Beautiful Science
It has been about two weeks since I got back to China. I really appreciate about what the trip to the US showed me. Although finally I am not admitted by Caltech, I find it valuable that I got to know and think how much the other competitors are better than me. A did give me great pressure when I talked to him, while I still feel thankful for the talk. I do remember most of the conversations between those great professors NP, E, L, P and A, which inspire me to think thoroughly about my own research interests and future development.
The application results I have got till now: Shortly after I returned to China, I got UT's offer and an email from A. As for Rice, all the other invited students get their own offers but I am on the waiting list because I am only interested in Da while it seems that he wants me to be his “back up” which is on the contrary to our previous talk. I am not happy about it of course. I totally understand that a professor wants to recruit the best students, while from my perspective, you should not have told me that you are certain you can influence the application result, which indicates you would recruit me. And you should not have helped me revise my personal statement, which made me totally misunderstood. I have only applied for 5 universities just because I felt that Da and I contacted very well. All I want to tell myself is that I should not have been so overconfident.
There is an unexpected news from Duke that I got a chance to interview by skype with a professor who was really nice and told me if I decide to switch to computer science, I need to face up with a lot of challenges because in Duke, students are required to pass the computer science related courses by the end of second year, while I do not have any computer science background, which means I need to take some extra courses before I go to the US.
After the skype interview, I thought a lot and attended some computer science courses with some freshmen or sophomores. It reminds me of what I was like when I was on the second semester in HUST. At that time, I asked ty and xz for the list of curriculum in University of Science and Technology of China and Peking University, because I desired for exploring the pure science and wanted to improve the fundamental courses background. Referring to the books used in Peking University, I bought Linear Algebra and Method of Mathematical Physics. However, perhaps I was kind of confused or did not arrange my time well at that time, I did not work hard on these books. When I stepped into the second year of my university life, I put all my efforts to the course learning, GRE preparation and extra research. As for the third year, I was busy doing experiments and finally lived in the lab. I almost forget what my motivation was three years ago and it seems that students in Prof. Xia's lab do not need to have any background knowledge when they join the lab, which gave me an illusion that I would not need it either.
Actually, I was wrong. Why am I rejected by Caltech? I did not understand it at first, while now I think I have figured it out. Besides that those competitors are comprehensively better than me, I have an important weak point that my fundamental knowledge is too poor. Those great scientists in Caltech like E and NP, did not major in biology when they was undergrads. P majored in biology while he also got another degree from computer science. And in Caltech, it is well-known that undergraduates need to be trained really hard especially on math and physics. As for DNA nano, researchers need to have interdisciplinary training if they want to expand the frontier of this field. (Of course, it is difficult and only suit for a small amount of people.) So I am kind of regret my chemistry major background. (If I were not at HUST, it might be much better. The education of fundamental knowledge at Chemistry Department in HUST sucks.) When I was at algorithm class, I felt that it has been a long time since I got training of thinking ability, which made me excited and also is a challenge for me.
I do not know how it will be in the future, but I think it is necessary for me to learn and welcome those interdisciplinary courses now. And I hope the application goes well in Duke and if it does, I wish I could be brave enough to choose Duke and start my computer science PhD life there. I also hope that I will never forget how much I desire to be admitted in Caltech when I apply for graduate study. If I can settle down in DNA Computing this field, Caltech will definitely be my destination for postdoc.
Good luck!
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