cmu mism video interview questions

October 28, 2022 Robby

My Video Interview sneak peak for seeking admission to the MISM program at Heinz College, CMU

Interviews for Top Jobs at Carnegie Mellon University

Graduate Student Interview

Application

I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University

Interview

Easy and great, not really hard to get in, but value is relative great. So its the one of the best University in the world. Students here works extremely hard

Interview Questions

1. Why do you think CMU suits you?

As in a real, professional job interview, we do not share interview questions with you before the actual interview. If you would like to prepare for your interview, you may wish to search the internet for advice on preparing for a job interview and/or professional graduate school interview in the United States.

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Interviews at Carnegie Mellon University

I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University

I interviewed over the phone. It seemed straightforward, if a bit awkward. Almost immediately after the interview, they had told me they had decided to hire another candidate, so I was left wondering why I even interviewed in the first place.

Why do you want to work as a [department] intern?Answer Question

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Anonymous Employee in Pittsburgh, PA

I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA)

I had an on-site meeting with a recruiter to go over basic info, followed by a meeting with the manager and assistant manager of the department the position reported to.

Q: Do you know Excel? Q: How do you like to organize your work?Answer Question

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Anonymous Interview Candidate in Pittsburgh, PA

I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) in Aug 2022

The process took 3 months The first one from the recruiter, then next I had a initial semi technical interview with a senior mechanical engineer. They allocated 1 hr for the interview but it lasted for only 20 minutes. It felt like the person clearly not interested in talking to anyone but they forced him to do it. Instead of the interviewer asking questions, I was the one who was asking more questions and kept the conversation alive for some time. Then no word from them for 2 months and then again got call for the next round which was a paired interview. They literally told me due to their seniors on vacation they were on hold. The interview was 1:30 minutes where they asked a ton of hypothetical questions from robotics background system, including navigation, path planning and more. Initially I think I was doing good but at some point it felt like they don’t seemed to care my answers and started behaving rude. One thing they should understand is that, if someone is highly experienced in robotics field he or she will not going to go for CMU NREC job with low pay.

Robotics navigation, path planning, control and more hypothetical question. Answer Question

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I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University

Was quite long, about 2-3 weeks of implementing various models. Project was based on deep learning. It was difficult. However, I was lucky to crack them and become part of the group.

Implement models mentioned in the papersAnswer Question

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I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University in Jun 2022

Long interview process but great to meet many people at once. Preparation and practice were key. Important to know who the interviewers are to understand what area of research they are coming from with questions.

Why do you want to work here?Answer Question

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Anonymous Interview Candidate in Pittsburgh, PA

I applied online. The process took 5 months. I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) in May 2022

I interviewed at NREC as a ML Engineer. Several zoom interviews later was called for an onsite interview. Didnt get a reimbursement for the travel expenses (see update). This whole process took 5 months. Interviewers were absolutely condescending. I wanted to leave half way into the process. I guess this is what happens when you have a bunch of old incompetent geezers and insecure people. I personally felt like they were looking for more of a cultural fit than your qualifications. The first interviewer was nice, showed me around campus (which is in an abandoned pipe factory). This guy wants to leave badly. You can see it by his attitude. He told me in the first interview how he had to beg the director for several years to let him take classes at CMU while working there. He also interviewed at least one company while employed at NREC. The second interviewers were also nice. In the third round of interviews I literally had one lady (senior engineering manager) who was frowning the whole time, and another guy (robotics engineer) who constantly felt the need to assert his dominance (usually a sign of insecurity). The lady started off by bragging about how she was a nuclear engineer and such, and was condescending throughout the entire process. It felt like she already had someone else in mind and was trying to promote that person by playing political games. She spent the majority of the time down valuing my experience and qualifications. Since these are paired interviews, if one person gives off a negative impression that automatically imprints on the other. This is how broken their process is. Then again, should not be unexpected given the delusional nature of the director (keep reading). Keep in mind that this is during interviews where people are supposed to be on their best behavior. I would hate to imaging what they are like outside of interview setting. Actually, now that I think about it, I did have one guy – a former interviewer – come into lunch and sit secluded from the rest of the team. If you ask me, Id say that he hates the rest of the team. Cant imagine why. Overall most of the people came across as closed and narrow minded. I should also mention that these people first conducted a reference check before even deciding to interview me in-person. This is extremely disrespectful and a waste of time for my references who are researchers and principal software engineers. Reference burnout is a thing. My advice to the people interviewing at this place would be to get first a written offer contingent on reference and background checks, and then give these people the reference list. Interview with the director started off with saying how they cant afford 80k for someone who would be doing the job of software engineering, data engineering and ML engineering. To top it off he said that they dont like people who leave for better opportunities while the entire time dangling the carrot of getting to take classes at CMU. Not sure if the guy is delusional or too far detached from reality or both. After the interview I withdrew all of my applications for this place. The recruiter still sent me an email telling me that I had not been selected to move forward. What a joke of an organization. This place likes to dangle the carrot of getting to take classes at CMU while paying you significantly less than market value – 120,000 national average for ML engineers. The director did this to me several times. I guess this is the only way they can get candidates to apply and take the offer. Update: Several emails exchanges later I got the reimbursement after 2 months. Update: I recently accepted a position at a semicondictor industry as a Machine Learning Engineer with a base salary of $180000 (I asked for 130-140K), $10000 sign on bonus, and $25000 RSU with a vesting period of 1 year

Reverse the string Several ML questions – what is bias and variance, what is the difference between classification and regression, What is the effect on the output feature maps of the convolution layer that follows a max pooling layer. Why do we want a maxpooling layer. When to use a confusion matrix. What is the difference between precision, recall and F1. what is focal loss, what is dice loss. ML System Design (Facial recognition system) – think about clustering, dimensionality reduction, database storage, approximate nearest neighbor search, reducing database lookup time with horizontal scaling. Also think about feature/concept drift detection and rectification. Talk briefly about knowledge distillation, model quantization and pruning. Data engineering question – how would you remove duplicate s? Hash the s using a fingerprinting algorithm using DFT. Similar to how shazams audio fingerprinting works. Now you have reduced the problem to removing duplicate fingerprints. If you type ” hashing” in google, a lot of academic papers with noise robust algorithms will pop up.Answer Question

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I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University

Meeting with PhD student, questions about resume, general knowledge questions. ML, AI, Stats, regression. I spoke mostly about XGboost. All in all good and easy process for CMU students. Took around one hour.

Explain difference between L1 and L2 lossAnswer Question

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I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University

Good communication with HR through out the process. Good environment and schedule for in-person interviews. Everyone was on time and friendly there were two phone interviews and one in person with multiple people. .

They shared an example of a recent challenge ans asked how I would handle. Answer Question

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Anonymous Employee in Pittsburgh, PA

I applied in-person. I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) in Mar 2022

Knowledge of the subject is crucial, usually, through an interview with a professor of the course. Questions on the subject and why you would want to do this job. Some of them may require knowledge of specific software tools used in the course, depending upon the coursework

Subject-related basics and some difficult ones as well tested knowledge on the coursework-related topic1 Answer

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Anonymous Interview Candidate in Fremont, CA

I applied online. I interviewed at Carnegie Mellon University (Fremont, CA) in Mar 2022

It was a phone interiew with a member of the Software Engineering Institute. They asked about my background and whether I was willing to relocate however at the end asked if Im a U.S. citizen which Im not so they rejected me right there

Are you a US Citizen1 Answer

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FAQ

How do you become a CMU MISM?

The MISM-BIDA Pathway requires that you have a background in these three required coursework areas: programming, database, and statistics. MISM-BIDA requires that you have a background in these three required coursework areas: programming, database, and statistics.

Is there an interview for CMU?

Our Application Process

On-campus sessions are not evaluative, but rather are counseling sessions to help students align their interests with our programs. We do not offer alumni interviews in advance of admission decisions and have refocused alumni efforts to connect with admitted candidates instead.

Does Case Western do interviews?

Interviews are optional for admission to Case Western Reserve, but many students choose to interview as an opportunity to present themselves and their credentials in a one-on-one environment.

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