RIPS at IPAM, UCLA - Application and Pre-Intern Experience 2019

Introduction: RIPS Internship

RIPS stands for Research in Industrial Projects for Students. It is an annual research program organised by the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) of UCLA. With an acceptance rate of 2-3%, it hosts every year 36 interns who work on 9 industrial projects in groups of 4. I was one of the interns selected for the year 2019 and this post describes my application process and experience. The intern and personal experience will be covered in a separate post.

APPLICATION AND PRE-SELECTION EXPERIENCE:

By the end of September I had secured two on-campus internships at Morgan Stanley and Adobe but something inside me was not satisfied. So I started applying for research internships abroad. It is especially tough in our culture because we don’t have any curated list so refer to this link which contains a non-exhaustive list of internships (some exclusively for Indian students). I was selective when applying for internships because I knew they are highly competitive and anyone having an aggregate CGPA of <9.5 (out of 10) has less chance securing some of them.

Fast forward to February, I was getting frustrated with not getting any results. I remember sitting in the library of IIT-D, waiting for my professor to return from his meeting to wrap up my paper with him. I had a couple of hours and decided to apply for one final intern. It was Research in Industrial Projects for Students, or RIPS, offered by Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), residing in UCLA. I was interested in applying for it partly because mathematics and CS always appealed to me, and somewhat because I was torn between academia and industry and this internship seemed to be the perfect mix of both. I was also interested because my college senior (who I look up to) secured this internship the previous year and I remember him telling me how great his experience was (great would be an understatement). So there I was, sitting in the library, with my friend from FIITJEE days by my side, stressed and freakishly writing answers for which math and CS courses I had taken, which languages I had worked on (and by what scale) and describing the major projects I had worked on. I wasn’t required to write a Statement of Purpose but was asked to upload my college transcripts and 2 Letter of Recommendations (LORs) from my professors. I sat there for the entire day and filled the form up. I requested my professors to upload a LOR telling IPAM people how I am the best, most passionate and funny person everr! They were happy to (Big shoutout to Dr. Ruchika Malhotra, my guide).

Fast forward to February 28, I had come back from my bitter-sweet conference and had to leave for Kerala to participate in Smart India Hackathon with my awesome team. I woke up at 6 am, and as usual checked my email the first thing in the morning. But unlike most mornings where I only got mails from Grammarly, KDNuggets and Medium, this time I had an email that was titled ‘UCLA RIPS-Summer REU’ from a Dimi. It said they were interested in offering me an intern position at their esteemed RIPS program. I refused to believe. Few hours later, I was in metro with my luggage to board my flight when I opened my laptop and showed my friend the email. He made me believe I was crazy, and I finally accepted what had just happened and replied back.

Finally in second week of March (a night before my Operating Systems mid-term examination), just before I was going to bed, at 12.15 am, I received an email that said ‘RIPS LA 2019 Offer Letter’ and I remember going to my friends in adjacent room and showing them the email. The next few minutes were about shedding some tears and staying in disbelief. I told my two awesomesauce seniors, mentors and guides, and as always they made me realise how big it was and congratulated me in the best way possible! (In words of one of them: Right now, I am this person who is sitting in a Google meeting room smiling like crazies).

Key take-aways:

• Refer to this link and contribute to it if you find other internships.
• Don’t apply everywhere. Be selective and invest your effort and time only in programs that align with your ideology.
• Don’t stop yourself from applying just because you don’t think you have a shot (Imposter Syndrome). You have a shot. But only if you put yourself out there. Apply.
• Have a good support system, progressive friends and consistent mindset.
• If I can do it, so can you. You got this. Go and apply.

This is the link to RIPS official page. The applicaions generally open in November and the deadline is usually February second week.

Hope this was helpful. If you have any other queries regarding the application process, contact me on my email id: shreyag [at] iiitd [dot] ac [dot] in

All the best!