Intuitively, I think 3 > 1 > 2. Mentor quality differs between institutions; as does learning speed; as does the network you leave with (i.e. your classmates and mentors).
If you are psychologically able to put in the work for a good GPA at the good school, that seems like an excellent thing to do. If you find out that itâs not psychologically sustainable for you to do, you can adjust your plans accordingly. Itâs not obvious to me that you are currently able to assess your GPA correctlyâmaybe you significantly over- or underestimate what results you will end up with.
However, according to some EAs, chasing a high GPA is mostly for signaling rather than improving my research abilities, because some college courses are irrelevant to AI risks.(Iâm uncretain about this view)
Iâd personally strongly disagree with this. I think a core problem of some EA work is that it keeps reinventing the wheel; that it overlooks important existing literatures; and that it struggles to illustrate its relevance to existing fields (and thus is not picked up or well regarded by researchers). A decent university education in the field you wanna engage in will be helpful even if it includes courses that do not currently seem directly AI research relatedâit may help you gain the ability to understand and persuade future colleagues in the field, for example.
Intuitively, I think 3 > 1 > 2. Mentor quality differs between institutions; as does learning speed; as does the network you leave with (i.e. your classmates and mentors).
If you are psychologically able to put in the work for a good GPA at the good school, that seems like an excellent thing to do. If you find out that itâs not psychologically sustainable for you to do, you can adjust your plans accordingly. Itâs not obvious to me that you are currently able to assess your GPA correctlyâmaybe you significantly over- or underestimate what results you will end up with.
Iâd personally strongly disagree with this. I think a core problem of some EA work is that it keeps reinventing the wheel; that it overlooks important existing literatures; and that it struggles to illustrate its relevance to existing fields (and thus is not picked up or well regarded by researchers). A decent university education in the field you wanna engage in will be helpful even if it includes courses that do not currently seem directly AI research relatedâit may help you gain the ability to understand and persuade future colleagues in the field, for example.
The part about âEA reinventing the wheelâ is quite insipring, thanks for providing me this opinion.