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I'm a professor at a PhD-granting math department. I wish I could endorse this comment, but unfortunately it's incorrect. In general I'm not available to "deve

I'm a professor at a PhD-granting math department. I wish I could endorse this comment, but unfortunately it's incorrect. In general I'm not available to "develop a relationship" with people outside the system, and with no apparent credentials. I have too many demands on my time, so I prioritize developing relationships with students enrolled at my university. The one exception is if someone were to bring a genuinely useful idea to my attention. If someone had a good idea for improving the error terms in the Davenport-Heilbronn theorem, clearly understood the related literature, and brought this to my attention -- then I'd cheerfully work with them, even if they were an unemployed high-school dropout. But in practice this does not happen. I also am happy to answer questions about our graduate program, or my discipline, from strangers. For example if a stranger wrote and asked "How can I best learn analytic number theory" then I would answer them. But for people who seek out some sort of advisor relationship, then all I can really do is to encourage them to apply to our PhD program.

woofie11 6y ago
> If someone had a good idea for improving the error terms in the Davenport-Heilbronn theorem, clearly understood the related literature, and brought this to my attention -- then I'd cheerfully work with them, even if they were an unemployed high-school dropout. But in practice this does not happen. Yes, it does. That's the exact approach I used to get into grad school, and what I encourage others to do. Find a professor you like. Read their literature and get up-to-speed on their field. Engage with them around their work. It's rare for people to do this, but it works. Sometimes you might need to do this with 2-3 professors to find one who is hiring grad students that semester (and be careful about programs where one professor can't hire but students are brought into a program), but it's a much better approach than spending a decade optimizing to GPAs, GREs, and what-not. When someone does this, professors can have complete confidence the candidate can do the work, since they already are...
- impendia 6y ago
  Can I ask what field you're in? In mathematics in the US, "hiring grad students that semester" is not a common thing, and "programs where one professor can't hire but students are brought into a program" describes every program of which I'm aware. But, I stand corrected that my experience doesn't generalize as extensively as I had imagined.
  - woofie11 6y ago
    I'm in electronic engineering, but most of the experience is from computer science departments. There are programs like Caltech where students do rotations and aren't admitted into a lab. But for example, at the MIT Media Lab, a professor can explicitly pull in a student for their group (and it's bloody hard to switch, if there's an advisor-advisee conflict). And some departments are a hybrid, where a professor can pull someone in by writing an appropriate recommendation note to the admissions committee. If a professor says in a rec "I've worked with Alice for the past few months. If you admit Alice, we have a project defined together, and I have funding to pay for it," that's more-or-less an automatic admit, barring exceptional circumstances.
    - impendia 6y ago
      Interesting. My guess is that in EE and laboratory-based CS, professors have a lot of work that they can readily farm out to people working under their supervision. This is less true in math, where it typically requires a big effort to get a student up to speed.
leoh 6y ago
Sorry to be a jerk, but quickly rule out professors like this. Go listen to Maria Konnikova's interview on the Longform podcast here https://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-400-maria-konnikova https://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-400-maria-konnik... about her working with an advisor that was skeptical about the academic system. It's largely a racket and I say that having gone to an Ivy League and having worked in an elite lab in high school before working for Google. I would also listen to Thiel's talk on YouTube "Competition is for Losers" -- about creating genuine value and side-stepping, to the greatest degree possible, competition on metrics that a lot of people care about but just don't matter. I want to appreciate the academic system, but unfortunately so much of it is prestige and credential games. It's best to step outside of that and work with others that are beneficiaries of these systems as opposed to slaves to them. It took me years of finding a degree of independent success in spite of hating the Ivy League I went to (thinking it was my fault for years) to get over this mentality. If the last 5 years of working hard as an IC at a startup that had a 1B+ acquisition -- and watching others, too -- it's that you need to (a) be dedicated (b) work hard (c) work with others that believe in you (and only care so much about credentials) to accomplish great things. So many are precluded from accomplishing great things due to a sense of miserliness and scarcity that academic systems create (avoid individuals with this mentality/do not cultivate this mentality within yourself at all costs). There are wonderful, lovely things going on in academia, but also unconscious yet incredible MLM/Ponzi scheme-like things, too. Chose your path carefully and again, don't get discouraged. That said, perhaps academia isn't right for you, too. And don't get discouraged by that either.

woofie11 6y ago

> If someone had a good idea for improving the error terms in the Davenport-Heilbronn theorem, clearly understood the related literature, and brought this to my attention -- then I'd cheerfully work with them, even if they were an unemployed high-school dropout. But in practice this does not happen. Yes, it does. That's the exact approach I used to get into grad school, and what I encourage others to do. Find a professor you like. Read their literature and get up-to-speed on their field. Engage with them around their work. It's rare for people to do this, but it works. Sometimes you might need to do this with 2-3 professors to find one who is hiring grad students that semester (and be careful about programs where one professor can't hire but students are brought into a program), but it's a much better approach than spending a decade optimizing to GPAs, GREs, and what-not. When someone does this, professors can have complete confidence the candidate can do the work, since they already are...

impendia 6y ago
Can I ask what field you're in? In mathematics in the US, "hiring grad students that semester" is not a common thing, and "programs where one professor can't hire but students are brought into a program" describes every program of which I'm aware. But, I stand corrected that my experience doesn't generalize as extensively as I had imagined.
- woofie11 6y ago
  I'm in electronic engineering, but most of the experience is from computer science departments. There are programs like Caltech where students do rotations and aren't admitted into a lab. But for example, at the MIT Media Lab, a professor can explicitly pull in a student for their group (and it's bloody hard to switch, if there's an advisor-advisee conflict). And some departments are a hybrid, where a professor can pull someone in by writing an appropriate recommendation note to the admissions committee. If a professor says in a rec "I've worked with Alice for the past few months. If you admit Alice, we have a project defined together, and I have funding to pay for it," that's more-or-less an automatic admit, barring exceptional circumstances.
  - impendia 6y ago
    Interesting. My guess is that in EE and laboratory-based CS, professors have a lot of work that they can readily farm out to people working under their supervision. This is less true in math, where it typically requires a big effort to get a student up to speed.

leoh 6y ago

Sorry to be a jerk, but quickly rule out professors like this. Go listen to Maria Konnikova's interview on the Longform podcast here https://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-400-maria-konnikova https://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-400-maria-konnik... about her working with an advisor that was skeptical about the academic system. It's largely a racket and I say that having gone to an Ivy League and having worked in an elite lab in high school before working for Google. I would also listen to Thiel's talk on YouTube "Competition is for Losers" -- about creating genuine value and side-stepping, to the greatest degree possible, competition on metrics that a lot of people care about but just don't matter. I want to appreciate the academic system, but unfortunately so much of it is prestige and credential games. It's best to step outside of that and work with others that are beneficiaries of these systems as opposed to slaves to them. It took me years of finding a degree of independent success in spite of hating the Ivy League I went to (thinking it was my fault for years) to get over this mentality. If the last 5 years of working hard as an IC at a startup that had a 1B+ acquisition -- and watching others, too -- it's that you need to (a) be dedicated (b) work hard (c) work with others that believe in you (and only care so much about credentials) to accomplish great things. So many are precluded from accomplishing great things due to a sense of miserliness and scarcity that academic systems create (avoid individuals with this mentality/do not cultivate this mentality within yourself at all costs). There are wonderful, lovely things going on in academia, but also unconscious yet incredible MLM/Ponzi scheme-like things, too. Chose your path carefully and again, don't get discouraged. That said, perhaps academia isn't right for you, too. And don't get discouraged by that either.