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Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application

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Re: Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application

#91

Post by mkramlich »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #88
mkramlich wrote: post #87

even better: don't apply at all. simply work/study/design/research/build whatever you wanted to do anyway. then share/publish/collaborate as you desire. or not. rinse, repeat. be a genius. or a crank. or an entrepreneur. or some mix. just do things and get it out there. see what sticks. not all smart people are in academia and not all people in academia are very smart. and you can publish, collaborate, ship and show…

Please don't underestimate how much it helps to have an adviser who has been through the ropes, or how awesome it is to have peers that are brilliant and working on similar stuff. I'm a self-taught programmer, so I know exactly what it's like to wing it, and I loved the PhD experience. The anti-PhD attitude on here is so weird, considering YC seems to be largely the same thing on a smaller timescale (weed out everyon…

understood

personally I think HN has both a pro-PhD, pro-academic, and also an anti-PhD or anti-academic segment. Sometimes within the same people! I certainly do.

I think it has both strengths and weaknesses. I think to the extent that universities and PhD track stuff serves an unnecessary and embarrassing anachronistic echo from the Middle Ages then that is a bad thing. But to the extent it helps teach disciplined thinking, cultivate a new generation of teachers and researchers, and helps to cull out noise or invalid/false/dumb contributions to the advancement of an art, it's a very good thing. The weed-out effect is good. I think some antipathy comes from the folks who perceive there to be a lot of non-weeds outside academia, and weeds within it. All discipline and curation is good. But it's not the unique providence of universities or professorship tracks. A lot of programmers have a libertarian bent too and dislike profit-maximizing monopolies or priesthoods, and universities/academia has at least a little of that aspect to them.

Re: Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application

#92

Post by aet »

ex_ex_nihilo wrote: post #66
mcguire wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and of course Brown (where the author is) is top-twenty, in fact tied at #20 [according to US News & World Report[1]] with places like Rice. It's pretty elite. [1] http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...

Wow, my school's not even on the list and our graduate program for CS/CE has less than a 13% acceptance rate.

This lists are basically meaningless. However, I wouldn't argue with the top 10 or so.

Re: Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application

#93

Post by pgbovine »

tanzam75 wrote: post #67
pgbovine wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i will vehemently argue that a Ph.D. in CS is one of the best ways that a young hacker can spend his/her 20s, regardless of which career they end up pursuing in the future. pursuing a Ph.D. + interning at several companies during summertimes = amazing combo for a wide variety of future careers. the ONLY enduring downside (which you mentioned) is the lost income. see: http://vimeo.com/73178238

> i will vehemently argue that a Ph.D. in CS is one of the best ways that a young hacker can spend his/her 20s No need to argue that point, because I'm not arguing against it. Look at the comment that I was replying to: > For those interested in a career in research and development, a PhD is almost a must. A PhD is a must for a career in research. It is not a must for a career in development. We use the term "R&D," b…

"I mean that the person who would otherwise have done the PhD is probably a self-starter who would've done other equally-valuable things in the meantime." -good point! i agree with that a lot. i see what you mean now.

Re: Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application

#94

Post by pinhead »

latj wrote: post #86
tjr wrote: post #2

An offer letter from Google or YCombinator (where you are the tech co-founder) which serves as evidence that you passed a challenging programming interview at Google, or that YCombinator believed you would be successful at developing your company product. Interesting. Because I have no intention of moving to a Google or YCombinator location, I never applied to either, but this makes me wonder if merely having been of…

The other question is- if you have an offer letter from Google or YCombinator in hand, would you really want to go to Brown? At Google it will be like going to grad school except you will be better funded, working with more consistently smarter people, and you will be getting paid instead of racking up debt. As a YCombinator founder you'd basically already be in the position that a Brown computer science graduate hop…

How exactly would you be racking up debt as a computer science Ph.D student? You don't pay for tuition, you get paid a pretty decent stipend + health insurance and you probably will do many industry/research internships (where you get paid very well). I say this with experience, as I am a CS Ph.D student and make more than enough to live on with a modest lifestyle and I have no debt. Plus if you get an outside fellowship, which most successful students do, you'll essentially be able to work on just about anything you want (I don't think this can be said for a random Google employee, however this is probably true for a YC founder). The Ph.D lifestyle is pretty great imho...at least in CS (non-CS, that's a whole other story).

Re: Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application

#95

Post by p1esk »

Balgair wrote: post #71

I'm applying as we speak, but in Bioeng. When I email professors and get to talking they always coach that they do NOT have control over the admissions process, that a committee acts as Maxwell's demon. Though I am not applying to Brown and do not know anything about the internals of their process, this seems to indicated that professor Huang has at least some control over the admissions. If I were professor Huang, I…

Are you kidding?

Of course a professor has control over the admission process. If he wants you on his team, you're in, unless you have a criminal record, or GPA below 3.0 (or whatever is absolute minimum for that particular grad school).

Think of it as a hiring process, with the professor as a hiring manager.

Re: Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application

#96

Post by pgbovine »

cmeiklejohn wrote: post #70

I think this is a very interesting idea, and I look forward to the results of the experiment! Allow me to take a moment to reiterate some of the comments I left on the Georgia Tech master's thread [1], specifically as a student who has taken graduate level computer science courses at Brown University with the majority of his experience working in industry. * I went directly into industry in 1998 working at a software…

what kind of research are you interested in for Ph.D.? i can't seem to find your academic info from your HN profile. email me if you want to chat more.

Re: Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application

#98

Post by skj »

mcguire wrote: post #34
segmondy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. I have no intention of moving to Cali, but one thing I do plan to do when I go to vacation West next year is to apply to Google, possibly Facebook or/and Amazon. If I get the offer letter, I can frame it and use it as negotiating tactic here in the midwest. It's almost as good as saying "I worked at Google"

Possibly better: you don't have to actually work at Google. 80% of the benefit minus 1% of the opportunity cost.

That's a very interesting perspective on working for Google. That is, that it's a waste of time. In my experience, working at Google is a blast both in terms of compensation and exciting projects.

Re: Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application

#99

Post by graycat »

Usually the Ph.D. is aimed at being a college professor and working toward tenure. The CS Ph.D. now seems to be aimed at such a professor but also at a career as an employee.

Sorry to say this, but Ph.D. or not, it is getting clear that in the US being an employee is no good for a career.

Can get hired as an employee in your 20s, but the chances go down in your 30s, and the chances go to near zero long before your 40 year career is over. Exception: If you rise high into management, then you might be able to continue to get hired until, say, 50. And high management positions commonly don't last very long.

E.g., a big tech company might hire 100 Master's or Ph.D. degree holders, promote 1 to management, and at age 35 or so fire the other 99. Then the other 99 can wish that they could convert their Ph.D., say, in electronic engineering, to an electrician's license or had followed the path of a friend in high school who was mowing grass and now has 5 crews mowing grass and is getting into landscape architecture and commercial instead of just residential clients.

In broad terms, for a long career in the US, be a sole proprietor with a geographical barrier to entry. If want to do something technical, then be a CEO of a startup that takes advantage of your technical background. For being an employee, regard that as a temporary slot that will have to be replaced by owning part or all of the business from which you get your income.

Then, a problem with a Ph.D. is that you spend in grad school most of your 20s when you are most employable. Then to go into the job market in your late 20s or 30s can be a big disappointment because, really, the jobs are for subordinates, not narrow subject matter expert researchers. Actually, a Ph.D. can be highly resented, can be a black mark on your resume.

Be careful.

Re: Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application

#100

Post by flyrain »

pinhead wrote: post #94
latj wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other question is- if you have an offer letter from Google or YCombinator in hand, would you really want to go to Brown? At Google it will be like going to grad school except you will be better funded, working with more consistently smarter people, and you will be getting paid instead of racking up debt. As a YCombinator founder you'd basically already be in the position that a Brown computer science graduate hop…

How exactly would you be racking up debt as a computer science Ph.D student? You don't pay for tuition, you get paid a pretty decent stipend + health insurance and you probably will do many industry/research internships (where you get paid very well). I say this with experience, as I am a CS Ph.D student and make more than enough to live on with a modest lifestyle and I have no debt. Plus if you get an outside fellow…

Get paid a pretty decent stipend + health insurance? Most Ph.D student got less than $2000/month before tax, even less than $1500/month and should pay for health insurance by themselves. OK, decent, how to define decent.
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