Internship & Your Application Jiwen Cai

About Myself Jiwen CAI Website: Senior undergraduate student of the School of Information Security Engineering Visiting student in Microsoft Research Asia(MSRA). I’ll attend UCLA’s CS department as a graduate student in the fall of 2010.

Highlights FAQ about internship and GOA application Preparing for the internship application My life in MSRA Notice: all the following information is my personal opinion based on my personal experience. DO NOT consider it as rules or musts.

FAQ Is it necessary to get involved in internship? What will you learn from internship? What kind of internship will help your application? How to find a internship?

Is it necessary to get involved in internship? It depends... If you are aiming at a Master degree, internship is very important. If you are aiming at a PhD degree, you can still learn from the internship.

What will you learn from internship? You will learn... How to take an interview. How a large cooperation works. How to cooperate will other people in the same team. How to improve English during work. How students in other universities think and work.

What Kind of Internship Will Help Your Application? Large international cooperation is the best choice. Try to find an internship which you want to take it as your career. Payment and location are not big issues. It will be helpful if the company has the same culture with your future destination.

How to Find Internship? Some company might arrange large-scale campus intern recruitment. For example, EBay and IBM. Others might recruit interns any time in the year. For example, Microsoft. Others might post Job Description on their website or even on YSSY BBS’s Parttime forum. Actually, the most common situation is that: interns are recruited by internal recommendation.

Preparing Compile a resume of yourself, the earlier, the better. Check whether you have enough time to take an internship. Survey all companies in your field that have plans to recruit interns. Get your qualification and capability ready. Get ready to receive offer letters and rejection letters.

Resume Survey: How many of you have a resume? “Because I compiled my first resume in the first year at college, I start to know what to improve very early” -- Shuang YANG, Stanford Fellowship Winner. Be careful of using the following words: master of..., fully understand... Do not only puts the name of projects, but describe your contribution in detail.

Resume Actually, a resume in LaTex format is easy to maintain and update in the future, though it is some how difficult to work out the first version. If possible, I strongly recommend you to register your person website, or add a personal page under your school or lab’s website.

Are You Available for Internship Do not sacrifice your GPA, GRE, or TOEFL. If you can find a good professor in SJTU to direct your research && you do want to get a PhD in the future, you should consider giving up the summer internship. Focus, Focus, Focus...

Survey All Opportunities Company’s website YSSY’s Parttime board Poster in the campus Information shared between students Other sources: Xiaonei, etc

Qualification & Capability Remember: interns are at the lowest level in the hierarchy of a company. Qualification: a quality or accomplishment that makes someone suitable for a particular job or activity. They might not hire the strongest person, but must hire the person matches the job best.

Offers and Rejections Offers: Compare offers by consulting someone working or worked in that company. Make sure of the deadline of decision. Rejections: Don’t be frustrated and try another one. If you are determined to work in that company, improve yourself and try again in future.

My Life in MSRA MSRA mode: post-docs are leading pre-docs. How we recruit? Our slogan: Work Hard, Play Harder. Notice: MSRA is a place really different with other departments or companies. The following description might not be applicable to other companies or even other departments of Microsoft.

What We are Doing? Reading paper, lots of paper. Brainstorming. Coding. Carrying out experiments. Writing a paper, if you are lucky and hard wording.

We Are Always Recruiting Someone consider it is hard to get an internship in MSRA. Actually, MSRA has about 200 FTE and has 300 intern head count; while other departments of Microsoft has much lower intern-FTE ratio. If you have done some research in a specified field, the chance of being hired will be increased.

We Are Always Recruiting Some interns are just doing coding or engineering works for a specific project. If you will apply for PhD program in the fall, please point out your eager of doing some real research and publish paper when you are interviewed. Please focus on the field you have chosen, or make a decision about your field ASAP.

Advantages of MSRA Top CS research institute in China. For some fields live CV or ML, even as competitive as some top universities in US. FTE and visiting researchers give talks from time to time. Some provides the current research hot points; other will train you to become a good researcher.

Advantages of MSRA Meet students from top universities in China. Many of them and almost every undergraduate will apply for US colleges. Get some solid recommendation letters. Get used to the life of a PhD candidate. Have a great opportunity to get deep tour into our capital city.

A Useful Website Only for CS students. This website ranks conferences’ influence by fields. It also ranks authors (professors).

My Conclusion It is never too late to find an internship. Focus on your career plan. If you do not have a career plan, focus on making one. Balance your time.

Q & A Thank you!