Application For Fall 2012 Credential Program Multiple & Single Subject: Fill & Download for Free

I'll be joining University of California, San Diego this fall (Masters, Computer Science). I am switching fields from Electronics and Communication engineering.My Background1st year: My first year had begun with building electronics projects like autonomous line following and line maze solving bots. But then I stumbled upon a book - Programming Interactivity by Joshua Noble, which really captivated me. It showed me some wonderful things that can be built with graphics software like Processing and openFrameworks. I built Ninja Air Hockey - an air hockey game where the player controls his paddle by moving his hand while holding a colored object. It was built using openFrameworks and OpenCV.I attended an electronics hobbyist meetup during that time where I met my first project mentor. He gave me the opportunity to work on a prototype multi-touch surface table at the Robotics Vision Lab, IIT Delhi. As part of the team, we worked on the UX-design as well as the software back-end, using TUIO, Processing and MT4j. I'd realized during this internship that I really enjoyed designing software.(P.S - My father is a hobbyist developer and had taught me programming quite early. So it wasn't very difficult for me to take up software projects early on.)2nd year: I had come across an article in the Digit Magazine (http://www.thinkdigit.com) on how contributing to open source is cool and a good learning experience for budding programmers. Since I had lots of free time back then, I thought - well, why not! I had become increasingly fond of the Processing.org project and so I began contributing to Processing’s development, fixing bugs and eventually building two open source plug-ins.As a result of my efforts, I applied and got selected in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2012 internship program. I worked on XQMode - a live error checking module for Processing IDE. It provided real time and instant feedback on syntax and compiler errors, thus helping students learn better and increasing programmer productivity.3rd year: I continued working on XQMode after completing GSoC. Building upon my previous work, I again applied to GSoC 2013, this time focusing on a bigger goal - adding advanced IDE features to Processing editor including intelligent code completion, refactoring, quick code navigation and more. My project - PDE X, received some really positive feedback from the Processing community. Some people even blogged about my project! :)PDE X: Processing experimental - Emiliusvgs, 補完・デバッグ機能搭載！Processingの新モード「PDE X」使い方ガイド : だらっと学習帳A complete portfolio of my undergrad projects can be found here: Quarks: PortfolioBy my 3rd year, I'd realized that pursuing a MS in CS would give me a strong CS foundation and also the opportunity to get involved in some really cool research. Moreover, the coursework and research work in universities abroad is considered quite different from what we have in India - I wanted to experience what it is like. So I decided to not look for a job in my final year and applied for MS.Advice to juniorsHere are the key areas to focus on:Research ProjectsThe most important part of your application is your prior experience in performing research and your potential for being a creative, hardworking, and productive graduate student. This will be pretty much the only factor in determining whether you are admitted to a MS program at a top university. All other secondary factors, such as your leadership roles, community service, societies, hobbies, and other experiences hardly even matter. Focus on the quality of your projects, not quantity. One high-impact/popular project carries more weight than multiple small/not-so-good projects.So try to gain as much experience as you can by working on projects. Here are some good options to consider:You can try approaching professors from your or another department and express your interest in working with them. The initial tasks assigned to you may feel like grunt work, but then remember you're taking your first steps in the field.You can join an active team which participates in a recognized international/national competitions. DTU has a lot of famous teams like UAS, Mini BAJA, AUV and more.You can get involved in a popular open source project. Applying to Google Summer of Code is a great option too.You can also approach professors from other colleges like IITs, IIITs, IISc and even foreign universities. How? Check out their respective department website and find the list of professors. You'll find some professors whose research interests may align with yours. Email them, politely expressing your interest in their work and willingness to work for them. Don't send the same boiler-plate email to every professor. Do your homework on them and tailor your email for every professor, taking into account his research. Also remember that you'll usually need some good prior project experience before you can draw their attention, grades alone may not cut it.Research Publications prove your ability to carry out core research. If you're working under a professor on a research project that can result in a publication, you should definitely pursue it. If your paper gets published at an international/national level conference, nothing like it!Many foreign universities have their own summer research programs, for which international students are eligible as well. Usually such programs have a standard application process with deadlines around December-January. So you need to plan on applying in advance and work on your application. Some programs off the top of my head are: CMU RI, INRIA, NTU Singapore.Getting an industrial internship at a good company helps. It's a good idea to work at a start-up, especially in your first or second year.If you are working on or plan to work on an independent project, approach a professor to be your mentor. Not only will you get good advice but also they may write a recommendation for you later.Basically you need to have strong credentials as a researcher/someone-with-project-experience in order to be admitted. You can't just charm your way into a reputable MS program. You can't game the system. The admissions committee consists of professors in your field who will scrutinize your application for its technical merits. So plan early, plan ahead.Letters of RecommendationThe purpose of recommendation letters written by your mentors is to back up the work you've done under them, and in general highlight your strengths as a potential researcher. They are the next most important part of your application.You will need 3 letters of recommendation(LOR) for your MS applications. A recommendation from a professor/professional who is well known in the field definitely carries more weight. The best case scenario is that two letters are from professors/mentors under whom you have done research projects or internships and one academic recommendation from a professor of your department. So remember to stay in touch with your project mentors even after finishing your project; they just might write you a great recommendation.If you can't get 2 research-based recommendations, then you will need to get letters from other sources, for ex: your department professors who've taught you. Be polite and patient when requesting a LOR from your mentor. And request them well in advance (1.5 to 2 months) of submitting your application.Aggregate and Test ScoresHaving a good percentage has a positive impact and strengthens your application. It shows you're sincere and have the academic rigor to excel. But you don't need to be demotivated if your aggregate percentage is low. If you're in the 70s or even 60s, you should still consider applying if you've relevant projects or research experience. You should probably touch upon this somewhere in your application, giving justified reasons for the same. For ex, you could counter it by showing how you spent more of your time in research work and projects.GRE/TOEFL scores are primarily used to filter out the weak applicants. The better you score, the safer you'll be. But again, a ~325 GRE score is usually good enough for most universities. IMO, 3rd year is the best time to take the GRE test. Since a GRE score is valid for 5 years, you should consider taking the test even if you're not planning to apply for MS in the final year, but later after gaining some work experience. Joining a good GRE coaching institute helps. Again, good work experience can help counter a lower GRE score. As per my knowledge, a high GRE score(330+) hardly strengthens your application when it comes to top universities. A 110+ score in TOEFL is usually enough.One last piece of advice: Try to maintain a personal website/blog showcasing your work and interests. Internet presence in today's times matters. You never know who may discover you this way. ;)The MS application process itself is no simple task. The following sites helped me quite a bit - MS in US | stupidsid.com, Edulix. Application deadlines are usually around December. So try to apply by October-November. Applying early helps for those universities which have rolling admissions.

Let me first congratulated you on building such a brilliant profile !Multiple GSoC, Internship at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc), 9+ CGPA and a 330+ GRE score is great stuff to begin with for any undergraduate. However, here's why your question sound's a bit naive -Since you have listed GSoC's as one of your achievements, I am guessing you want to apply for a MS program in CS in the top graduate schools. Keeping that in mind, I failed to understand why you haven't mentioned anywhere your area of interest in the context of your master's program.CS comprises of hot-topics such asArtificial IntelligenceComputer ArchitectureHuman Computer InteractionOperating Systems & NetworkingCyber-SecurityTheory of Algorithms (Also called Theoretical Computer Science)Database Management SystemsComputer Graphics & VisualisationComputer Vision, Machine Learning, Data MiningProgramming Languages and ImplementationThis is what majority of undergrad's do wrong. They blindly follow the notion of going by the brand name, case in point "MIT/Stanford/CMU" as listed by you.Focus on understanding first what are the fundamental research problems being tackled in the different fields and what does each university have to offer to a prospective grad student. Specially, if you are going to top tier universities like Stanford/CMU, have a look at the "Research Areas" page on their respective EECS/ECE/CS departments.In the context of the paper's that you have published, ask yourself how relevant are they to the on-going research at MIT/Stanford/CMU. Your credibility as an applicant is established when the reviewers of the admissions committee find coherence between the work you did as mentioned in your paper, and the work you wish to do when you join their school. This is established well when you write your SoP. But then again, I am getting ahead of myself.It is credible that you did an internship at India's premier research institute (IISc), but how relevant was the work (done during the course of 2-3 months - summer intern is my guess !) to the MS program that you wish to apply. Again, you see it is extremely subjective !Also, let me clarify that MIT doesn't offer a MS program. All students are admitted into PhD program in EECS department. It is frankly, extremely competitive even for a guy with your credentials to make it into MIT. I have seen master's student applying for a PhD with published work in Nature/Science/Physical Review Letter's or PRE's, sometimes getting rejected. IEEE/ACM or any other journal has a diminished reputation in-front of aforementioned journals.My point is not to demotivate you, since you seem a like diligent student who is simply unaware of the facts and naively asked this question. Reality check is the key here. Make an informed choice when you apply in Spring 2014/Fall 2015; All I ask is get your facts and notions about these universities right. Also, no-one can guarantee your chance of getting an admit as lot of factors affect the decision.If you interested in knowing more about the different factors (including GRE & TOEFL scores), you can see my answer - Arnav Goel's answer to Higher Education: What are good GRE and TOEFL scores to get into any of the top 10 universities in US?References -CS Research Areas (UCB)The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)

We recently had to develop for both facebook and linkedin for my startup and there is a big difference in the way facebook treats its developers v/s how linkedin does and that really told us the answer to your question.Let us take the example of testing the app.Facebook provides for a way where every app developer can create hundreds of test users per app (even automate it), and use them to test the app. These test users have some restrictions built in, via which they cannot interact with other real users and so on. Very good and clear documentation as well.Now, the search for test users for linkedin, leads us to this page -> Test Accounts | LinkedIn Developer Network which is not a documentation page, but a forum Q&A page.I shall quote some interesting tidbits from this forum thread, and all quotes below are responses from Linkedin employees.March 2012While we don't officially support creating fake accounts for testing purposes, it's an obviously recognized need and as such, we generally look the other way on them. That's the best solution we have at this time.Users then talk about how they have to create fake companies, fake recommendations and so on which is difficult. Then those fake accounts get banned by the security team. So here's the response to thatMay 2012Unfortunately we have no control over the security team in this area. My suggestion would be to make them as legitimate looking as possible. Things which are obviously test accounts will likely fall victim. I wish I had a better response, but that's what we have at this time.The security team will take action on any account that appears to be fraudulent. You're account is very obviously fraudulent, so I would recommend fixing that if you actually do value the test account.In October 2012, they launch a policyFor testing purposes only, you may create up to five LinkedIn accounts. Accounts must be created manually and not via any automated means, including scripts. These test accounts must not interact with non-test accounts (e.g. they must not be used to post messages in Groups), or be used to circumvent user limits. These accounts must have profiles that clearly identify them as test accounts, not have any profile positions at real companies besides your own, and be listed as Developers on your Developer Account.In April 2013, when we created a test user, made that user a developer and followed the policy mentioned above, the account was still locked by Linkedin Security team. When we sent out an email to them pointing to the policy, they unlocked the account.the same thread has another question on what would happen if the employee who owns the API key, leaves the organization ?The response is:You are right and application keys (and all the API calls made through them) are tied to a LinkedIn user account. You can create a generic user account on LinkedIn and share the login credentials with multiple people in your company. This way even if one user leaves the company, other will still have access to the account. You can change the pwd of this account for security reasons when someone leaves the company. Hope this helps.If this is the condition of the API program at Linkedin, I'm definitely not surprised to see that the developers have deserted the company.