Would authoring a R package on CRAN compensate for a weak GPA (<3.5) in PhD admissions?
Writing R packages
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This is the plot of a short story I’m working on. A budding young grad student writes a package that writes packages, but *plot twist* the meta package is racist.
You could write a package that writes other packages. A meta package of sorts. I bet people would like that.
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Would read.
This is the plot of a short story I’m working on. A budding young grad student writes a package that writes packages, but *plot twist* the meta package is racist.
You could write a package that writes other packages. A meta package of sorts. I bet people would like that. -
the answer is a really big no. writing R packages only makes sense if you 1. have enough CS background to know how to make something faster or 2. you have a methodological paper in conjunction with it.
If 1: wtf are you doing trying to become a political scientist
If 2: just write the paper, that's what actually is important to grad admission committees.but i also wouldn't trust an R package from someone with a bad undergrad GPA and no further degrees. Maybe if you have low grades in biology or something but have good grades in CS and stats, I'd be fine. But if you're getting bad grades in quant classes, I don't think you have the aptitude to make a worthwhile r package without a bunch of additional training in the first place.
Of all the ways in the universe that I can think of to try to overcome a bad GPA, trying to write and publish an R package has to be one of the worst in terms of cost-benefit.