Thesis Tales: Cornell University
Written on February 10th, 2020 by {"login"=>"jcbitshyd", "email"=>"journal@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"", "last_name"=>""}In the first article of Thesis Tales, covering undergraduate thesis off-campus, we bring to you an account from Akula Sai Pratyush who did his thesis at Cornell University over the last semester. Ranked at #14 in the QS Global Rankings, Cornell University is located in New York, USA.
Q. Out of a) CGPA, b) Projects, c) courses in college and d) involvement in technical teams, how would you rank these factors in helping you get the thesis? Experience in which of these helped most during the thesis?
Answer: It varies from region to region. In European universities, CGPA matters more than anything else, while in the USA and Canada, it is not at all an important factor, because the projects that you undertake, technical teams you have been part of and courses you have completed matter a lot more than CGPA.
Q. When did you start applying and how many professors/universities/programs did you apply to?
A: I had not applied to any programs and had only started sending emails to professors around January 2019, which is not an ideal thing to do. You should always start applying for universities or professors at least one semester prior to thesis/summer internship. However I got lucky, and my application was accepted. The number of professors to whom you send emails varies from person to person and from field to field. It depends on what work you’ve done and what research theme the professor is currently working on. If your work overlaps with that of the professor’s, you are sure to receive at least a reply from them if not an acceptance.
Q. Did you get any funding/support from the host university or BITS to help fund your undergraduate thesis? If not, how much would a similar thesis cost for the average BITSian?
A: BITS rejected my funding request because of minimum CGPA requirements. If they had accepted, it would have meant that 30% of one way airline fare would have been borne by them. Cornell usually only funds CSE/Robotics students due to excess funds and low cost of infrastructure for those departments. A similar thesis would cost around Rs.7,00,000, excluding student visiting charges, which in my case amounted to an extra $5000. Thankfully, my thesis professor was generous enough to cover that cost.
Q. How did you end up shortlisting Cornell while searching for summer internships/bachelor’s thesis? How did you shortlist professors and get to know about their present research work?
A: I mainly shortlisted universities based on their QS rankings. Also, certain universities are well known for conducting research in some specific fields and domains. As for professors, I started out by looking upon those professors whose research papers I had been referring to for my projects at BITS. I also went to the websites of my desired universities, searched for the page dedicated to my field of research and browsed through the profiles of the professors who had previously worked on it. The more your research overlaps with theirs, the higher is the chance that they accept your research application.
Q. How did you discover your area of interest? How did you start working in the field?
A: It all started when I joined technical teams like BAJA and Hyperloop India. These tech teams gave me an important kick-start because I got to interact with final year seniors who provided valuable advice that got me interested in research in the first place. However, I did not discover my true area of interest until I had taken up four different courses beforehand, after which I took a minor in material science. It was then I finally realised that that is what I wanted to study more about, although I wasn’t interested in the manufacturing aspect and wanted to delve deeper into the scientific aspect.
Q. What was the first impression of Cornell as soon as you reached there? What were the cultural shocks you experienced in America - the people, the food, and the culture?
A: Cornell is a big university with a massive campus. While the cultural differences are pretty significant, what struck me the most was the work ethic. There are two main types of people at Cornell - Americans, who are not the brightest but are very hardworking, and the Asians, who possess a lot of knowledge and are very hardworking too. Hence inferiority complexes can develop very easily within a new student, which was also the case with me, but this drove me to work hard too.
Use of equipment is very easy at Cornell because they let you handle all the machines on your own with no interference or supervision, thus increasing your exposure and experience in these things. There is also a lot more value attached to research over there, and a lot more funding for the same, as compared to BITS, or for that matter any university in India.
The people at Cornell, including the administration, are extremely helpful and easy to talk to. They are also quite punctual with their work. There are proper research groups on campus. I could approach anyone in my group regarding any issue and they would be more than willing to help me.
Q. What did you work on during your six months of research at Cornell? Was it similar to the work you did on campus at BITS?
A: The research I worked on at Cornell doesn’t really take place anywhere in India. It is basically a part of advanced material science. What we were trying to do was take two alloys and make a new material in such a way that it would have zero thermal expansion and high stiffness. This had started off as a NASA project as they wanted to produce telescopes with mirrors that wouldn’t bend very easily. My contribution to the research was mainly computational - topology optimisation using three material phases to make a metamaterial. It involved extensive use of MATLAB and a lot of computational analysis.
Q. Did Cornell live up to your expectations? What was missing there and where were they better than BITS?
A: Cornell didn’t lack anything. The professor I worked under was new there but well known for her previous work, and was really helpful to me. The major problem with BITS is that there are no proper projects here, mainly because most students prefer doing a job over research. Also, the lack of equipment and funding here leads to a lot of delay in conducting work and pushing research papers, which is not the case at Cornell. There is a lot more value and scope for research over there in particular, and in the USA in general.
Q.What resources/facilities were you provided by the university to conduct your research?
A: I had open access to all kinds of information for my research, as I was provided with a Cornell email-ID, using which I could access millions of journals. Cornell also has huge libraries with over 2 million books that we could borrow from or get the ebook. The number of pieces of equipment at Cornell is far greater when compared to BITS, including scanning electron microscopes and other expensive machines that are available for use by undergraduate students. The other Ivy League colleges aren’t as focused on engineering as Cornell, so that does make it a bit unique.
Q. How helpful are profs here w.r.t guidance and help?
A: When it comes to guidance, BITS professors are not very different from those at Cornell, although their method of approach might sometimes be different. One major difference is that Cornell professors have a bigger research circle and better contacts than their BITS counterparts, so networking is much better.
Q. What changes do you think BITS needs to make research/thesis more accessible for its students?
A: One major issue is accessibility. I’ve heard that some departments do not let their students go off campus for their thesis. No department should be restricted by the home university to go abroad. The restrictions are more severe for dual degree students, who need two-course supervisors for both their disciplines. Getting a thesis offer is easy provided students put in the effort, but BITS should also facilitate them to go off campus by providing the funds or some other support without upholding the CG bar.
Interviewed by Adarsh Mishra and Pranav Nambiar. Edited by Nivedan Vishwanath.