● Campus Profile ●
School Name: Carnegie Mellon University
Motto: My heart is in the work
Establishment Time: 1900 AD
Location: Pittsburgh, USA
National Ranking: 18 (2020 Times University Ranking)
World Ranking: 27 (2020 Times University Ranking)
Notable Alumni: John Nash, Herbert Simon, John Forbes Nash, Charles Erwin Wilson, etc.
First Impressions
At CMU, the experiences of undergraduate, master's, and doctoral students are completely different. Undergraduate programs focus on comprehensively imparting in-depth and practical basic education. Master's programs emphasize research to cultivate professional capabilities, while doctoral programs center on scientific research.
CMU has a strong computer science atmosphere. Since students from other colleges can also take courses offered by the School of Computer Science, the university's motto-My heart is in the work is more vividly demonstrated among computer science students.
Let me share my experience as a master's student. Overall, the atmosphere at CMU is relatively relaxed. Professors don't pressure students to publish a certain number of papers each year. Instead, they believe that haste makes waste. They don't encourage students to publish too many papers because research is a long-term process, and papers are the natural outcome of research.
A relaxed atmosphere doesn't mean studying isn't intense. Studying at CMU comes with a significant amount of pressure. For example, there are stories like seeing the escort service at 3 am or being at Hunt Library at 4 am. Most people can only choose two or even just one among studying, sleeping, and socializing. Of course, some exceptional students can manage all three, but that's a different story.
If you choose challenging courses at CMU, you'll be constantly rushing to meet deadlines. Sometimes, you won't even have time to go to the supermarket, let alone socialize. But I've always believed that hard work pays off, and indeed, everyone has good job prospects in the end. About 95% of the students in my department got jobs in the United States.
Professors & Students
CMU's computer science faculty is filled with top-notch experts. For instance, there's an old professor who was reportedly deeply involved in solving the Unique Games Conjecture, a major problem in theoretical computer science. After failing to prove it by contradiction, he came to teach at the university out of frustration.
It's fair to say that every computer science professor at CMU is a leading figure in their field. And they might just decide to start a business on a whim one day. They're truly highly skilled and bold. One of the great things about having such a group of professors is that you'll often encounter a great sense of humor during your research, and they always teach the latest knowledge in the field, which is really amazing.
CMU students aren't the bookworms that people might assume. Just because they don't have much time for socializing doesn't mean their lives are dull. Most of them don't just study blindly. There's a constant stream of amazing logical algorithms. When focusing on academics, they might seem as boring as a log, but when they achieve results, they feel extremely fulfilled and happy, just like children.
Overall, although CMU students may seem to have a chaotic schedule and high pressure, and are even joked about as living on Chinese time in the US, they're truly dedicated to their majors. From being unfamiliar, to having a basic understanding, to achieving a thorough understanding, and finally being able to complete a small project, the joy they feel inside is indescribable.
Let's talk about the Chinese students at CMU. Many Chinese students here are very hardworking. Often, when waiting for the escort service at night, you'll run into acquaintances. We usually start by complaining to each other, then encourage one another, and might even look forward to or make plans to enjoy the sunshine and beach together after graduation. Having such a group of Chinese friends in a foreign country is truly a precious treasure. We work hard and make progress together.
● Course Introduction ●
① Search Engines
This course introduces the principles and optimization of search engines, such as K Nearest Neighbors (KNN). Our assignments include improving a web page with poor search results using the professor's own search engine to get better results for certain keywords, and implementing a decision tree with code.
② Web Services
This course mainly focuses on introducing the methods, advantages, and disadvantages of traditional Web Services (such as ESB) for transmitting information using SOAP and WSDL protocols. The assignment is to create a RESTful Web App, and it must achieve a certain request accuracy rate to pass. Each group has a $50 budget for Amazon Cloud, and the application needs to run on Amazon Cloud.
③ User Interface Design
As a senior professor in the field of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), he mainly introduces cutting-edge human-computer interaction technologies. Students interested in game design and internet user analysis can take this course. The assignment is to create a hospital web page (front-end only, no back-end) using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, etc.
④ Cloud Computing
This is a course with a heavy workload, but many students choose it because it offers many cool practical projects, which are also very helpful for job hunting. I've pulled several all-nighters for this course. With an average workload of 40 hours per week, it can be quite a struggle. Most of the assignments involve writing various applications on Amazon Cloud AWS, and some even require optimizing performance for ranking competition. Through this course, I've been exposed to many cloud computing technologies such as MapReduce, Spark, Hadoop, LoadBalancer, AutoScaling, etc.
These are my experiences as a computer science graduate student at CMU, mainly focusing on academic aspects with less mention of daily life. I hope it will be helpful to everyone.
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