Grad school four months out
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Grad school four months out
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Re: Grad school four months out
#2I am about to return to grad school after working a bit in industry; so this article is very relevant to me. I will be doing a Masters right now, but I do plan on doing a PhD afterwards.
I am constantly splitting my brains about how I can work on an "important" problem; something where my expertise will be relevant years after grad school, too. And I don't want to become a professor and there is a chance I might choose to go back to my home country (not much of compsci products, but very good e-commerce and banking); so my expertise should be of value even in a consumer-of-technology (not producer) economy.
If anybody has ideas about how to pick an area for research, I'd love to hear.
Re: Grad school four months out
#3I am about to return to grad school after working a bit in industry; so this article is very relevant to me. I will be doing a Masters right now, but I do plan on doing a PhD afterwards. I am constantly splitting my brains about how I can work on an "important" problem; something where my expertise will be relevant years after grad school, too. And I don't want to become a professor and there is a chance I might choo…
> If anybody has ideas about how to pick an area for research, I'd love to hear.
If you don't really know, maybe you shouldn't do it, or at least stop after your masters. PhD is not something you do some work to get, its rather something that comes along with the work you do.
Re: Grad school four months out
#4I am about to return to grad school after working a bit in industry; so this article is very relevant to me. I will be doing a Masters right now, but I do plan on doing a PhD afterwards. I am constantly splitting my brains about how I can work on an "important" problem; something where my expertise will be relevant years after grad school, too. And I don't want to become a professor and there is a chance I might choo…
If you want to make an impact on an important problem, I'd focus on the advisor first, not the area of research. Pick an advisor with a track record for strong publications in quality journals. Someone who produces quality research will typically have the best sense of what problems are and aren't important, and can guide you much better than bystanders who don't know your skills. In addition, a strong advisor will have the contacts necessary to get you in touch with other top researchers in your field, which is extremely important in producing high quality publications.
Re: Grad school four months out
#5It's good to hear that Cal's grad program is good. I'm in undergrad here right now, and I plan to start researching next semester so I can integrate myself a little more into this side of things. Any advice? If you haven't left yet I'll buy you lunch if I can pick your brain.
Re: Grad school four months out
#6Great post, thanks for taking the time to write it.
I took a similar route– quit my PhD program to join a startup at which I had interned the summer prior– and slowly find myself missing many aspects of grad school.
Will probably end back there at some point– if only there was a magical place with the best parts of grad school and the best parts of the startup world...
Re: Grad school four months out
#7Great post, thanks for taking the time to write it. I took a similar route– quit my PhD program to join a startup at which I had interned the summer prior– and slowly find myself missing many aspects of grad school. Will probably end back there at some point– if only there was a magical place with the best parts of grad school and the best parts of the startup world...
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Re: Grad school four months out
#8It's good to hear that Cal's grad program is good. I'm in undergrad here right now, and I plan to start researching next semester so I can integrate myself a little more into this side of things. Any advice? If you haven't left yet I'll buy you lunch if I can pick your brain.
I'm no longer at Berkeley, but I'm sure there are any number of professors or grad students who'd be happy to talk to you. I'd talk to Armando Fox if you want to get into research, he works with a lot of undergrads. He also runs a website (Research Match? something like that) which lists projects looking for undergraduates.
The CSGSA also hosts an undergraduate "research mixer" which is a chill way of speed dating a bunch of projects.
Re: Grad school four months out
#9I am about to return to grad school after working a bit in industry; so this article is very relevant to me. I will be doing a Masters right now, but I do plan on doing a PhD afterwards. I am constantly splitting my brains about how I can work on an "important" problem; something where my expertise will be relevant years after grad school, too. And I don't want to become a professor and there is a chance I might choo…
You have to be intrinsically motivated to succeed at getting a PhD, which normally means being strongly interested in your area of research. It's a lot of hard work; I wasn't kidding when I said I pulled three weeks of 16 hour days in a row (and that paper wasn't even accepted!).
If you've gotten an undergraduate and master's degree in computer science, you should already have a pretty good feel for the different areas. Choose the one you really want to immerse yourself in for reasons of pure interest, and pursue that one. Once you have the PhD, you can go on and do whatever you want afterwards. You don't have to stay in the same subarea as your thesis; lots of professors (my advisor included) have changed areas based on the times.
Re: Grad school four months out
#10I am about to return to grad school after working a bit in industry; so this article is very relevant to me. I will be doing a Masters right now, but I do plan on doing a PhD afterwards. I am constantly splitting my brains about how I can work on an "important" problem; something where my expertise will be relevant years after grad school, too. And I don't want to become a professor and there is a chance I might choo…
If you want to make an impact on an important problem, I'd focus on the advisor first, not the area of research. Pick an advisor with a track record for strong publications in quality journals. Someone who produces quality research will typically have the best sense of what problems are and aren't important, and can guide you much better than bystanders who don't know your skills. In addition, a strong advisor will h…
Depends on what you need.
The one with lots of publications in big-deal journals may or may not be running a sweatshop. And they may or may not be doing actually interesting science, because that game requires so much attention to fashion, fundability and grinding out large quantities of papers (contrary to common belief, prestigious journals do not mean journals publishing the highest quality papers).
But if you want to learn that particular trade then find the advisor best at it to study under.