nathan and audrey

This is somewhat of a hard post to write about because in a large sense I don’t have direct experience in what graduate admissions offices are looking at with respect to your background. I do know that your prior research experience can be the difference between you getting accepted or rejected. Some of this section will come from the guide: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf written by Mor Harchol-Balter. She has a much better perspective on what is a positive and negative from the admissions office viewpoint.

To get into the top graduate schools you need the following:

1. Good GRE scores
2. Good GPA
3. Prior Research
4. Great letters of recommendation

The first two of these are not as important when competing at the top schools. The reason why is because most of your graduate life will be focused on one thing: research. Therefore, the most important factor at the top institutions is how good of a researcher you project to be. This projection comes primarily from your past research experience. So the key to looking good for the admissions office is to prove that you have great potential as a researcher. A 4.0 and 800s on the GRE are not good enough at this level.They may be required to hit the bar minimum, but those alone will not get you in.

The question is then how do I get research experience? There are several options which include: (the numbers and main sections here are as provided by the previously mentioned grad school talk, but the descriptions following the bold letters come directly from my own experience).

1. Undergraduate research with a professor. The relationship you develop with your undergraduate professors is extremely vital because not only will they give you research opportunities, but they will also be the people who write your letters of recommendation. I have had several great relationships with professors leading to great undergraduate research opportunities. I was able to perform departmental honors and get credit for said research. So the best option is to start discussing potential research opportunities with professor you know well. At the larger institutions the advisors carry a few undergraduate researchers, which is a good place to start. Find out what your school has to offer and go with it. The key to finding a research opportunity is to have a good relationship with the professor you want to work with. It’s important to note that I went to a somewhat smaller undergraduate department, which might have made it easier to find this connection with a professor. A better description of how to find a professor is here http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf :

1. How to ask a professor to do research with him:
   i. Make a list of professors with whom you might want to work. Most professors have a web page with lots of papers and descriptions of their research. Take your time and read these.
   ii. Make a summary sheet about yourself. This is a one-page piece of paper which you will be giving out. It should have the following information about you:
   (a) Your photo. Professors can’t remember names, but they do remember faces.
   (b) Your name and contact info.
   (c) Brief description of your research interests.(d) Your availability – are you looking for a full-time summer position, a part-time fall position, both? How many hours can you devote to this project? Are you looking for class credit?
   (e) List of every class you took and your grade and the professor you took it with (professors like to talk to each other about you).
   (f) Relevant previous experience and skills.
   iii. Talk with your undergraduate advisor – at CMU this is Mark Stehlik – about whether anyone has an open position for undergraduate research. Mark maintains many such lists.
   iv. Pick a professor from your list. Go to his/her office hours or send email to schedule an appointment (most professors prefer office hours). Explain your situation and give your summary sheet. Be prepared for the following questions which he may ask you:
   (a) Do you have any ideas about what you might want to do research on?
   (b) Which of my projects are you most interested in working on?
   (c) Describe your math background.
   (d) Describe your programming background.
   With very high probability the professor will thank you for your interest, but tell you that he isn’t taking on any undergraduates this term. This does not mean that he hates you! Be brave! Try the next person on your list. You may have to try this 10 times. Hang in there. If the  professor does say yes, you need to be prepared with your own list of questions:
   (a) What is the goal of the project?
   (b) What exactly will be my responsibilities?
   (c) Whom will I work with? – e.g., will you work directly with the professor, with one of
   his graduate students, with another undergraduate?
   (d) What background material can I read to learn more about this project?
   (e) What textbooks can I study to learn more about this research area?

2. Summer Internships: This is not only a great opportunity for developing research skills, but it also gives students helps studetns to connect classroom learning with real world problem solving. As an engineer this seems to be a big gap to bridge. I don’t think I would be ready to do research had it not been for several internships that I have worked at over the last 4 years of undergraduate time. So start applying for research internships. I worked with a few DOE labs in my undergraduate career.
3. Get a Job: I have been a student intern and applied to grad school directly from undergrad. So I don’t know too much about this. If the job is research based it will be a lot more useful than any other type.
4. MS Student Project: you will work on some project as an MS student giving you research experience. This one as well, I have no grid for.
5. Work Alone on a problem: Find out an area of interests and start reading papers on that topic. If you find an interesting problem, propose a solution and start working on it. I have never done this and it is actually more closely related to how you get your thesis topic as a PhD student. So this might be hard, but if you are driven it will help out.

I hope that this guide is helpful to you. Getting research experience should be started as soon as possible. You should start at least 3 semesters before you graduate so that you can prove you have experience when you write apply.

Any corrections or addions would be welcomed in the comments.

–nathan

I recently applied to several graduate schools and thought it would be a great idea to help out those people getting ready to apply with a sort of how to and when to for graduate school applications. I made several mistakes and several good choices during the process. My mistakes centered mostly on the timing. This will be an overview of the graduate school admissions process and how to best navigate the intense amount of requirements associated with it. 

These steps assume that you, the reader, already knows that you want to pursue a PhD, and understand the implications of such a commitment.

In writing this guide I will pull from several sources including my own experience, but whenever I’m getting information directly from another source I will post a link to that site. My current list of sources include:

• Mor Harchol-Balter: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf
  • This guide is the one that I used most during my applications process. I’m going to use it and add my spin onto what it is talking about. It’s good to get the opinion and experience of someone who just went through the process. This guide is extremely thorough and worth the read.

I will be writing a series of posts to describe each of the following parts of the process:

1. Make yourself look good here
2. Deciding which schools to apply to
3. Creating a personal/research statement
4. Getting letter of recommendation writers
5. Fellowship applications
6. When you apply
7. Waiting for results

If I have forgotten an important step, comment and I will make sure to add a post for that. As I write these documents I will also add links from the list here to their respective pages. I assume as I go through the creation of the pages I will remember other things that must be discussed. I hope this is informative and useful.

–nathan