RAP PANEL ON "MAKING IT THROUGH THE CS PHD PROGRAM"
Below are summaries from 1996, 1995, 1994.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
COURSES, QUALS, AND THESIS: MAKING IT THROUGH THE CS PHD PROGRAM
A RAP panel session held on October 4, 1996
Panel moderator: Yolanda Gil.
Panel members: Seymour Ginsburg, Wei-Min Shen,
Bill Swartout.
The annual CS RAP sessions give an overview of the work and interests
of faculty members in the Computer Science Department and their students.
These presentations are useful to students who are in the process of
choosing an area of research and an advisor. However, this is only one
of the many things that students need to do in order to get a PhD degree,
including how to organize the course work while getting the research
started, how to prepare for the quals and form a committee, how to
endure and complete a thesis topic, and how to prepare for finding and
doing well at a good job after graduation. The RAP sessions now include
a panel on these topics organized by a Faculty member and CSGO. A panel
of four students answered questions and gave advice based on their
experience. Each member of the panel was in a different stage of the
Ph.D. process, and gave a brief presentation of experiences that they
consider useful to other students. The presentations were followed by
an open discussion in which both faculty members and students participated.
Slides are available from the panel presenters.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
COURSES, QUALS, AND THESIS: MAKING IT THROUGH THE CS PHD PROGRAM
A RAP panel session held on October 13, 1995
Panel members: Ahmed A. Abd-Allah, Cristina Gacek,
Chao-Kuei Hung, Katia Obraczka
Panel moderator: Yolanda Gil.
(with our thanks to the panel members in 1994: Yui-Bin
Chen, Cristina Gacek, June Lee, Benjamin Smith)
The annual CS RAP sessions give an overview of the work and interests
of faculty members in the Computer Science Department and their students.
These presentations are useful to students who are in the process of
choosing an area of research and an advisor. However, this is only one
of the many things that students need to do in order to get a PhD degree,
including how to organize the course work while getting the research
started, how to prepare for the quals and form a committee, how to
endure and complete a thesis topic, and how to prepare for finding and
doing well at a good job after graduation. The RAP sessions now include
a panel on these topics organized by a Faculty member and CSGO. A panel
of four students answered questions and gave advice based on their
experience. Each member of the panel was in a different stage of the
Ph.D. process, and gave a brief presentation of experiences that they
consider useful to other students. The presentations were followed by
an open discussion in which both faculty members and students participated.
Below is a brief overview of some of the issues that were discussed in this
meeting.
=======================================================================
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS (by Yolanda Gil)
Your main goal as a graduate student: learning to be a researcher.
This means learning to do the following:
- Have a good background in CS
- Understand the state-of-the-art in your research area
- Identify good research problems
- Formulate problems
- Solve problems
- Communicating your ideas (papers + presentations)
The PhD program is structured to help you achieve these goals.
Take advantage of:
- coursework, seminars, etc.
- research advisor, thesis committee
- quals, thesis defense
- other students and faculty
=======================================================================
I. TAKING COURSES AND GETTING STARTED WITH RESEARCH (by Cristina
Gacek)
Taking Courses and Getting Started in Research
-----------------------------------------------
- Ask for advice from other students, specially ones that are in the same
track as you are
Course load
Choices of professors per course
Copies of old exams and homeworks
- Take course loads into account when deciding which courses to take
concurrently
Never take more than ONE very heavy course load at a time
- Your main focus should not be on taking as many courses as possible
Taking Courses and Getting Started in Research
-----------------------------------------------
- Get started with research as soon as possible
Do not wait to finish the required courses before you start to look
for an advisor
- Try to somehow mix the load between core courses, track courses and
research
At the beginning:
1 core course
1 track course (looking for potential advisors)
1 chosen based on your interests, taking concurrency
problems into account
After you have chosen an advisor:
1 core course
1 track course
directed research
Taking Courses and Getting Started in Research
-----------------------------------------------
- When looking for an advisor:
Try to take a course or do some directed research with him/her
Talk to his/her students (personal inter-relationships,
availability, how demanding, how open to new ideas)
Make sure there is an intersection with your interests
Look around for info about his/her previous work (publications)
Personality compatibility
If you need support money, then available funding is also an issue
Taking Courses and Getting Started in Research
----------------------------------------------
- When you found a prospective advisor:
Do NOT sacrifice class work for research (you DO need the GPA)
Share with him/her your previous related experience (trying to
leverage from that on your research)
- Handling individual problems:
Talk to students that have undergone similar experiences
Talk to your advisor
Talk to receptive professors
=======================================================================
II. PREPARING FOR THE QUALIFYING EXAMINATION AND FORMING YOUR
GUIDANCE COMMITTEE (by Ahmed A. Abd-Allah)
The Qualifying Exam
or
"101 Ways to Pass Time with Five Professors in a Cold, Dimly-Lit Room"
*************************************************************************
Three Important Objectives
1. Earn your Ph.D. as fast as possible
2. Learn a good deal about computer science and your chosen research focus
3. Learn how to learn
*************************************************************************
Components of the Exam
- Consult USC catalog for latest information
- Written part
- Core course requirements (3.5 GPA)
- Thesis proposal, including research to date
- Oral part
- Oral presentation and defense of thesis proposal
*************************************************************************
Major Steps
- Finish core courses with 3.5 GPA
- Identify and work on an interesting, feasible research focus
- Assemble committee of five professors
- faculty who are interested in your research focus; at least research professors
- Chairman: advisor
- Three CS professors
- at least one must be tenured
- One non-CS professor
- Write formal research proposal (written part of qualifying exam)
- Create slides of proposal (oral part of qualifying exam)
- Apply for oral exam date 30 days in advance
- Beware of schedule of committee
- Deliver written proposal to committee in advance
- Practice your oral presentation
- Take oral exam (1.5 hours maximum)
*************************************************************************
The Proposal & Slides
- Should contain the following:
1. motivation
2. concise problem statement
- single, average-length sentence
3. related work survey
4. overview of your approach/results
5. detailed approach & results to date
6. main contributions
7. future work; short-term and long-term
8. references
- Length is not important
- Having previously published parts of the proposal may help
- Slides:
- same format as proposal
- enough to cover 40-60 minutes
*************************************************************************
Tips
- No need to rush - all in good time
- but do rush a bit. There's a seven year time limit for Ph.D. students.
- "NO SURPRISES!!!!!"
- Consult with EVERYONE on your committee well in advance; go over slides with all members if possible
- but do not confuse this with achieving consensus or total agreement with you
- Use your committee
- Each has ideas that you can incorporate
- Learn how to evaluate ideas
- Consult your fellow students
- Failure mode & recovery
- You get a total of two (2) tries
- Learn from the failure
- Recover: swallow hard, resize the problem, consult with committee, change research focus (last resort)
- Avoid extended post-exam doldrums
*************************************************************************
You and your committee
"Look over your shoulder now and then to be sure someone's following you."
-- Henry Gilmer
- Make sure you and the committee are headed in the same direction, at
times them leading you, at times you leading them
=======================================================================
III. WORKING ON YOUR THESIS RESEARCH AND STAYING MOTIVATED (by
Chao-Kuei Hung)
_______________________________________________
| |
| Making an Enthusiastic Decision |
|______________________________________________ |
o Are you determined, persistent, and strongly motivated?
o What do you expect the PhD degree to bring you? (Social status?
High income? Academic recognition or academic achievement?)
o Or do you just enjoy this process of learning? (- more than
intellectual learning?)
o Ask people already in the PhD program for years. (whether
what they experienced is close to your expectation)
o Is it worth while?
==> Go for it only if you have a clear goal and are enthusiastic.
_____________________________________
| |
| Utilizing Your Resources |
|____________________________________|
o MIT Newsgroup FAQ archive. (if you have a topic in mind but
don't have a specific keyword to search for)
o Archie. (if you know the name of the program you need)
o Netlib. (if you suspect what you want is a commonly used library)
o Bibliography databases.
o Cornell technical report archive.
o Science Citation Index. (for "forward references")
o Inter-library loan and the UMI thesis repository.
o Friends, advisor, and committee members. (Ask them for help
and also make yourself helpful to them.)
o Meta-FAQ's on "how-to's". (Doing research, writing resume,...)
==> Your technical questions and personal problems likely have been
raised and solved by others.
________________________________
| |
| Managing Your Time |
|_______________________________ |
o Create your schedule and show it to people. (It is very easy
to waste one's time in a life without course load.)
o Multi-task. (Spawn some background jobs for your brain. The
innovative ideas may spring up any time, anywhere.)
o Make the fruit of your efforts re-usable. (Keep simple notes
and logs of time consuming processes -- url's, e-mail
addresses, software tips)
o Make distracting jobs rewarding. (Learn tools related to
your research. Build document templates and macros.)
o Allocate unproductive time slots to less demanding jobs or
even recreations. (Schedule processes with small context-switch
costs for odd time slots; schedule after-lunch time for making
copies of papers.)
==> You can certainly make good use of your time as the computer
does its CPU cycles.
_______________________________________
| |
| More Than Working Hard |
|______________________________________|
o Avoid re-inventing the unit circle.
o Stay politically correct without sacrificing your integrity.
(e.g. Advertise vs protect your work.)
o Make connections.
- Talk to people in conferences. (Conferences have more social
functions than technical functions.)
- Subscribe to relevant mailing lists/Newsgroups. (They give
you more updated info than journals.)
- Grab every opportunity of knowing people in your field.
(Ask and answer questions. Give and receive help.)
==> Direct your hard work towards important - usually more than
technical - issues.
_____________________________
| |
| Writing the Thesis |
|____________________________|
o Write pieces as soon as you've got a new idea. (It need not
be in publish-able quality.)
o Submit technical reports and distribute them. (so as to get
feedback as well as proof of originality.)
o Publish papers. (Get recognized; receive comments; make
connections; add to your resume.)
o Major pieces of the thesis:
- Theorem/Heuristics. (Precise mathematical statement or
innovative idea.)
- Applications/Motivations.
- Implementation/Comparisons. (Comparisons is especially
important if your topic is well-studied and your approach
is heuristic.)
==> What to add to your thesis becomes clearer as you sit down and
express your cloudy ideas in concrete words.
_________________________________________________
| |
| Getting Along with Your Advisor |
|________________________________________________|
Go down the list as far as necessary; loop back as up as possible.
o Take his/her advice seriously. (Be stubborn about your goals,
not your approaches.)
o Push your advisor. (It is you who will receive the degree.)
o Be understanding. (Your advisor is busy, under pressure, and
has his/her own personal problems as you do.)
o Complain to your closest friends and ask for advice. (Get some
different perspective.)
o Complain to your advisor. (Earthquake and the release of
seismological energy.)
o Talk to receptive faculty members in the department.
o Talk to the graduate school.
==> Your advisor is as much a human being with individual
temperament and moods as you are.
__________________________________________
| |
| The Grad Student's Lament |
|_________________________________________|
(Courtesy of Ben Smith)
"I'm stuck. I must be an idiot. I'm just not cut out for research."
- Most people I've talked to have felt this way from time to
time - research is hard!
"I'm a genius! My research is the greatest thing since the Turing
machine!"
"I'm an idiot. My research is obvious, irrelevant, and trivial."
- This manic/depressive cycle is apparently quite common, even
among Nobel Laureates.
"I don't feel like I'm making any real progress."
- You probably are making progress, but just can't see it.
o Get feedback as a reality check.
o Write papers.
o Talk to others about your research (friends, committee
members, advisor).
"How come I'm the only one having so much trouble?"
- You're not. Talk to your fellow PhD students. They are
likely having similar problems.
____________________
| |
| Conclusions |
|___________________|
o Think beyond technical issues - become philosophical or political.
o Rely on yourself to initiate activities and changes.
o Be motivated. Be determined. Be persistent. (concerning the
ultimate goals.)
o Take other people's advice in carrying out your plans.
o Be receptive. Be open-minded. Be flexible. (concerning the
methods, approaches, heuristics.)
o Make better use of accessible resources; do not just obtain more.
==> PhD experience can be rewarding not only intellectually, but
also in its influence on your personality.
=======================================================================
IV. THESIS DEFENSE AND JOB SEARCH (by Katia Obraczka)
Preparing for the defense:
========= === === =======
. Your advisor usually knows when you are ready for the
defense. Follow his/her advice on that.
. Get paperwork from the graduate school. If you haven't filed
the "change of committee" form after your quals, it's time to
do that.
. Your thesis committee is usually a subset of your quals
committee. It consists of 3 faculty members, 2 from CS and one
from another department. You can have more people if you'd
like.
. Once you have chosen your thesis committee, one of the
difficult things is scheduling the defense. You should have
some possible days and times when you talk to the committee
members, so that's easier to converge to a common date.
. You are required to give a draft of your thesis to the
committee members. You don't have to have the whole thesis
written down, though. They will probably would like to have it
at least 3 weeks in advance. Make sure you give them enough time to
read it and try to schedule an appointment with them before
the defense, so that you can answer most of their questions
before hand. This will make your defense talk go much
smoother!
. Give as many practice talks as you'd like. Practice with
different audiences, but have at leats one with for advisor
and his/her research group.
. When preparing your talk, keep in mind that you won't have
time to talk about the entire work. So, make sure you state
and motivate the research problem you worked on, as well as
your contributions. Bring some "backup" slides, that is,
slides that you don't plan to cover, but can show in case of
questions.
Finishing and finding a job:
========= === ======= = ===
. Finishing vs. job hunting: sometimes it's hard to do both,
so you should consider finishing first, and then concentrate
on finding a job.
. Finishing: means passing the defense, getting the committee
(including your advisor) signatures. Usually, if the committee
requests changes to the thesis and/or additional work, they
will sign your card anyway, and rely on your advisor to make
sure the work gets done. This means that your advisor is
usually the last one to sign your cards and the thesis
signature page.
. When you get all the required signatures, you have to file
the dissertation with the graduate school. You submit it to
the thesis editor, who will make sure the thesis is in the
right format (margins, pagination, signatures, bibliography,
etc).
. Once the thesis is filed, the thesis editor will sign (yet) another
card, which you'll take to the Degree progress Dept., who will
make sure that you have fullfilled all the requirements, and
finally graduate you. Your diploma should arrive to you on the
mail approximately 3 months after that.
. After passing the defense, sometimes people tend to forget
that they will only graduate after the thesis is filed. The
best thing to do is to finish up as soon as possible, so that
you can move on to the next step in your career.
. Finding a job: academic vs. non-academic positions.
. Post-doctoral positions are also a possibility: they provide
a nice transition between student life and the "real world".
. Academia:
. Your research area is one of the most important
factors; however, even if the job announcement asks
for specific areas, it doesn't hurt to send your
application package anyway.
. Publications are VERY important. However, people
usually look for quality not quantity of articles
published.
. Your GPA is also important; so keep that in mind
when you are taking courses.
. Your application package should consist of a cover
letter, CV, most relevant publications, your thesis
abstract, and a research statement. Depending on the
school they will ask you to send letters of recommendation
(usually between 3 and 5) with your application, or
they will ask for them later. Your CV should contain a
list of 3-5 references with their contact information.
. If you decide you want to persue an academic career,
it doesn't hurt to apply to non-academic jobs (e.g,
research labs) as well.
. The interview is clearly a crucial step. Keep in
mind that once you are invited for an interview, you
are among the top 5 or 6 candidates.
. Schools usually organize 2-day interviews, where you
give your talk (usually on the firstt day) and then
talk to the faculty about your work and their work.
. It's crucial to have your research agenda for the
the next five years or so. You should probably end
your presentation talking about your future research
plans, and also when you talk to the faculty members
individually. This is a way to find potential for
future collaboration.
. It's also very important to know in advance what
your research needs are, both in terms of equipment and
support for students, summer, etc, and make sure the
school is willing to provide you with most of what you
need to carry on your research plans.
. Making a decision:
. 2-body problems are usually something you have to
take into account.
. Timing may also be a problem and you should be
prepared to decide on an offer without knowing the
answer from the other places you interviewed. This is
specially the case when you interview for academic and
non-academic positions.
. For academic jobs, there is also the tradeoff
between teaching and research schools. You should try
to figure out what your priorities are regarding
the teaching and research activities. Keep in mind
that if your priorities don't match the school's, you
can get in a difficult situation when you go up for tenure.
=======================================================================
APPENDIX: USEFUL INTERNET RESOURCES (by Chao-Kuei Hung)
Research Resource Listing for Computer Science PhD's
Note: In this document you may login as "anonymous" when
following the links to ftp sites unless otherwise stated.
Of General Interest
Good places to start searching for any topic you have in mind
are Yahoo and
Infoseek.
If your topic is of general interest (e.g. ray tracing) and you
know of a newsgroup which discusses it, you may be able to find
a comprehensive resource listing in the corresponding FAQ
(Frequently Asked Question) postings at the
newsgroup FAQ archive.
Sometimes you learn of the existence of a program by other means
and don't have an exact ftp address. This is when
archie is most useful.
(Login as archie.)
In yet some other occasions you know for sure that people must
have written a library you want to use. ("Infinite precision
arithmetic, too?" You bet!) Then your best bet is the
netlib -- libraries on the net.
There are a number of bibliography databases for computer
scientists such as
glimpse,
umanitoba,
and rpi's.
If what you want is a thesis, you may have to get it through the
Interlibrary Loan service at the USC library; or
order it from the UMI thesis publisher. (Their 800 number
is 521-3042 but does anyone know of their web page/gopher
server/e-mail?)
Also useful at the Seaver Science Library is the Science
Citation Index, which allows you to find ``forward references''.
A few publishers are accessible from the net, including
Princeton University Press,
(and more...?)
For the Theoreticians
Well, my collection of the theoretician resources is embarrassingly
small and biased, but if you don't mind looking at it..., I wouldn't
mind showing it to you!
Excuses, excuses...
Several people asked me for a copy of the resource pointers
(should we say URL's just to be pedantic) I mentioned in the
CSGO panel. Out of a haste I put together a rather incomplete
listing of the resources I use most often here (unlikely to
be the most useful, though).
If there is enough interest, I'll get it more organized and
updated. (But my guess is that you will get lost in some beautiful
fantasia on the net long before you have time to try every link
listed here ;-) Anyway, I am most glad to be helpful and
appreciate your comments
( ckhung@pollux.usc.edu).
=======================================================================
=======================================================================
=======================================================================
COURSES, QUALS, AND THESIS: MAKING IT THROUGH THE CS PHD PROGRAM
A RAP panel session held on October 14,1994
Panel members: Yui-Bin Chen, Cristina Gacek, June Lee, Benjamin Smith.
Panel moderator: Yolanda Gil.
The annual CS RAP sessions give an overview of the work and interests
of faculty members in the Computer Science Department and their students.
These presentations are useful to students who are in the process of
choosing an area of research and an advisor. However, this is only one
of the many things that students need to do in order to get a PhD degree,
including how to organize the course work while getting the research
started, how to prepare for the quals and form a committee, how to
endure and complete a thesis topic, and how to prepare for finding and
doing well at a good job after graduation. The RAP day organizers and
CSGO put together a session on these topics in the Fall of 1994. A panel
of four students answered questions and gave advice based on their
experience. Each member of the panel was in a different stage of the
Ph.D. process, and gave a brief presentation of experiences that they
consider useful to other students. The presentations were followed by
an open discussion in which both faculty members and students participated.
Below is a brief overview of some of the issues that were discussed in this
meeting.
======================================================================
I. TAKING COURSES AND GETTING STARTED IN RESEARCH (by Cristina Gacek)
* Ask for advice from other students, specially ones that are in the
same track as you are
- Course load
- Choices of professors per course
- Copies of old exams and homeworks
* Take course loads into account when deciding which courses to take
concurrently
- Never take more than ONE very heavy course load at a time
* Your main focus should not be on taking as many courses as possible
* Get started with research as soon as possible
- Do not wait to finish the required courses before you
start to look for an advisor
* Try to somehow mix the load between core courses, track courses and
research
- At the beginning:
1 core course
1 track course (looking for potential advisors)
1 chosen based on your interests, taking concurrency
problems into account
- After you have chosen an advisor:
1 core course
1 track course
directed research
* When looking for an advisor:
- Try to take a course or do some directed research with him/her
- Talk to his/her students (personal inter-relationships,
how demanding, how open to new ideas)
- Make sure there is an intersection with your interests
- Look around for info about his/her previous work (publications)
- Personality compatibility
- If you need support money, then available funding is
also an issue
* When you found a prospective advisor:
- Do NOT sacrifice class work for research (you DO need the GPA)
- Share with him/her your previous related experience (trying
to leverage from that on your research)
* Handling individual problems:
- Talk to students that have undergone similar experiences
- Talk to your advisor
- Talk to receptive professors
======================================================================
II. FINDING A THESIS TOPIC AND STAYING MOTIVATED (by Ben Smith)
* Pick the initial topic
- Get suggestions from your advisor
- Check the "future work" section of papers in your field of interest
- Consider your advisor's expertise & that of your committee.
* Narrow it down to a well defined research hypothesis (a thesis!)
- Be able to state your thesis in a single sentence.
- This is a gradual process -- the thesis statement keeps
changing (has for me at least)
- I find this process very slow and difficult --core of research
perhaps? Answering the question is almost trivial once you've
asked the right question.
* How do I narrow it down?
- Use your advisor & committee to help define your central hypothesis
and narrow the topic. They have the experience to help you determine
what's important and what isn't.
- Writing and talking about your research can help identify the central
thesis.
- The central idea behind a manageable thesis is a LOT smaller than
you think.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Grad Student's Lament
* I'm stuck. I must be an idiot / I'm just not cut out for research
- Most people I've talked to have felt this way from time to
time -- research is hard!
- Suggestions for getting unstuck?
* The manic/depressive cycle
"I'm a genius! My research is the greatest thing since the Turing machine!"
"I'm an idiot. My research is obvious, irrelevant, and trivial."
- This cycle is apparently quite common, even among Nobel Laureates
* I don't feel like I'm making any real progress
- You probably are making progress, but just can't see it.
1. Get feedback as a reality check
2. Write papers
3. Talk to others about your research (friends,
committee members, advisor)
* How come I'm the only one having so much trouble?
- You're not. Talk to your friends -- they're probably having similar
problems
======================================================================
III. PREPARING FOR THE QUALIFYING EXAMINATION AND FORMING YOUR GUIDANCE
COMMITTEE (by June Lee)
* Qualifying Examination includes:
- Written Part:
a. finishing core course requirements with GPA of 3.5
b. thesis proposal or statement of research direction
- Oral Part:
oral presentation and defense of thesis proposal or research to date
* Your deadline for getting a Ph.D with a bachelor's degree is 7 years and
6 years if with a master degree. You must have taken at least two semesters
of CS794* (Doctoral thesis) before the oral defense of your thesis.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Working out your schedule to beat the deadlines
1. Finish the course requirements (as Cristina has talked about)
2. Course requirements evaluation
Get a Ph.D program progress form from the CS department that summarizes
the performance of your course requirements and submit it to a Ph.D. advisor
to evaluate it for you and turn it to the CS department
3. Working out your research direction and proposal
4. Forming your committee and find a quals date that all of them can make it
5. Applying for taking your quals (30 days prior to your quals date)
6. Taking quals (by the add/drop deadline of the semester that you are
going to take cs794)
7. Taking CS794ab by your oral defense of the dissertation
8. Dissertation Defense by the end of your hard deadline
NOTE: Going over your slides with each committee member before
taking your quals is highly recommended.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Working out your proposal
1. Motives (Problem statement): what is your research problem and
why it is important
2. Related work survey: to address the challenges in your research
field and validate why your proposed problem is not solved
3. Solution Approach or Hypothesis or Proposed Model
4. Research Plan: how to justify and implement your solution approach
5. Research Results Up to Date
6. Contributions
7. Schedule
8. Future work
9. References
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Forming your committee
* The guidance committee is composed of at least five members including
- Your advisor
- at least 3 members from your home department and at least
one of them must be a tenured member
- at least one member from outside the student's home department.
- find faculty that are interested in your problem area
and your work
* Normally, all members of the guidance-dissertation committee must
be regular officers of instruction of the rank of assistant
professor or above in departments offering the Ph.D. degree at USC.
======================================================================
IV. THESIS DEFENSE AND JOB SEARCH (by Yui-Bin Chen)
* When to take your defense
- When you think you are ready
- When your advisor says that you are ready
- When the department says that you have to take it
* Scheduling the defense
- It may be hard to find a good time for all of your committee members
- You have to give your final draft to your committee a few weeks
before your defense
- You need to announce it at least 10 days in advance
* Pass Defense <> Graduate
- It usually takes 2 to 6 months for you to complete your thesis
after the defense
----------------------------------------------------------------------
How to Do Job Searching
* Get connections
- Introduce yourself to other people at conferences
- Introduce yourself to the speaker at seminars
* Prepare your resume and several versions of cover letter
* Find where to send your resume
- Email
- Newsgroup (misc.jobs.offered, ba.jobs.offered)
- USCResume
- Newspaper
- Jobtrackker
- Bulletin board
* Go to the interview
- Present yourself
- Learn about the company/university
- Ask for salary and benefit
- Call them few days after the interview to find out the result
======================================================================
V. USEFUL INFORMATION SOURCES
* USC CS department: The Doctoral Program in Computer Science
* USC graduate school: General Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
(can be found in gopher and mosaic)
University_Information
Catalogue
The_Graduate_School
Graduate_School_Policies_and_Requirements
General_Requirements_for_the_Doctor_of_Philosophy_Degree
Mosaic document URL:
"gopher://cwis.usc.edu/11/University_Information/Catalogue/
The_Graduate_School/Graduate_School_Policies_and_Requirements/
General_Requirements_for_the_Doctor_of_Philosophy_Degree"
* USC graduate school student affairs counselor
Ronald Andrade 213-740-9061 (Annerberg school M312)
randrade@bmf.usc.edu
Arthur Ledford 213-740-9057
aledford@bcf.usc.edu
* Useful forms:
USC CS department:
- Coursework requirement evaluation form
USC graduate school:
- student record card
- guidance committee recommendation form
- change of committee form
* Other useful sources of advice
USC graduate school seminars: call 740-9093 for a schedule.
"How to Do Research at the MIT AI Laboratory" D. Chapman (Ed.)
AI Working Paper #316, MIT, September 1988.
(NOTE: Written by MIT graduate students, it is useful but remember
that some parts are specific to MIT. Available through CSGO.)
"The Compleat Academic: A Practical Guide for the Beginning
Social Scientist", M.P. Zanna and J.M. Darley (Eds.)
Random House, NY, 1987.
(NOTE: Good advice about academic careers: how to find a job,
prepare for interviews, get funding. It is useful but keep in mind
that it was written for people in another field.)
"The Prentice Hall Guide to Scholarships and Fellowships for Math and
Science Students: A Resource for Students Pursuing Careers in
Mathematics, Science, and Engineering", by M. Kantrowitz and J.P.
DiGennaro. Prentice Hall, NY, 1993.
(NOTE: Very good compendium of financial aid sources for graduate
students. Chapter 7 covers the graduate fellowships. Available
through the CS Department.)
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