The Ultimate USA Masters?Guide

A one-stop guide on how to survive one of the most difficult struggles of your life — Masters in the United States.

Preface

Hello Again! Congratulations on completing your Bachelor’s, leaving your job, giving your GRE, writing your SOPs, collecting LORs, making your resume, applying to Colleges, getting an Admit, sorting your Finances, getting a Visa, booking your Flights, and buying a lot of socks & underwear??

Tired already? Well, the real struggle has just begun!

I’m Soham Mehta, a software engineer currently working at Salesforce, San Francisco. I graduated from State University of New York at Stony Brook in December 2018 and I had a heck of a time trying to survive my Masters. I was fresh out of my undergraduate college joining Stony Brook and it took me some time to understand what was going on around me. I see a lot of my friends and juniors going through the same process reaching out to me for help (after reading my other blog The Ultimate GRE Guide). So I just wanted to write all my thoughts & experiences here so that you don't make the same mistakes as I did ?? Please don't consider this as a source of truth as these are just my opinions. Okay, let's begin!

— — — — — Everything College — — — — —

You should do be sure about all of these things before setting foot in your college. Too late to read this? Don’t worry, there are tips which you can still use today

What’s the first thing I should know?

I am blatantly copying this title from the book 7 Habits of Effective People but you should “Begin with the End in Sight”. Irrespective of whether you know are sure about anything in life, you need to have one thing very clear from the beginning of your masters.

Why are you pursuing a Masters in the first place? ???♀?

It is very much possible that you ended up here just because everyone else was doing it ??. Or maybe because you were tired of your previous life and wanted some change ??. But first, you need to sit down and think about the above question carefully. It will give you a great perspective on what you should be doing in the next two years. Let me give you some examples of different personas ???????:

1. I want to do Masters because I want to be proficient in one very specific domain I was interested in, let's say, Data Science??
2. I want to do Masters because I want to do research under a very specific professor who is currently working on a very specific problem which can change the world ??
3. I want to do Masters because I want to earn a big-fat paycheck and I want to work in a Silicon Valley tech firm ??
4. I want to do Masters because I just wanted to get the heck out of my previous life and experience the crazy first-world American life ??

Any of these reasons can be justifiable. Think carefully about what is your purpose so that you can plan your Masters ahead. If you are someone who is Person 1/2, you want to focus more on getting the right courses, guidance from correct mentors, getting good grades, and perform well in the assignments. If you are someone in the category of Person 3/4, you need to have a radically different approach for your Masters. This is something I hadn't known early on and I ended up spending a lot of time doing things that I shouldn't have. So learn from My mistake, Identify your goal early on!

What to expect from College?

| A Goal Without Plan is Just a Wish ??

I’m sure you have given thousands of exams like me until this point in your life. And one lesson which I learned from giving so many exams was that “If you don't know what’s going to be asked, then you’re doing it wrong”. Same way, Masters is just a big on-going exam where you should be knowing what needs to be done. And how can you know that?

It’s a golden document called the Graduate Student Handbook

I have hyperlinked the handbook of Stonybrook above. You can just google the handbook for your respective college on google. You should read this document at least 5 TIMES before staring your masters. I didn’t. But you should.

What to read in a Graduate Handbook?

| Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail ??

There are a lot of nuances and catches in a Graduate Handbook that you should be looking out for. Some of the things are:

1. What are the total credits required to be graduated?
2. How many minimum credits are required per semester?
3. What are the minimum/maximum semesters allowed?
4. What are the different buckets/category of courses available?
5. How many minimum courses from each bucket need to be completed?
6. How many projects/thesis are required to be graduated?
7. How many internships/co-ops are required or allowed?
8. How many on-campus TA/RA/GA positions are allowed?
9. Am I allowed to work on-campus or under a professor?
10. How many independent studies or outside-department courses I can take?

This is the holy grail?? of your Masters. Once you know what are the requirements to get graduated, you can plan your Masters based on your decided end goal. Talk with a lot of seniors and ask them about the most common paths taken by students in your college. Make sure you have a mix of heavy and light courses each semester. Don’t do something crazy like taking all heavy courses initially so that your future gets sorted. Remember the rule — “First semester is always the most difficult as you are not just learning the course but also the system”. I would recommend that if you are a category 3/4 Person, you should mostly take light courses. Because to get a job, nobody cares about your courses much. All tech firms care about is your coding and data structure skills (i.e Leetcode)

The Dean of my college told us this on the day of our orientation:

Students outside the university want to desperately get in the college. But once the students are inside, they desperately want to get outside ?????♂?

The Graduate Student Handbook has all the means & ways of how a student can get outside (or get graduated in official terms ??). So plan your masters ahead, take more semesters if you feel you might need them. Or take more courses if you want your masters to be done quickly. Whatever you do, make sure you have a plan.

— — — — — Everything Courses — — — — —

In this section, I will be talking about how to select a course from the entire gamut of the options available each semester

How to classify a Course ?

| Without Data, you’re just a person with an Opinion ?????♂?

The first step for selecting courses for your semester is to classify them. There are a lot of things that are taken into consideration while deciding whether a course is

• good/bad/ugly
• easy/medium/hard or
• NoTimeConsuming/ SomewhatTimeConsuming / DrivingMeNutsTimeConsuming

You can get this data from a lot of different places. One of the best sources of information is your Seniors (or your friends who might have taken the course earlier). These guys can give you first-hand knowledge about the real value and time required for the course. Please please network in your college as that is the only way to get real information that can not be found from any website.

How to get information about the Course ?

| The more you read, the more you will know ??

Remember the golden document I mentioned for your entire Master’s plan? Turns out, there are small-small baby ???? Golden docs for each course as well. This Golden Document is called a “Course Curriculum” ??

A lot of information can be obtained from this course curriculum. An example of such a document is Stony Brook CSE 519 — Data Science. Again, you can search for the course curriculum by googling the course number and subject for your college. You should look at the following things in the above document:

1. Who is the professor for the given course?
2. What are the timings and frequency of the classes?
3. What’s the syllabus for the course?
4. How many projects/assignments/exams will be there for the course?
5. what is the grading system (scaled/skewed/linear)
6. How many slides/textbooks/study materials are needed?
7. How many TA/RA students are working for the class?

I know this is a lot of information to look at for each individual course, given the fact that there 100 different courses to choose from. But, trust me, doing this effort for a day will save you months worth of pain later.

How to research about a Professor ?

| Without Teachers, Life would have no Class ??

While the above document will give you insight about what is theoretically gonna happen in the class, the reality can get quite different based on someone — the Professor. The first thing that struck out evidently in the US Education for me was the Autonomy of the Professor.

All my life, me and my family, have always aligned our lives based on the rigid university schedule and timelines (I’ve missed countless vacations because of my exams). But here in the US, the course aligns with you based on the opinion of the professor.

Are you unavailable during the exam dates? Professor can pre-pone the exam just for you. Don't have time to solve an assignment? Professor can extend the submission deadline. Don't have time to complete the curriculum? Professor can omit some syllabus mid-semester. Want the project to be graded more than the exam? Professor can change the grading system for the class. Do you feel like you were incorrectly graded? Professor can review your grade months after course completion as well. Want to share your assignment with juniors after graduating? Professor can fail you in the course and take back the degree??. I hope you get the point I’m trying to make. Professor is King?? .

In short, everything in the golden document can render useless if the professor wants(you still have to read it??). So your decision about taking the course should be based on the Professor more than the Course itself. The tools to know about the professor are:

1. Seniors: Can't stress this enough. Network. They will be helpful for job/TA/RA referrals as well. ???????
2. RateMyProfessor: It's just weird how they objectively quantify a professor. But yeah whatever. As long as it works.?????♂?
3. School Feedback Portal: In Stonybrook, we had something called ClassieEvals where students could anonymously rate professors at the end of the semester and the future batches can see the reviews later??

In the end, you can decide to take whatever course you want, but making an informed decision is important??

Finally, what Combination of courses to select?

| Data That You Don’t Act-On is as Useless As Data You Never Saw ??

I agree that you should get a data science degree just for course selections?? But this effort will be critical in the long run.

I circle back again to the point of GOALS. If your goal is to get a great job, then make sure you spend most of your time doing things that can get you a great job(like leetcoding). Take light courses and put only that much effort required to pass the course. Even if it means to take boring subjects with almost no curriculum. Even if it means to take a subject with easy grading. Even if you need to skip a few assignments and study only a day for the exam. Time is very valuable and makes sure you spend it on the right thing.

— — — — — — Everything Jobs— — — — —

I’ve been ranting a lot above for you’ll to focus on your job preparation?????♂? & to not give a shit about the classes for which you pay a shit amount of money??(I know it hurts a lot to spend thousands of dollars to take an easy class just so that you don't have to attend it). So now, let me tell you what you SHOULD be doing for actually preparing for your jobs (Because, even here, I spent a lot of time?? doing wrong things and I see a lot of my juniors & friends doing the same mistakes?? again)

How to Prepare for Job Interviews ?

| To crack any exam, you don't need to know everything. You just need to know the things that are going to be asked in the exam ?????♂?

Okay, so enough of abstract talking. Let’s talk business. How should you get prepared for your job? This section will be Computer Science?? jargon-heavy. If you’re in a major other than CS, then please talk to your seniors to identify the things needed to prepare for a job in your fields. Let’s get started:

1) Leetcode.com : This is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT thing for getting a job. It doesn't matter what field within computer science(data science, machine learning, systems, generic SDE) you are going for, as long as your job has something to do with computers, you will NEED LEETCODE.

2) Cracking the Coding Interview: This book is a very fundamental book to understand the basics of computer science. It teaches all about Data Structures, Algorithm Complexity Analysis, Code Optimization, Object Oriented Code Design(Parking Lot Problem, Jukebox design), Design Patterns(Singleton, Factory, etc). The thing that you will learn from this Book is what you should Learn

3) Leetcode.com: I just want to make sure I don't forget to tell you about this. If you’re a Person 3/4, you need to Solve Leetcode 80% OF YOUR TIME. If someone says that they solved only 50 questions and got a job, THEY ARE LYING. They must have solved 500 other questions elsewhere before(geeksforgeeks, codeshef, hackerrank, freecodecamp)

4) Language Expertise: It doesn't matter what coding language you use (C++, Java, Python).. just make sure you are an expert on that. You need an in-depth knowledge of how OOP principles work in that language, how each data structure is made underneath and what’s its complexity, what is abstract class and interfaces, how does inheritance & polymorphism work. BE A MASTER. Here are some of the amazing courses that helped me with these concepts.

• Java Masterclass by Tim Buchalka
• C++ with DS & Algorithm (Mind-blowing course to understand DS)
• Python Bootcamp — Colt Steele 

5) Leetcode.com: Hope you see the importance of this thing. Start with easy categories such as Strings, Arrays. Then try solving questions with Stack and Queues. Then, move to solve Linked Lists and Trees. Then solve Recursion and DP. And finally, after you're confident with these, proceed with Graphs.

6) Front-end Knowledge: Some of you guys might like it/some might hate it. But you all need to know it to be considered as a software developer. If you deeply understand Javascript, you can understand anything else in computer science. This language just blows my mind. The courses which I am recommending below changed my career path and got me an internship. These two courses below were the REAL MASTERS for me.

• Web Developer Bootcamp (JS, jQuery, Node.js, REST API) — Colt Steele (One of my favorite professors)
• Advanced Web Developer Bootcamp (React, Redux, ES2015) — Colt Steele, Elie Schoppik
• My Personal Notes: FrontEnd Frameworks

7) Leetcode.com: You know the drill now. I’m often asked how many questions are required to be confident. And my answer is that Number doesn't matter. Nobody is going to give you a medal if you solve 1000 questions. Be Smart in what you want to solve. But if you want a ballpark number, do ATLEAST 300 questions before your job interview. And solve each question MULTIPLE TIMES over time so that you remember to approach for a type of question.

8) SQL Knowledge: It is super important for anyone studying a field in computers to know about databases. This thing is like bread and butter. It's so common knowledge that if you falter in this thing then your fundamentals will be questioned. Just read some docs or go through this course quickly to refresh your memory

• The Ultimate MySQL Bootcamp — Colt Steele
• Personal Notes: SQL Notes

9) Leetcode.com: Another important question I get is How to solve leetcode? It's actually a skill to know what to solve. You should follow the section order I mentioned above. Do all-important curated most-asked questions by leetcode. Take part in the Weekly competition while challenging your friends. Also, remember Don’t Keep Solving Easy Questions or Keep Losing your Brain on Hard Questions. Focus on what is going to be asked in the exam(the interview in this case)

10) System Design: This section is quite abstract in itself. Some companies use it to see your architecture knowledge while some only keep this for the experienced few. Either way, you should have some basic knowledge to tackle any design questions. Fortunately, there are some really great resources which you can go over quickly

• Grokking the System Design (Most Important)
• Hired in Tech System Design doc
• System Design Primer
• Workflowy — How to give system design interview
• Hackernoon — Top System Design Questions

I know this list is super daunting. It can literally take Months/Years to check-mark these items. But the best part is:

Now You Know What You Should Know??

That’s the beauty of computer science. It’s binary. You either know or you don't. You can't fake having knowledge about something because it’s easily visible. More importantly, knowledge of computer science is Quantifiable. You can easily be given a numerical score based on total questions solved, your coding approach, OOPS implementation, design efficiency, space utilization & time complexity of the solution. This makes the interview process quite fair, unjust, and yet equally difficult.

Like I had mentioned above, you don't need to know everything — you just need to know things that are going to be asked. I have interviewed numerous people having great domain knowledge expertise in new technologies like Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform yadi yada, but they can't solve a simple array-based coding question. It speaks volumes about their algorithm knowledge. Leetcode and competitive coding have frankly become the new standard and nothing else matters anymore. Now that you’ve got the Brahmastra, make sure you use it wisely. Keep preparing. Because opportunity will knock your door anytime and when it does, you surely won’t have time to prepare for it.

How to build your profile ?

| Opportunity doesn’t knock until you build a door ??

So while you are busy preparing for what will happen in the interview, you also need to focus on things that can get you to the interview in the first place. And this means building a holistic profile?????♀? that attracts everyone’s attention and makes you stand out of the crowd?. Make sure you follow these things below:

1) Resume: I’m sure you have made a lot of these till this point. In fact, you must have made one specifically to get into the college you are in. The first mistake you can make is to reuse that resume for your jobs. While some of the things may be common, recruiters look for a different kind of information. And more importantly, the amount of screen time your resume will get is less than 10 SECONDS. So you need to make an impact in just those 10 seconds. So the natural question is what are recruiters looking in the first place:

• Name, Email, Contact: Must be on the top clearly visible
• Address: I can't stress the importance of this. I was targetting a job in the bay area. So my address was in the bay area for the companies I applied there. It gives the recruiter comfort that you can travel?? on-site for the interview.
• LinkedIn URL: Nobody on earth has time to copy a URL and paste in the browser. Make it super easy for the recruiter to reach your page
• Github URL: You need to have this page to show what projects you have worked on.
• College, Course, Graduation Date, Classes Taken: This most importantly helps the recruiter understand that you have a correct visa to apply for the role.
• Skills overview: This is super important for a recruiter to give a quick glance and see if you have skills stated on the job requirement. Also, for any big companies, these skills can be parsed by the online system.
• Previous Experience: Make sure you have this to show your previous work may it be a job/internship. Show dates and timeline.
• Projects (with Github Hyperlink): Each project should be on GitHub irrespective if it has code or not. The readme page should be good enough like a thesis
• Extra-Curricular: Keep this limited to few lines but try to stand out. I’ve had a countless number of interviews where I was asked me about my Rubik’s Cube worldwide ranking. In fact, for my interview with Morgan Stanley, I was asked to system design a Rubik's cube solver.

You can look at my resume on my LinkedIn for your reference. Don't Copy??

2. LinkedIn Profile: It can be argued that in today’s age, LinkedIn is more important than your resume. It is the perfect tool that can help you network and connect. Add all your batchmates to your account. Make your profile as vivid as possible. Put a nice description. ATTACH YOUR RESUME. Have a nice tagline to show you are open to opportunities. Write posts about your projects in college. Connect with professors and previous managers and take their recommendations. Show it as much love as your Instagram??

3. Github Profile: As I mentioned above, this part is really important for anyone who wants to be in the tech domain. It shows a nice account of all the projects that you have worked on. You can even put your college projects on GitHub as long as you have the permission of the professor. If you don't want to put code online thinking that it can get plagiarised(it will surely) then you can just put the summary and analysis of the project. Make the ReadMe beatuiful. Use Github Pages, Heroku, Netlify to host your project online. Make a GitHub repo for every single thing you do. From your coding solutions of CTCI to the projects you make for the Udemy classes. Show your work to the world??

How to NOT apply for jobs ?

| Once a mistake. Twice a habbit ??

1. ONLY Apply on Job Portals: I applied for 700+ internship positions on company job portals. Each application took at least 15–20 mins as they are dumb enough to ask you for all information over and over again. Now let's do the math, even I spent 4 hours a day applying(which is 25% of my time awake), I still would spend 58 days just applying??

While I agree that it is important to apply on job portals, it's excruciatingly bad if that is the only thing you are doing. Because NO ONE reads your profile if you keep applying on the portal . It will just make sure that your resume is stuck in the portal till eternity (I still date get rejects from companies I applied 2 years back. Applying on the portal is like shooting an arrow in the dark. You might hit the bull’s eye, but it's a slim chance. It’s more like a first-come-first-serve.

2. Applying on Aggregator Websites: I know after being tired of applying on job portals you will look for solutions where you can apply in “One-Click”. Or there may be websites that apply for you. The only thing that this will do is spread your resumes to places you don't want to and your inbox will be filled with spam emails. (PS - LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, Monster & other reputed websites are okay to use)

How to actually apply for Jobs ?

| Job Search is like Pi?ata. If you hit it hard enough, you’ll be rewarded??

This is the secret sauce of this article. It is like giving the Formula of Coca-cola to you. So Pay Attention. I have seen countless people (including myself) who spend an immense amount of time “thinking” that they are applying for jobs and then cry that they are not getting any interview calls.

1) Referrals: This is super important. Applying to a company with a referral makes sure that your resume is at least looked ?? at by a recruiter. And if you tick all the checkmarks?? on the job description(Skills, Graduation Date, Visa Status, Location, Minimum Experience) then your resume will be sent to the manager whose team posted the job requirement. So the question is how can find a referral?

• Seniors ???????: I know they keep coming up again and again in this article. I hope you get their importance yet
• LinkedIn Peers??: Keep messaging people in the company you are targetting. I'm sure there will be a lot of people who are willing to refer you
• Professors ???????: Yes, they can be helpful too. They might have some ongoing projects with companies, have connections with some management of a firm or plain black have contacts of their students of the previous batch.
• College Career Counselors ????: It's good to have great relations with the staff at your campus career center. Because they know exactly which company is recruiting, who is the recruiter, and if the company will be having interviews on campus.
• Blind App (Important): Ugghh I almost forgot mentioning this. This is something that I never used during my college life. But after joining the corporate work, I’ve got very fond of it. In this app, people are anonymous which makes sharing of the information super easy. People share their salaries, discuss new roles in their companies, and even actively give referrals to people. Please use it extensively.

2. LinkedIn: This is an amazing tool. You should be happy to be alive at a time when all the information is available at your fingertips????. It’s just incredible how easily you can network and connect with anyone in the world. Give a personalized message?? to everyone you want to connect to get a response (never send an empty LinkedIn request. Have a draft which you can use again & again). Use the Sales Navigator version to narrowly target University recruiters by company, location, job type. You can also see the recruiter who posted each job using that version. It’s like having a God View??. Make sure you use this superpower of LinkedIn to the fullest.

3) Meetups/Conferences/Career-Fairs: There are a lot of events that happen around where people come to network. Some of these events are organized by large groups where recruiters are also present. Please Network as much as possible. A few of such events are:

• Internpalooza: A career fair where a lot of recruiters show up
• Grace Hopper Conference: A MUST MUST MUST attend event for girls. I’ve seen numerous people get job offers directly from this conference. Everyone should submit their resume to their database at least to get emails from companies
• Meetup.com : This is a great tool to find events near your location
• College Career Fairs/Events: Every college will have some events where companies come for presentations/networking. However useless you think it might be, there is always a small chance to connect with recruiters/employees who can refer you.

4) F. R. I. E. N. D. S: As much as this show has helped me stay afloat in life, the real-world version friends have also been as helpful. I owe the job that I currently have to a friend who told me that everyone in college is getting an interview from a specific recruiter. If I didn't have that information at that point, I wouldn't have my current job.

Make as many friends as you can. Make it a priority to connect with people. And not just connect, but share as much information as you can. Because the more you help others, the more help you will get in return. Share your interview questions, recruiter ids, interview processes, and yes even your salary so that you can help people negotiate better. You can be intelligent in knowing what to share with whom, but not sharing with anyone is surely incorrect. One of my fav quote for you to ponder upon:

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” —George Bernard Shaw

5) Emailing (MOST IMPORTANT): While I had applied for 700 positions on the portal for internships, I had applied for less than 50 for my full-time. The reason being — I had found another tool that gave me a much better conversion rate??. And Ironically, it's not some fancy super costly tool, it’s just an EMAIL??.

It’s a very powerful way of getting anyone’s attention???????, ANYONE (I have received an email response from Jeff Bezos??????? for an issue I had pointed out to him with Amazon's service). At this moment, I have 265 LinkedIn requests but 0 unread emails. I’ve had juniors who have emailed me their queries and I made sure I got back to them. Start Reaching People’s Inbox.

If you reach the inbox of a recruiter at the right time, you’re essentially doing their job for them. They don't have to go around looking for a candidate when the candidate shows up in their inbox at 9 in the morning. When I was in college, I and my roommate used to wake up early just so that we can prepare all the emails and hit SEND at 9 AM?? sharp(I feel old writing this statement????, even 2 years in technology is so long, given that now we all have scheduled emails)

— — — — — — Everything Email — — — — —

Since emailing is the most important skill you can learn from this article, let me teach you how to do it correctly. First rule: Don't be shy to reach out. My school teacher used to say this quite often:

" If you don't ask for something, you won't get it. Don’t expect the world will give you something until you ask for it ??". Even a newborn baby has to cry to ask for milk. If such a small human understands about asking for things they need, you should never be shy of letting people know what you need.

What to write in the email?

1. Keep it short: Nobody has time to read your ancient history (tells the guy who wrote this huge article lol). Be Succinct. Tell who you are. What are you interested in. Attach your Resume.
2. Provide Exact Job Ids (Important?): I used to make a mistake of just writing emails to everyone in the company to FIND if there is any job opening(so dumb??). Remember, the person you are mailing to is not your servant. In fact, moresothannot, they are doing you a favor. So make their favor easy. TELL THEM EXACTLY WHAT JOB ID YOU ARE INTERESTED IN.

How to write so many emails?

1. Have a set format: Don't try to create new emails for every single person. Create templates for the type of person you are emailing(senior, recruiter, company employee)
2. Use Email Studio For Gmail (Important?): This is a great Gmail tool that lets you create multiple drafts of the same email(while keeping your attachments intact)

How to find the email addresses of people?

This is yet again super important? information. I am providing you with the tools that can get you an email address of any person (God View 2.0) So use the tools carefully and wisely:

1. Clearbit Connect: This tool is by far my favorite tool to get email ids of any recruiter or senior right from your Gmail inbox.

2. Hunter.io: Super awesome tool. Gives multiple options if they are not sure of an email.

3. Common Sense: If you don't find an email via the above tools, Just try emailing [email protected] or [email protected] or other any other common email pattern. If you’re a nerd like me who wastes time doing something other than what you're supposed to do(leetcode), you can even create an algorithm to generate possible email addresses based on regex patterns??

4. Angel List: This is a great website for finding emails of founders of Startups. Use it extensively only after you have exhausted all options of finding a big company and want to try your luck in a startup. Also, send personalized emails talking about the founder's products for a better response rate.

Important Side Note: A man is nothing without his tools. All of the things that I have mentioned above costs a lot of money. However, don't be frugal in spending money on things that matter. Spending a few hundred bucks on Leetcode, LinkedIn Premium, Grokking the System Design course & Udemy courses is irrelevant compared to the massive job offer you will get from it.

— — — ——Everything Philosophical — — — — —

A lot of unsolicited gyaan coming up. Because I already feel like a monk?????♂?

Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing

The most important thing you will learn from your Masters will not be some crazy new technology/fancy framework but it will be how well you manage your TIME. Amongst all courses, assignments, projects, applications, interviews, college-events & parties— TIME will be the deciding factor that will make/break someone.

Now let me be clear. I’m not saying you should study/prepare all the time. I have spent an insane amount of time practicing dance for performing at college events(Youtube link ??), playing Catan and ping-pong all night, running outside to play as soon as it snows, traveling to NYC, or just randomly chilling at a friends place & cooking meals at midnight. Because I know that down the line, I will value these things more than anything else.

Learn to prioritize what’s important at a given moment. Make sure you do things that keep your mind off work and get yourself away from burning off. And if you master this superpower of the time, you will truly graduate from your Masters ??(and become Dr.Strange of course). The one trick that helped me manage my time is called the “Eat the Frog” method. Your tasks can be divided into 4 categories:

1. Things you don’t want to do, but actually need to do.
2. Things you want to do and actually need to do.
3. Things you want to do, but actually don’t need to do.
4. Things you don’t want to do, and actually don’t need to do.

The frog is the Things you don’t want to do, but actually need to do. You should do those things first in the morning and leave the rest for later. Read more about this awesome concept in this Amazing Blog Post

Luck == Preparation + Opportunity

Let me just tackle the most painful question. Luck matters a lot in your masters and job-search. Getting a job is more of a who-found-it-first thing than a knowledge thing. Moreover, it is biased, just like anything else in life(You’re one of top 0.0001% percent of the world to come to the US this year — so I don’t think you can complain). There will be people who get a job because of their gender/race/visa status. Its just demand v/s supply. There will always be things you cannot control. And the earlier you accept this fact, the better it is.

Getting a job is just being at the right place at right time??

Just do what you’re supposed to do and I promise things will work out (I myself got the job after graduation). There is no way you won’t get an opportunity if you work hard enough. What better way to learn this if not from sports. Let me give you two examples which resonate with me very deeply:

1) 25th February 1988 — Among the 664-run partnership, Vinod Kambli(349) had scored more runs than Sachin Tendulkar(326). The article in the Times of India the very next day claimed a new star is in the making(i.e. Kamli). But we all know who ended up being the Greatest Cricketer of all time. Hard Work Beats Talent when Talent doesn't Hard Work!

2) Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics — Michael Phelps beat Milorad Cavic to win Gold Medal by a hundredth of a second. Cavic was winning during the entire race but Phelps didn't give up until the last centisecond. Please watch the video and feel the chills

?Best Effort. Least Tension

During college, I had written this down on a piece of paper and stuck it on my wall in front of my desk. My brother used to tell me this every time I called him up for advice. I’ve framed it now and it’s still hung on my wall.

I would like to leave you with this amazing image. I’ve read it a hundred times and it still makes sense every single time. It justifies everything that happens around me and I’m sure it will make sense to you as well.

Best of luck everyone. You can do it??