Advice

A repository of links with advice related to grad school applications, research, phd etc related to (usually but not always) CS, NLP, and ML. Some resources may be sourced from one of the other resource links. Note - this is merely a repository, and I do not necessarily endorse or subscribe to every piece of advice.

Contributing

If you come across posts/tweet-threads/blogs/podcasts that belong here, feel free to create a pull request.

Table of Contents

• Applications
  • General
    • MS Specific
    • Applying to Predoctoral Programs
    • ToDo PhD or Not / What doing a PhD Entails
  • Selecting Schools
    • After getting admits
  • Reaching out to prospective advisors
  • SOP
    • Examples
  • LoRs
  • CV
    • Examples
  • Interview preparation
  • Misc
  • Resources
  • Financial Aid
  • List of Lists
• Research
  • General
  • For grad students
  • Research Ideas
  • Writing
    • Papers
    • Proposals
  • Reviewing
  • Rebutting
  • Reading
    • Literature Surveying
  • Publishing and Conferences
    • Publicising
  • Advisor-Advisee Dynamics
  • Research Internships
  • Networking
  • Talks/Presentations
  • Productivity
  • Tools
  • Impostor's Syndrome
  • Misc
  • List of lists

Applications

Note: A lot of the advice might be geared towards PhD, but people applying to MS programs, RAs, short-term interns etc. might find a lot of it still very helpful.

General

• AI2 NLP Highlights Podcasts: PHD Application Series - Preparing Aplication Materials, PhDs in Europe v/s US
• Student Perspectives on Applying to NLP PhD Programs -- MUST READ
• Himabindu Lakkaraju and Aditya Grover’s Panel -- Must watch, great insights from the panel.
• Demistifying PhD Admission application by Shriram Krishnamurthi (Brown CS) -- nice nuggets on the admission process from a Prof's POV.
• PhD Application FAQs by Noah Smith (Faculty at UWash)
• Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Computer Science by Mor Harchol-Balter (Prof at CMU) -- Very good breakdown of the process + a good insight into how to decide if its for you.
• How to get into grad school for science, engineering, math, and CS by Matt Might
• Jean Yang's 7 part guide to applications
• PhD Applications FAQ by Maria Antoniak (Cornell) -- very helpful
• Machine Learning PhD Applications — Everything You Need to Know by Tim Dettmers
• A Princeton CS Major's Guide to Applying to Graduate School by Clay Bavor
• The A-Z for Graduate Admissions MS/Ph.D.
• Has your graduate school application been rejected? by Sanya Jain
• Pointers on grad school applications by Khimya
• Reflecting on CS Graduate Admissions by David Anderson
• Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Computer Science by Mor Harchol-Balter, CMU
• Optimizing Your Machine Learning PhD Applications for Success by Scott Freitas

MS Specific

• Demystification of the Graduate Admissions Process by Karthik Raghunathan (MS from stanford, now director of ML at Cisco)

Applying to Predoctoral programs

• Demystifying the “Pre-Doctoral Researcher” role at Google Research, India by Shaily Bhatt (that's me) -- I wrote this blog detailing my experience applying to the 'pre' doctoral program at Google. The advice is generally applicable for most predotoral/RA roles
• How to find a Research Opportunity by Vipul Gupta

ToDo PhD or Not / What doing a PhD entails

• Undergrad to PhD, or not - advice for undergrads interested in research by John Hewitt (PhD student at Stanford)
• The illustrated guide to a Ph.D. by Matt Might
• Advice for Undergraduates Considering Graduate School
• Is it worth it to go to grad school in computational linguistics? by Emily Bender
• Rabbit's Ph.D. Thesis and Lion's Watch Repair Business by Margaret Fleck
• Everything I wanted to know about C.S. graduate school at the beginning but didn’t learn until later By Roland Azuma
• A course targeted at undergraduates which lays out the journey leading up to a research-first position (PhD) or job

Selecting Schools and Advisors

• A Vlog on using CSRankings to find CS PhD programs by Philip Guo -- Don't blindly go by rankings, but don't ignore them either.
• How to pick a grad school for a PhD in Computer Science by Vijay Chidambaram
• How to Pick Your Grad School by Tim Dettmers
• University Rankings for PhD Applications by Danish Pruthi and Mansi Gupta
• How to Pick a Graduate Advisor
• How to short list professors for your PhD/ Master’s? by Sanya Jain
• Choosing a graduate adviser by by Jen Heemstra, special to C&EN

After getting admits

• Questions to Ask a Prospective Ph.D. Advisor on Visit Day, With Thorough and Forthright Explanations by Andrew Kuznetsov (HCII,CMU)

Reaching out to prospective advisors

This might be helpful for cold emailing advisors for internships and prospective collaborators even outside of the PhD application process.

• Tweet thread for a template to emailing prospective advisors by Casey Fiesler
• Contacting Potential PhD Advisors / Supervisors by Casey Fiesler
• A note on cold-mailing professors by Yontan Bisk
• A Guide to Cold Emailing by Eugene Vinitsky and tweet thread
• 5 Tips for E-mailing Busy People
• People you should cold mail other than the prospective advisor - a thread by Sanya Jain
• Writing Cold Emails by Jia-Bin Huang
• Twitter thread on writing cold-emails by Sanya Jain
• Threads on cold-mailing by Sanya Jain: No Response Positive Response
• Managed to get the professor Interested for a Skype call. Tips for the Call thread by Hammed A. Akande
• Tips for Contacting Professor through mail. Thread by Oludayo Sokunbi
• Not getting Responses from Profesor. Here is what you need to recheck by Hameed A. Akande
• Gold Tips from Writing the first mail to professor and what to include/not include in mail by David Evans

SOP

• Inside Ph.D. admissions: What readers look for in a Statement of Purpose by Nathan Schneider (Prof at Georgetown University) -- A Prof's perspective, really helpful.
• How to Write a Statement of Purpose for Grad School by Swapneel Mehta(PhD student at NYU -- One of my personal favourites. Also contains example and other links. MUST READ.
• How to Write a Bad Statement for a Computer Science Ph.D. Admissions Application by Andy Pavlov (Prof at CMU) -- MUST READ
• How to write a (Good) SOP by Saksham Consul (MS at STanford) -- This post was written by a college senior and is very comprehensive.
• Erica Weng's Tips and Tricks -- absolute gold
• Advice On Grad School Applications by Luis Van Blog -- Crisp and quick
• Saujas Vadguru's Annotated Statement of Purpose -- great walkthrough of what to do (and what not to do) by a dear friend.
• Christopher W. Fletcher's guide to Personal statements with examples of his own SOP
• Vijay Chidambaram's tweet thread on what to avoid while writing SOP (especially for international students)
• 5 Things to Do in a Statement of Purpose for PhD/Grad School | PhD SOP + an example (mine!) by Casey Fiesler
• Quora thread on What was your Statement of Purpose (SOP) for entering into a PhD program? -- great answers.
• Personal Statement Advice by Suchin Gururangan -- with his own SOP attached
• MIT EECS's advice on Graduate School Personal Statement
• How to write an effective Statement of Purpose? by Sanya Jain
• Structure is Magic: A Guide to the Graduate SOP
• Olamide Olaoba's twitter thread on SoP structure
• Thread on ending your SoP with a Bang by Sanya Jain
• Thread on learning from reviewing SoPs by Swapneel Mehta
• MIT EECS's guide to graduate personal statement
• What faculty members are looking for in a grad school application essay - compiled by MIT EECS

Examples

• A website with CS PhD SOPs crowd-sourced from applicants
• Jean Yang’s Statement of Purpose for a Ph.D. in Computer Science
• Nelson Liu's SOP for CS PhD applications
• Jeremy Lacomis’ Statement of Purpose for a Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University focusing on Software Engineering focusing on Programming Languages
• Sean Kross’ Set of Statements for Graduate School - focusing on Information and Cognitive Science
• Vipul Singh’s Statement of Purpose for a Masters in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University
• Anant Bhardwaj's SOP for MS and PhD applications.
• An example curated by Soundarya Balasubramaniam -- Original author unknown
• Another example curated by Soundarya Balasubramaniam -- Original author unknown
• Sachin Gururangan's personal research statement
• Sai Siddartha Maram's repo of graduate admissions SOP
• Shashank Srikant's research statement submitted to and accepted by CMU ISR/SCS

LoRs

Requesting LORs

• How to get a great letter of recommendation
• How to ask for an LOR by Casey Fiesler
• How to get good letters of recommendation? by Sanya Jain: Part 1, Part 2
• Requesting a letter of recommendation by Michael Ernst (UWash)

Writing LORs

• Advice to Graduate School Recommendation Letter Writers by Shriram Krishnamurthi
• How to write a letter of recommendation by Michael Ernst
• A thread on writing great letters by Fadel Adib
• Gradschool advice - demystifying letters of recommendation by Krishna Murthy

CV

• How to write a resume that doesn’t suck
• How to prepare your Curriculum Vitae? by Jia-Bin Huang
• How to prepare a CV for grad school applications? by Sanya Jain

Examples

• Jean Yang's Resume for CS PhD applications

Interview preparation

• Interview Preparation Tips by Sanya Jain
• Yash Kumar Singhal Fall 2022 Interview Expierence

Misc

• A thread on how to strengthen your chances of admission if you have zero or few publications by Sanya Jain
• A thread on coming up with research questions for SOP, cold mails by Sanya Jain
• 9 MISTAKES to avoid while applying for graduate programs thread by Sanya Jain

Tools and Resources

• CS Rankings
• CS/HCI PhD Opportunity Tracker (2022) -- This is a tweet tracker for recruitment tweets by profs, it may change every year.
• Application support programs tracker 2023-2024 -- the links may change every year. Application support programs are usually very very helpful, and typically you can use them even if you apply to MS.
• CS PhD Stipends and living costs across US universities
• CS PhD recruiting networking event 2021 -- has been happening from two years.
• Largest dataset on CS academia including Professor placements, rankings, conference outcomes/awards, faculty hiring trends, and PhD stipends by Jeff Huang's team (HCI, Brown). Summary by Jina Yoon, raw data available at Drafty, and four rankings line up at CS Open Rankings

Financial Aid

• CS PhD application fee waivers
• Queern in AI's program to provide financial aid ot queer applicants -- The page can change every year; Please consider donating to this cause!

List of lists

Most of the links in these lists will appear in the rest of the list otherwise anyway.

• Kalpesh Krishna's post on an extensive list of useful grad school resoruces
• Matt Might's articles -- Lot of good advice for people at every stages.
• CMU's page of advice
• Casey Fiesler's youtube playlist on applying to phd programs
• Sai Siddartha Maram's tweet thread with resources
• Meta-thread on grad-school applications by Sanya Jain -- Follow Sanya Jain on Twitter she posts good stuff regularly.

Research

General

• AI research: the unreasonably narrow path and how not to be miserable an invited talk Rosanne Liu gave at Google in October 2020

For grad students

Helpful for early(or all) stage researchers in general

• How to Be a Successful PhD Student by Mark Dredze and Hanna Wallach -- gold written by two prominent people in NLP
• 10 Tips for Research and a PhD by Sebastian Ruder -- Tips to literally LIVE BY!
• 12 resolutions for grad students by Matt Might
• 3 qualities of successful Ph.D. students: Perseverance, tenacity and cogency by Matt Might
• 10 easy ways to fail a Ph.D. by Matt Might
• How to Succeed in Graduate School: A Guide for Students and Advisors by Marie desJardins
• GRADUATE STUDY IN THE COMPUTER AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES: A SURVIVAL MANUAL by Dianne Prost O'Leary -- Very thorough
• How to do Research At the MIT AI Lab -- old but helpful
• An Opinionated Guide to ML Research by John Schulman (Scientist at OpenAI)
• Doing well in your courses by Andrej Karpathy -- also geared towards undergrads. Super helpful!
• Advice for early-stage Ph.D. students by Philip Guo
• Grad School: A Brief Survival Guide by Igor Gilitschenski

Research ideas

• How to find innovative ideas for your project
• How to choose an NLP research project? Talk and summary blog post -- Insights from the 1st ACL Year-Round Mentorship Session on September 9, 2021. Panelists: Rada Mihalcea (Professor at University of Michigan, @radamihalcea), Saif M. Mohammad (Senior Research Scientist at National Research Council Canada, @saifmmohammad), Soujanya Poria (Assistant Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design, @soujanyaporia). Notetakers: Zhijing Jin (@ZhijingJin), Janet Liu (@janetlauyeung)
• How to come up with research ideas? by Jia-Bin Huang
• How to make steady progress in my research? by Jia-Bin Huang

Writing

Papers

• Planning paper writing by Devi Parikh (Prof at Georgia Tech)
• Write the Paper First by Jason Eisner -- On planning and writing
• Shortening papers to fit page limits by Devi Parikh
• De-Mystifying Good Research and Good Papers (repost) by Fei-Fei Li (Prof at Stanford)
• How to Write a Great Research Paper by Simon Peyton Jones
• Guide for Scholarly Writing by Shomir Wilson
• How to write a review paper by Sanya Jain
• Tps on paper writing by Jia-Bin Huang
• Writing Related Work by Jia-Bin Huang
• Animesh Garg's technical writing tips
• How to write CHI papers -- A Podcast

Proposals

• How to write research proposals by Sanya Jain

Reviewing

• Advice on Reviewing for EMNLP -- very helpful for reviewing for * CL conferences
• How to review for ACL Rolling Review -- a tutorial by Anna Rogers, Isabelle Augenstein -- ACL community folks please read to avoid being reviewer 2 :)
• What Can We Do to Improve Peer Review in NLP? by Anna Rogers and Isabelle Augenstein
• How to peer review by Matt Might
• top 10 tips for peer reviewers
• Neurips 2019 reviewer guidelines

Rebutting

• How we write rebuttals by Devi Parikh, Dhruv Batra, Stefan Lee -- Very good post.
• Responding to peer review by Matt Might

Reading

• How to Read an Engineering Research Paper
• How to Read a Technical Paper by Jason Eisner
• How to Read a Paper by S. Keshav -- The three pass approach, very helpful.
• Critical Reading by Emily Bender

Literature Surveying

• 6 tips for navigating academic literature as a student by Lucinda Doyle
• Honestly, WTF is a #LiteratureReview? by Adam Grachek
• How to keep track with the literature? by Jia-Bin Huang

Publishing and Conferences

• Guide for Publishing in Conferences and Attending Them

Publicising

• ideas on how to disseminate your research by Jia-Bin Huang

Advisor-Advisee Dynamics

• The Many Ways of Doing a PhD
• Guide to Meetings with Your Advisor
• What do PhD students talk about in their once-a-week meetings with their advisers during their first year? Quora answer by Jason Eisner
• How to do research with my mentors effectively? by Jia-Bin Huang

Research Internships

• How to find a research internships? by Jia-Bin Huang

Networking

• Guide for Interacting With Faculty --especially for undergrads, new grads, and international students
• Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students by Philip Agre
• On Using Twitter by Emily Bender

Talks/Presentations

• 10 tips for academic talks by Matt Might
• tips on preparing your presentation slides by Jia-Bin Huang

Productivity

• Deep Work by Cal Newport -- Great book, worth a read
• Calendar, not to do lists by Devi Parikh (Prof at Georgia Tech) -- Personal favourite productivity advice.
• Checking Email → Inbox Zero by Devi Parikh -- A clean inbox is a boon :D
• A thread on time-management by Jia-Bin Huang

Impostor's syndrome

• Googlers talking about Impostor's syndrome -- Very very good

Tools

• A short introduction to LaTeX and Overleaf by Jeremy Howard

Misc

• (FUN) Humans of AI: Stories, Not Stats by Devi Parikh and Dhruv Batra -- Prof Devi Parikh and Prof Dhruv Batra talk to various researchers in AI about their lives in and out of work. Worth listening if trying to unwind :)
• How to avoid machine learning pitfalls: a guide for academic researchers by Michael A. Lones

List of Lists

• Matt Might's articles -- Lot of advice for people at every stages. Resolutions for grad students is a must read.
• Advice for researchers and students Compiled by Michael Ernst
• Research Advice List
• Jason Eisner's Advice for Research Students
• Kevin Duh's resources on courses, subjects, and research -- great collection
• Resources to Help Global Equality for PhDs in NLP / AI
• Shomir Wilson's advice for students
• Jia-Bin Huang's Awesome Tips (twitter threads and more) -- These tips are just GOLD!
• 7 Essential Books for Graduate and Ph.D. Students