MS Robotics from the University of Utah | What it has been like

TL;DR - The University of Utah is a pretty good school and I take pride in holding an MS diploma from the U.

A few years ago I wrote a blog post summarizing my experience was at MGIT. I never thought anyone would read it, but people did. It got a lot more attention from the world that what I genuinely thought it would. [1]

It's been 6 years since I graduated from MGIT and I have added another feather to my cap, an MS in Mechanical Engineering (Robotics Track) from the University of Utah. Let me jot down what my experiences have been like. Hope this summarizes the initial questions that most prospective students would have about the U/SLC/UT. I try to remain as objective as I possibly can, but I'm human after-all and my bias would inherently be present in the opinions I'm stating below.

What is it living in SLC/Utah like? Why don't most people know about it? 

I would not be surprised if you haven't heard of Utah yourself. I did not know about the existence of this state before I knew about the U. It hardly gets any recognition when you compare with the giants like California and Texas. As I would point out in the later part of this blog, there are a few things that lead to this. Utah is quite weird in a lot of ways. It is, religiously and politically, a conservative state. For reference, it's more conservative than Texas, IMO.
  

Religion

Salt Lake City (SLC) serves as the world headquarters of The LDS Church and, therefore, is the Mecca for its adherents, the Mormons. The Mormon lifestyle has influenced the city and state in quite a few ways. About 50% of the residents in the SL county identify as Mormon and the percentage only goes up in all the other counties. 

As I mentioned earlier, the liquor laws are quite stringent. Bumping into evangelists on a regular basis is something that might annoy many. Most people consider Sunday to be Church day, which means several businesses are closed on Sunday. Utah's birthrate is the highest in the U.S. and Polygamy was something that was practiced widely until recent ages. etc. etc. 

  
That doesn't mean people practicing other faiths are frowned up. That's not the case. Salt Lake County has places of worship for all the major religions. There are a couple of Hindu temples, a Gurudwara, several mosques, etc. The Festival of Colors (as it's called here) is celebrated at an ISCKON temple some 50 miles away and is considered the biggest Holi celebration in North America. Mormons are very friendly and respect other faiths and expect the same in return. There's no need to feel threatened if you happen to be a minority. 
All the above comparisons have been made with respect to other states in the U.S., not India. 

I am a Hindu and I never felt unsafe here. In fact, I feel much safer here than in any other part of the U.S. that I have been to.

Safety

Compared to other cities of its size, SLC is quite safe and has relatively lower crime-rate in comparison. The University is generally in a much safe neighborhood as well. In the 3 years that I've lived here, fortunately, I've not come across any major incidents of crime faced by an Indian student. I've heard just one case of mugging.

We've stayed back at the university till past midnight on more days than I can count, and have cycled/walked back home without feeling much threatened. I cannot say the same about some other cities that I've visited across the U.S.
  

Housing

Since the university is realistically surrounded by mountains on two sides, the only place most students get to find decent housing is between the University and SLC Downtown. This proximity to downtown bumps up the housing rents quite a bit. 

SLC is not the cheapest place to live in. I've known of some Universities that have ridiculously low housing options available, but they might be in towns which have nothing apart from the University. Those towns would not have some of the advantages that I would list later in this blog post.

Rents in the neighborhood where students like range anywhere between $900 (2 bed 1 bath, shared by 3 people) and $1600 (2/3 bed 2 bath, shared by 5). Those figures are just to put things into perspective. 

Public transport

Being close to the downtown does have some advantages too. One such advantage is that students have access to free public transportation in and around SLC. Almost the entire Indian student community relies entirely on the public transport system to get around the University and the city. The buses, trams and commuter trains can get you to most places within the urban region around Salt Lake City, free of charge. Since most students live within a few blocks from the University, we hardly felt the need to buy cars. Even most PhD students get by without needing to own a car. When you compare this to other universities where you're more likely to need a car to get around, it is a huge advantage. I dearly missed not being able to ride the Bus/Trax for free after I graduated. 

Also, the buses run even when there's an active snowstorm. I could almost bet my paycheck on the reliability of these UTA services.

Weather

Speaking of Snowstorms, did I mention we get quite a lot of snow? Salt Lake City averages about 60 inches of snow each year. The mountains around get over 600 inches of snow each year. Salt Lake City and Park City once held the Winter Olympics, so the winters here are legit and there's absolutely no shortage of winter activities. Being used to large amounts of snow, the city has figured ways to deal with snowstorms and most services/business are open unless it gets very bad. If it really gets that bad, the university will remain closed and exams might get postponed. This might happen once or twice a year. 

To put that into perspective, Salt Lake City's temperature and snowfall averages are very close to Srinagar, Kashmir. However, unlike Kashmir, Utah features a dry, semi-arid, desert-like climate. I guess a more realistic comparison would be Leh, Ladakh. The Great Salt Lake, which is a few miles away from the city, is a hypersaline lake with arguably the highest saline content after the Dead Sea. Western Utah is sometimes said to be drier that some parts in the Sahara. 
Being at an altitude of about 4000 ft. (Same as Kullu, Himachal Pradesh), being right in the path of the Pacific storm clouds, and having an arid climate results in some of the fluffiest snow that you could experience. There's a reason why Utah brags itself of having The Greatest Snow on Earth. Read more here[2].

However, creature comforts are plenty and unless you venture too much away from civilization, neither the cold nor the heat would even come close to killing you. 

Culture

Utah and Salt Lake City might not be known to your random uncle back in India, but the Indian diaspora is decently represented here in the Beehive state. It's definitely not a desi stronghold though. In my understanding, few thousands of Indians/people of Indian origin live in the Greater Salt Lake area and some of them have lived here for decades now. Indian culture is fairly well represented and as mentioned earlier, several Indian Festivals are celebrated throughout the year. Sri Ganesha Hindu Temple of Utah, Radha Krishna Temple of Utah and Sikh Gurdwara Sahib of Utah are the more popular Indian temples in the region.

The Greater Salt Lake area has about a couple of dozen Indian restaurants spread all across the valley. Popular Hindi, Telugu and Tamil movies get a handsome number of screenings at a few theaters in the region. Kannada and Malayalam movies get a fair representation too. 

There are several linguistic community groups in Utah too, representing several regional communities. Find the entire list here [3].
The Indian Cultural Center and Indian Students Association at the U of Utah organize several events throughout the year to promote the Indian culture. These include events like India Mela, India Night, Bollywood DJ night, Utah Cricket Premier League, etc. Read more here [4].

Let's talk about the University. 

How good of a University is the U? 

That's a relative question. It varies a lot based on what you compare it with. It ranks anywhere between 100 and 300 in the world, depending on what markers were considered for the study.  Objectively, it's a well funded public university with quite a lot of emphasis on research. It is bigger and (mostly) better than the other universities in the State of Utah. The BYU beats the U in certain respects though. 

I'll just ask you to look at the various ranking that should be available online and compare with the other universities you might be considering. 

In my experience, it's a good university. I was provided with ample opportunities w.r.t research and coursework. The infrastructure is quite good and the campus is pretty. It's surrounded by mountains on two sides and you get an amazing view of the city and the Great Salt Lake from the upper campus.  I couldn't have asked for a better campus to study in. 

There are some caveats that arise due to its presence in a conservative state like Utah. The LDS Church has a bit of control on the University. The university has a more conservative outlook when compared to other universities outside Utah. Alcohol is not permitted on campus and it's something most other universities don't care much about. 

I would not want to explain more about the university because I cannot remain objective on this subject. My perspective would be based heavily based on how my department functioned (which is detailed later in this post though). The experience that I had as a Robotics Grad student might be completely different from someone who has graduated with an MS in Finance.

I'll let you do the research for yourself if the U is the right place for you.

Robotics track 

Within the University of Utah, I was affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and The Utah Robotics Center. I joined in the Fall of 2015 and graduated in Spring 2017. The department and the robotics community would be fairly different from what it used to be while I studied as there have been quite a few professors who were hired in recent years.

The Utah Robotics Center is the community consisting of students and faculty from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Computing. It was formed to bring the two departments closer and align their independent research goals. Both departments have always had quite a lot of emphasis on research. Utah did have a head start in robotics research early on. Several innovative products came out of the university and some of them are as listed below. 

• Utah/MIT Dextrous Hand
• Sarcos Dextrous Arm
• Virtual reality systems, named as Treadport
• Several entertainment robots very developed for Disney
• Sarcos spun out to be a business of its own which produces exoskeletal suits and stuff
• Utah started working on autonomous vehicles over a decade ago but the project didn't really take off. 

Utah might not be one of the best research universities in the field but quite a lot of professors have garnered a lot of respect within the robotics community for sure. Jake Abbott's work in medical robotics and haptics has been very impressive. Kam Leang's work in the field of UAVs is quite extraordinary. John Hollerbach has been a very respected researcher and the editor of the International Journal of Robotics Research. 

Now, what do I think of the coursework? 
Before I get critical about the coursework and what I think about it, I need to disclose a few things.

I am by no means a very bright student. I've had a roller coaster ride academically when I was doing my masters, had to retake a couple of classes, and graduated with a sub-par CGPA. So, take the following criticism with a grain of salt and check with other people too. 

To get a degree in the Robotics Track, you need to take a few courses with the Mechanical Department and a few with the CS department. My courses on the CS spectrum include courses like AI, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Motion planning etc. The CS courses were, ironically, what I was more comfortable with. Machine Learning has been the best course I've ever taken. Not because it was something that was booming, but I got to take it under a very impressive instructor.

However, I was taking courses just when the Machine Learning inflexion point started changing things. The Computer Vision course that I took in Spring 2016 was based on how the computer could understand one image. It was mostly based on identifying lines, textures and how it could understand a given image. That wasn't the industry standard even when I was studying. It was quite outdated in approach that the very next semester, the entire course was revamped and taught with a heavy machine learning undertone, which is how the state of the art machine vision algorithms run these days. 

On the other hand, most of the courses on the Mechanical Engineering spectrum involve control systems. Classical controls, State Space controls, Robot controls, non-linear controls, adaptive controls etc. etc.  As someone who did not have an intuitive understanding of controls in the first place, having to take these courses felt very challenging. My first two semesters were quite rough but I got back on track towards the latter half of my masters. Most of the research in robotics (not just at the U) involves control systems. Dr Leang's research is based on improving control systems for UAVs, Dr Abbott's research includes control systems for haptic systems and medical robots. So, if you're planning on joining the U, it's probably time to start brushing up your basics in this subject.

As Grad students working towards an MS degree, you could work with a professor on their projects when could later turn into a PhD offer with him/her. You might get lucky and be funded during your study, but it's not always guaranteed. I was fortunate to have been funded for 2 of the 4 semesters. If you really intend to work towards a PhD, I'd consider applying for a PhD admit, which guarantees funding of some sort. However, you never know how your advisor will turn out to be. I'm not sure if it's a risk worth taking.

Post-graduation

For roboticists, finding a job might turn out to be tricky. This was not just my observation. Being based out of Utah is a logistical disadvantage we have because of the absence of any such major industry here. Some of the best schools that work on Robotics are on the east coast and Massachusetts turned out to be the location where most robotics businesses were set up. Read about the "Massachusetts Robotics Cluster". In spite of being willing to relocate if offered a job, it just turns out to be logistically challenging for someone in Boston to set you up for an interview when they already have several people in their city whom they could recruit. 

Being outside of both, the Massachusetts Robotics Cluster and the Bay area, Utah grads tend to have a noticeable geographical disadvantage. 

However, the tech industry within Utah is growing very rapidly. The region around Salt Lake City has seen substantial growth in the number of tech companies that were set up here or moved from elsewhere.  Read more about Silicon slopes here [5].

So, things are looking good for people looking for careers as data scientists or developers. 

Conclusion

I hope you've learnt a thing or two about how grad life is here at the U and in the US. Deciding on which university to pick to pursue your masters needs to be a very personal decision. I'll let you make an informed decision based on what you understood about it by reading this post. 

I wish you the best.

Cheers!


PS: You can find a few other FAQ and checklist documents at indianstudents.utah.edu/Freshmen. Go thru them. They might be helpful.

PPS: Read this document if you want to learn about the process of obtaining a drivers license in Utah.

PPPS: Bring your Indian Drivers license if/when you move to Utah. It makes the process of obtaining a new one here much easier. If you don't have one, take some classes in India, learn to drive and get an Indian Driver's license before you move here. Trust me, it's worth it.