What did I do this past week?

I studied and took my first algo exam. Spent a long time making the note sheet, but didn’t really use it. There was also an OS exam last week, so I answered a bunch of students’ questions and graded exams. Hope the 439 students don’t hate us when they see the scores :o This week in OOP we learned more about iterators and covered constructors, destructors, copy constructors, copy assignment constructors and so on. Although there are lots of details to remember, I found these concepts very interesting. I definitely need to implement the iterators and constructors myself in order to fully understand how things behave. I also went to the integrated five year master program’s info session last week. Basically you need a very high GPA and 3 strong letter of recommendation, and write up a statement of purpose. I will go and talk to some more CS professors and ask for advices.

What’s in my way?

Applied Number Theory. It is always going to show up in this section… Besides number theory, there’s also an interview that’s quite important to me coming up this week… Managing my time properly to do interview prep and to study for the OOP test is going to be hard.

What will I do next week?

I will finish my Applied Number Theory homework that’s due two Fridays ago, prepare for interviews and study/practice a lot for the OOP exam!

Tip of The Week

Since I’ve gone to the 5 year master info session, I can share about what I learned there. Application is due May 1st, spring semester of junior year. 3.3 CS GPA is required for all applicants. The program has two stages, stage one is the fourth year, 6 hours of grad classes are required each semester, should finish all undergrad courses by the end of senior year. Then at the end of fourth year, GRE is requried, and application to UTCS grad school is also required. But the speaker at the info session said it’s more like a formality. Stage two is the fifth year, 9 hours of grad courses are required each semester. The weird thing is that you have to get BS and MS at the same time, so after 4 years you still can’t get your BS even though you are officially a grad student. Hopefully there are ways to work around it, but overall it seems like a pretty amazing program :)