CS Grad School Admissions Committee -- Excerpts
The following took place on February of 2021.
This is a true story.
Candidate: Hi...
Admissions Committee Member #1: Hello. Can you please wait outside? We'll call you
<5 seconds later>
Admissions Committee Member #1: Please, come in
AC-M1: Hello, Welcome
Candidate: <takes a sit>
Candidate: Yes, Hi - listen - do you mind if I take off my mask? This thing makes it really hard to... and I'm sitting like 30ft from you anyways and...
AC-M1: Oh no no, there are regulations and ...
C: yeah but I'm... maybe just the nose?
AC-M1: Nose is just as bad as - son you better put that thing back on *clears throat*
C: yeah ok I'll manage, sorry - all good, really, sorry
AC-M2: <looks at phone>
AC-M1: ...
AC-M1: So, tell us about yourself. What brings you here. And why - we understand you finished your undergraduate studies several years ago and ...
C: yeah - So. I got my, I finished my undergrad studies about 8 years ago and then I went on to work in the tech industry - and , um ... I worked all kinds ... Big Data, small startups, corporations - built distributed systems - the works you might say.
AC-M1: Mmm...
AC-M2: <looks at laptop>
C: Yeah, and I guess I got kinda bored - thought maybe I want to work on something with more focus? I don't know - I really like programming languages, Lisp-family and the homoiconicty thing, esoteric APL stuff, I really love - we used Scala at my last place where I worked - and I really really liked it - the functional programming, the whole thing was just really great... so I thought maybe I could do some research, to chase what I really like...
AC-M1: Yes well, good. That's fine. So now - now I - we'll ask you some questions and see how ... yeah? Basic questions to see what you know, to gauge you a little, as it were. Well ok.
AC-M2: <looks at phone>
AC-M1: We'll start with something basic, I think something used everywhere in CS in fact, pretty much, very important - let's say you have n different, unique, items and... how many items do you have?
C: n?
AC-M1: yes, well that was excellent. Suppose we want to pick two items - how many different ways are there to do that?
C: uhmmm.... I really don't - ok, I - there's a formula for 2 choose n ... I think it's ... the way you derive it you put all items in permutations which is a factorial and then you divide by factorial of the rest of the items because you don't care about the order - but - yea, I can't say I really remember
AC-M1: n choose 2
C: sorry?
AC-M1: you said 2 choose n
C: yeah.... sorry
AC-M1: Well okay <looks at AM-M2>
AC-M1: let's move to probability theory - I think we can agree this is used everywhere <keeps looking at AC-M2>
C: <what the FUCK>
AC-M2: lets say you have a cube - a cube with six sides - and you throw it <throwing motions> how many times - what's the expected value for number of throws until you get a 1?
C: uhmmm... ummm... okay look I don't - this is really - okay I... the expected value is like the sum of the result multiplied by the probability of the result and I ...
AC-M2: <stares blankly>
C: I don't - I can't really see how you figure what you're asking but intuitively it should be six - six throws, because these are independent throws and all have probability of 1/6
AC-M2: <an almost compassionate look. turns head down to phone>
AC-M1: well okay then - lets... lets... - do you remember computation theory?
C: Sure, maybe - Kalmogorov complexity pops to mind
AC-M1: well, how about NP, P - can you tell us what NP is?
C: umm it's polynomial - it's - you have a class of problems where you can solve them, compute them in polynomial time - in polynomial number of steps - and I don't remember if it's to solve them or to verify if a solution is correct - but it's - you need to do this in n to the power of some constant of time. So that's P - and I guess NP would be the problems you can't do that with.
AC-M1: you know what NP stands for?
C: Non Polynomial?
AC-M2: <looks up from phone, her gaze could kill a fucking goat>
AC-M1: <looks to AC-M2>
AC-M1: Okay. I think we're running close to ending here... with our time - Look son, this process, the review, this takes about two weeks, but that's an upper bound, right? Usually answers come back much faster. If you have any questions please contact the secretary - Lenore - and we'll - if its important enough Lenore will pass it on to me, ok? And I guess... well, alright?
C: ...
C: yeah sure, thank you for your time
AC-M1: thank you, goodbye
C: a nice day to you, bye
AC-M2: <looks at laptop>
