Reach Program: Fill & Download for Free

When I used to actively use CodeChef, it was pretty messy.Good things :They do a lot of publicity. Their campus reaching program is very good.Their competition is well timed for Indian audience.It’s one of the those orgs which actually wants to make a difference and not money.Bad part :The site used to be less than usable. They’ve improved over time. But it’s still far behind most other similar websites. Competitor platforms like SPOJ, Codeforces provide simplicity while those like Hackerrank provide good user experience. Codechef however lacks in both department.I think a large part of their work is often repetitive in which they probably spend of lot of their resources. Improvements to user statistic is way less useful than improving the latency at the beginning of the competition. Codechef probably gets under pressure to provide features their closest competitors are providing but that’s not a good strategy IMO.Most of their problem statements make no sense to me. Chef and Sereja are weird characters if you ask me. Sometimes, bad problem statements hinders understanding. It’s a great thing to encode problem and present it differently but those things can be done via realistic fiction. And in Long Challenges, problems can be given straight forward.

So, the wall is mine, huh?First things first, olive branch the Wildlings. Varamyr’s prologue chapter and Mance’s introduction both say that the Free Folk and the Wall do trade with one another.Send out reach programs to near by villages, defend them from enemy raiders, give them food and medicine. Even offer to take unwanted children, or resettle them on the Gift is they promise not to fight and to send some of their harvest to the Wall. If there is another King Beyond the Wall, most of his army is going to think of the Watch as friends.Now, WesterosThe height of the Watch was in the Age of a Hundred Kingdoms, when losers in wars would be sent packing to the Night’s Watch, like Nymeria did. The official wiki says that many lords thought it was honorable to send their children to the Wall.I’m going to create a new program. Send your sons to the Wall for three years. They don’t have to swear in, or be forced to join the Watch, but three years squiring for the Comander of each Castle, and every commanding Ranger.Jon Snow got his start as the Commander’s squire. Now, if a boy in the Reach squires under another Lord, that’s a hostage. As that squire, they’ll be sent off to fight steel clad men, so they’ll be on even footing.But a battle between Wildlings and men in steel? It’s practical battle experience with a lower chance of death.Now, the point of this program is to endear Lords to the Watch. Have them think of the Watch as friends and compatriots. Maybe they’ll send more men then their prisoners, eh?Jon actually talks about this in Dance, but making a Glass Garden to grow food in winter. For years at a time, almost nothing can grow in the north, without hot springs or Glass Gardens. If the Watch had a couple hundred of these, they could keep the entire watch fed all Winter.Finally, I’m going to start manning dome castles beyond the Wall. Send a hundred or so builders with an equal amount of Rangers, and have them turn the Fist of the First Men into a true castle. But not just the Fist.Any place a River meets, build a castle. Hardhome? Build a castle. Where Craster’s Keep ends up being? Build a castle. At the tip of the Antler River? That’s right, Castle Time.Having all of these fortresses built, the Wall would have way more sources of information. Thw Watch turned to Craster because he was really the only place they could get information from beyond the wall. Having a couple of Castles would not only increase the Watch’s control exponentially, but it would also defend the wall from a large scale strike south by Wildlings or Others

I write this answer with the goal of helping you assess your chances of admission. In my opinion, your chances at the top 5 (possibly top-10) are very low. Here are some reasons why.Top CS departments get thousands of PhD applications, and a significant portion of them come from top universities around the world. For example, I do not recall seeing PhD admits at Berkeley from any Chinese school out of the top-5.My understanding is that Indian students are very rank driven, and all the top students from top schools (the original IITs) apply almost exclusively to the top CS departments. That's your competition.Three journal papers is not the strongest record, because in nearly all CS areas, top venues are conferences, not journals. Only exceptions I'm familiar with are applied computational science areas like bio informatics and scientific computing. For example, if you had three papers from Trans. On Networking, the very selective networking journal, it would in most cases be viewed as on par or less competitive than a single SIGCOMM or Mobicom paper.LORs and SOPs matter, but they have to be read carefully first. In large applicant pools with several thousand applications, you might not get to the point where your application gets read in full detail (think about the logistics of an admissions committee tasked with reading that many applications over the tight period of a month or 6 weeks). LORs are often weighted by the reputation of the author. So you're possibly at a disadvantage if your letter writers are from lesser known schools).I am sorry if this sounds quite negative. But I am writing to help give realistic expectations for the OP.Plenty of other factors can completely change the outcome and make a top offer possible. If you get a top LOR from a known writer to the department, if you're first author on all of your papers, if you have special circumstances that make your application stand out, or if you can reach out to and get the attention of a potential advisor via email or other means.In general, I advise students to apply to some "reach" programs that they do not think they have a chance in. The random factor is significant enough that it's worth a shot. On the other hand, PhD application fees are getting ridiculous. I suggest, especially for international students, that they ask the program about application fee waivers. Many will waive the fee for those who are unable to pay. If applying to a dream department only requires the cost of sending them GRE scores, then it's a much easier decision to make.