A Five-Minute Guide to Ph.D. Program ApplicationsDecember 2016 (perspective of an assistant professor)
Summary
If you spend five minutes reading this article, you'll learn how to make your Ph.D. program application the strongest possible. Why five minutes? Because it's probably the longest that anyone will spend reading your application.
I've now served on Ph.D. admissions committees for
the past [Update in Dec 2020: in the years since this article was first written, I've probably read a few hundred more applications and rec letters.] This article should take you five minutes to read, which is probably the longest that anyone will spend reading your application. When I serve on admissions committees, I read around 150 applications, so I'll spend 3 to 5 minutes per app and place each into one of three piles: {good, ok, bad}. Then I may tell faculty in the relevant research sub-field to take a closer look at some of them. Final admissions decisions are made in very different ways depending on department norms and constraints, but that's all out of your control. No matter what, though, you want to end up in the 'good' pile! What is a Ph.D. program application?The first step toward getting into the 'good' pile is to understand what your application really is before writing it: A Ph.D. program application is a request for someone to invest around $500,000 and five years of mentorship time so that you can produce new knowledge via research publications. The exact economic details vary by department and institution, but the general idea remains. When evaluating applications, I ask myself: Do I feel good about letting myself or one of my colleagues invest in this person – both in money and in time? The role of your application is to convince me to enthusiastically answer YES!!! Concretely, this means your application needs to show me that you have either already produced research publications in your chosen sub-field, or that you have the potential to do so in the near future. Everything else is secondary. The most important criteria: Research DensityIn my experience, the property that best separates good from bad applications is research density. As the name implies, a research-dense application is one that is densely-packed with research-related content. The strongest applications are usually the most research-dense. What this means is that the majority of your statement of purpose should be about research – not your childhood inspirations, not your personal intellectual journey, not your classes, and not your extracurricular activities. A common kind of weak statement is one that spends too much time describing the applicant's childhood; in general, avoid mentioning anything before college. I often read weak statements that are way way way too long and not research-dense enough. Strive to write the shortest and more research-dense statement that you can. This idea of research density also means that you need to find people who can write research-dense recommendation letters for you. For example, a letter about you doing well in a class is not compelling, since it has zero research density. A letter from a non-research-related job also has zero research density. All else equal, applicants with more research-dense letters will win. So choose your letter writers carefully. Addendum to research density: properties of weak Ph.D. applicationsThe weakest Ph.D. applications are those that are the least research-dense. Some common patterns here include:
How do I review Ph.D. applications?The people who review Ph.D. program applications are professors like me, not professional admissions counselors. Some of them will be knowledgeable about your research area, and some won't. Here's how I spend my 3 to 5 minutes evaluating each part of the app, roughly in this order:
[Update in Dec 2020: I'm more busy now and we get more applications than ever ... so on my first pass I read only the letters and reject if they're not research-dense. Then if letters are good, I'll read Statement of Purpose. If all of that is good, then I'll more seriously consider the app.] Final thoughtsIf you create a research-dense application, that's the first step toward getting into the 'good' pile. You'll now be competing with tons of other applicants who also have research-dense applications, but at least you're still in the game. The next most important thing is to choose a sub-field within the department that is most relevant to your prior experiences and to your letter writers' expertise (especially your primary letter writer who will write the strongest letter). For instance, if you've done the most significant undergrad research in sub-field X, mark down sub-field X in your app if you get to choose; that way, you will be placed in the same pool as others in sub-field X. And your app might get reviewed by faculty in X. If you choose your sub-field wrong, then you will be competing against students in another sub-field whose apps look stronger than yours because they have more prior work in that sub-field than you. (Some students did undergrad research in X but want to change to sub-field Y for their Ph.D. In those cases, I do NOT recommend listing Y. If you put Y down on your apps, then you will not look competitive at all since you don't have prior work in Y, and your letter writers are also not from Y.) Even after you pick the best sub-field match for you, the next most important thing to work on is making your writing clear for professors who are not in your sub-field. Of the hundreds of apps I've seen, I'm not an expert in most of their research. Thus, it's crucial for you to show me why your research projects are important, what specific role you played in each one, what the main challenges were, and what the impact was – ideally a publication or steps toward one. Finally, it's OK to cold-email professors whose research genuinely interest you – after you submit a research-dense application. Make sure to write a good email customized for them. We usually review applications in the month or two after the due date, so that's the best time to cold-email. At best, you get someone to notice you; and at worst, they'll just delete your email. (In the U.S., it is convention to refer to professors by "Professor [last name]", like "Professor Guo". This convention is likely different in other parts of the world, though.) OK, five minutes are up; good luck! Appendix A: Related Resources
Appendix B: random notes added in Dec 2020Random tips for Statement of Purpose:
Also I've noticed a trend lately of Ph.D. apps adding more supplemental questions. My advice is not to stress about those since your Statement of Purpose is far more important. Just don't write anything in supplemental questions that could be interpreted as a negative signal and you'll be OK. You won't ever get into a Ph.D. program due to supplemental questions, but it can hurt your app if what you write reflects negatively on you. Random tips for interviews: Back in my day (the stone age) students would get admitted without interviews, but nowadays the bar is a lot higher, so interviews seem to be a standard part of the process. My only advice is to PREPARE A LOT. It might seem like professors just want to casually chat with you about your research (“hey can we find a time to chat? lemme know, k?”), but trust me, it is 100% an interview. Take it super-seriously. They are interviewing the top few candidates on video chat and deciding who to make offers to. All else being equal, if you prepare more than your peers, then you'll have an advantage; simple as that. Here are some ways to prepare:
These above bullet points do take work, but that's exactly how you will stand out amongst the other applicants that they are interviewing! There's no shortcuts here :) Trust me, professors will be able to tell who has done their homework sincerely and who hasn't. Appendix C: random notes added in Nov 2023Super-messy notes jotted down in a hurry, but hopefully somewhat helpful ... Here's a simplified (but somewhat realistic) model of Ph.D. admissions: At every department you apply to, you are competing for a very small number of 'spots' allocated by advisors in your research area who are taking on new students in the coming year. Usually every advisor may have anywhere from 0 to 4 spots (super-rough approximation), and there may be up to ~3 relevant advisors in each department. So you're competing for around ~10 spots against others who are applying in your research area. (Exact numbers vary, of course, but this is one rough estimate.) This is very different from, say, undergrad college admissions or any other graduate program admissions (such as masters programs, medical school programs, law school programs, etc.). In those programs, you are competing for one of a 'large-ish' number of spots in the entering class; there is no 'advisor' or anything to be matched with. For instance, if you're applying for undergrad admissions at UCSD, you're competing for one of, say, 5,000 spots in next year's class out of maybe 20,000 applicants (I'm making up these numbers). Or if you're applying to Harvard Law School, you're competing for maybe 100 spots out of maybe 3,000 applicants this year. In contrast, when you apply to a Ph.D. program, you are not competing for, say, 100 Ph.D. openings in the department out of 1,000 or whatever applicants. That's the wrong way to look at it. Instead, you're probably competing for maybe 10 Ph.D. openings in your immediate research area out of however many applicants are applying in that area. Thus, overall 'admissions rates' don't mean anything, since if in your research area there are few to no openings this year, then even if you're the BEST applicant you may not get admitted. And what determines how many openings there will be in your research area? It all depends on which faculty advisors are willing to take on new students in the coming year. This is 100% totally out of your control. You have absolutely no idea whether Professor X or Y or Z is willing to take on new students or away on sabbatial next year or going on an unpaid leave to start a company or planning to retire or move into an administrative position or whatever. So if you don't get into a particular department's Ph.D. program, it may not be because your application was bad ... it might just be that no faculty are looking for students with your specific research background, or there is someone else applying who is a better fit for their lab. Don't take it personally! OK, so what actionable tips can I give to you, given this reality? Here is what I tell everyone:
Appendix whatever: added in Dec 2023When you apply to Ph.D. programs, make sure you have a personal website that can be found on search engines. Ideally it would show up first for a web search for your name; but if not, then at least for "<your name> <school>" like if someone searched for "Philip Guo UCSD" they should find me. You can keep your website super-simple and basic; don't stress about it! Your website only needs to be a single webpage with your name and current school on it (so that search engines can find it). Then add a link to your CV PDF, email address so people can easily contact you, PDFs of your publications if you have any (no worries if you don't), and a summary of your relevant research (and maybe industry) experiences. If professors are interested in your application, they will immediately search for your name on the web and see what they find. If they don't find anything, then that could leave a slightly-negative impression (especially in technology-oriented fields like computing ... maybe it's not as big of a deal in some other fields). Note that just having a LinkedIn page is not enough since professors don't really use LinkedIn, unlike industry hiring managers. For industry jobs, LinkedIn is important; but for Ph.D. applications ideallly you'd have your own personal website. Created: 2016-12-09 Last modified: 2023-12-05 |