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u/General_Concern_253

r/cscareeradvice r/GraphicsProgramming
Looking for Resume & Career Advice [1st Year]
▲ 1 r/cscareeradvice

Looking for Resume & Career Advice [1st Year]

Hello, I am a first-year CS student living in the United States, and I would like advice because I kind of don't want to repeat the mistakes I have made in my first year.

For reference, over the span of the school year on the Google Sheets I've made, I have applied to 273 jobs, got some form of response from 22 of them, 3 OA's, 8 interviews, and the 1 offer you see is the simple school research program.

I like gaming, so I used a little tier list to quantify what general tier each company I applied to was. The result was 34% D (unknown pre-seed startup level), 30% C (regional level), 13% B (mid tech range), 16% A (lower big tech range), and 7% S (upper faang level). Obviously, the fact that my applications were skewed towards the "worst" two tiers went to show that my mentality back then was that any internship was better than none, and that hopefully the smaller the company was, the less likely they'd be to screen me out. Also I just want to point out the tiers were just for my base understanding as a first year since it was my first time touching the field, it was common for many companies to have an argument of being in A vs B, or C vs D, and so on.

Some faults I had when applying were either my first semester (meaning I had no GPA), or my 2nd semester (meaning I had a bad GPA because of a bad first semester), so I tried locking in which is why I have the solid 3.5 GPA you see here on the resume. Another fault is that I put 2029 on my resume; I did not realize how much of a red flag this was.

Given this background, I want to ask if there are any more tips/tricks/advice available for this upcoming fall? I am planning to put 2028 on the resume to "larp" as a junior, but is there anything else crucial that I may be missing?

Another piece of advice I would like to ask is what roles I should be targeting. I am interested in Computer Graphics, but that field has apparently a high barrier to entry and low job openings, so is there any somewhat related field that I could pursue during the upcoming application season? Or at least any field that is most applicable to me, so I can finally plant my feet within the tech industry?

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

u/General_Concern_253 — 1 month ago
▲ 24 r/GraphicsProgramming

Joining Graphics Field

Hello, I am a first-year CS major in the US who is interested in joining the graphics field.

I was wondering if there is anything I could do outside of projects to help get into the field better. I tried reaching out to faculty in my school but there is no graphics research being done at my school. I managed to join a ML research project that incorporates some graphics, but that is just about it. And my school has no clubs or organizations in computer graphics, it seems to be a dead field.

Is graphics programming generally inaccessible for undergrads like myself? I am concerned because I know the market is bad, but the one piece of control students like us have IS doing internships and getting experience, so not having that available feels risky for me.

I am writing this post mainly to ask if there is some avenue that I have not explored yet, or if the conclusions I came up with are misinformed. If I happen to be correct, I am still interested in pursuing graphics when I am a new grad, but I will also just pursue different fields in my undergrad that are somewhat related just so my resume is not empty.

I am sorry if my post sounds annoying or has offended anyone. Thank you for reading.

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u/General_Concern_253 — 1 month ago