivation, and your goals.
- Curriculum Vitae (i.e., CV)
- Statement of Purpose
- 3+ Recommendation letters (i.e., “letters of rec”, “rec letters”)
- Transcripts
- [Optional] Personal Statement, Diversity Statement.
- [Optional] Graduate-level entry exams (GRE). Schools have been moving away from standardized exams like the GRE for the last 5 years. Double-check with the universities if they require the GRE. This is excluding requirements for English-language proficiency exams (e.g., TOFL).
Tags: Advice
Video Games for "Non-Gamers"
18 December 2023
I never identified as a “gamer” and always thought the only options were shooter games like Halo or Call of Duty (COD). I am happy to say that I was sorely mistaken! So here are my recommendations for those who want to get into games and don’t want to be held back by hand-eye-coordination!
Tags: Miscellaneous
How to Write a Literature Review
10 December 2023
A literature review (“lit review”) is a point* in the research process where you decide how to approach a problem by combing through other peoples’ work. This process is used to gain inspiration, design experiments, and curate baselines and comparative models.
Tags: Advice
Tips for Debugging PyTorch Errors
24 August 2021
Debugging PyTorch errors can be very difficult, mostly due to poor error messages. Here I share some of the strategies I use to get a more informative error message or (hopefully) fix the issue.
Tags: Tutorials
Conference Bingo
13 August 2021
Just a little game calling out conference tropes. Can also be a drinking game.
Tags: Miscellaneous
Pebble Terminal Watchface Part 2
14 January 2017
This post is a continuation of a project discussed in Pebble Terminal Watchface Part 1
Tags: Pebble Smartwatch, C, Projects
Pebble Terminal Watchface
30 March 2016
Pebble is best described as a budget smartwatch for the nerds. I wanted to develop a simple watchface for Pebble in order to improve my C skills. Also, Pebble is very cool.
Tags: Pebble Smartwatch, C, Projects