"I recently met a first year PhD who would be very well o"ver the hill." Top-tier school. There's motivation for ya." Hey Thanks! "particularly if you aren't

"I recently met a first year PhD who would be very well o"ver the hill." Top-tier school. There's motivation for ya." Hey Thanks! "particularly if you aren't a monstrously strong candidate" Good Point. A "monstrously strong" candidate is what I am trying to be. Hey if we ask startup founders to be monstrously strong developers why not hold ourselves to the same standards as grad students. The journey is very interesting, forcing me to evaluate my deficiencies as a candidate and get better constantly. A scientist I am working with on some research software said recently, "You'd make a great PhD student at Carnegie Mellon" (where he got his PhD) and has promised to write a reccomendation, so there's some progress. We'll see how it goes.