# The Typical Successful Career Starts with Rejection

*March 14, 2018* | #career-advice

[Moritz Hardt][mrtz] posted a [tweet][mrtz_tweet] the other day saying "It's
that time of the year to keep in mind that the typical start of a successful
academic career is getting rejected from a bunch of good grad schools." Lots
of people replied about how their own failures did not stop them. This post is
my own response.

[mrtz]: https://mrtz.org
[mrtz_tweet]: https://twitter.com/mrtz/status/950493433822560257

![A screenshot of Moritz Hardt's Tweet saying: "It's that time of the year to
keep in mind that the typical start of a successful academic career is getting
rejected from a bunch of good grad schools."](/files/a-career-starts-with-rejection/mrtz_tweet.png)

My story is a little different than Moritz's. [I do not have an academic
career][phd], I was rejected, not by a few good grad schools, but by all of
them, and yet, I am happy with where I ended up.

[phd]: /blog/should-i-get-a-phd/

## To Grad School

I wanted to be a Physicist since I was fourteen, so I knew the path before me:
BA, PhD, professor. As I finished up my BA at [Berkeley][ucb], I started
preparing for the GRE. But test anxiety caused me to study poorly, and
ultimately my test results were terrible. None of the graduate schools I
applied to in 2008 accepted me.

[ucb]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Berkeley

I tried again in 2009. Not the GRE, since thinking about it brought even more
anxiety than the first time, but simply applying once again to various
graduate schools. Thankfully, the [University of Minnesota][umn] (and more
specifically, the too kind [Yuichi Kubota][yk]) looked past my test scores and
gave me a spot. I wasn't the only person he gave a chance to, but I'm thankful
that I was one of them.

[umn]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Minnesota
[yk]: https://cse.umn.edu/physics/yuichi-kubota

## And Onward

I graduated from grad school in 2015 and went to [Insight Data
Science][insight]. From there I got a job doing machine learning at
[Lab41][lab41], where I published [a paper][paper] ([arXiv][arxiv]) and spent
two great years learning from my brilliant coworkers. Now, I lead a data
science team at [Intuit][intuit]. Failing to get into graduate school in 2008
was crushing at the time, but it taught me that everyone falls, and sometimes
they just need a bit of a hand to get back up and on their way.

[insight]: https://www.insightdatascience.com
[lab41]: https://www.lab41.org
[paper]: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q2bquqawpg8htgc/0956.pdf?dl=1
[arxiv]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.06962
[intuit]: https://www.intuit.com

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- [The Pyramid and the Spire: Management and Individual Contributor Tracks](/blog/management-vs-ic-the-pyramid-and-the-spire/)
- [Data Science, Compensation, and Asking for Money](/blog/data-science-asking-for-more-money/)