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Comment by anonymous567 | Hacker News Reader

Well, I already happen to have an MS from a US university. So, the next logical step would be a PhD.

And PhD is a whole another beast. It's a commitment that I'll have to think hard and carefully about.

I've considered the idea of doing PhD in Canada before, at the University of Toronto, or the University of Waterloo; not for PLT, but for networks which I was into back in the day. I'm not into networks as much anymore.

Is McGill University known for PLT? The other university I've considered is TU-Delft in the Netherlands, which does some things in the field of PLT.

However, it's been over 3 years since I graduated, and I'm not sure if I'd get glowing letters of recommendation from my prior schools at this point. To top it off, my master's degree focus was on OS, networks, and cybersecurity (the "systems" stuff). So, I'm definitely not going to get anybody to praise my abilities in PLT.

(And I love cold!!)

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> Well, I already happen to have an MS from a US university.

Was it a "terminal MS" or a research MS? Both send very different signals[0]. What was your undergrad like?

> Is McGill University known for PLT?

Never heard of it. They don't seem to be very active in computer science. Waterloo, from my understanding, is a giant undergrad school. Grad students are outnumbered 6x by undergrads (that's a red flag). Only Lab I keep hearing about is the MILA [1]

[0] https://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-compu...

[1] https://mila.quebec/en/

Don't do a PhD in either US/Canada unless you were in top 1% of the class and practically slept through all advanced Math courses (e.g. Convex Optimization, Linear Programming, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker etc.) and still ended up with an A. Asking someone to do a PhD just because they are bored/not challenged enough in their work is an incredibly bad piece of advice!!! Stay away! Academia in US/Canada is mostly a lost cause today (apart from a few bright spots which are doing cutting edge AI/ML/DL or Nano Tech research). Academia in US/Canada is as much corrupt today as Catholic Church was in the middle ages!

I disagree, but I admit that I may be biased. I know plenty of folks whose grades were not perfect, but were determined and had a clear idea of what they wanted to study. However there is some degree of bureaucracy involved, so you must be persistent.

What about PhD in Europe in engineering?

I see. The Ph.D. route is not an easy one, and you should think carefully whether it is what you really want. However I would not assume that less-than-perfect grades are an insurmountable barrier. More importantly, you must be persistent and resourceful.

Between McGill and UdeM, there are probably a half-dozen professors working on systems, formal reasoning, and type theory in Montreal. There are others at UofT, Waterloo and UBC. If your interests align maybe reach out to see if they are taking new students?

If you are still interested in machine learning, you might also consider applying to Mila/IQIA in parallel:

https://mila.quebec/en/cours/supervision/

Anyhow, good luck with your next steps -- I hope you'll find what you're looking for.

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