thealig

I am planning to do my masters in CS the future. My initial interests while applying were specifically in NLP /computational linguistics which I noted in the SOPs . However, I don't have much experience in it other than a survey paper about common sense reasoning in my undergrad. for various reasons, I ended up doing a sponsored project in embedded (rasp pi hooked up to a PLC for measuring biogas plant values) which i did not enjoy much.

Recently, I found compilers/programming languages very intriguing and contemplating preparing on the topic. Maybe getting some experience by contributing/using open source projects like LLVM etc. Currently, I am self studying some prerequisites like linear algebra that would hopefully come useful (mainly for ML).

First off, is it a good idea to choose topics and prepare to gain some experience in the domain before starting the masters? if so, how to approach any topic and prepare?