graduate admissions - Summer Schools and academic career

There are some prominent summer schools in CS (ML in particular) like MLS (Machine Learning Summer School).

What is the impact of attending such program on academic careers? (or applying for graduate programs)

For example, LxMLS (Lisbon Machine Learning School) this year has ~ 150 selected participants from all over the world.

The summer school offers the following things:

• Lectures (from basics to advanced topics)


• Lab sessions



• Talks


• Poster Session (based on which the students were selected)

Would it be a worthwhile investment of 1000-1200$ (Assuming I have the means to fund myself) or are such opportunities common and easily funded in US and I should be looking at not attending and saving money?

What else would this summer school bring forth for a recently graduated undergrad student?

Some of the summer schools have courses which can be treated as university credit equivalents. Is this true for all summer schools?

• Background: A student interested in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing and has taken online courses in these subjects.

Answer

I'm a PhD student in my final months, I'm in a different field (geophysics), but I've been to some summer-schools that I found very valuable. One lecturer even stated that summer schools are the best forum for scientific exchange. The summer schools I've been to didn't have as many participants as yours, but still, besides from the obvious point of acquiring knowledge and skills, summer school permit you to:

• Meet and talk to senior people in your field


• Meet other students, who may be going to be the future senior people in your field

The bottom line is: A summer school is as good as its lecturers are. Look at the list of lecturers, and ask a senior scientist you know to look at the list. Are there many famous names? Go for it. Are those mainly lecturers who spend most of their time teaching at not so well known institutes? Then you can probably spend your time and money better elsewhere. Depending on what's included (lodging/meals/...) and on how long it takes, 1000$ is not bad, although of course it's better if you can find someone else to pay it for you ;).