Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]

#61

Post by fooker » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #32

scottishcow wrote: post #16

> Some people never do research again after completing a Ph.D. For such people, the Ph.D. was largely a waste of time. Is it? Some of my friends went on to start successful companies after getting their PhDs. I'm a bit envious of them actually, I didn't have that option as my research was on an obscure topic with zero commercial potential. > The Ph.D. is a tremendous opportunity. You get to pick an advisor in any res…

6 years of a grad student salary is a big financial sacrifice compared to 6 years of a software industry salary, even at non-Silicon-Valley salary levels. The opportunity cost of a PhD can be pretty high. In CS you could theoretically make back a lot of that money with a higher salary after graduation if you then enter industry, but the gap in lifetime earnings up until that point is huge.

Eh, not everything has to measured by how much money you accumulated.

Re: Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]

#62

Post by gen220 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

papeda wrote: post #41

For anybody interested in the computer science PhD process, a good complement to the featured article is Philip Guo's "The PhD Grind" [1]. It's a long (115p, but with big text) blow-by-blow account of the author's PhD at Stanford in the late 00s. It's neither sensationalized nor sanitized, and it's weirdly engrossing for an account of PhD research. I read it before starting grad school and I think it helped my "meta"…

I just read the first half of it, and want to ditto how engrossing of a read it is.

I followed the path in his prologue: a BS/MS student with a lot of internships, which were mostly uninspiring but less uninspiring than school. Always vaguely disappointed that problems weren't "big" or "intellectual" enough (something I kind of look back on in shame). However, I took a different turn by getting very "in" to the engineering part of software in my last two years.

This led me to being purposefully selective with my last internship and eventual job search (optimizing for hard problems, interesting business models, and OSS/mature infrastructure), and I ended up very happily in industry, satisfying my intellectual curiosity at work and on the side.

And yet, I have always wondered what it would have been like to be a PhD student instead. From this narrative, it sounds very similar to being a junior engineer: you don't really know what's going on, and you're dependent on the graciousness and good will of more senior people to point you in the right direction, until you can build a compass of your own.

Thank you very much for this link, it's like gazing into another branch of the universe for me.

Re: Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]

#63

Post by seanwilson » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:41 AM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #53

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much to lose... except four to six years of your life. If you think of your working life, which has maybe 45 years, four to six years is a fairly major cost. That's a fairly high cost even if it's fun . It still may be worth doing, and the fun may tip the scales, but... "don't have much to lose" is I think inaccurate.

You misunderstood: I was referring to trying out a PhD for those curious about it. Worst case, you spend ~2 years and get out with a MS degree.

> Worst case, you spend ~2 years and get out with a MS degree.

I wouldn't bet on that and it's rarely that clean. I think a very common story with PhDs is:

1) after a year or so you have huge doubts you're going to finish

2) you consider quitting but don't want it to look bad on your resume, you don't want to be seen as a quitter, you don't want to let people down, you don't want the money you've spent so far to be for nothing, you know if you give up now you'll never be able to try again etc.

3) you hope it'll get better and push on.

This problem then compounds itself year after year as 2 becomes a increasingly weightier issue and sunk cost fallacy takes over.

Re: Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]

#64

Post by mettamage » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:51 AM UTC

papeda wrote: post #41

For anybody interested in the computer science PhD process, a good complement to the featured article is Philip Guo's "The PhD Grind" [1]. It's a long (115p, but with big text) blow-by-blow account of the author's PhD at Stanford in the late 00s. It's neither sensationalized nor sanitized, and it's weirdly engrossing for an account of PhD research. I read it before starting grad school and I think it helped my "meta"…

I read his book as well! It's an amazing book. It helped me to come to terms with whether I wanted to do a PhD or not. The result: maybe later in life, but not now. The risks are way greater than I expected.

Re: Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]

#65

Post by mettamage » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

glangdale wrote: post #55

jvanderbot wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the definition of "research". If you call it "publication", then yes, it seems like a waste. If you call it "development of new widgets after principled approaches consistent with or beyond the state of the art", it starts to feel like a Ph.D can be training to do really great work in industry.

Very much this. I have spent a considerable post-PhD period developing "new widgets" as you put it, and I constantly feel the benefit of (a) the early training of my PhD and (b) the benefit of commercial work done in the framework of "(a)". That seems a bit obscure, but think of it as this analogy: Person A never does any serious training in a sport, and then goes on to spend 10 years playing "hit and giggle" tennis…

I have one anecdata point, kind of. It's not PhD level but master versus the non-academic route.

TL;DR: my friend is more practical (e.g. better at bandaid solutions). I am more integrated with theory and practice (e.g. diagnosing issues from sillicon to high level). When things are simple, he is faster. When things are harder, I am the only one who can solve it.

===== THE WHOLE STORY ======

I simply did a bachelor + master in CS (security + web/mobile). My friend is a semi self-taught web developer and (soon to be) pentester.

Friend in Web:

When he became serious about web development, he went to a coding bootcamp. When I started teaching web, he had 1 year of company experience.

Me in Web:

I had some hobby experience with web, but because I had CS fundamentals and a good teaching style, I was hired to start teaching his course.

Result:

My friend was more practical than me. He came with more bandaid-style solutions which were sometimes warranted (time-constraints) and sometimes they weren't. For me, it helped me to bridge theory and practice.

Alrighty, round 2: pentesting.

Friend in Pentesting:

It took him a year (!) to get his bearings and find a curriculum he wanted to learn. In this year he learned a lot about pentesting which is how he could verify that he found "the magic bullet" of curriculums. By the way the "magic bullet" for entry level pentesters is: go to hackthebox.eu and if you want to get certified (i.e. recruiters will notice you), do OSCP. He did a lot of different stuff before he got to this conclusion (honorable mention: VHL - Virtual Hacking Labs).

Me in Pentesting:

My friend invited me to join him on hackthebox.eu because he knew I did courses in web + network security, binary & malware analysis and hardware security. I go in and slay the boxes together with him. The key difference: he is fast, I am slow but I am capable of hacking the most difficult levels (which they call insane boxes).

Result:

We teach each other a bit of what we know. He helped me get faster with easy boxes. I helped him to (almost) hack insane boxes. In doing so, I taught him x64 assembly and some C.

Re: Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]

#66

Post by vzuvz » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:12 AM UTC

In case there are any CS PhD students at top colleges in the US reading this, I'd appreciate some advice: I am currently applying for a PhD in Germany (RWTH), and although I am excited about that place, I think I'd rather do a PhD in a top US School (for a couple of reasons that I won't detail here). The thing is that admissions for US schools do not seem to start before September, and in case I get accepted in Germany I'd have to decide whether to accept or not without having the opportunity to even apply for American schools. My question is about whether I'd have a decent shot of getting into such programs or not. Because if I don't then it makes sense to take an opportunity somewhere else before even applying there.

My relevant credentials are: I'm currently doing my Ms. Sc. at University of Chile, and have published the following papers: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.10000 (accepted at FUN2020) https://ioinformatics.org/journal/v10_2016_19_37.pdf (IOI2016) https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.11693 (ICDT2020) https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3329486.3329498 (Workshops DEEM2019 and AMW2019), and I'm currently preparing what will be my master thesis to be submitted to a conference as well.

Does this look like a solid enough profile to get a decent shot at a top US PhD program?

Re: Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]

#67

Post by bubba1236 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:21 AM UTC

papeda wrote: post #41

For anybody interested in the computer science PhD process, a good complement to the featured article is Philip Guo's "The PhD Grind" [1]. It's a long (115p, but with big text) blow-by-blow account of the author's PhD at Stanford in the late 00s. It's neither sensationalized nor sanitized, and it's weirdly engrossing for an account of PhD research. I read it before starting grad school and I think it helped my "meta"…

this is a great read but damn that sounds horrible

Re: Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]

#68

Post by akhilcacharya » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

plushprocessor wrote: post #5

What isn't often discussed is how hard it is to go from a no name school that isn't ranked highly to an elite school. At a non-elite school your recommenders may be unknown to the admissions committee, the 'level' of education these applicants receive can be questionable ("What does an A mean from this program and how does it compare to our class?"), their research experience could be weak, student visibility could b…

I came to this conclusion junior/senior year when I was thinking of focusing on applying to grad schools. 2nd author papers and a 3.92 probably aren’t enough these days - honestly just kind of depressing to see my undergrad shut out these opportunities after hearing people say “it’s grad school that matters!” for four years.

Re: Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]

#69

Post by akhilcacharya » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:46 AM UTC

throwlaplace wrote: post #7

plushprocessor wrote: post #5

What isn't often discussed is how hard it is to go from a no name school that isn't ranked highly to an elite school. At a non-elite school your recommenders may be unknown to the admissions committee, the 'level' of education these applicants receive can be questionable ("What does an A mean from this program and how does it compare to our class?"), their research experience could be weak, student visibility could b…

easiest way to jump tiers is networking i.e. person to person conversations with PIs. if you're able to represent yourself well and describe your own research articulately and authoritatively it'll make up for a great deal of the gap between you and students from "elite" schools. unfortunately this networking happens at conferences which less resource-rich schools can't afford to send undergrads to. my hack: when you…

> this has worked for me no less than 3 times and led to 2 admissions.

I did this when pursuing undergrad research - I didn’t think this would help in grad school admissions. Was this during undergrad or after?

Re: Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]

#70

Post by leemailll » Thu, May 14, 2020, 5:53 AM UTC

For any one want to apply for grad school, I suggest visit phdcomics.com, and try to read at least top 100 there. It will bring some laugh, but I want to emphasize one thing: those jokes are real for many in grad school.