My Udacity Pytorch Scholarship Challenge Experience
Udacity sponsored a Challenge Program to select students for its Deep Learning with Pytorch Nanodegree.The following article enumerates my experience during the Challenge Program and tips for future students who might qualify for this challenge.
The Challenge was announced at the first ever Pytorch Developer Conference by Udacity in collaboration with the Facebook.The aim was to select 10,000 students initially offer them an initial course material along with community support on Slack.The top 300 students would then be selected for the Deep Learning Nanodegree sponsored by Facebook.The Selection process involved filling out a standard questionnaire on the basis of which a global pool of 10k students were selected.
The challenge involved completing the `Intro to pytorch` Course on Udacity and a final Lab Challenge where we had to design a Neural Network to classify flowers.However,the Challenge’s USP was the Slack Workspace specially created for all the participants of the Challenge.It was like a virtual global school where the students could study together and help each other out in completing the Challenge.
Besides just discussing the course, the Udacity team had planned a lot of events to engage the students throughout the duration of the course.Some of them were :-
1.Student Story Challenge
Students shared their life stories, motivations and future aspirations on the Pytorch Challenge Facebook Group.The event was a great chance to know about our classmates and the struggles many of them were going through inspired me a lot.Finally,the top 5 stories were selected and shared with the Facebook team.You can read some of the stories here.
2. Shout out Hall of Fame
The Shout-out Hall of Fame was a weekly event where students making great contribution to the community were praised for their efforts by being featured on the official Pytorch Challenge Site.
3. Pytorch Study Jam
The Pytorch Study Jam was one of the most highlighted events of the Challenge.It was a one-day long event wherein student volunteers were assigned to answer lesson-specific questions,AMA(Ask-Me-Anything) sessions and conduct live webinars on a variety of topics.The event was aimed at helping students to progress faster in the course and improve understanding of key concepts.
4. Study Groups
At the start of the challenge, students were asked to form study-groups based on their geographical locations, interests and their level of previous experience with Deep-Learning.As the course progressed, these study groups had online or offline meet-ups and members of a study-group sometimes formed closed personal bonds.
5. Holiday Memory Challenge
The Holiday Memory Challenge involved the concept of Neural Style Transfer.Students were asked to transfer style onto some of their holiday pictures using the concept taught in the course.It was a really fun challenge and we got to see some interesting and beautiful photos.
6. Student Leadership Program
The Student Leadership Program involved selecting student Leaders who(like class representatives) would monitor the channels on the Slack Workspace and help the Udacity Scholarships team with organising the above mentioned events.
7. Student Mentorship Program
The Student Mentorship Program involved mentoring 2 students and providing them with support so that they could complete course on time.You could apply either as a mentor and mentee.
The courses were taught in an easy and comprehensible way by the instructors at Udacity.Inspite of having an earlier knowledge of Deep Learning with Tensorflow,I learnt so much more and strengthened my mathematical knowledge of the subject.However,the greatest plus point of the challenge was the huge community that you got to participate in.It gave you an insight into how students across the world solved problems and their talents in this field.They inspired me to push personal boundaries and approach problems with a whole new dimension.
As the results have not yet been declared, I cannot give a definite outline of what helped students qualify for the Deep Learning Nanodegree but I saw some qualities that I inherently saw in good students which I would like to share : -
1)Participate Extensively
Participate in all the events conducted by the Udacity Team.You might not be Successful in some of them but participation helps in building confidence and improves your personality.For eg: I organised my first Webinar Session on a project that I had done and it was a success and since them I am comfortable with conducting.Also contribute to the community whenever you are online.
2) Take Initiative
Want to conduct a webinar or an AMA Session or have any other Idea ,tell the Udacity team about it .They might not accept your proposal but you would get noticed in the eyes of the Udacity team and this counts a lot.Go out of the way to help people for eg : Some students wrote Medium articles to help the community in submission of the final Lab Challenge and some even created custom datasets so that students could get to know their accuracy.
3)Enjoy the Challenge
The best attitude is to enjoy the Challenge,make friends along the way and fully utilise the community by asking doubts and help even on matters not related to Pytorch.Thinking of this as another competition just sips the fun out of it and might be detrimental to you.
Finally I would like to thank the Udacity Scholarships team for giving me the opportunity to be a part of such an amazing community and to all my fellow challenge mates who made the last 2 months quite memorable for me.
