What you should do to get selected for the 2nd Phase: Bertelsmann-Udacity Scholarship
This is a guide to help you get into the top 10% of scholars who will earn the additional 6-month Nanodegree scholarship.
In November 2019 I got selected for the scholarship challenge and I was so proud of it since many people got rejected and I felt myself privileged!
The Challenge was announced by Udacity in collaboration with the Bertelsmann company. Its aim was to select 15,000 students initially offer them an initial course material along with community support on Slack. The top 1500 students from those 15,000 would then be selected for the full Deep Learning Nanodegree sponsored by Bertelsmann.
After 3.5 Months I got another email from Udacity this time I get selected to the 2nd phase that mean an access to a nanodegree program, maybe you are like me at first asking what you should do? and how you can get to the 2nd phase? This article is here to help you.
The 6 things you should do to get selected for the 2nd phase:
- Overcome your initial fear/confusion/disappointment/overwhelmed.
- Complete your course material to 100%
- Manage your time.
- Participate in Slack: Udacity monitor all channels. Try to spend at least 10 minutes each day to see what’s going on in your country channel, in the announcement channel, and in the other channels you might be interested in.
- Make a network
- Enjoy! It’s always important!
Get rid of your Fear and/or Disappointment
When first you will get the email you will feel so lucky and happy you’ll enter to the class and the slack meet new people and start learning but after one or two days you will feel that there is a lot of people there and you can’t do it, maybe you will thing that you don’t have the right background to understand the course… a lot of ideas will pass by your mind fear, disappointment, overwhelming feeling, don’t worry it’s normal and all the students feel the same.
My advice for you is just start the work and do as much as you can but the secret is persistence.
Start a schedule maybe 30 min for the slack participation and 1 or 2 hours for the course a day but don’t give up or let it for after we know all that after never come.
Complete your course material to 100%:
the top one condition to get selected to the 2nd phase is to complete your course material, all the videos and the quizzes, again with a little of time management 1 to 2 hours a day or maybe 3 hours on the weekend you can make it and finish it all we have a large amount of time to finish and start some projects.
Manage your time:
Based on your schedule, you might feel that you are at a disadvantage, since there are a lot of people who can participate full time, don’t worry you will find a lot of people in the same situation or maybe worst but they try their best and finish the challenge or maybe two the secret is persistence again and always try to remember why you do all that and what you will get, for me I want to be an expert in AI field and change my career so this is my motivation, what about you?
Participate in Slack:
Read, ask questions, answer questions, post your work, start useful threads/topics, and you’ll be good, think out of the box and try to stay active you should do something unique for me I hosted an AMA tech session on the channel #women_who_code, wrote articles about my experience and share them, participate on the study jam days, participate daily on #60_days_of_code, I tried to be present on every AMA session and try to answer other students questions and help as much as I can.
Just put in your mind, this is not a competition against others; this is a competition against yourself, to prove to yourself that you can do this long term.
Make a network:
What I loved the most was the slack and the community, you will meet a lot of people from around the world sharing the same interested and try to do the best to help you, try to get involved and know other people trust me that will help you a lot.
Enjoy:
The last thing every moment and try to learn more and more everyday, don’t ever give up and stay positive.
Once again: it’s not hard, you can make it I know it take time, but it is absolutely worth it.
Now all what you need to do is go and do your best! Quality over quantity. Try to be helpful rather than a spammer. Complete all tasks in the classroom.
