u/Afraid-Bread-6370

Hey everyone, I'm a 2nd-year, 1st-sem CS student planning to take SCIE30001 next semester and could really use some input from people who've taken it.

I've found two professors willing to supervise me. One works on LLMs, distributed systems, and cloud (Kubernetes etc.), and the other researches ML more broadly.

I'm leaning towards the first professor cuz he's super approachable, his explanations are really clear, and I genuinely enjoyed his lectures more. My main hesitation is that his research area might be too challenging for me. That said, I don't have any ML research experience either, so neither option is exactly "safe."

A few things I'd love advice on:

1. How do you prepare for research as a complete beginner? What would help me perform well?
2. For those who've done SCIE30001 specifically, what are the assessments like? What would you do differently, or what do you wish someone had told you going in?
3. Any general tips for first-time researchers? Stuff to discuss with my supervisor beforehand, things to sort out early, common mistakes to avoid, anything really.

Any advice is appreciated, thank you!