4 ms·
As far as I can see, the top PhD programs are getting better and better applications for the same number of slots, and the process is becoming far more competit
by arjunnarayan 13y ago
As far as I can see, the top PhD programs are getting better and better applications for the same number of slots, and the process is becoming far more competitive. There are plenty of students coming in with publications at good venues (maybe not NIPS, SOSP, STOC level). It used to be that students came in without doing research, but that doesn't seem to be the norm any more.
I don't know how I got into grad school --- looking at the qualifications the incoming students have these days I don't think I'd make it --- and I only started my PhD 4 years ago.
This ratcheting up in qualifications is happening at every level in academia (and not just in CS). I know some grad students whose work and lifestyle is best described as "tenure track professors in the 80s." I know researchers at top labs like MSR who were hired on the strength of a _single_ OSDI publication. I had one as a second year PhD student, and I'm so far off the ball that I don't think I will even be attempting to go on the academic job market when I graduate. At this point I think it's pretty fruitless to apply to do a PhD without having prior research experience, ideally with a publication. I may be getting too jaded and pessimistic though. Consider alternate points of view.
On the other hand, if you can get in, it's a pretty amazing life of learning and developing industry relevant skills (if you're smart about it) on the NSF's dime. I know some of y'all are cynical about academia and like to badmouth PhD students as being unhirable and writing crap code, but consider that RTM is a top academic, and is pretty relevant as far as the startup scene is considered.
- ekm2 13y agoAre there any fellowships open to international students?
- arjunnarayan 13y agoAll good PhDs are funded (if it isn't categorically don't go). Typically this is through advisor's grants, which are usually from the NSF. I'm an international student (originally from India) and I'm funded through my advisor's NSF grant (I think. I'm not 100% sure since I don't know the exact details and he also has some additional funding from other sources like DARPA that he could be using). You should take the fact that I don't really know where my funding comes from as a good sign that PhD funding is very stable.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- throwaway1979 13y agoI'm curious what you plan to do after finishing your PhD? Have you considered doing/working at a startup? I assume post-doc is off the table since you are not interested in the tenure track grind.
- arjunnarayan 13y agoI'm not 100% sure. For now I'm concentrating on finishing a serious PhD (my plan is not to quit academia with a pity-PhD consisting of no serious publications). I'm working on a couple projects leading up to publication, and that doesn't leave much time for strategic planning :) But for future plans I would very much like to work on some large scale projects building out large scale infrastructure. I don't have much experience writing production code for large scale distributed systems --- my research has, by necessity, concentrated on prototypes and theoretical innovations. I would be very excited to join a group that rolls out cutting edge systems, such as what Matt Welsh, or Jeff Dean, or Eric Brewer are doing at Google. I'm not sure a consumer focused startup would offer such an opportunity (although I'm willing to be convinced).
- throwaway1979 13y agoHere is some unsolicited advise from an old timer. As a backup, do one of your internships in a dev shop. It can be Google, Amazon, Facebook, whatever. The key thing is ... it has to be non-research. It is far easier to do this kind of exploration as a student than later. Best of luck with your PhD and beyond!
- mtdewcmu 13y ago"...a pity-PhD consisting of no serious publications" ... right... that would probably be the worst of all worlds, considering that the piece of paper doesn't offer any guarantees, so hanging around just to get the diploma would be risky.
- Nate75Sanders 13y agoRTM is a massive outlier who isn't representative of the distribution you're describing.
- arjunnarayan 13y agoMatt Welsh, Eric Brewer, Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Mike Dahlin all have PhDs and lead teams that write serious production code at Google. Ion Stoica and Hui Zhang have started technically heavy networking startups. Joe Hellerstein has a new startup (I'm not familiar with the details). You don't hear much about them because they aren't sexy consumer facing startups of the type that HN is obsessed about. They typically focus on unglamorous but technically challenging problems of the kind that require deep expertise.
- timsally 13y agoAdd Tom Leighton (Akamai), Frans Kaashoek (Mazu Networks), Dawson Engler (Coverity), and maybe David Brumley (ForAllSecure) to that list. Profitable startups are not uncommon among professors in top departments.
- _delirium 13y agoSome more, fairly randomly chosen: Peter Norvig (USC->Berkeley->Google), Chris Lattner (Illinois->Apple, LLVM), Daniel J. Bernstein (Illinois, qmail/djbdns), Donald Knuth (Stanford, LaTeX), Hadley Wickham (Rice, ggplot2), the whole PLT Scheme/Racket team, etc.