/awesome-phd-advice

Collection of advice for prospective and current PhD students

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Collection of advice for prospective and current PhD students

By Paul Liang (pliang@cs.cmu.edu), Machine Learning Department and Language Technologies Institute, CMU, with help from many friends at CMU. If there are any links I missed, please let me know! Credit goes out to the original authors of each link.

Table of Contents

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Advice for prospective students

General advice

Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science by Mor Harchol-Balter

Graduate School Advice by Stanford CS

Undergrad to PhD, or not - advice for undergrads interested in research by John Hewitt

HOWTO: Get into grad school for science, engineering, math and computer science by Matt Might

Applying for a PhD in NLP by Zhijing Jin and ACL Year-Round Mentorship Session

Student Perspectives on Applying to NLP PhD Programs by Akari Asai, John Hewitt, Sidd Karamcheti, Kalpesh Krishna, Nelson Liu, Roma Patel, and Nicholas Tomlin

Machine Learning PhD Applications — Everything You Need to Know by Tim Dettmers

Demystifying ML PhD Admissions to US Universities by Hima Lakkaraju

A long, rambling, mostly personal corpus of advice on applying to Computer Science grad school (for UWCSE students) by Justine Sherry

Ph.D. Applications: FAQ by Noah Smith

Quora answer on the admission committee process by Scott Fahlman

Reflecting on CS Graduate Admissions by David Anderson

A PhD is Not Enough: A Guide to Survival in Science by Peter Feibelman

The PhD in CS: Getting There and Being Successful by Michael Hilton, Janet Davis, and Ian Ludden

Statement of purpose

Database of Example PhD SOPs by the CS-SOP initiative

Some Suggestions on writing your statement of purpose by Jennifer Mankoff

Graduate School Personal Statements by Christopher Fletcher

Inside PhD admissions: What readers look for in a Statement of Purpose by Nathan Schneider

How to Write a Bad Statement by Andy Pavlo

Tips and Tricks, How-To Guide for Grad School SoPs by Erica Weng

Graduate School Statement of Purpose by MIT EECS

How to write personal statement for graduate school application by Stanley Chan

Writing a Google AI Residency Cover Letter by Katherine Lee and Ben Eysenbach

Public examples: [Cody Coleman], [Sai Rallabandi], [Jeremy Lacomis], [Sean Kross], [Zahid Hossain], [Jean Yang]

Visit days, choosing advisor and school

Questions to Ask a Prospective Ph.D. Advisor on Visit Day, With Thorough and Forthright Explanations by Andrew Kuznetsov

How to Choose Your Grad School by Tim Dettmers

How to Pick a Graduate Advisor by Ben Barres

The Definitive ‘what do I ask/look for’ in a PhD Advisor Guide by Columbia CS

Advice for current students

PhD survival guides

So long, and thanks for the PhD by Ronald T. Azuma

Graduate School: Keys To Success by Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau

The illustrated guide to a PhD by Matt Might

How to Be a Successful PhD Student by Mark Dredze, Hanna Wallach

Time Management by Randy Pausch

Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student by Manuel Blum

Finances for CS PhD students by David Anderson

A Survival Guide to a PhD by Andrej Karpathy

15 pieces of advice I wish my PhD advisor had given me by Jim Kurose

The Tao of PhD: Thriving in the Allen School’s Graduate Program by University of Washington

10 tips for PhD students by Daniela Witten

Expectation Setting by Eugene Vinitsky

Research

How to Do Great Research by Nick Feamster and Alex Gray

How to Have a Bad Career How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia by David Patterson

Useful Thoughts about Research by H.T. Kung

You and Your Research by Richard Hamming

Advice on Research and Writing by Mark Leone

Reading

How to Read a Paper by Srinivasan Keshav

How to Read a Technical Paper by Jason Eisner

Writing

How to write a good CVPR submission by Bill Freeman

Ten Simple Rules for Mathematical Writing by Dimitri Bertsekas

Notes on writing by Fredo Durand

How to write a (hopefully good) paper by Martin Vetterli

Blogposts

PhDLife Blog - A collection of blog posts from Warwick University

Reviewing

Reviewer Tutorial by CVPR 2022

How to write a good review by CVPR 2020

How to write a reviewer report by Stanley Chan

Presenting

Giving an Academic Talk by Jonathan Shewchuk

How to give a technical presentation by Michael Ernst

Advising students

(coming soon, send PR!)

Teaching

How to Be a Teaching Assistant by Jason Eisner

Fellowship applications

Tips for the NSF GRFP Application by Danielle Perry

NSF GRFP Advice by Christine Liu

NSF Fellowship by Alex Lang

Tips by Tara Safavi

Public examples: [Extensive NSF collection by Alex Lang], [Victoria Dean (NSF personal)], [Victoria Dean (NSF research)], [Tara Safavi (NSF)], [Paul Liang (Facebook)], [Devendra Chaplot (Facebook)], [Sai Rallabandi (Facebook)]

Networking

Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students by Phil Agre

Organizing workshops and tutorials

Hitchhiker’s guide to organizing an academic workshop by Ben Eysenbach and Surya Bhupatiraju

Attending academic conferences

Nine things I wish I had known the first time I came to NeurIPS by Jennifer Vaughan

NeurIPS 2018 through the eyes of first-timers by Fangyu Cai

How To Make A Plan To Attend International Academic Conferences

Job search

Tips for Computer Science Faculty Applications

How to Ask for a Letter of Recommendation

Interview Questions for Computer Science Faculty Jobs

The Ph.D. Job Hunt - Helping Students Find the Right Positions by Ed Lazowska

The N Things I wish I Knew Before the Job Search, by Maria Ebling, Guerney Hunt, Lily Mummert, Bill Tetzlaff, and John Davis

The academic job search for computer scientists in 10 questions by Nicolas Papernot and Elissa Redmiles

Checklist for faculty job-hunting in Stat/ML by Aaditya Ramdas

Tips on the interview process by Jeannette Wing

Getting an academic job by Michael Ernst

Computer science graduate job and interview guide by Wes Weimer, Claire Le Goues, Zak Fry, Kevin Leach, Yu Huang, and Kevin Angstadt

Academic job search advice by Matt Might

Memoirs

I loved graduate school by Peter Bailis

What my PhD was like by Jean Yang

How to get a Ph.D. in computer science if you're me by Chris Martens

The N=1 guide to grad school by Adam Marcus