

Ask YC: How can we catch up to our peers at the big name universities? - rw

As an undergrad at a "second tier" university, I want to know what I need to do to compete with CS students at the top schools. Specifically, I'm concerned about admission to grad school. Bonus points for criteria other than GPA.
======
cperciva
Research, research, research.

Seriously, there's nothing university departments like to see in a graduate
entrance application than published research. It doesn't have to be related to
anything anyone at the department in question is working on (although that
wouldn't hurt); simply demonstrating that you are capable of working
independently, discovering new things, writing a coherent paper about them,
and getting it published will put you ahead of the vast majority of
applicants.

Edit: Sole authorships, while not necessary, are ideal -- with co-authorships
(particularly involving undergraduate students) there's always a question as
whether each author made any significant contribution.

~~~
robg
Research could also involve independent study courses and/or an honor's
thesis. The latter could take two years to complete, but when you go to apply
for grad schools it's something you've completed based on your interests and
drive. It's the perfect example of completing something that grad school will
require. You will have formed a committee, presented your ideas, executed a
plan of work, and defended the results. It's practice for grad school because
it's a mini-version of it.

Independent study courses are a great way to explore your interests more
intensively especially as you get ready to do your own work. If you're working
on research with a professor, some schools will allow you to get credit in
this form. Or you could simply do more focused reading with a professor and
get credit for it. One of my best experiences as an undergrad was an
independent study with two profs (philosophy and psychology) to talk weekly
about mind and brain issues. I needed to know them to see if it would fly, and
I organized the reading list with their input, but afterwards it functioned as
a normal course with me as the only student.

Through a thesis committee and independent study courses, you'll also get to
know professors for those all-important letters of recommendation (as Paul
recommends). For those, it's better to know 6 profs well so you can then pick
the ones that know you and can best speak highly of you. In a class,
especially one with more than ten students it's very hard for a prof to see
how you stand out. Better to start working more with them directly. Then
they'll have much more to write about. In a similar vein, take small seminar
classes wherever and as early as possible. That's a straight-forward way to
get to know profs (to see who you want to work with or have on a committee)
and for them to get to know you.

Also, find ways to go to other schools during the summers to conduct research
more in line with your interests and to be surrounded by like minded peers.
Schools have programs that will pay you a little bit and put you up in a dorm.
If you research those programs quickly, you could find something for as soon
as this summer.

~~~
robg
P.s. More directly in line with your original question: It's very hard for
undergrads to get face time with profs at the better name schools. If you get
that opportunity, it will shine through in your letters, but more importantly,
in your experiences.

------
mechanical_fish
<http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science>

It's not what you asked for, but if you haven't read the likes of it before,
you should. I wish I could have read it when I was your age. I wonder if I
would have believed it.

If you still need advice on graduate admissions, I can tell you that pg and
cperciva are on the right track. Undergrad research is particularly great, as
it gives you lots of contact with an adviser who will write great
recommendation letters for you.

~~~
rw
This document is pretty shocking, I won't lie. Do you think it's totally true?

~~~
hugh
I think it's a bit exaggerated. Certainly the _average_ assistant professor
isn't denied tenure: that only happens in about 10-20% of cases as I
understand it.

[http://incoherently-scattered.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-
commo...](http://incoherently-scattered.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-common-are-
tenure-rejections.html)

~~~
mechanical_fish
I'd agree that it's a little bit exaggerated. And yet... I'd claim that the
real reason why "only" 20% of assistant profs are denied tenure is that the
system now weeds them out at the postdoc level. It's now considered normal to
require candidates to perform _multiple_ postdocs before awarding them a
tenure-track position. The only sure way to escape that treadmill is to write
your own grant and get it funded... which, by no coincidence at all, is also
the secret to being a successful assistant prof.

You can count the number of first-year grad students per year. You can count
the number of graduating Ph.D.s per year. And you can count the number of
tenure-track openings per year. And then you know the percentage of people who
will eventually leave, or be kicked out, of academia. The rest is detail.

Most of us leave. For a motivated student to be _forced_ out is kind of rare.
They're quite happy to have you. You're really, really cheap.

~~~
hugh
Mostly true, but I think it makes a big difference whether you leave as a
23-year-old PhD student or as a 42-year-old assistant professor.

~~~
timr
Problem is, leaving after a couple of years of a PhD program is the academic
equivalent of chewing your own leg off, and most people won't do it -- even if
it's the right decision.

You have to be exceptionally mentally strong to leave that culture without
grabbing the brass ring, and even then, it can haunt you with feelings of
failure and inadequacy for years (people like Jerry, Larry and Sergey are the
obvious exceptions.)

------
mercurio
The order of importance of the many components that would make up your grad
school app:

1\. Research experience --- The most important factor, though not essential.
Not having it is not a handicap. In fact most undergrads admitted for grad
school do not have research experience, and their app focuses on no. 2 and 3
below. However if you have done some significant reseach, that fact will
dominate the rest of your app, and make 2 and 3 irrelevant to a large degree.

2\. Recommendation letters --- there are a couple of factors here. A letter
from a better known researcher is more valuable. A letter from a professor who
is known to your potential advisor is more valuable. Finally, a letter from a
professor who has a history of recommending strong candidates carries more
weight (admission committees keep track of such things).

3\. Undergrad school and GPA --- A 3.6 from MIT is more valuable than a 4.0
from a second tier school. Your GPA over your junior and senior years carries
more weight than the GPA over your first two years. This means you can't
afford to let up, but you can make up for the follies of youth (or freshman
year).

4\. Your statement of purpose (the essay you write explaining why you want to
pursue a phd in a particular dept) --- This should be focused

5\. GRE scores. These are much less important, and are used mostly as a
preliminary filtering mechanism.

Another important issue is that given two applications of equal quality (that
is, the two candidates are roughly the same by the criteria above), the more
focused one will have an edge. By focus, I mean that between an app saying
"I'm interested in theoretical computer science" and one saying "I'm
interested in probabilistically checkable proofs and error correcting codes"
(these are specific topics of research in theoretical CS), the second one will
make the cut every time.

As an applicant from a "second tier" school, you are significantly
handicapped. The good news is that this system can be hacked quite well. The
best course of action depends on how much time you have left before applying
for grad school and the subject you plan to apply in, but I would strongly
suggest the following:

a) Increase your gpa as much as possible, between now and when you apply. If
your gpa is low right now, showing a substantial improvement just before you
apply sends a strong message of maturity.

b) Do research. Find a project in your school to get involved in. Find an
informal advisor. If you feel such opportunities don't exist in your school,
then find the closest top-tier school in your area. Go visit and find a
project there. The goal of this involvement would be to produce a publication
and a couple of recommendations. Ideally you should do it in conjunction with
point c below.

c) Focus your application. This is the single biggest factor that can boost
your chances. Decide the subfield within your major that you want to apply to.
Find potential advisors within that area. Read up on their research, contact
them about it. Do not spam. If possible go meet these people and get involved.
If a professor wants to take you on as a grad student and has funding, then
nothing on your application matters and you are in.

Its very possible to get admitted to a top tier program. It takes hard work
and knowing how the admission process works. You should also talk to people in
your field, as some things vary across disciplines.

~~~
timr
You're right about 1 and 2, but you've got the order wrong for 3-5.

Most grad schools view GPA and GRE scores as an initial, binary filter (with
the emphasis on GRE scores), and then use the other criteria to rank the
remaining applicants in a somewhat flexible way. A 4.0 from MIT is obviously
not going to hurt you, but I wouldn't go so far as saying that a 3.6 from MIT
is "better" than a 4.0 from a second-tier school. That's just snobbery.

~~~
mercurio
Those numbers were just an example to say that both the gpa and school are
factors. That is, an admissions committee would not do a straight comparison
between gpas, but would factor in a weight for the school.

This is not snobbery, just the facts of life. I am not saying that a 4.0
student from an unknown school is worse than a 3.6 MIT student. There is no
way to objectively know that.

Also gpa matters more than you seem to think. A 4.0 from MIT would do more
than not hurt. It would get you admission into a top tier program. The reason
graduate programs give importance to gpa is because it takes a sustained
effort over 4 years to have a great gpa when you apply. This shows an ability
to work hard over a sustained period of time which is a prerequisite for
success in grad school and research.

Finally, as I originally said, most undergrads do not have any significant
research experience when they apply, and so the recommendations and gpa become
more important in those cases. There is a strong correlation between
recommendations and gpa, with the difference that a gpa is an objective
measure. Most competent students manage to find people who will write positive
recommendations for them. Its much harder to finesse your gpa this way.
Admission committees are well aware of these issues.

~~~
timr
I understand what you believe to be true, but I'm not speaking from a
hypothetical perspective. I've seen the 3.6 MIT student get rejected, while a
4.0 student from a "lesser" school gained admission. It happens.

As I said, a high GPA from MIT isn't going to hurt you, but it's not a golden
ticket, either. If nothing else, grad schools like the GRE because it's a
standardized metric. Still, neither GRE score nor GPA are particularly good
predictors of success in graduate school, and the committees know this.

~~~
mercurio
I think we possibly have a different understanding of what is a lesser or
second tier school. I based my opinion on the original poster's response to
pg's comment, where he states that his cs program is like "trade school". I
doubt that a 4.0 from such a program would count for much in comparison to an
applicant from a top CS department.

As for your anecdotal example, could it not be that the other factors were the
deciding ones in this case (like the student from the lesser school having
much stronger recommendations or published a paper)? In any case, all I meant
by making up this 3.6/4.0 example was that the school matters too.

If I read you correctly, you also seem to be saying that GRE scores are more
important than GPA. This is not true at all. In fact GRE scores count for very
little compared to your GPA (which counts less than recommendations and
research). Remember that we are discussing admission to top-tier schools. MIT
does not even consider the GRE in their admission procedure.

Also, what makes you assume that I'm talking from a hypothetical perspective?
At my undergrad school, I have personally known about 50 people who've applied
and gone to grad school, and GPA correlates very strongly with the ranking of
the department they joined. Since then these views have been confirmed by the
faculty (including my advisor) that I have talked to at my grad school.

In any case, we have our grad recruiting weekend coming up next week, and I'll
do some field research and report back :)

~~~
timr
My post was based on my own knowledge of the recruiting process (and the
background of many fellow grad students) a top-tier school:

1) GPA and GRE scores are typically the basis for an include/exclude decision
to filter a large pool of applicants down to a smaller pool. They don't
typically play a primary role in determining the _ranking_ of the candidates
after this step. That's a far more holistic (read: subjective) decision.

2) In terms of #1, committees tend to weight both GPA and GRE equally, with a
slight preference given to the GRE, because it is the only direct quantitative
comparison available between all applicants.

But this debate is mostly navel-gazing, because admissions committees are
famously capricious; the _exact_ method used depends on the members of the
committee, and their particular biases. The only point I'm trying to make here
is that your chances to get admitted to a top-tier school aren't necessarily
higher if you went to MIT as an undergrad. That's a myth that is dearly loved
-- by MIT undergrads.

(And by the way? Two seconds of googling tells me that you're wrong about MIT
and the GRE:

[http://web.mit.edu/admissions/graduate/requirements/testing_...](http://web.mit.edu/admissions/graduate/requirements/testing_req.html))

~~~
mercurio
First, I really don't understand what we are arguing about here, since my
initial comment already says that research and recommendations are much more
important than GPA and GRE. Lets just agree to disagree on the rest.

Second, I never questioned the basis of your opinions, you questioned mine
(indirectly).

Finally, maybe you should have spent more than two seconds googling, since MIT
CS does not ask for your GRE scores. See the relevant part in this document
(which is available on the page you linked):
[http://web.mit.edu/admissions/graduate/pdfs/MIT_department_i...](http://web.mit.edu/admissions/graduate/pdfs/MIT_department_info.pdf)

(Edit: Did you go to grad school in CS? Because otherwise the whole discussion
loses relevance.)

------
pg
The way you get admitted to good grad schools is by impressing specific profs.
It's much more personal than undergrad admissions. And profs I know say the
thing that impresses them most is good recommendations from other professors
they know and trust. So talk to current profs who like you and ask them who
they know at grad schools you want to go to who would make good advisors for
the kind of work you want to do.

~~~
rw
Our CS program here is more like "programming trade school." I doubt
recommendations from those profs would be worth much -- what about from the
math department?

~~~
timr
Get the best recommendation you can, from the best researcher who knows you
personally, and who can vouch for your _research skills_. Classroom
performance doesn't count.

If you have to choose, it's better to have a great recommendation from someone
unknown, than it is to have a mediocre recommendation from a superstar.

------
gms
<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf>

~~~
vikas5678
This is a really nice link, I found it really nice to read although I have got
into grad school already :-), nice to be reminded why we are here in the first
place.

------
webwright
What? You don't need to (other than perhaps geographically).

<http://paulgraham.com/colleges.html>

If the gospel according to PG doesn't persuade you, I'm happy to offer some
additional anecdotal evidence. Some of the smartest hackers I've ever met are
college dropouts or went to a 2nd rate college.

As Twain said, "Never let your schooling interfere with your education."

