Graduate Student Survival Guide
Janardhan Rao Doppa
School of EECS, Oregon State University
doppa@eecs.oregonstate.edu
http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~doppa
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Disclaimer
• This guide is based on what I learnt myself in the
past 4 yrs from – reading, talking to people and
my personal experience.
• These are general guidelines. Please follow
what works best for you – personalize it!
• Take this guide with a pinch of salt – some bias!
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School requirements vs. Your education
• “Never let your schooling interfere with your
education” – Mark Twain
• Classes and program requirements are
important, but what is more important is to
become an expert in your area.
• Optimal policy depends on your reward function
 quickly finish PhD and get a high paying job
 Take some more time to produce a high-quality thesis
 …
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Taking classes
• Take fewer(no more than two) classes per
term and spread out your classes over yrs
 you will have more time to do research work
• Prioritize your classes based on
 which courses will be useful for your research
 when they are offered and their frequency
 flexibility for special topics courses
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Getting started: “exploration” phase
• Explore different topics in your area of interest
 Talk to senior PhD students and learn about their
research
 Attend reading groups, seminars and colloquium talks
 Attend project meetings of different professors
 Read recent publications of professors
 Talk to professors whose work interests you
 Use the first year(GTA period) as a buffer time
for your exploration
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Choosing your Advisor
• Things you should look for
 mentoring skills – talk to his students
 “active” researcher – look at his publications
 funding – current projects at hand
 time for each student – depends on the
number of students, his academic activities reviewing, editorship, conference/workshop
organization and research fame!
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Choosing your Advisor
• Young Asst. Professors
 are dynamic and have lots of new ideas
 more hands-on and work closely with students
 sometimes can be impatient – remember they are also
under pressure, i.e., tenure period
• Take home message
 “win-win” situation for both -- If you can work hard and
keep up with the pace, you can be highly productive!
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Choosing your Advisor
• Senior professors
 are experienced and leaders in the field
 most of them are very good mentors
 have the luxury to be relatively more patient
 slight advantage in terms of advertising your work and job
prospects – connections acquired over years!
 mostly have less time for students – remember they are busy with
reviewing, editorship, travel for PI meetings, conferences etc.
• Take home message
 If you can work more independently, you can reap huge rewards in
the end!
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Skills needed to Succeed
• Reading and understanding ability
 Grad school requires lot of reading
 Read and understand ideas -- quicker the
better
 Critically analyze ideas, arguments and
assumptions, and being constructive at the
same time!
 Grows your bag of tricks: may not see
immediate benefit, but helps in the long run
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Skills needed to Succeed
• Technical writing
 its completely different!
 start working on it from your first year, e.g., course
project and research progress reports
 articulating your ideas and presenting them as a
coherent story
 sell your ideas – conference papers accept/reject
 writing good papers comes from practice – learn by
imitating good writers
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Skills needed to Succeed
• Presentation skills
 Making good slides – start working on your power
point skills
 Giving good talks – advertisement to read your paper!
 Comes from practice – learn by imitating good
speakers
 International students should work on their speaking
skills
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Skills needed to Succeed
• Social networking
 No. I’m not talking about Facebook or MySpace 
 Meeting your peers and seniors at conferences,
workshops and symposiums
 Talk about research problems
 Bounce ideas off each other
 Follow up after discussion through email and possible
future collaboration
 Requires a lot of effort
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Skills needed to Succeed
• Leadership skills
 In research, teaching and academic service, e.g., volunteer activities,
community building ..
• Time management
 To maintain a balance between work and life!
 Leading a stress-free happy life
 Time Management talk by Randy Pausch
• Patience
 Grad school is different from undergrad!
 Ideas may not work as you thought
 Repeated failures, e.g., paper rejections ..
 This skill will be helpful more generally in life as well
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Skills needed to Succeed
• Math skills
 Turning intuitions into formal arguments
• Working in a team
 See the big picture!
 Be a good team player
 Learn from your team-mates, e.g., different views,
different disciplines, other skills ..
 Accept others mistakes as yours
 Be generous about credit assignment
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Skills needed to Succeed
• Some software
 To manage emails, e.g., pine, thunderbird,
outlook – Organize to save your time!
 To prepare manuscripts, e.g., LaTex editor like
Texniccenter and WinEdit (windows), LyX and
Kile (Linux)
 To draw your plots, e.g., gnuplot
 To develop rapid prototypes, e.g., Matlab or R
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How to read a research paper ?
• Goal: understand the scientific contributions
• Read critically
 Is it solving the right problem ?
 Are there any simple solutions ?
 Reasonable assumptions ?
 Clear justification under the given assumptions ?
 Breaking points of the solution ?
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How to read a research paper ?
• Read constructively
 Reading critically is much easier – tearing
something is easy than to build it up!
 Involves harder, more positive thinking
 What are the good ideas ?
 Do they have other applications or extensions ?
 Can they be generalized further ?
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How to read a research paper ?
• Make notes
 Highlight the important points
 Write additional comments on the hard copy
 Maintain summaries of all the papers you read
 Will be useful later, e.g., writing paper or thesis
• See the big picture and connections
 Compare it to other related works
 How does it advance the field ?
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What to read ?
• Major conferences
 ICML, NIPS, AAAI, IJCAI (AI and ML)
 SIGCOMM, MOBICOM, Hot-Nets (Networks)
• Major Journals
 JMLR, MLJ, JAIR, AIJ (AI and ML)
• Tech reports from Research groups
 Follow other groups who are working in your area
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How to write a research paper ?
• Keep your audience in mind, e.g., conference or symposium or journal.
• Write a good story
 Describe and motivate your problem with real-world examples (What)
 Why is it important ?
 Short-comings of previous methods
 How are your solving the problem ? (How)
 Justify why it solves the problem (Why)
 Theoretical proof or Experimental evidence
 Comparison with state-of-the-art
 Lessons learned from your work
 Don’t give away your future work !!
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How to write a research paper: A recipe
• Top-down approach
 Section level outline
 Sub-section level outline
 Paragraph level outline
o More or less like a presentation with bulleted points
o Check for flow of ideas
o Think about the plots and tables you want to include
o Consistent terminology and symbols
• Get feedback from peers or advisor and refine
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How to give a presentation ?
• Keep your audience in mind
• Remember, talk is an advertisement of the paper
• Tell a good story
 Describe the problem
 Motivate through real-world examples
 Key intuition behind your solution
 High-level solution
 Briefly talk about main results
 Use figures as much as possible and avoid text!
• Practice your talk
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General Advice on Research
• Choosing the right problems to work on
 Work on important fundamental problems
 Keep you busy for few years
• Vision
 What should your PhD thesis look like ?
 Impactful research during tenure period ?
 You should know your goal and take small steps to reach it!
• Build your reputation as a researcher
• Read books similar to auto-biographies by great researchers
 The art of doing science and engineering: learning to learn -- Richard Hamming
 Fermat’s enigma: The epic quest to solve the world’s greatest mathematics
problem
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Opportunities after a PhD
• Academic positions
 Post-doctoral researcher
 Look for those NSF funded CI Fellowships
 Tenure-track Asst. professor
 Non-tenure Research Asst. professor
 Faculty at a teaching university
• Industry positions
 Researcher
 Research Engineer
 Engineer
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Questions ??
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