Quote:
Originally Posted by Hachima  With only a week, maybe you don't have a choice at this point. But as some general advice, if Rare is your dream company that you want to work for, don't apply to it first. |
The bolded part is absolutely vital advice. If you have
any doubts about your ability to land a job at Rare, do not apply there first. The sad but unfortunate truth is that you need to have experience to show off, and from reading your post I got the sense you don't exactly have something already prepped and ready (by the way, I wouldn't consider your colliding ball simulation spectacular, either; I had to do that for a homework assignment in my sophomore year).
My personal suggestion is try to find something that could be construed as menial, in the programming field. At the same time, I'd strongly suggest trying to build some sort of demonstration (heck, I've had the thought of doing a "3d resume explorer" of sorts to go with the paper copy, to show off graphics ability and physics and whatnot). In other words, think of a project that sells you, then make it. It won't take a couple of months (longer, surely), but at the same time I'd be very surprised if you didn't learn something new from it, be it from research or just how you went from scratch to finish. The main thing they're going to be looking for is:
can you finish what you start?
I did have one question: you said you had a terrain editor as your dissertation. So you've just finished your doctorate? That's probably a big point in your favor, and the terrain editor would be a
huge sample to provide to a company; the ability to make in-house tools and other tools like map editors and whatnot gets big +internets, or so I'm told. If the school owns the rights to the code, I'd strongly suggest you try to get permission to use it for applications and whatnot. I'd be surprised if they said no. A doctoral thesis/project is something I'd consider a serious portfolio piece. It's your original work, and obviously you finished it, so use that.