I wonder how much attending different universities matters if we focus solely on the quality of research mentorship available to an EA-oriented student who hopes to reduce AI risks.
I plan to study dentistry at a medical university because I believe having earn-to-give as a backup option is important. However, my ultimate goal is to become an AI safety researcher. I therefore plan to collaborate with computer science professors at a nearby university and may spend around 40% of my time in college on AI-related research.
Suppose Medical University A is located near University C, which has a top 5 computer science department in Taiwan and around 60 professors working in CS-related fields. Medical University B, meanwhile, is near University D, which ranks around the top 10 and has approximately 35 professors in relevant fields.
University C is clearly stronger overall and would probably give me a better chance of finding a lab doing a more EA-aligned research topic. This gives Medical University A an advantage, but A is also more difficult to enter.
For example, suppose I were admitted to Medical University B through the first entrance exam. Would it be worthwhile to spend around four months preparing for another exam in order to enter Medical University A for better research mentorship? (assuming that I would get in medical university A on the second exam and that the two medical universities are otherwise similar?)
Even if you are uncertain, your 1-minute gut intuition about this topic would already be very helpful. Thank you very much for your time.
Hey! Wanna reiterate something I said in the other question you asked.
You need to talk to someone in real life with richer knowledge about the universities you’re considering and ideally someone’s who has gone down the same path. Internet advice is going to reflect people's intuitions about CS and medical school in the US and UK.
Rankings are immensely contextual. In some contexts, top 5 versus top 10 has no meaning. In others, it’s a big jump. In rare cases (though I think these are exaggerated), it can be better to get mentorship from the lower ranked place.
And the ranking likely reflects things that aren't what you're optimizing towards. For example, have CS professors mentored people outside their university? How is the AI safety community of grad students and bachelors? How much of as structure is there for networking? Is either school known for connections to Bay Area? These things can be very idiosyncratic
Hello Geoffrey: Thanks for your reply, and I'm also asking the professors in Taiwan I know on whether they would be open to collabortae with students from other colleges. You're right that this question is somewhat localized. EA people in Taiwan that's familiar with doing AI risks reserach would be the best to answer this question, however there are very few(<3 people) in Taiwan. Therefore I think it'd still be beneficial to see how western EA thinks about this question