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OK, let me try to answer/comment on what you said. Excuse me if some of these sound blunt. 1. Your age is irrelevant. 2. Working at a management consulting company as an analyst is almost the definition of enterprise fizz-buzz programming. I haven't met any real hacker who works at those companies, and on the contrary I know quite a few who resent their IT jobs at such companies. 3. Quant jobs are also mostly dull, although if you get in a good place at a higher level, you might work on interesting stuff. If you're on the systems side of things, then high-frequency trading places have interesting work on optimizing execution times. However, the high pay at quant jobs is like cocaine -- you'll find it very hard to quit, even if you see more interesting jobs. 4. If you actually want to be a technical person solving problems for more than just the next couple of years, there's no need for an MBA these days unless you're NOT at a top-tier technical place. The better places like Google, Facebook, etc. will let you get very high up the corporate ladder without an MBA, and not having one somewhat innoculates against being pushed into more management-y roles. 5. It's hard to judge what your abilities actually are. You didn't mention anything about programming projects you've done (COMPLETED), which is one of the biggest pieces of evidence that you are good and capable at hacking. On the other hand you do mention accepted research papers at a good venue -- if the journal is actually good, then this will be an ENORMOUS help in your getting into a PhD program. A quick recap, in case you're unfamiliar about what matters for PhD admissions: * Evidence of research ability. This is basically the only thing the top schools care about. The way they judge this is: * Previous papers published, and the level of the conference/journal they
were published in. You (perhaps) have this. You are automatically above
90% of applicants.
* Recommendations from good researchers. You're at a top 7 school, and you
did research. Hopefully it was with someone who (a) got to know you well
and (b) was impressed with your work and (c) are themselves known as good
researchers to others in their field. If so, you're basically in at just
about any place you want, as long as you don't fuck up in some other
category.
* Grades matter somewhat if you're at a known good school where the
academic standard is tough. It's far less important than the previous
two, though.
* As long as you don't say something completely idiotic in your essays,
they don't matter.
* General GRE scores don't matter at all, as long as you're above some
fairly low threshold. Subject scores don't matter at all, even if you're
only at the 50th percentile.
In summary, you have a very good shot at getting into a good PhD program, if you're accurately self-assessing your publications/school reputation. Also, it's much easier to get into a PhD program straight from undergrad since your recommenders will remember you best, and often working for even a year really dulls your desire to go "back to school".While theoretically PhDs are internships for becoming a professor, in practice less that 50% continue on to academia in CS, so you shouldn't view it as a negative even if you eventually want to go to industry. A PhD will open doors to top research labs like Microsoft/Adobe/Google/Mitsubishi Research, where you'd get to work on cool, tough problems. Getting a PhD at a top place also requires many of the same skills needed for startups -- self-motivation, getting stuff done, working your ass off, being able to present your work well and "sell it", being effective at choosing the right problems to solve, solving them, and being able to communicate your results, etc. On the other hand, it is a large time-commitment -- at least 4 years and perhaps 5-6 -- and your experience is largely determined by the quality of your advisor -- both technically and at a personal level how well you get along with him/her. 6. Your visa issue shouldn't matter much for big companies, as they all routinely help their employees get better visas and some even start them on the green card process. However, for startups, this could be a problem, depending on how much risk you can handle. 29 months is not necessarily going to be enough, and I don't know how easy it is to get a visa upgrade while at one. Reply to this comment if you need further clarification or have more questions. |
1: Regarding PhD Programs, Getting in a good PhD Program wouldn't be that much difficult for me (I have a decent GRE score 1380) coupled with demonstrated research interest (via publication and paper).
However I have closely looked at life in the Academia (all my undergrad friends are doing PhD). And the Advisor problem is really terrible, since a lot is determined by your choice of advisor alone. Finally regarding working in a Lab of Google/MSFT/ or Academia is what I am trying to avoid.
I have this personal theory that I should couple my technical knowledge with Managerial one to obtain a position where I could solve practical problems. Research, Conference and Publications are fun, but over the years I have been amazed at large amount of publications that are hardly implemented in real life (if at all they are implementable). The other Post-PhD issue is that my stipend (with 50% saved) wont be enough to completely pay of my loans (my parents have enough money but I somehow dont wish to burden them), Also the current Visa rules do not allow me to start a Startup post PhD so The employment issue remains. At best I can hope is to get an Associate level jobs or Qunat ones at consulting firms Post-PhD.
Regarding your comment about Quant jobs being dry (conscientiously), sure they are but they are also exciting in a way You can literally see performance of your algorithms in term of monetary value.
Regarding my publication they were in a journal which is considered top in my field and published by an American non profit academic body, with its first issue being published around 100 years ago. About my programming skill, well I can tell you that I can understand and write code. Its hard to give out any information here without compromising my privacy.
Regarding 29 months figure, if i have a job for say 2 years I would be able to earn enough to pay most of the debt plus would gain enough experience required for a B-School. That how i did my mental calculation though it is likely wrong.
To summarize 6 years into the future I want to work at a position where I could be making significant decisions that would affect products / Services / lives of people. A perfect example would be Program/Project Mangers at Google or Facebook.