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(6) Computer Science: How do I become an MIT caliber engineer on my own? - Quora

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How do I become an MIT caliber engineer on my own?

I go to a small relatively competitive college in my country in Africa. Although I am top of my class, the rigor is not up to my standards. And I have ambitions to join prestigious universities for graduate education. How do I set standards, get top resources to meet my goals?

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I know there are many online courses out there which I learn from. what I'm most interested is how I impose a rigor on myself, like the great schools do. P.S : I'm a Computer Science and Engineering student.
Comment Share (9) Report Options 8 Answers Monish Manwani
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Anirudh Joshi, When the facts change, I change my mi... 78 Votes by Aamir Khan, Roosevelt Garcia, Donald Caldwell, and 74 more. Look at the example of Sebastian Thrun [1]. B.S. (computer science, economics, and medicine), M.S., Ph.d (computer science and statistics) in Germany (random schools) then professor at CMU and Stanford, and currently inventing the future at Google X. So let us follow his example. Choose a speciality in computer science which you believe will have a massively disruptive impact on the future such as AI/Big Data/Machine learning/Robotics. Read: End of employment, and the Singularity. Not saying that these things will happen, but they appear to be technically possible. Compilers/Programming Languages/Databases/Frameworks look dead, in terms of actually making a lot of money (commodity/open source). It's better to use these things as your infrastructure to build the future. You might get some notoriety - but that isn't that big a deal. Everyone knows Linux, but it's Google who is now worth $200B. Richard Stallman is well known - but it's Facebook that's worth $100B. Matz made Ruby, but it's 37Signals, heroku and Engine Yard who made the bundle. AI/ML/Big Data and Robotics are protected from competition and disruption by network effects, data access and proprietary algorithms, so they can have monopoly pricing, and monopoly impact (the echoes of Standard Oil still reverberate around the world). Spend all your time in the area. Read all the major books. Do all the relevant programming - bootstrap to about a MIT undergraduate level. Get acquainted with advanced mathematics, statistics, some physics and a little bit of business thrown in for colour. These are useful for turning the physical world into bits and bytes, in addition to your computer science learning. Do whatever it takes to read as much as possible. Too much time is wasted in the world because people were too lazy to see what was already out there. Sebastian Thrun read photocopied Ph.d papers during his undergraduate degree, because it was so bad. James Cameron did a similar thing, where he drove trucks by day, and read Ph.d papers on movie special effects by night (photocopying and memorizing everything). Once you are up to speed in your relevant field - after bootstrapping on the course books listed on MIT curricula, and more importantly, you know where the state of the art in your field lies you may now do things that no one else can do. Recognition/Companies will be made after this point, and MIT will welcome you with open arms - see Akamai, Cisco, Intel, Google, Apple (Wozniak).

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(6) Computer Science: How do I become an MIT caliber engineer on my own? - Quora
You can skip the degree - but since you'll presumbably want to emigrate to the US some day I would recomend doing at least an BS. Immigration authorities want technical degrees, with job or study offers before they'll let you in. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seb... Note: If you've made it this far down the answer, enjoyed it, and you would like to see more like it, then you should follow me here: Anirudh Joshi Response to asker's comment: How can I impose a rigor on myself, like the great schools do? Well if it's the discipline you want. 2 forms of discipline, external or internal. You lack the external (a good school) so focus on the internal. Human body is composed of a present and future brain. Present is driven by emotion and immediate gratification. Future is driven by goals and delayed gratification. You must co-opt your present self to achieve your goals. 2 ways to achieve this. You (a) love what you do so that your present self is aligned with your future self automatically (do what you love) (b) force yourself to do things (do what you don't love for material gain). Sebastian Thrun and most successful technical innovators have (a). They just love doing this stuff. They hack and create for pure enjoyment. They'd do it if there wasn't any money, fame or fortune. They're motivation is akin to that of the hobbyist where passion and excitement rule. If you haven't found your thing - keep searching - because with all the failures you are about to experience, you really need the love of the game to keep you going. Rigor comes form loving what you do. If you love what you do, rigor and the pursuit of perfection is automatic - you can't not do well - you must. I don't like talking about (b) because it seems like a waste of a life (if you can avoid it - most people can't). Pursue (a) if at all possible. 5+ Comments Share (10) Thank Report 1 Apr, 2012 David Urquhart, B.Computing M.Management 11 Votes by Evan Dale Aromin, Thyag Sundaramoorthy, Daniel Mokrauer-Madden, and 7 more. I understand your question. I always felt a step out of the action here in Australia. But I made a few mistakes: - The Australians who focus on their craft create world class things. I created less because I was busy saying "I wish I was in the Valley." - I've had training from ex-MIT entrepreneurs in Cambridge, MA, done business in San Francisco and Silicon Valley and taken CS classes in the NCSA building at UIUC. They're just places. I STILL wasn't achieving what I wanted because I wasn't creating and living my subjects. And you can sit next to Marc Andreeson, but if you aren't hacking what he's hacking, there's no "snap". The Internet means you don't need to travel - ESPECIALLY in Computer Science. - After you achieve some stuff, you can go meet people because there's something to talk about. If you REALLY achieve something people will come to you. Can you imagine the waste of time of some people? - I think you may suffer from a kind of meta-issue like I do. I really recommend you work where you are. Ever seen a garden grown out of a desert? It can happen - be the water! 1. Have a vision "Digital Africa" "AIT" (African Institute of Technology) etc

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(6) Computer Science: How do I become an MIT caliber engineer on my own? - Quora
2. Decide upon a life of learning, encouraging, sharing 3. Allow fortune to lead you - every seeming dead-end is a potential breakthrough in disguise 4. Love your engineering. Live it around the clock. Draw people into participating. Give expat Africans invitations to help. 5. Become a teacher and a motivator. 6. Don't chase wealth - then you're on the wrong end of the power relationship. 1 Comment Share Thank Report 3 Apr, 2012 Adrien Lucas Ecoffet, I study computer science Votes by Pasquale Ferrara, Robert Renaud, Nathan Ketsdever, and 4 more. A very interesting question. I can't guarantee MIT caliber, but you can try to become Stanford caliber (pretty much the same, uh?) using the courses on https://www.coursera.org/ . These are currently ongoing free online courses from professors of Stanford, UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan. They provide high quality video material often featuring "star" professors, as well as quizzes, homework (including programming exercises) and exams. Many of the courses have already started so you might not keep up with the normal schedule, but as far as I know all the material, including the exercises and their automated grading, will remain online "forever". This project started last semester with ai-class.org , and AI course, dbclass.org , a databases course, and ml-class.org , a machine learning course. These were all pretty good, and the material should still be available on the websites. I would advise against using ml-class.org because there is already a new version on Coursera (incidently, it was the best of the 3 courses IMAO).

I haven't tried it (well, it hasn't really launched so...), but MIT is starting a similar program called MITx, which you can look up here: http://mitx.mit.edu/ Hopefully it will be as awesome as the Stanford initiative.

These are good because they are specifically made for online learning. If you are fine with using "raw"er material, I would suggest trying to go on iTunes and looking up all the good stuff on iTunesU (in the iTunes Store). It now requires a iTunes Store account with a registered means of payment, but I have never seen a course there that wasn't free. Many great university have an "open courseware" (sometimes with a different name) program, that distributes recordings of their courses for free. iTunesU is basically a good centralized way to access them, but you might access them from outside iTunes with a good ol' google search. I particularly like http://freescienceonline.blogspo... , which is a whole blog about free courses on the internet.

Now, I think a gave you a good start for the learning resources, unfortunately you will miss one thing: credentials. As of today, this free online learning thing is still new and no acceptable (and only few unacceptable) credentials system has emerged. The best you can get today is the certificates of accomplishment from the Coursera and MITx courses, but they are worth little. We'll see in a few years, until then all you can do is show the extent of your knowledge through putting it in practice. Comment Share (1) Thank Report 1 Apr, 2012 Daniel Mokrauer-Madden, I have taught in schools in four diff... 12 Votes by Pasquale Ferrara, Thyag Sundaramoorthy, Nathan Ketsdever, and 8 more. You probably can't, but that doesn't mean that you can't become an amazing engineer. One of the biggest advantages of studying at MIT is the large network of amazing people who you work with along the way. Many of the coding skills that students learn at MIT could be self-taught by an incredibly dedicated and persevering person. However, there is much more to the degree than the computer programming classes that students take. There are humanities, arts and social science classes (eight semesters of them); there are extra-curriculars and UROPs [1]; there are

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(6) Computer Science: How do I become an MIT caliber engineer on my own? - Quora
international programs and internships and so much more. You will find it much more difficult to work with the sort of people who you would find in a community like MIT. But there are also limits to the perspectives that students get at MIT. You will see things in your university that will beyond the grasp of students in computer labs in the U.S. If you make the most of your time in university, not just your computer science classes, but the whole experience, then you will be a formidable engineer in your own right. Comparing your experiences to those of a student from MIT will be like comparing apples and oranges. There are plenty of MIT engineers who apply for spots in graduate schools, but if you can convince the admissions committee that you bring a strong skill set in computer science coupled with the richness of your international experience, you will be able to choose any program that you like. [1] Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program http://web.mit.edu/urop Comment Share Thank Report 1 Apr, 2012 Rob McQueen, MIT learned. self explorer. 19 Votes by Evan Dale Aromin, Steven Jens Jorgensen, Sudarshan Gaikaiwari, and 15 more. I've been at MIT for the past 4 years in the Computer Science department. While MIT students are very very smart, many of them do not actually build things (at least while they are at MIT); one of the main reasons (I believe) is that the curriculum is more weighted towards theoretical computer science rather than systems engineering. Also, students are more worried about grades than actually changing the world while in school (but this is a pet peeve of mine and I will stop there). In my perspective and opinion, those at MIT who are great engineers have taught themselves how to code and do it 24/7, both in class and out. The MIT theoreticalweighted education helps students think at a higher level so that we understand scalable , efficient, and extensible systems, but it does not teach us how to actually build these systems. Most classes expect us to learn the details of how to implement systems on our own, with varied guidance. The education also helps us discover patterns in system/algorithm design that help us understand how to think about problems. To test whether you understand a system, you should be able to have a meaningful conversation with an expert of that system and understand how it will behave under varied environments. Most tests at MIT hit on the second, they say something like "if we change our timing system by using logical clocks instead of timestamps, what is something that might go wrong during system recovery?" etc etc etc. I could go on and on, but to put it succinctly: to be a great engineer, you must (1) love to build things and do it all the time (2) have a toolset of programming languages / extensions that you are comfortable working with and (3) expose yourself to different system designs that will enable you to think and learn in different ways. 1 Comment Share Thank Report 1 Apr, 2012 Joseph Wang, '91 - S.B. Course 8 1 The most important thing is to not do it on your own. Find a group of people with goals and values similar to your own, and develop your own network. Comment Share Thank Report 20 Jun Andrew M. Farrell, Computer Science Student at MIT Votes by Daniel Mokrauer-Madden, Nathan Ketsdever, Jessica Su, and Amey Dharwadker. Using resources online that Andrien points out is a good path. MITx in particular promises to be good (I know people working on it.) But I'll note that the calibre of students at MIT varies widely. The major difference I've noticed is that we seem to have access to a lot more people who want to throw money at us for projects. I don't really know how to work around that except through sweat. I'll also note that a lot of MIT students (like myself) have no idea what it is like to work in Africa, but are curious about it and want to partner with Africans, so you have an advantage over them in that respect. 1 Comment Share Thank Report 1 Apr, 2012 Nathan Ketsdever, education start up researcher for pas... Votes by John Clover, Daniel Mokrauer-Madden, Adrien Lucas Ecoffet, and 5 more.

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(6) Computer Science: How do I become an MIT caliber engineer on my own? - Quora
I can't speak as much to the calculus and engineering formulas. But certainly those seem to be going online at a faster rate--particularly at MIT where that is a priority of the teachers and administration (including the Open Courseware initiatives, MITx, and perhaps even Coursera over the longer term). Unquenchable thirst. Have an unquenchable thirst for questions, solutions, and improving your problem-solving skills through your projects. Be fearless. People without courage or without the force of will to do something despite the fear (i.e. potential harm to personal egos) aren't going to make engineers who do much. Especially if you're coming from scrappy origins (ie not MIT ones and the ones it sounds like you're coming from--I put myself in that group too). Attitude of humility. Fearless on the one hand and a kind of thunder-lizard mentality about getting things done--but recognizing that books and you don't hold all the answers--that your customers experience, assumptions, and daily life is a key part of the design and engineering process. Attentiveness to opportunity. Attentiveness to customers in relationships, interviews, and observations. Attentiveness to micro and macro. Attentiveness to both detail and systems. Three other opportunities: Build and Try. Continue to tinker and build projects. Community. Over the longer term it would help to find the tribe of makers, doers, builders, and entrepreneurs near you and form relationships and collaborations with them. This will provide the opportunity for you Reverse Engineer. You could reverse engineer some of their readings (ie course syllabi are available) and reverse engineer some of their projects. Comment Share Thank Report 2 Apr, 2012 1 Answer Collapsed Monish Manwani
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