For those Undergrads who have Grad School on their mind

This is just some advice from a current grad school student on what you should work on and (more importantly) what you should not work on during your undergrad years if grad school is your aim. I’m currently pursuing a master’s degree in Computer Science at Brown University and while I was applying to all these various grad school programs there was a constant frustration (maybe ‘frustration’ is too heavy a word, but I guess you get my point) on what all things I could have done better during my undergrad along with the sporadic moments of relief thinking about things I did right.

A (My) Grad School Program shortlisting strategy

My totally non-scientific methodology of shortlisting grad programs, specifically master’s programs, that kinda works (or at least did for me)! This blog post is in all honesty a true ramble, this was actually a text conversation with a friend of mine which I am now converting into a blog post. Everyone applying to grad school has and for eternity (probably!) will struggle with program shortlisting. There are some who have a few very specific programs in mind and to those people congratulations you really are awesome and do not need to read this further whereas for others like me who are not constrained by having a niche interest we all try to make a list of program and divide that list into the tried and tested safe-moderate-ambitious categories.

Finally done with the GRE. Testing experience, prep plan, and more...

Finally, finally, finally done with the GRE. Didn’t do too shabby, scored: 169 Quant :) 160 Verbal :/ 3.5AWA :( A little context, I’m a non-native English speaker and would be applying for MS in CS programs. Also, I prepared for 6 months along with a 40hrs per week internship, though the pandemic lockdown helped me focus pretty much completely on GRE for the last month. This was my testing experience and preparation material and plan I followed:

fifawc - CLI app to track FIFA World Cup 2018

fifawc A small CLI app to track FIFA World Cup 2018. About fifawc is a CLI app written in Go to help developers keep track of the ongoing FIFA World Cup 2018 without leaving their terminals. The app uses football-data.org API to provide data. Installation Pre-requisite Install Go Set PATH variable Get and Install fifawc app with the command: go get -u github.com/nishchayp/fifawc To run fifawc app from across the system copy fifawc binary to directory pointed by PATH environmental variable.

Git State of Mystery

Explaination of the three states As teams get bigger and projects more complex there arises a need for tools which can keep track of all the changes made to the project by each team member, allow each member to work on their copies of the project simultaneously without breaking the project for each other, help collaborate and combine the changes made by different members, rollback certain changes and a whole lot more, all for the sake of efficient workflow of the project and effective collaboration between team members.

Book Review: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye is not a book meant to be liked or criticized by the readers because the author writes down a part of his own heart and mind and thus it seems evident that just like ‘Holden Caulfield’ even J.D. Salinger cared the least about the opinion of the society he was a part of. The book converses with you on a personal level in a way unlike any other book, person or even your own conscious.