
Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application - masterofmasters
http://jeffhuang.com/rethinking_the_phd_application.html#
======
bolu
This reminds me of YC's "Apply without an idea" experiment. Both experiments
seem to arise from a innovator's insight that a whole class of otherwise
highly qualified candidates self select out because of a self perception that
they don't "fit the mold". This is especially true of YC, where there are so
many articles every day that tell the story of a founder who "saw a problem,
and set off on this quest to solve it" that people who don't have an idea on
hand when YC applications come up can immediately self exclude. Never mind
that many great founders pivoted more than once on their way to success.

I'm excited to see this experiment "meet the marketplace", and see what pans
out. Given the small number of PhD students these top programs take each year,
just yielding one or two great people into the PhD program that otherwise
wouldn't have applied seems like it'd really move the needle.

[Disclosure: I went to undergrad with Jeff and we're good friends. He really
is a great "mold-breaker" himself and I'm excited to see how a great "hacker
of systems" in the best sense of the word changes academia during his career]

~~~
pgbovine
+1000, and latching on to this top comment for more visibility ...

also check out jeff's related post on bringing startup culture to academic
research!
[http://jeffhuang.com/adopting_the_startup_culture_for_resear...](http://jeffhuang.com/adopting_the_startup_culture_for_research.html)

------
tjr
_An offer letter from Google or YCombinator (where you are the tech co-
founder) which serves as evidence that you passed a challenging programming
interview at Google, or that YCombinator believed you would be successful at
developing your company product._

Interesting. Because I have no intention of moving to a Google or YCombinator
location, I never applied to either, but this makes me wonder if merely having
been offered an opportunity at such a place could have value. Even if one
never intended to follow through.

Which might not be a great thing for the folks reviewing applications...

~~~
segmondy
Of course. I have no intention of moving to Cali, but one thing I do plan to
do when I go to vacation West next year is to apply to Google, possibly
Facebook or/and Amazon. If I get the offer letter, I can frame it and use it
as negotiating tactic here in the midwest. It's almost as good as saying "I
worked at Google"

~~~
mcguire
Possibly better: you don't have to actually _work_ at Google. 80% of the
benefit minus 1% of the opportunity cost.

~~~
skj
That's a very interesting perspective on working for Google. That is, that
it's a waste of time. In my experience, working at Google is a blast both in
terms of compensation and exciting projects.

~~~
timburus
If you were luckier than others it doesn't necesserily make you an example to
be followed.

~~~
yetanotherphd
I wouldn't call it luck. Google is consistently ranked as one of the top
workplaces. Out of a large number of my co-workers at Google, almost all of
them seem to enjoy their work. Very few people are unhappy or seeking to
leave. The main difficulty is getting in.

------
cmeiklejohn
I think this is a very interesting idea, and I look forward to the results of
the experiment!

Allow me to take a moment to reiterate some of the comments I left on the
Georgia Tech master's thread [1], specifically as a student who has taken
graduate level computer science courses at Brown University with the majority
of his experience working in industry.

* I went directly into industry in 1998 working at a software/systems engineer for a telecom working on Solaris deployments. I worked full-time and paid for my undergraduate education which I pursued part-time and which took me 9 years to finish. I majored in "information technology," as there was no computer science online program at Northeastern University. I didn't take any theory courses at all, and the majority of my course work was programming in languages like Java, C++, and C# (also COBOL, and the like...)

* I applied at Brown University after talking to the admissions and computer science departments multiple times, in which they told me I wouldn't be able to pursue a master's due to lack of independent or undergraduate research or an undergraduate education in computer science. The process of being told this was rather unfortunate, as the responses I received via e-mail telling me it wouldn't be possible were ended with "Sent from my iPhone."

* At the time I talked with them, I had been working at Basho Technologies for a year on Riak, an open source distributed Dynamo-style data store, as well as serving as a maintainer of rubygems.org.

* I was finally able to get accepted as a "non-degree" or "special" graduate student, which is allowed to take courses at full price. This role exists primarily to allow students to determine if they would be a fit for graduate school, at which point I would then have to re-apply for degree seeking status. This was possible because of an independent meeting I scheduled with Shriram Krishnamurthi, who, based on my industrial experience expedited the process along.

* Since starting as a "non-degree" student, I've been heavily motivated to attempt to stand out from other candidates for when I eventually re-apply to be a degree seeking student by independently publishing papers, publishing a blog, organizing a podcast, and speaking at conferences.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6510142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6510142)

~~~
pgbovine
what kind of research are you interested in for Ph.D.? i can't seem to find
your academic info from your HN profile. email me if you want to chat more.

~~~
cmeiklejohn
Distributed systems.

My website is located here:
[http://christophermeiklejohn.com](http://christophermeiklejohn.com).

~~~
pinhead
If you haven't already, you should really talk to
[http://cs.brown.edu/~rfonseca/](http://cs.brown.edu/~rfonseca/)

------
DrSpock
Hmmm. This is an interesting spin the Brown Professor has taken on the PhD
application process.

For those interested in a career in research and development, a PhD is almost
a must. Getting on to a prestigious PhD programme is incredibly competitive,
and as someone who has gone through the whole process and seen it from both
sides, I can say that I've seen individuals who'd make great computer science
researchers not being given an opportunity because they don't tick the right
"boxes".

Sure it's not perfect, but worth a shot if you're interested.

~~~
tanzam75
For those interested in a career in development, a PhD is rarely helpful. For
the PhD candidate, it can even be counterproductive, as any gains in initial
salary will be more than offset by the lost salary during the 5-6 years of the
PhD.

Only for a career in research is a PhD important.

~~~
pgbovine
i will vehemently argue that a Ph.D. in CS is one of the best ways that a
young hacker can spend his/her 20s, regardless of which career they end up
pursuing in the future. pursuing a Ph.D. + interning at several companies
during summertimes = amazing combo for a wide variety of future careers.

the ONLY enduring downside (which you mentioned) is the lost income.

see: [http://vimeo.com/73178238](http://vimeo.com/73178238)

~~~
tanzam75
> _i will vehemently argue that a Ph.D. in CS is one of the best ways that a
> young hacker can spend his /her 20s_

No need to argue that point, because I'm not arguing against it. Look at the
comment that I was replying to:

> _For those interested in a career in research and development, a PhD is
> almost a must._

A PhD is a must for a career in research. It is not a must for a career in
development. We use the term "R&D," but those are quite different things.
There's a lot less "R" around, and a lot more "D."

When I say that the PhD is "rarely helpful," I do not mean that it is totally
useless. I mean that the person who would otherwise have done the PhD is
probably a self-starter who would've done other equally-valuable things in the
meantime. Different things, certainly. But unlikely to be worse than what you
would've done in the PhD. Thus, it is not helpful _compared to what else you
could 've done in the meantime_.

For a career in the "D" side of computer science "R&D," it's about your
technical skills and experiences. Doesn't matter if you acquired them while
doing a PhD, or in a company, or working on open source. This is very
different from a career in research, where it is much more important to have a
piece of paper with "PhD" written on it.

~~~
pgbovine
"I mean that the person who would otherwise have done the PhD is probably a
self-starter who would've done other equally-valuable things in the meantime."
-good point! i agree with that a lot. i see what you mean now.

------
brucehart
I'm surprised that admission into Computer Science PhD programs is so
competitive. I would think that with the strong job market for computer
scientists, there would not be as many students who would want to make the
commitment to a PhD program over other job and entrepreneurial opportunities.

~~~
zerr
I believe someone who is not a good software engineer or even can't code at
all, can still be admitted into some CS PhD program.

~~~
dominotw
How about theoretical computer science? That probably doesn't need one to be a
good software engineer.

~~~
PeterisP
Well, you really don't need to be a good engineer, but the skills required to
do anything meaningful in theoretical computer science PhD program are more
hardcore and rare than good SW engineers - from what I see, most of the people
who can do theoretical CS are already doing it; and most engineering-oriented
CS researchers couldn't/wouldn't cross to theoretical CS no matter what.

------
clarebear
Why would you be filling out a PhD application if you already had an offer
letter from Google or YCombinator?

~~~
stephencanon
Because you always wanted to do academic research? Because you someday want to
teach at the college level? Because you have no idea what you want to do and
you want to keep your options open a while longer?

I left grad school to work in industry, but I’m not so naive as to think that
everyone shares my preferences. I have friends who turned down Google offers
c. 2001 to go to grad school, and they’ve never regretted that decision. (And
I don’t regret the time I spent in grad school before leaving, either).

~~~
zura
Personally, I'd want to get a PhD to be able to work in such places as
Microsoft Research. I don't want to become a teacher/professor. Other than
that, I really hate some perils of academic world - bureaucracy,
nepotism/favoritism/elitism, ...

------
kraskat
Like Jeff I am also a young faculty member at Brown
([http://cs.brown.edu/~kraskat/](http://cs.brown.edu/~kraskat/)) and I
couldn't agree more with him. The Ph.D. application process has a lot of
flaws. We (the Big Data Management Group at Brown) are also always looking for
very talented people and similar to Jeff we started to hand out small
challenges to candidates interested in doing data-centric systems research
(see also
[http://cs.brown.edu/~kraskat/phd14.html](http://cs.brown.edu/~kraskat/phd14.html)).
In addition, last year we started a research internship program
([http://database.cs.brown.edu/big-data-
internship](http://database.cs.brown.edu/big-data-internship)) - it is quite
competitive to get in, but still easier than to be admitted to the PhD
program, and the best way for both sides to determine if there is a good fit
with the group and the PhD program. Finally, I would like to mention, that we
actually do consider MOOC courses and github portfolios as part of the
candidate evaluation.

------
solarix
While I agree the application process needs improvement, I think this entry
greatly exaggerates how hard it is to get into a PhD program. Since when do
you need to be published to even get into a PhD program? When I went through
the application process, I got accepted by 6/6 schools that I applied to, with
no publications and no real ideas for what I wanted to research on. In fact,
most PhD students actually don't even have a research topic until the second
or third year of grad school. I think more than anything, your personal
statement is the deciding factor in a lot of cases. What had worked for me was
to have a list of research topics and faculty from each school that you're
interested in working with, and directly address them in your statement. Other
than that, of course whatever supporting evidence to differentiate yourself is
helpful. I thought proposing to use offer letters from Google or YC (both have
much lower acceptance rates than a PhD program) just to prove you can code is
pretty hilarious.

~~~
GuiA
When did you apply, and to what schools?

These days, good luck getting in a top tier institution for CS without a solid
track record (I.e. a publication or two at an ACM/IEEE conference, and letters
of rec from reputable professors/researchers in your field). The letters of
rec are what make or break your application.

I agree that it's a bit over the top, but that's how it is.

~~~
solarix
2005, Berkeley, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UIUC, and my alma mater UT Austin.
Ended up at Cal. Granted, I was EE and admitted as EECS, so maybe a bit
different.

------
graycat
Usually the Ph.D. is aimed at being a college professor and working toward
tenure. The CS Ph.D. now seems to be aimed at such a professor but also at a
career as an employee.

Sorry to say this, but Ph.D. or not, it is getting clear that in the US being
an employee is no good for a career.

Can get hired as an employee in your 20s, but the chances go down in your 30s,
and the chances go to near zero long before your 40 year career is over.
Exception: If you rise high into management, then you might be able to
continue to get hired until, say, 50. And high management positions commonly
don't last very long.

E.g., a big tech company might hire 100 Master's or Ph.D. degree holders,
promote 1 to management, and at age 35 or so fire the other 99. Then the other
99 can wish that they could convert their Ph.D., say, in electronic
engineering, to an electrician's license or had followed the path of a friend
in high school who was mowing grass and now has 5 crews mowing grass and is
getting into landscape architecture and commercial instead of just residential
clients.

In broad terms, for a long career in the US, be a sole proprietor with a
geographical barrier to entry. If want to do something technical, then be a
CEO of a startup that takes advantage of your technical background. For being
an employee, regard that as a temporary slot that will have to be replaced by
owning part or all of the business from which you get your income.

Then, a problem with a Ph.D. is that you spend in grad school most of your 20s
when you are most employable. Then to go into the job market in your late 20s
or 30s can be a big disappointment because, really, the _jobs_ are for
subordinates, not narrow subject matter expert researchers. Actually, a Ph.D.
can be highly resented, can be a black mark on your resume.

Be careful.

------
Balgair
I'm applying as we speak, but in Bioeng. When I email professors and get to
talking they always coach that they do NOT have control over the admissions
process, that a committee acts as Maxwell's demon. Though I am not applying to
Brown and do not know anything about the internals of their process, this
seems to indicated that professor Huang has at least some control over the
admissions. If I were professor Huang, I would be very very careful about
this, as sparks of racism, sexism, and homophobia can quickly ignite into a
fire. I want to be clear, I am not accusing professor Huang of this at all.
Heck I don't know the guy a bit and I do like this alternative approach to the
application a lot. Still, he needs to be careful.

~~~
p1esk
Are you kidding?

Of course a professor has control over the admission process. If he wants you
on his team, you're in, unless you have a criminal record, or GPA below 3.0
(or whatever is absolute minimum for that particular grad school).

Think of it as a hiring process, with the professor as a hiring manager.

~~~
Balgair
No, I am not kidding.

Based on the conversations I have had, it seems to be typical that a committee
selects the applicants, not the professors. That is what all the professors
tell me.

That being said, I would be stunned if this were the truth. There is no
frickin way that this happens. Here's how I imagine it:

'Admissions committee is in session' 'So, which of these bozos we gonna pick?'
'I want Joe, Schmo, and Dingus' 'Sweet, I want Harry, and Fiona' 'Ok, we all
cool?' 'Yep' 'Aite, lets get beers'

~~~
p1esk
Well, the committee also has a job of selecting the rest of the applicants, if
there are still places left after professors made their recommendations.

------
mlyang
Cool idea-- people inventive enough to go down an entrepreneurial route would
probably be interesting/compelling candidates for academic innovation.

I actually think that creating many interesting projects + one's corresponding
Github would be a better metric than getting a Google (or even YC) acceptance
letter. You want people who are constantly tinkering and thinking of new
ideas/projects/approaches and inventing just for the sake of inventing.

If you go too entrepreneurial, you might also be selecting for students who
might be more amenable to dropping out from the program and doing a start-up
(which then wastes the resources/time that Jeff mentioned he had to give to
every PhD candidate).

------
huherto
I love this. Especially the part where it gives you a few problems that you
can try to solve. Not only is a good way to find talent that may otherwise be
detected. It increases the chances of finding new ways to solve some problems.
(Edit: grammar)

------
banachtarski
As a person who was about to apply to PhD programs but changed my mind due to
insufficient recommendations, I'm glad somebody else realizes that PhD
admissions is utter bull crap.

185 dollar GRE that I can get in the 99th percentile on with ZERO studying?
Grades that aren't normalized across institutions weighed heavily? Need recs
from established professors who can slip in a good word for you?

Oh sorry, you were actually doing things that interested you, not necessarily
things that would impress the right people. Oh sorry you took tons of hard
classes at a prestigious institution and so have something less than 4.0. Oh
sorry you hopped labs for a bit instead of staying with that boring CS guy
that would've gotten you into any PhD program in America for 4 years. Oh sorry
you spent a year or two out of college doing startup tech work without
building credentials with other PhD grads but nevertheless solving research
grade problems.

I've realized that the PhD admissions does not select candidates who actually
want to do research. It selects candidates who want to be admitted into a PhD
program. No thanks. I love science and math, and I love research, but I think
the PhD application has been so harrowing for me, I won't consider it again
unless drastic changes are made.

~~~
jxtx
As a person who reads PhD applications and works with graduate students,
bullshit.

I care a little about your GRE scores, it is a filter, you need some kind of
standardized comparable. Congrats on getting in the 99th percentile (that's
expected). I don't care much about your GPA. I might look at what classes you
took. I will probably look at your reference letters briefly. They might be
from professors, they might not. I don't care. I love the fact that you have
some startup or industry experience, you are slightly more likely to actually
know how to get things done.

The very first thing I read is your cover letter, then straight to your
research statement which I will read in great detail. The only thing I care
about is do you have a passion for research, are you likely to be successful
at it.

At most research institutions in most areas of science, we have to pay our
graduate students stipend and tuition, either right away or after a year. This
is a damn good incentive to get students in who are going to do great
research.

All I care about is getting great researchers in the door and (eventually,
hopefully) into my lab. So, my advice: focus on your research statement.
Tailor it to the department your are applying to, talk about the research they
are doing there. But, have your own agenda. At least know what research areas
you are passionate about.

~~~
banachtarski
What you are telling me is completely at odds with what others have told me
(including faculty on admissions committees) so I imagine it varies from
institution to institution. I had a pretty compelling application a year ago
and my statement (in my opinion anyways) demonstrated that I was caught up
with the academic literature on a particular topic and I had done some work
myself implementing and attempting to improve existing techniques. I realized
that I may not have worked on that topic in particular, but my hope was that
it would demonstrate research aptitude. My application was rejected from 8
schools and I contacted several to see what the problem may have been.

The GRE point I was trying to make was that since 99th percentiles are
expected, the test shouldn't exist at all as it is clearly a poor filter.

~~~
tostitos1979
Did you have a low GPA by any chance? In academia, this is considered a black
mark :(

Honestly, I think you dodged a bullet. Academia isn't that magical (CS PhD
here). I think you get a better education reading Hacker News some days.

~~~
banachtarski
Perhaps this was the case. I did not do well the first two years. I hated
school in fact and averaged a 3.3 or so (the engineering courses felt very
soft and uninteresting). This changed when I discovered pure math and
theoretical physics and I averaged almost a 4.0 for the last two years with
the most difficult courses so I didn't think it would matter. I like
engineering now, but I wished that the fundamentals were covered more
rigorously as the lack of rigor made me initially very disinterested.

------
zura
I'm still waiting for a REMOTE PhD position :)

~~~
bkamapantula
I doubt if it would happen at all.

I'm a full time Ph.D. student. You might, of course, know that professors
interact with the students very often (except if the professor is super busy
always). I interact with mine almost every day. I do work with couple of
collaborators in different countries. That is because my advisor knows them
in-person before deciding to collaborate. I work with lab colleagues
frequently. Remote makes all this extremely challenging.

~~~
tjr
What about it exactly is challenging? How is doing computer science research
(probably what many people here would do; I don't know what your research
field is) with a team of remote individuals harder than doing software
development with a team of remote individuals?

~~~
pgbovine
remote software development is _very_ challenging, and when it works well,
it's due to super-clear specs and project management. by its very nature,
research isn't as amenable to crystal-clear specs.

------
frozenport
Application looks too involved for Brown. When applying to 10 schools I
wouldn't do this one because it has no overlap with my other application. I
can reuse my letters of recommendation, I can't reuse this application.

~~~
benmccann
I graduated quite some time ago. Getting letters of recommendation from
professors would be impossible for me. I doubt I'd have one professor that
knew me when I graduated let alone now years later. And yet, fulfilling these
requirements would be very easy for me. I think it's very nice to have
multiple routes in. Even if very few candidates avail themselves of this
latter route, they might be interesting candidates worth strong consideration.

~~~
jaynos
I'm in the same boat applying to a Master Program. It doesn't help that i
spent the better part of my 20's as a business owner with no boss that can
write a letter for me.

------
imrehg
I wonder how would this work in fields other than CS. I'm in physics, and I
got my D.Phil, but has been thinking seriously about the state of academic
research, including the admission process & finding good student/lab fit.

Looking at the examples in the original post, I think the "demonstrate
scholarship" section could directly apply for physics as well. Offer letters,
github, are more more marginally useful...

Tough one. I'd love to hear how this works out, he sounds like a very
thoughtful professor.

------
smoyer
That sounds right up my alley! I'm currently tracking the geolocation of
computer science professors by tracking the gaze of the NSA's agents who are
watching them through the myriad of security cameras in our country.

My academic resume isn't going to get me noticed for a PhD program but it
sounds like someone is finally looking at ability (I had great scores on the
Computer Science GRE in 1990, but they apparently only last five years and
that test has been discontinued)!

~~~
tanzam75
The GRE Computer Science exam was pretty heavy on theory and systems. This
made sense for 1990, when CS departments were heavier on theory and systems.
It has grown less relevant as the field of CS grew to encompass additional
areas.

Thus, CS programs stopped requiring it, so fewer people took the exam, so the
ETS decided to drop it.

~~~
smoyer
I understand the rationale for dropping the exam, but it's the last academic
endeavor on my resume. I've got a ton of work experience since then and many
of my projects would be worthy of today's buzzwords. My lament is that only
forward-thinking advising professors would see the value in what I have done.

Note that no professors have actually been tracked or harmed.

------
xSwag
I'm almost certain that a Ph.D. in the UK takes 3-4 years max. Why does it
take so much longer in USA?

~~~
maximilian
You still need to do your masters, "along the way". If I remember correctly,
in England, first you do you masters, and then start a PhD. 2 masters + 4-5
phd = 6.

Most European countries require a masters degree before starting, but the PhD
is officially supposed to take 3 years (but usually takes 3-4+)

------
wukix
Submit your GitHub portfolio and join the Ivy League university that also
develops Racket? Awesome!

------
wschorn
This got me to consider applying to brown whenever I'm looking at grad
schools.

------
mkramlich
even better: don't apply at all. simply work/study/design/research/build
whatever you wanted to do anyway. then share/publish/collaborate as you
desire. or not. rinse, repeat. be a genius. or a crank. or an entrepreneur. or
some mix. just do things and get it out there. see what sticks. not all smart
people are in academia and not all people in academia are very smart. and you
can publish, collaborate, ship and show accomplishments without/outside a
university paradigm.

~~~
chrismonsanto
Please don't underestimate how much it helps to have an adviser who has been
through the ropes, or how awesome it is to have peers that are brilliant and
working on similar stuff. I'm a self-taught programmer, so I know exactly what
it's like to wing it, and I loved the PhD experience. The anti-PhD attitude on
here is so weird, considering YC seems to be largely the same thing on a
smaller timescale (weed out everyone but the very best, have them make things,
give them connections, ...)

~~~
mkramlich
understood

personally I think HN has both a pro-PhD, pro-academic, and also an anti-PhD
or anti-academic segment. Sometimes within the same people! I certainly do.

I think it has both strengths and weaknesses. I think to the extent that
universities and PhD track stuff serves an unnecessary and embarrassing
anachronistic echo from the Middle Ages then that is a bad thing. But to the
extent it helps teach disciplined thinking, cultivate a new generation of
teachers and researchers, and helps to cull out noise or invalid/false/dumb
contributions to the advancement of an art, it's a very good thing. The weed-
out effect is good. I think some antipathy comes from the folks who perceive
there to be a lot of non-weeds outside academia, and weeds within it. All
discipline and curation is good. But it's not the unique providence of
universities or professorship tracks. A lot of programmers have a libertarian
bent too and dislike profit-maximizing monopolies or priesthoods, and
universities/academia has at least a little of that aspect to them.

------
af3
Classifieds: "Master is looking for more cheap power with experience from
Google to pay minimum wage". Good luck, professor Huang.

