Exchange Diaries  

Pranav Khadpe | Electrical Engineering

PhD in Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

From where did you get the motivation? How did it all start? How did you handle your preparation along with your academics?
I had set my mind on pursuing further education since the beginning. I had enjoyed working on projects and more importantly, I enjoyed the freedom afforded to me in terms of being able to take initiative, lead a project, and come up with and execute solutions independently. My positive experiences directly influenced my decision to apply.
Handling academics wasn’t completely orthogonal to pursuing research as the grades and CG are important to apply to grad school. But you should always be aware that research credentials and LORs matter a lot more. It’s important that you keep yourself engaged with projects of your interest and make sure to have a concrete end result from each project- a paper in submission, a full-fledged web app, open-source code. Networking is an essential part of the process because, in academia, you are your own brand. It is important to know people that work in your areas and find opportunities to interact with them- at conferences or on call. Working with getting a well-known professor to write you a LOR helps a lot in drawing interest to your application.

What part does an MS/PhD degree from a prestigious university play in a student’s life?
There are two primary reasons due to which degrees play a major role. With an advanced degree, the number of career opportunities only increases: you can still pursue jobs you were eligible for after your undergrad but you also have access to new kinds of jobs and opportunities which typically come with more freedom than the typical job after an undergrad degree. You also open up new opportunities globally. So, in case someone is unsure about whether to pursue grad school or take up a job, committing to grad school is a lower risk commitment. A PhD program is also a controlled environment and so you can be more ambitious in the projects you pursue; failing in the process has little to no repercussion. As I wanted to be an expert in my field and have a safe environment to take risks, experiment with ideas, and innovate, it made sense for me to consider doing a PhD

Besides doing research interns, what other opportunities or ways are there in IIT KGP to develop and cultivate an interest in research?
In college, there is a flawed demarcation between what constitutes research and what constitutes engineering. For example, most people would think that building a web app is a perfectly reasonable software side project to pursue through which they might learn valuable web development skills but might be unenthusiastic about pursuing “research”. However, most system-building HCI is basically just that- building web apps. There are ample opportunities to learn the skills people want to learn and to work with the technologies people want to work with, within the purview of “research”. Most of the things people already pursue can be a part of the research, with different packaging. The only added steps in research would be isolating out what problems to solve, motivating why your solution is a good way to deal with it, and showing conclusively that your solution works! The main problem solving is largely “hacking/engineering”- things people are already great at. So I would encourage everyone to work on a research project early to both get a feel for research and to get rid of misconceptions they might have about what research is. I’d also encourage people to take graduate-level courses in KGP or online, to gain exposure to the current research forefront.

What difficulties do you think the pandemic might bring or has brought already in the process?
The effect would be different on PhD and MS as PhD students are employees of the university while MS students are generally looked at as a source of income for the universities which are facing a financial crunch right now. I guess that in the immediate future, the competition for getting into PhD will be tougher due to a potential decrease in the number of slots.
There are also policy changes and travel restrictions happening alongside the pandemic which might affect students targeting grad school in different countries, differently. So, it is difficult to predict the changes exactly.

What is the role of CG? Is there an optimal CG?
It would be insincere to say that CG doesn’t matter. A good CG definitely makes people take your application seriously. It is not that people with low CG don’t get admission, they do if they have good research credentials and LORs. But the onus is on you to draw their attention by showing that there is something outstanding about you and your work. But at some of the more competitive programs, students with higher CG always get preference.
For MS applicants CG matters a lot. They should try to keep it as high as possible. In my case, I tried to maintain a minimum CG of 9 which I thought would be enough given the other parts of my application.

How is your university going to manage everything in this confusion of Covid-19?
I’m most likely going to be remote during the first sem. The major problem is the delay in getting out Visas due to embassies closing. Most international students are facing this issue and so we’re all likely just going to be remote for the first sem.

How did IIT KGP benefit you in your journey?
The main benefit of IIT is the peer group as here you have a lot of smart, talented, and driven individuals who motivated me. There was an exchange of ideas. I too discussed my ideas and got feedback. Also, there is an alumnus network, who have all gone through the same process and to whom I could reach out. I got a lot of opportunities too, being in IIT which I couldn’t have otherwise, so it helped me out a lot.

How did you decide on your area of interest?
My area of interest evolved over time. Initially, I had an interest in a lot of things, so, I decided to pick one and start with it. If I didn’t like it, then I would switch. Finally, I did a project and got interested in HCI as it was a broad area of research with components of AI, NLP, etc. It gave me an opportunity to work in different areas and tie them to HCI.