Exchange Diaries  

Vishvesh Pandya | Mining Engineering

UNSW Business School, Australia

Research Area: Sentiment Analysis of the Indian Stock Market

1) What was your research topic?
In a broader sense, it was sentiment analysis of the Indian Stock Market. Whenever a company releases it’s financial statement or any such financial data, people give their opinions and thoughts on various social media platforms, most popularly twitter. These opinions kind of develop a perspective of the company. So, my task was to do Sentiment Analysis of their twitter data and see how it will affect the stock price of the company.

2) How did you apply for FTP? When did this process begin?
Initially, I was selected for an FTP in Brazil, but it got cancelled in march due to Covid-19 pandemic. So, I started applying for remote FTPs from the beginning of April. Initially, I got 13 rejections because the professors were not ready to take students for remote work. Finally, I got my offer in the first week of May from UNSW Business school, and I started working from the second week of May.

3) Why do you think FTP is important?
The work you do actually matters a lot. Though FTP may or may not be important from a CV point of view, but the work you do and the experience you gain is of utmost importance. Suppose, you get an offer from a University whose QS-ranking is not so good, but it offers a very good project, you should go for it. You will get to learn a lot.

4) What is the role of CGPA?
When you apply through programs like Mitacs, there are thousands of applications. So, it becomes difficult for the professors to go through every CV and then decide. So, the most convenient way is to shortlist on the basis of the CGPA. So, for programs like these, CGPA matters.
But, if you personally mail the professors, then they look at your resume properly. If they are interested in the work you’ve done earlier, they generally select you and in these cases, the importance of CGPA is overshadowed by your previous works.

5) As you did a remote internship, which platform was used for communication between you and your university?
We communicated mostly through Skype video calls.

6) Did you have to incur any significant expenses?
As it was a remote FTP, I didn’t incur any expenses. Sometimes, during remote FTPs, you have to spend money to purchase databases but generally it is funded by the professor.

7) How would you describe your overall experience?
My overall experience was pretty awesome. Earlier also, I had done projects based on ML or based on core finance topics. But, this time I had to apply both of them in a single project. It was a bit challenging. I also gained in-depth knowledge in the Machine Learning field.

8) What advice would you give to our fellow KGPians who aspire for FTPs?
Sometimes, it happens that you send email to only one professor and you get selected and sometimes, you send emails to 200 professors and still aren’t selected. So, the thing is you must be patient about your application. The selection not only depends on your skills, but it also depends on the requirements of the professors. And you must start applying as early as October because the professors start planning their projects from October. You can also focus on various programs like Mitacs, DAAD etc.