This reminds me of YC's "Apply without an idea" experiment. Both experiments seem to arise from a innovator's insight that a whole class of otherwise highly qualified candidates self select out because of a self perception that they don't "fit the mold". This is especially true of YC, where there are so many articles every day that tell the story of a founder who "saw a problem, and set off on this quest to solve it" that people who don't have an idea on hand when YC applications come up can immediately self exclude. Never mind that many great founders pivoted more than once on their way to success.
I'm excited to see this experiment "meet the marketplace", and see what pans out. Given the small number of PhD students these top programs take each year, just yielding one or two great people into the PhD program that otherwise wouldn't have applied seems like it'd really move the needle.
[Disclosure: I went to undergrad with Jeff and we're good friends. He really is a great "mold-breaker" himself and I'm excited to see how a great "hacker of systems" in the best sense of the word changes academia during his career]
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 offered an opportunity at such a place could have value. Even if one never intended to follow through.
Which might not be a great thing for the folks reviewing applications...
In the UK in some areas such as finance and business there are many people who apply to be an Army officer, and go all the way through selection, but never intend to join up. They do it just so that they can put on their CV (resume) that they've passed Army officer selection.
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"
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 hopes to one day get to. I like universities. I hope they figure out how to stay relevant.
In which case you move to #2 which (to me) seems much easier to get: A Github or other online repository of your source code demonstrating contributions to open source projects or impressive projects of your own.
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/systems engineer for a telecom working on Solaris deployments. I worked full-time and paid for my undergraduate education which I pursued part-time and which took me 9 years to finish. I majored in "information technology," as there was no computer science online program at Northeastern University. I didn't take any theory courses at all, and the majority of my course work was programming in languages like Java, C++, and C# (also COBOL, and the like...)
* I applied at Brown University after talking to the admissions and computer science departments multiple times, in which they told me I wouldn't be able to pursue a master's due to lack of independent or undergraduate research or an undergraduate education in computer science. The process of being told this was rather unfortunate, as the responses I received via e-mail telling me it wouldn't be possible were ended with "Sent from my iPhone."
* At the time I talked with them, I had been working at Basho Technologies for a year on Riak, an open source distributed Dynamo-style data store, as well as serving as a maintainer of rubygems.org.
* I was finally able to get accepted as a "non-degree" or "special" graduate student, which is allowed to take courses at full price. This role exists primarily to allow students to determine if they would be a fit for graduate school, at which point I would then have to re-apply for degree seeking status. This was possible because of an independent meeting I scheduled with Shriram Krishnamurthi, who, based on my industrial experience expedited the process along.
* Since starting as a "non-degree" student, I've been heavily motivated to attempt to stand out from other candidates for when I eventually re-apply to be a degree seeking student by independently publishing papers, publishing a blog, organizing a podcast, and speaking at conferences.
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.
Hmmm. This is an interesting spin the Brown Professor has taken on the PhD application process.
For those interested in a career in research and development, a PhD is almost a must. Getting on to a prestigious PhD programme is incredibly competitive, and as someone who has gone through the whole process and seen it from both sides, I can say that I've seen individuals who'd make great computer science researchers not being given an opportunity because they don't tick the right "boxes".
Sure it's not perfect, but worth a shot if you're interested.
For those interested in a career in development, a PhD is rarely helpful. For the PhD candidate, it can even be counterproductive, as any gains in initial salary will be more than offset by the lost salary during the 5-6 years of the PhD.
Do you have any thoughts on how to get started on this road? I feel like I missed the boat sometimes, though I'm using doing interesting-ish work professionally and in open source. I'm not interested in chasing the framework-of-the-week, I want to work on tools that advance how we think about software.
This may be something I do later in life, but I feel very wired for R&D + tooling, and a bit locked out of these types of jobs without a PhD.
I'm surprised that admission into Computer Science PhD programs is so competitive. I would think that with the strong job market for computer scientists, there would not be as many students who would want to make the commitment to a PhD program over other job and entrepreneurial opportunities.
I am not surprised that it is competitive (PhD's in general are kind of oversupplied), but the form the competition takes:
"Maybe you didn't publish as an undergraduate.... Maybe you can't even write a very compelling research statement yet."
When I was applying, no undergraduates had published research. And the "research statement" could hardly be described as "compelling"; that was one of the points of the breadth requirements for the graduate program---my eventual research topic was completely unrelated to my interests or knowledge coming out of my undergraduate program.
Many US students do not go into PhD, because, as you mentioned, due to the strong job market (and also a 20k/year stipend). Most of the PhD students are foreign.
Because you always wanted to do academic research? Because you someday want to teach at the college level? Because you have no idea what you want to do and you want to keep your options open a while longer?
I left grad school to work in industry, but I’m not so naive as to think that everyone shares my preferences. I have friends who turned down Google offers c. 2001 to go to grad school, and they’ve never regretted that decision. (And I don’t regret the time I spent in grad school before leaving, either).
Like Jeff I am also a young faculty member at Brown (http://cs.brown.edu/~kraskat/) and I couldn't agree more with him. The Ph.D. application process has a lot of flaws. We (the Big Data Management Group at Brown) are also always looking for very talented people and similar to Jeff we started to hand out small challenges to candidates interested in doing data-centric systems research (see also http://cs.brown.edu/~kraskat/phd14.html). In addition, last year we started a research internship program (http://database.cs.brown.edu/big-data-internship) - it is quite competitive to get in, but still easier than to be admitted to the PhD program, and the best way for both sides to determine if there is a good fit with the group and the PhD program. Finally, I would like to mention, that we actually do consider MOOC courses and github portfolios as part of the candidate evaluation.
While I agree the application process needs improvement, I think this entry greatly exaggerates how hard it is to get into a PhD program. Since when do you need to be published to even get into a PhD program? When I went through the application process, I got accepted by 6/6 schools that I applied to, with no publications and no real ideas for what I wanted to research on. In fact, most PhD students actually don't even have a research topic until the second or third year of grad school. I think more than anything, your personal statement is the deciding factor in a lot of cases. What had worked for me was to have a list of research topics and faculty from each school that you're interested in working with, and directly address them in your statement. Other than that, of course whatever supporting evidence to differentiate yourself is helpful. I thought proposing to use offer letters from Google or YC (both have much lower acceptance rates than a PhD program) just to prove you can code is pretty hilarious.
These days, good luck getting in a top tier institution for CS without a solid track record (I.e. a publication or two at an ACM/IEEE conference, and letters of rec from reputable professors/researchers in your field). The letters of rec are what make or break your application.
I agree that it's a bit over the top, but that's how it is.
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.
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 would be very very careful about this, as sparks of racism, sexism, and homophobia can quickly ignite into a fire. I want to be clear, I am not accusing professor Huang of this at all. Heck I don't know the guy a bit and I do like this alternative approach to the application a lot. Still, he needs to be careful.
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.
Cool idea-- people inventive enough to go down an entrepreneurial route would probably be interesting/compelling candidates for academic innovation.
I actually think that creating many interesting projects + one's corresponding Github would be a better metric than getting a Google (or even YC) acceptance letter. You want people who are constantly tinkering and thinking of new ideas/projects/approaches and inventing just for the sake of inventing.
If you go too entrepreneurial, you might also be selecting for students who might be more amenable to dropping out from the program and doing a start-up (which then wastes the resources/time that Jeff mentioned he had to give to every PhD candidate).
I love this. Especially the part where it gives you a few problems that you can try to solve. Not only is a good way to find talent that may otherwise be detected. It increases the chances of finding new ways to solve some problems. (Edit: grammar)
As a person who was about to apply to PhD programs but changed my mind due to insufficient recommendations, I'm glad somebody else realizes that PhD admissions is utter bull crap.
185 dollar GRE that I can get in the 99th percentile on with ZERO studying? Grades that aren't normalized across institutions weighed heavily? Need recs from established professors who can slip in a good word for you?
Oh sorry, you were actually doing things that interested you, not necessarily things that would impress the right people. Oh sorry you took tons of hard classes at a prestigious institution and so have something less than 4.0. Oh sorry you hopped labs for a bit instead of staying with that boring CS guy that would've gotten you into any PhD program in America for 4 years. Oh sorry you spent a year or two out of college doing startup tech work without building credentials with other PhD grads but nevertheless solving research grade problems.
I've realized that the PhD admissions does not select candidates who actually want to do research. It selects candidates who want to be admitted into a PhD program. No thanks. I love science and math, and I love research, but I think the PhD application has been so harrowing for me, I won't consider it again unless drastic changes are made.
As a person who reads PhD applications and works with graduate students, bullshit.
I care a little about your GRE scores, it is a filter, you need some kind of standardized comparable. Congrats on getting in the 99th percentile (that's expected). I don't care much about your GPA. I might look at what classes you took. I will probably look at your reference letters briefly. They might be from professors, they might not. I don't care. I love the fact that you have some startup or industry experience, you are slightly more likely to actually know how to get things done.
The very first thing I read is your cover letter, then straight to your research statement which I will read in great detail. The only thing I care about is do you have a passion for research, are you likely to be successful at it.
At most research institutions in most areas of science, we have to pay our graduate students stipend and tuition, either right away or after a year. This is a damn good incentive to get students in who are going to do great research.
All I care about is getting great researchers in the door and (eventually, hopefully) into my lab. So, my advice: focus on your research statement. Tailor it to the department your are applying to, talk about the research they are doing there. But, have your own agenda. At least know what research areas you are passionate about.
HAHA. As a PhD student, I agree with most of your sentiments. The PhD application process is nothing, try applying for fellowships. Go to a prestigious institution, pull allnighters, to get a subpar gpa, and have no time for volunteering activities. These are the criteria you need to satisfy to get something like NSF GRP (Broader Impact is 50% of the application). You might have a better shot at a lesser prestigious university with a not-so-great engineering program and being a super smart person, killing it. Then, apply for fellowship --> you will get it. It is all a rubric.
Now on to the game of academia. It is one that is based on reputation, papers, and not money. No one cares for efficiency either and no one is building crap. All they are doing is trying out different "solutions," which may or may not make any sense. For instance, "hey guys, let's apply game theory to problem X, it will be a good/novel experiment and we can get a paper out of it." Waste of tax dollars. The logical answer that solves problem X might have already been solved and can be solved using ordinary methods, but academia doesn't want that. Research labs have business models, keep proposing new complexity on complexities, very unnecessary. Overcrowded fields like computer vision reek of this.
remote Ph.D. is a bad idea; the Ph.D. experience is isolating enough as-is, and pushing it remotely will exacerbate those problems. plus, innovation often happens in serendipitous in-person encounters in the hallway, lounge, and lab with students, professors, and research staff incidentally bumping into one another. see:
I'm a full time Ph.D. student. You might, of course, know that professors interact with the students very often (except if the professor is super busy always). I interact with mine almost every day. I do work with couple of collaborators in different countries. That is because my advisor knows them in-person before deciding to collaborate. I work with lab colleagues frequently. Remote makes all this extremely challenging.
Application looks too involved for Brown. When applying to 10 schools I wouldn't do this one because it has no overlap with my other application. I can reuse my letters of recommendation, I can't reuse this application.
I graduated quite some time ago. Getting letters of recommendation from professors would be impossible for me. I doubt I'd have one professor that knew me when I graduated let alone now years later. And yet, fulfilling these requirements would be very easy for me. I think it's very nice to have multiple routes in. Even if very few candidates avail themselves of this latter route, they might be interesting candidates worth strong consideration.
I think this would be useful for three groups of people:
(1) People who were planning to go into industry and already have, say, an offer letter from Google, or just a strong open source profile, but now aren't sure if they want to go into industry or academia. Being able to apply to Brown with their offer letter could reduce a lot of friction in their consideration of the academic route.
(2) People who've already tried to get into a top Ph.D. program the traditional route and failed. If this is your dream, and you don't have the grades or publications to get in otherwise, but you do have top programming chops, this could be a way for you to still get what you want.
(3) People who are already in industry and want to go into academia. They may have lost their academic connections at this point in time. Even if they had great grades, they may struggle to reconnect with old teachers to write the requisite stellar recommendation letters.
I wonder how would this work in fields other than CS. I'm in physics, and I got my D.Phil, but has been thinking seriously about the state of academic research, including the admission process & finding good student/lab fit.
Looking at the examples in the original post, I think the "demonstrate scholarship" section could directly apply for physics as well. Offer letters, github, are more more marginally useful...
Tough one. I'd love to hear how this works out, he sounds like a very thoughtful professor.
That sounds right up my alley! I'm currently tracking the geolocation of computer science professors by tracking the gaze of the NSA's agents who are watching them through the myriad of security cameras in our country.
My academic resume isn't going to get me noticed for a PhD program but it sounds like someone is finally looking at ability (I had great scores on the Computer Science GRE in 1990, but they apparently only last five years and that test has been discontinued)!
The GRE Computer Science exam was pretty heavy on theory and systems. This made sense for 1990, when CS departments were heavier on theory and systems. It has grown less relevant as the field of CS grew to encompass additional areas.
Thus, CS programs stopped requiring it, so fewer people took the exam, so the ETS decided to drop it.
You still need to do your masters, "along the way". If I remember correctly, in England, first you do you masters, and then start a PhD. 2 masters + 4-5 phd = 6.
Most European countries require a masters degree before starting, but the PhD is officially supposed to take 3 years (but usually takes 3-4+)
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 accomplishments without/outside a university paradigm.
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 everyone but the very best, have them make things, give them connections, ...)
bolu|12 years ago
I'm excited to see this experiment "meet the marketplace", and see what pans out. Given the small number of PhD students these top programs take each year, just yielding one or two great people into the PhD program that otherwise wouldn't have applied seems like it'd really move the needle.
[Disclosure: I went to undergrad with Jeff and we're good friends. He really is a great "mold-breaker" himself and I'm excited to see how a great "hacker of systems" in the best sense of the word changes academia during his career]
pgbovine|12 years ago
also check out jeff's related post on bringing startup culture to academic research! http://jeffhuang.com/adopting_the_startup_culture_for_resear...
tjr|12 years ago
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 offered an opportunity at such a place could have value. Even if one never intended to follow through.
Which might not be a great thing for the folks reviewing applications...
chrisseaton|12 years ago
segmondy|12 years ago
latj|12 years ago
agilebyte|12 years ago
mathattack|12 years ago
cmeiklejohn|12 years ago
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/systems engineer for a telecom working on Solaris deployments. I worked full-time and paid for my undergraduate education which I pursued part-time and which took me 9 years to finish. I majored in "information technology," as there was no computer science online program at Northeastern University. I didn't take any theory courses at all, and the majority of my course work was programming in languages like Java, C++, and C# (also COBOL, and the like...)
* I applied at Brown University after talking to the admissions and computer science departments multiple times, in which they told me I wouldn't be able to pursue a master's due to lack of independent or undergraduate research or an undergraduate education in computer science. The process of being told this was rather unfortunate, as the responses I received via e-mail telling me it wouldn't be possible were ended with "Sent from my iPhone."
* At the time I talked with them, I had been working at Basho Technologies for a year on Riak, an open source distributed Dynamo-style data store, as well as serving as a maintainer of rubygems.org.
* I was finally able to get accepted as a "non-degree" or "special" graduate student, which is allowed to take courses at full price. This role exists primarily to allow students to determine if they would be a fit for graduate school, at which point I would then have to re-apply for degree seeking status. This was possible because of an independent meeting I scheduled with Shriram Krishnamurthi, who, based on my industrial experience expedited the process along.
* Since starting as a "non-degree" student, I've been heavily motivated to attempt to stand out from other candidates for when I eventually re-apply to be a degree seeking student by independently publishing papers, publishing a blog, organizing a podcast, and speaking at conferences.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6510142
pgbovine|12 years ago
shiven|12 years ago
Love the co-op that NEU is so well known for. Excellent way to earn a degree while gaining real-world experience on the job :-)
DrSpock|12 years ago
For those interested in a career in research and development, a PhD is almost a must. Getting on to a prestigious PhD programme is incredibly competitive, and as someone who has gone through the whole process and seen it from both sides, I can say that I've seen individuals who'd make great computer science researchers not being given an opportunity because they don't tick the right "boxes".
Sure it's not perfect, but worth a shot if you're interested.
tanzam75|12 years ago
Only for a career in research is a PhD important.
mattgreenrocks|12 years ago
This may be something I do later in life, but I feel very wired for R&D + tooling, and a bit locked out of these types of jobs without a PhD.
brucehart|12 years ago
mcguire|12 years ago
"Maybe you didn't publish as an undergraduate.... Maybe you can't even write a very compelling research statement yet."
When I was applying, no undergraduates had published research. And the "research statement" could hardly be described as "compelling"; that was one of the points of the breadth requirements for the graduate program---my eventual research topic was completely unrelated to my interests or knowledge coming out of my undergraduate program.
DrSpock|12 years ago
zerr|12 years ago
ryuu|12 years ago
clarebear|12 years ago
stephencanon|12 years ago
I left grad school to work in industry, but I’m not so naive as to think that everyone shares my preferences. I have friends who turned down Google offers c. 2001 to go to grad school, and they’ve never regretted that decision. (And I don’t regret the time I spent in grad school before leaving, either).
kskz|12 years ago
pgbovine|12 years ago
btw i'm a big fan of jeff's approach and hope it works out well.
kraskat|12 years ago
solarix|12 years ago
GuiA|12 years ago
These days, good luck getting in a top tier institution for CS without a solid track record (I.e. a publication or two at an ACM/IEEE conference, and letters of rec from reputable professors/researchers in your field). The letters of rec are what make or break your application.
I agree that it's a bit over the top, but that's how it is.
graycat|12 years ago
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.
Balgair|12 years ago
p1esk|12 years ago
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.
mlyang|12 years ago
I actually think that creating many interesting projects + one's corresponding Github would be a better metric than getting a Google (or even YC) acceptance letter. You want people who are constantly tinkering and thinking of new ideas/projects/approaches and inventing just for the sake of inventing.
If you go too entrepreneurial, you might also be selecting for students who might be more amenable to dropping out from the program and doing a start-up (which then wastes the resources/time that Jeff mentioned he had to give to every PhD candidate).
huherto|12 years ago
banachtarski|12 years ago
185 dollar GRE that I can get in the 99th percentile on with ZERO studying? Grades that aren't normalized across institutions weighed heavily? Need recs from established professors who can slip in a good word for you?
Oh sorry, you were actually doing things that interested you, not necessarily things that would impress the right people. Oh sorry you took tons of hard classes at a prestigious institution and so have something less than 4.0. Oh sorry you hopped labs for a bit instead of staying with that boring CS guy that would've gotten you into any PhD program in America for 4 years. Oh sorry you spent a year or two out of college doing startup tech work without building credentials with other PhD grads but nevertheless solving research grade problems.
I've realized that the PhD admissions does not select candidates who actually want to do research. It selects candidates who want to be admitted into a PhD program. No thanks. I love science and math, and I love research, but I think the PhD application has been so harrowing for me, I won't consider it again unless drastic changes are made.
jxtx|12 years ago
I care a little about your GRE scores, it is a filter, you need some kind of standardized comparable. Congrats on getting in the 99th percentile (that's expected). I don't care much about your GPA. I might look at what classes you took. I will probably look at your reference letters briefly. They might be from professors, they might not. I don't care. I love the fact that you have some startup or industry experience, you are slightly more likely to actually know how to get things done.
The very first thing I read is your cover letter, then straight to your research statement which I will read in great detail. The only thing I care about is do you have a passion for research, are you likely to be successful at it.
At most research institutions in most areas of science, we have to pay our graduate students stipend and tuition, either right away or after a year. This is a damn good incentive to get students in who are going to do great research.
All I care about is getting great researchers in the door and (eventually, hopefully) into my lab. So, my advice: focus on your research statement. Tailor it to the department your are applying to, talk about the research they are doing there. But, have your own agenda. At least know what research areas you are passionate about.
ank286|12 years ago
Now on to the game of academia. It is one that is based on reputation, papers, and not money. No one cares for efficiency either and no one is building crap. All they are doing is trying out different "solutions," which may or may not make any sense. For instance, "hey guys, let's apply game theory to problem X, it will be a good/novel experiment and we can get a paper out of it." Waste of tax dollars. The logical answer that solves problem X might have already been solved and can be solved using ordinary methods, but academia doesn't want that. Research labs have business models, keep proposing new complexity on complexities, very unnecessary. Overcrowded fields like computer vision reek of this.
zura|12 years ago
pgbovine|12 years ago
http://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-From/dp/15944853...
bkamapantula|12 years ago
I'm a full time Ph.D. student. You might, of course, know that professors interact with the students very often (except if the professor is super busy always). I interact with mine almost every day. I do work with couple of collaborators in different countries. That is because my advisor knows them in-person before deciding to collaborate. I work with lab colleagues frequently. Remote makes all this extremely challenging.
Fomite|12 years ago
While it was possible, and I'd defend my decision to do it, it's a tough road, and not one I'd start out on if I could avoid it.
frozenport|12 years ago
benmccann|12 years ago
nilkn|12 years ago
(1) People who were planning to go into industry and already have, say, an offer letter from Google, or just a strong open source profile, but now aren't sure if they want to go into industry or academia. Being able to apply to Brown with their offer letter could reduce a lot of friction in their consideration of the academic route.
(2) People who've already tried to get into a top Ph.D. program the traditional route and failed. If this is your dream, and you don't have the grades or publications to get in otherwise, but you do have top programming chops, this could be a way for you to still get what you want.
(3) People who are already in industry and want to go into academia. They may have lost their academic connections at this point in time. Even if they had great grades, they may struggle to reconnect with old teachers to write the requisite stellar recommendation letters.
imrehg|12 years ago
Looking at the examples in the original post, I think the "demonstrate scholarship" section could directly apply for physics as well. Offer letters, github, are more more marginally useful...
Tough one. I'd love to hear how this works out, he sounds like a very thoughtful professor.
smoyer|12 years ago
My academic resume isn't going to get me noticed for a PhD program but it sounds like someone is finally looking at ability (I had great scores on the Computer Science GRE in 1990, but they apparently only last five years and that test has been discontinued)!
tanzam75|12 years ago
Thus, CS programs stopped requiring it, so fewer people took the exam, so the ETS decided to drop it.
xSwag|12 years ago
maximilian|12 years ago
Most European countries require a masters degree before starting, but the PhD is officially supposed to take 3 years (but usually takes 3-4+)
wukix|12 years ago
wschorn|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
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phdtrees|12 years ago
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mkramlich|12 years ago
chrismonsanto|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
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af3|12 years ago