C4AI Special - Grad School Applications

Key Takeaways

foreign special grass School application um we're joined by vvm Indra and Ashish we're all PhD our current PhD student um over the world so uh we thought that given the PHD application season is starting we would share our individual experience and let you guys ask any questions you have regarding the Phish the application process um so first let's do a quick pull um I'm interested if you guys are planning to already apply for the 2023 September uh semester uh still deciding to apply for this coming year or you guys are planning to apply uh in the future and still deciding uh you guys should see a pool in new bottom right thank you I think the pole appears in the bottom right of the screen so if you're able to see that and let us know where you're at in your journey that'll help the presenters give a sense of where to target their message oh nice so it seems like most of you guys already applied or planning to apply for this year right all right I'll wait for 30 more seconds very nice so most of you guys are applying this semester so let's go to our next poll which is I guess applying to PhD October program or master master by research program because they are slightly different in terms of um the expectation of your statement and Siri nice seems like most of you guys are applying for doctoral program hey so let's begin our presentation um so yeah thank you for the panelists uh the VM injo and Ashish uh we are our current PhD student and we're gonna quickly introduce ourselves um talk briefly about our PhD program and how we got into the program so first of all I'm Brian I'm a second year PhD student at the University of Edinburgh I'm part of a program in the UK called the center of doctoral training which is a four-year studentship funded by the UK government it is a one-year Master by research followed by three years PhD program my research interest is in machine learning uh computational neuroscience and AI for health uh so I actually took me two rounds of a PhD application um so I did my undergrad at Toronto uh where uh I got into research because of alien Gomez and uh uh Ivan who are the CEO of code here now um where we found the forai the original for AI and then that's when I first applied and I didn't get anywhere so I work as a research engine engineer and then I apply again and that's how I go into my uh current program uh in Scotland so uh next DVM you wanna shoot yeah sure hi I'm the film I'm currently a second year PhD student at NYU um yeah I started my journey with uh foreign India after that I went for doing a masters in South Korea and after that I came for a PhD at NYU my first round was applying for the Masters but I did an internship at guys for six months in the end of my undergrad and then I just converted that to a masters so it was not really a round of application per se because I only applied to a single place uh for a PhD I applied to a couple of places and then I finally chose NYU for my PhD intro thank you so uh I'm a last year PhD students at serbiance University of Rome uh PhD in Italy lasts only three years uh uh actually PhD uh in Italy it's very different from other places in the world uh we have a public call and it's the state that found my studies and my research follows uh this new uh research area of trustworthy machine learning in particular applied to uh graph neural networks and actually I have done a path I followed a path which is very common in Italy uh where basically I have did my bachelor my master at sagenza and I immediately applied for a PhD and so it's just one round uh targeting just one University because I knew the advisor I knew that he was a really good researcher and I could learn from it and so I decided to stay in Italy and in my own town and continue my studies here and Esther yeah hello uh my name is Ashish So currently I'm doing a PhD at University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada um and uh I'm currently in my third year so I started in September 2020 uh and I finished a two-year Masters before so that was from September 2017 to January 2020 um and in between I kind of did like a uh visiting researcher sort of position uh which was relevant to my PhD actually um so with for with respect to my PhD uh the funding is guaranteed by the university for four four years um and a component of it is research assistantship uh for the professor that I'm working for and the teaching assistantship um and uh uh Raa like uh it comes from the University uh but I'm not exactly sure uh how uh what what role like the industry sponsor has and how the structure is uh uh like what was structure is there in the uh inside uh but I know that we are working with uh the industry partner Huawei um and I have an additional yearly scholarship from Vector Institute um yeah so those these are my interests I'm interested in inverse arrow and applications to autonomous driving in terms of application process I did not apply I only applied to one place in my PhD but for my masters I applied to like nine schools so I like created a full list of uh schools uh based on like easy to get into moderate and like hard and then sort of uh got some admits from my easy and the moderate ones but not for the hard ones um and then uh like I got a chance uh for I had a choice between Waterloo mague and UCSD um and then I chose Waterloo because I like the program and everything was very well defined uh in terms of what research I will do going further um and for my PhD I kind of collaborated like I was already in Waterloo so I I just went uh and attended like my props uh weekly meetings uh and then I collaborated with him without like sort of with pay afterwards but initially without pay as a volunteer and then later kind of uh started a PhD with him so yeah they were in a PhD I didn't really apply to any other place so yeah nice um so yeah I try my best to find panelists that cover different popular destinations for PhD so uh hopefully you can cover the destination that you're planning to apply to um so yeah uh we I we collected some tips and recommendations that the four of us uh also Sarah uh have regarding PhD application I will quickly go over them and then I will just open the floor for you for you guys to ask uh any question you have and which are best to answer them so um before any of these tips I want to uh mention that these are our personal uh opinion and experience it might not apply to other cases uh every advisor is different every University is different so one thing uh things that work for some University might not work for others uh just keep that in mind but um yeah so my first I guess suggestion or tips is that grad school application is a very concluded process uh quite stochastic so in the case of rejection um try to learn from the experience but don't take it too personal I know it's easy to say but quite difficult to do and my second tip that is with regards to your theory and personal statement is that you should work on things that um showcase your eagerness uh you'll be quite surprised by how identical uh University receive a series so pretty much most people take similar courses have similar GPA so I think what make an applicant stand now is by doing extra stuff like writing blog posts or implementing paper research project or contributing to open source projects um so I guess there's my two general tips um oh yeah okay so um I actually didn't place too many tips in the uh slides because uh most of my advice was like covered by the other people but the one tip I did place was that uh the statements of purpose must tell a good story so like retail treated like a like a uh like an essay uh which is kind of shared between your applications and it contains some common parts but there are some individual Parts uh with respect to the University of targeting so uh for example some statements can some things can be General like your motivation for doing a PhD or a masters uh your academic background How It prepares you for like a PhD what kind of research questions you want to tackle um but like some things have to be specific like why why this person or why the supervisor or why this uh uh University in particular um so those things uh make sure like you customize it depending on which university you're applying to and make sure you get it reviewed by a bunch of people uh preferably people who are already in research or uh have done some kind of grad school um so yeah that will be my uh most important advice that I would give sort of yeah I mean that is particularly important especially for the Italian selection process because your statement of purpose it's uh the first thing that is evaluated together with your CV and it basically should tell what you're planning to do in the next three years so you should have the clear ideas from start and usually you let's say uh Set uh this project that table with the professor that you choose or if you want to apply for a PhD founded by uh By A Small industry or a company this statement must match the topics and what the the company wants for you from you and when you let's say get through this first step of selection uh initially you have to uh you have to talk with their pH PhD Council and they evaluate candidates by making some questions about your uh statement of purpose and your research project and in that phase uh you should look really eager to start uh because they are basically founding you the next three years without asking you anything and basically they want to give the funding to people which are committed to reaching the end of these projects okay so this for me uh the general tips yeah to add on to it I think um one thing that I mentioned here was that you should choose the advisor and not the University at all your advisor would be the one that would be taking care of you and working with you for the next five years if you're going for a PhD um so in that case you should know what things you are looking for in an advisor so for example if you want in Hands-On or a hands-off advisor how much uh in how much Independence you want when you're doing research and is the lab collaborative or it's mostly dependent on you on what things you are doing what kind of topics the lab is focusing on I think all these things are very important rather than just going to a university and then um looking for an advisor even if you choose a university in U.S it's different on how you are getting an advisor because in many universities it's like first year you explore different advisors and in the end of first year you get to finally decide which either you will work in in some other countries it's like you decide your advisor before even getting into the PHD so if those things affect you you should take care of it also talking to PhD students help a lot like how is the lab right now how's the working environment and like there are a bunch of questions that you should ask about when you are finally making a decision and the other thing is PhD is a long commitment so uh you should have a good amount of motivation that why you want to spend next five years of your life doing PhD so in that case I think prior research experience helps a lot if you have done other jobs and then kind of doing research you have got an idea of both the lands and you know that research is something that motivates you and you want to spend the next five years of your life doing PhD so yeah I think making that decision and taking all factors into account is an important thing um as Brad mentioned you can do a Masters or you can also do a masters by research so both of these are different things that you can take into account when you are like finally deciding what you want to go for so yeah I I I think choosing a good advisor it's probably the most important for your PhD and it is difficult to know someone uh just by email um uh but I think one thing that you guys should do and can do is to contact their existing Master PhD student and talk to them and see how they enjoy um or how the lab environment is because I actually know quite a bit of stories about people not getting along with their PHD advisor and usually it's quite yeah it's quite it will become a very difficult situation for for both parties um but yeah so we gather tips on three topics uh the first ones about uh writing getting reference letter uh second is about contacting uh potential pi and the third is about uh existing funding that that we found and after that uh you guys can ask us anything um so yeah for reference letter uh which in my opinion is the most important part of your application from the uh admission admission team um because that kind of show who you are I guess um so I think choosing your referee uh wisely is very important and I think uh having a mediocre reference letter can actually harm um your application and so ideally you should ask someone uh who is in research and who is someone that you work with and you think that they know you um and once someone agreed to write a reference letter for you I think you should uh remind them multiple times uh so we should remind them maybe four weeks or two weeks before the deadline and you should also provide a list of bully points uh that remind them your accomplishment uh that may be things that you want them to mention uh this is a recommendation from Sarah at whom I believe she writes a lot of recommendation letter um and I think uh is I think the VM input you should ask for n Plus One Directory as well uh so you should ask for backup reference just in case um those who agreed that would write a reference letter for you didn't end up submitting on time uh which actually happened to me so so yeah uh keep that in mind uh I would like those sorry I would like to add a small thing can I just share like what my process was um so when I was applying for my Master's um actually I was applying to my universities on colleges right so I I really thought that asking one person to do like nine of them would be too much so what I did was kind of uh uh ask more people and split the work split the works as in like ask like only four or five from one person and kind of do like an allocation thing so that uh it's uniformly spread or something um and you can also do that if you have a lot of schools you're applying to all right and in terms of contacting potential pis um and this is just my experience I I've been told that we should I should keep my initial email short so ideally within the phone screen um I know some other Pi disagree that your email should be detailed so so this is really um depending on who you're talking to and from my experience contacting a pi uh just by email uh often will get ignored um for for various reason so it's actually usually a lot easier to have someone introduce you to that person um I guess the best case scenario is to have one of their colleagues to introduce you or or talk to the PHD student and help them introduce you um and I I think also bringing the benefit to know more about their work before actually talking to them and again since you're going to work with this person or this group or the next three to five years of your life you have to make sure that this group or the best you can that they can support you both professional and personally [Music] actually uh everyone has his own experience and for example I know that my advisor was let's say a full other things to do and that he couldn't provide really well to my needs for the next three years but however there was a a really good uh postdoc who is following I think now it's a terrorist track and he was able to do for me what my advisor my advisor wasn't and so yeah look inside the lab uh like uh many of us already told you and see if there are figures in there which can help you you know develop and follow you through uh you know first step getting into research uh small tips and maybe if they can also help you bind through introducing to in their research project and so most of the times a real advisor can be for hugs to you know interact with but it's a pyramid scheme at least in Italy and I think many other labs so if there are very good uh blocks in between the pyramid that can help you uh that may you know uh cover this aspect and another uh tip is look on Twitter uh for example a colleague of mine uh just posted a position on Twitter uh for a PhD that he is trying to assign to someone and I've seen a lot of them so getting uh to know people on Twitter uh it may be also uh it's easier for them to notice you instead of just uh playing email coming from nowhere in middle of one thousand unread emails so I think it's a really strong uh tool right now for research uh for getting to know new research topics uh new PhD position academic jobs and so you should use it and not just look uh cool cat videos so conceal it also for work oh sorry one one small thing I would like to add is that uh outside of Twitter there's also certain mailing lists that go around for certain uh topics in for example machine learning so like for RL there's an RL list which has like positions phds and postdocs that are available at different places so consider like Google environment subscribing to them because uh you you can get like a significant amount of emails or positions like from from there as well so it might be useful in your search yeah one tip from my side would be try to meet the advisors in person um like because of the virtual conferences sometimes advisors do attend the virtual conferences and you can schedule a meeting in the conference if you are attending in-person conferences it's never a bad thing to just send them an email and be like yeah we want to just meet you at a conference like if you are around they would be happy to do that and after that like if you are emailing them with a context like maybe you met them in a conference and your shared interests the possibility of you getting a mail back would be a lot higher than a random cold email to that professor other thing would be advisors are really busy like so they get tons of these emails about students willing to attend their group so a better thing would be to email their PhD students and maybe if you want to collaborate with them if you're having shared interests try to do a project with the PhD students and show that you are worthy of doing the PHD in that group and once you have worked with a PhD student or with the pi for a couple of months your chances of getting into that group would be a lot better than directly applying to it foreign program by working with one of um the pi students before so yeah that definitely works and yeah the last point is added by Sarah um whom I believe have been connected many times so she said that the email shouldn't be too generic uh it should be tailored and show interested Pi's research agenda I asked her to find a good example I will see if you can find one I will share with the recipe uh later hopefully um but yeah so funding which is arguably the most difficult part I think um especially for international students so yeah no we we quickly if the four of us quickly gathered the funding that we found uh for our respective country our region um so in the UK um as I mentioned there's the CDP program which is fully funded by the UK government and plus I checked around 200 CDT across the country and and yeah it's a program that uh encourage encourage interdisciplinary research and um on top of your salary and the uh tuition that is paid by the government they also give you extra funding for um uh a traveling and purchasing a personal item um so I think there's a quite quite a good uh program acidity um you and also found this list of uh funding that I found online for specifically for um international student or students from developing country uh so for example there's the Commonwealth scholarship for students who was born uh in communal uh countries or the uh China's scholarships Council so for Chinese student who are studying overseas and of course there are industrial scholarships like the D minori scholarship which um from our experience there are often even more difficult to get than Government funding but um yeah does any of you there's any of the panels have more experience with searching for funding oh uh actually for me I I never directly searched for funding I kind of just applied and uh like at least in Canada Masters and phds programs if you're doing it like Masters in research they're sort of fully funded uh uh by default like there are some partially funded programs but either it's partially or fully uh for Masters uh and for peers are always fully funded so but but the uh in these like basically uh the uh money is guaranteed by the university for some years um and the pis are the ones who are writing Grant letters and all those things uh to kind of uh channel the money I think but I don't really know that process so yeah but I didn't explicitly search for any like funding I would just uh kind of assign these fundings because of the like the nature of work I'm doing and uh the person I'm working with what is important is indeed the project that you're working with so yeah and make sure that is good before you do anything and a lot of few things about fundings um I think one important thing is where the funding is coming from uh I think you should ask this to your Pi or when you are being admitted to the lab so for example uh in some Labs uh your work is determined by your funding so if you're getting funding from a certain project you are supposed to work in that project because that's where the funding is coming for you in some cases it's quite flexible it's like even if we have the funding you can work on different projects and the projects can be tied to the funding in one way or the other so depending upon how much flexibility you want during your PhD if this thing is an important factor that you should consider um also in U.S in some universities you are guaranteed funding for five years in some universities that's not the case it's like the funding is coming only from your advisor and if in the worst case maybe your advisor runs out of funds then you have to look for an alternate funding but in some cases the university guarantees you funding for five years irrespective of whatever happens during the those five years I can also talk about like South Korea because I was there for my masters in U.S you normally have to pay for your Masters in Canada and even in South Korea I know there are programs where you can do your Masters funded by research so you get to do research for two years and then you are also funded funded by the University or either by your advisor depending upon what you're working on yeah actually in Europe there is this uh a EU funded PhD program which is the Marie Curie program it's very competitive and I actually know a friend which one wanna a funding from Mercury and he went in Hungary uh coming from amateurs in Italy and I think that's the it's the most important funding you can get in Europe uh concerning Italy uh as I told you uh phds are founded mainly by the government which allocates some resources for that year these are divided uh to the different universities who decide is how many uh phds are allowed to enter inside the one Department that's simple to in a phds in each other how many computer science and Etc so every year it's different and as I told you uh it's a public call and there is a graduatory and the top spots are usually uh assigned to these Government funding then you may have other spots which are usually founded by uh Professor contacts in industry and like tvmc these are related so you cannot do whatever you want sometimes you have to work on the projects decided by the company which is found in your studies and this year we had uh a lot of fundings from the European Union and the state decided to develop that to give them to research and therefore there are a lot of these PN error uh fundings which are by the way linked to a very specific topics in uh you know Italian Administration and they are they are supposed to uh let's say develop uh how we manage things uh for example uh you know traffic or you know uh retirement plans in Italy uh sometimes energy distribution and and so on so one thing which is also really different is that for applying immediately you are too late uh you the public call is held during summer uh usually during the months of July uh and June this year they were really late because of this PNR foundings so they call uh appeared in almost uh then you have a two-step of selections which usually end with the with an interview in uh said late September and then you start if you're lucky the PHD in November so on the first November so the timeline is completely different from what you get in other parts of the world and you can apply in this window uh mainly but there may be uh let's say a couple of fundings uh also in January and February we are trying to uh you know get in line with uh other countries to have a continuous application program but the summer is the information to get inside a PhD program in Italy to also add to this in Europe there's also a program called as Alice that you can look into by which you can apply into multiple universities within Europe I think you are allowed to apply to nine or ten advisors within one application through it and there is also integrated programs between Max Planck in Germany with other universities so for example when I was applying uh there was a program between Max Planck and University of Maryland and there was another between eth and Max Planck that you can look into and for them the timeline is around November and December so you're still on time and you can still apply yeah add to that uh the UK is also one of those countries that you can apply all year round um so not everyone start in September and also that I'm not sure about how to contribute in the UK new pis usually get uh special funding uh so that they can get new students so if there's a research that you like uh who recently joined the university the nation also contact them because they should have extra funding for a new student but yeah so these are the things that we have prepared um that we can we think is useful um so now we open the photo of you guys uh feel free to ask us anything about doing PhD which country why is doing paste in the UK better um about yeah uh but yeah ask us anything don't be shy hi I have a question so I'm a master student right now and I'm thinking about going into PhD and my question is did you know what exactly you want to work when you were applying for PhD like how exactly your knowledge was like because I I read few applications and some of them can be very exact some of them are the same level as I am so I'm just curious um for me um like when I uh started uh my PhD I was working with my supervisor uh for about eight months on uh on a different project so I kind of knew the things uh he was interested in but uh so so that that one uh that that sop that I wrote was very specific about the kind of areas I want to work with and he kind of uh it was in line with what he wanted to work on as well but for my for my masters it was very generic um and I yeah I just wrote like very generic areas and I wasn't sure what I wanted to work on and I got a uh I got an admit uh and then uh I I found uh luckily I found like an interesting application uh to work with but during the course of my masters actually I I did some more study and figured out that this was not what I wanted to work on and then what I wanted to work on I started working on Pharma in my PhD so it's a it's a learning process it's a long journey sometimes you don't know all the things in the beginning but overall like in the long run you will figure it out and just try to find a person who will accommodate you when you uh kind of uh uh like know what you want to work on right let me see thank you does anyone else have anything to add actually I I got interested during my uh Master thesis and uh also my advisor was really into into the topic and from a little discussion that we had uh we sort of planned these next three years of research and I was really interested uh of course at first I didn't know anything I started learning during the master thesis and then during the PHD these process continued let's say flawlessly ah I stayed more or less on the same topic and it was really smooth passing from doing thesis and doing the PhD I see thank you for sharing I can also add to this like I'm sorry yeah I mean adding to this I think yeah switch topics a bit in my research like during my Master's I worked on two completely different topics that were not related to each other and during my PhD I again thought of like maybe switching off up again like exploring something but what I found is your whole vision is kind of related like it's one problem that you are concerned about but how you approach that problem can change and there could be various ways on how you can solve that problem so for example for me it has been like I kind of want to build safe or like reliable machine learning models so the umbrella kind of Remains the Same but the way I tackle that problem can be done in various ways like you could make them robbers but you also want to say make them interpretable or you can just do multiple things that are responsible for making them reliable it's not just one one particular thing that you can say if that is solved then the model is reliable that's never the case so it's like maybe you have one Vision but you can uh like change about how you want to solve that big problem that you have I mean that's about also choosing the right topic for your PhD if you're choosing something that is really narrow then you cannot explore if you choose let's say to investigate robust model uh transporting model then you can explore you know privacy preserving machine learning uh interpretable much learning and yeah the topic is really important and also you have to consider what uh Computing researcher you will have access to uh for example I could never start researching on large language models uh and graphs uh let's say limited sized graphs allows me to do research which is uh let's say uh a little bit competitive with uh you know uh the example or the very big universities which have a lot of computing power yeah and just enough I don't know I think you shouldn't be too concerned about having a very concrete idea of what you want to work on I think phds or Master is just a place for you to explore a different area so as long as you have a general direction that you can work out I think it's fine and and I mean my research interests also evolve over time so and yeah I think that's just about the process uh so yeah I there are a couple questions Post in the Q a um if you guys can click to it are things like blog posts useful even for master programs what are what are some things that we can look and look out for while playing for MasterCard and this is different from what I'm trying to fish I think Master there's also research master and thoughts Master at least in my University um and usually I actually don't know which one is more competitive I feel like most they're more African important master um but then for research Master because fpi actually take you as a student so the pi themselves might be more picky uh worse for topmost the University might be more picky um so I actually got rejected by my university called Master which I'm teaching tomorrow um so I found it funny um but yeah what do you guys think definitely yeah I kind of agree that um like research Masters University might go easy um but uh the pi might be juicy so any kind of agree yeah sorry initially we don't have research Masters I'm it's just a thing Master then you do research just at the PHD stage if you're lucky you do a really good uh PhD this is work then you can publish during this uh this time during this window but I mean in Italy also during the PHD you are seen more like uh like a student and not uh let's see as a scientist or someone doing research so it's a little the little Nuance that we have and there are a lot of uh you know um things that follows from that I've not applied to a general Masters but what I think is if you write your uh statement of purpose and other documents according to master by research your sop would be better than when you write it General so for example if you are applying to a standard Masters but you write it according to the research program then you would also include the advisors that you are interested to work with what research you have done in the past how that would be aligned with the Masters program and that kind of shows indirectly that you have done the research towards the university and you are very much passionate about getting into this University so I think uh yeah writing it that way just makes it look better and to answer the original question is writing blog post even useful I think yes um even for your own personal you know experience education who never heard people uh application um if you show extra work and let's move on how useful are letters of accommodation from industrial researcher we get the paperwork yeah I think very important um I think having having someone that actually knows you to write your recommendation letter um is very important um yeah I mean you guys have a paper so it was a great endorsement in the other um I I I didn't I didn't have any uh I didn't I had like industry uh recent not research but like industry person like I did an internship and my manager sort of wrote one uh recommendation for me and I think that was the most important recommendation of all the other recommendations uh because the other recommendations were from uh teachers who I just had taken like courses with so uh but the internship one was like where I kind of showed that uh I I really had the potential for hard work and I was dedicated to whatever goals were provided like I think that one was the most important for me for masters yeah actually if we're entering inside my program I didn't need any uh recommendation letter so I really cannot can answer it question regarding this aspect but uh for they change it a bit so for last application they are requiring uh to research to uh to letters from people that know you well okay so the next question most pris have encounter have mentioned on their website that are applying rather than emailing yeah so from my experience people stayed on their website because they already have too many email um I think the best case would be having someone to introduce you to that person um so that's what happened to me I know couple president Toronto who knew someone in Edinburgh and they made my introduction for me and because the introduction introduction was made by someone they know they kind of have to reply to me otherwise they'll be quite rude to the other person um yeah so yeah don't email them if they tell you not to email them but definitely talk to someone whom you think they will know or talk to their PHD student and have them emails for you that's my advice I guess um I think that maybe you can still kind of email them but like don't be like don't be directly don't directly say that you are interested in this like first kind of show interest a little bit in any of their recent research uh kind of ask questions give suggestions on what you think might be the next steps or improvements um and then then I think like after like a a thread of emails then kind of once you know them then maybe mention them in passing that you know you've also applied so it doesn't hurt um but not like uh if they've already said that um don't email then yeah generally don't email yeah I think emailing emailing them about a particular paper or research project that's definitely fine as long as it is not about you know PhD application but you can mention that you're applying and then you talk about the research problem there are so that's it that is that's awesome yeah yeah nothing is set in stone in Academia there's always Google room um yeah rules are for people who don't know what they're doing so um next question uh I want to ask them on purpose about what to do for next few years so I guess the question is about how to improve your profile in general I guess yeah how to uh what what things to do in the next video so they can write out a nice statement of purpose a few years down the line right yeah so I think those things we mentioned blog posts research research project open source project um re-implementing paper that's definitely gonna be a big bonus um yeah yeah I think sometimes uh letting them know that you have a clear view of the state of the art on precisory search topic and that at least you want to attempt something which seems plausible uh that's a very good way to start and at least that was was basically what was my research project for the application so uh I let them know that I knew something about these graph neural networks and that there were some open questions and I tried to give them a really high level answers to the up to some open questions that they were at the moment so that was work that was what worked for me I I actually did do that but I I think if I had n't Supply again but uh I mean I won't but if I had then I would kind of do like a literature survey of the area that the person is working on Identify some good questions and kind of mention them in the um letter um that kind of clarifies and make things more specific right um so it would be useful uh to kind of see what what precise questions you have in your mind and yeah it makes you seem more informed and you will be more informed once you kind of read the kind of papers that that person is uh working on yeah to add to these points I think it also depends on where you are in your career right now for example if you're an undergrad right now maybe you can look for professors within your University and if they're doing good research try to approach them first and try to publish a few papers before you apply so that you know what areas you are interested in and what things you would like um but some people are not really privileged to have good professors around them uh for example for me my research came through for AI my initial projects that I did in research were through for AI so you have this platform where you can get collaborations decide up new projects across like people across the world and then you need to show that you have the potential to do research and you can like think of an idea end-to-end I think that helps a lot when you're writing that statement of purpose so yeah research experience I think would be the most important factor yeah I agree if you're an undergrad right now definitely try to work with one of the labs there um since you're already a student it's quite unlikely that we say no um Fair uh but yeah I think work on your research uh interesting project will be the most important are you a couple years um our Workshop paper is given any importance during application processor seems like everyone has tons of main concept yeah I think so I don't think that people itself is the highlight of your application it is the work that you've done that is the Highlight right the paper is just the result of your work um yeah I I doubt they would care they probably wouldn't even notice that it is a workshop paper not a conference paper um about you guys what do you think uh I think that I understand that maybe some places are extremely competitive for Masters and PhD uh they might have an implicit criteria that uh that you should that you should have a certain number of papers which you don't know as a student uh but still uh uh like I think the important part is to uh demonstrate that you have some experience in research uh I mean it could not it could be just like a project of you you implementing something uh doing some engineering work that's that's should be fine as well uh but yeah there's like three sort of things that I think are important either your you should have good projects or like maybe have some paper or research work or like have some good grades so like try to balance them and uh if you have all the three that is very good but if you have one of them missing then try to uh show that the other two are pretty good still yeah I mean in Italy it's very difficult to publish uh doing your master so even uh you know a workshop here at a conference it's a very big plus so uh because it basically shows that you are able to you know uh start an India implement it and let's say publish it so you have done what you should do in three years you already have some experience in research and it's a big plus foreign like it's a combination of a bunch of factors that are finally considered um to decide your admit but yeah it's also unfortunate that papers kind of play a role when they are admitting students because if there are so many applicants and like there are so many factors if all the all the all the applicants are good in terms of everything they match each other but then they have to find one distinctive Factor on how they choose to do and so papers do play a role but you can compensate it with other factors or show that you have the potential that you can convert this Workshop paper into a full paper maybe your recommenders support you that he has been working on support like an improvement of this Workshop paper and is it's in peer review right now for the conference submission so those kind of things also help a lot all right and I'm a bachelor that I want to do a PhD directly does it affect my enrollment I don't think the fact that you are Sebastian directly applying the PHD harms the chance it's more about like your profile so like what kind of project you've done um what's on your theory uh but yeah I don't think the fact that the pure fact that you have buffered uh this uh Factor but as a personal advice um so I work for two years before my research degree which I think is quite beneficial uh it makes me well first of all I'm a more mature person hopefully and I also have um was a better financial support because of the income uh for the for the two years um I think the last thing you want is doing a PhD and having some Financial issue that that is out of your control and you need money instantly um so there will be one reason to maybe work for a bit before applying um but that's just my personal experience okay I'll pay you guys excited yeah I mean you need that you cannot do you know a PhD without doing the master so uh this isn't the need to answer the question from my side yeah I think it depends on your profile like if you think even after your undergrad like you have a good amount of research experience you have papers then you don't want to do Masters you can go for a PhD directly but in case you are unsure that whether you want to do a PhD or maybe you think your profile right now is not strong enough for getting into the programs that you want to then it's better to maybe get some research experience maybe you can be a research assistant and a professor for a like an air or two or maybe work as bran said and then think about applying so it all depends on what like where are you at the end of your undergrad if you think that you are doing great balanced in terms of factors then yeah go ahead like no one looks at that the person is an undergrad or a masters it's mostly about the profile that you're applying with um I think that um uh like I I didn't do it like in my case but I think that there are uh certain research internships which are available uh for you as batch in in like bachelor's programs so if you for example like uh you can go to us there's a surf Fellowship in uh Germany I think there's that and there's also uh my tax in uh Canada so like if you do these research internships uh and you get to know the professor then they might be more willing to take you on as a PhD student um and that like apart from that I haven't really seen many people get into PhD directly from bachelor's unless like if they are coming from some uh yeah like a very good institution already then that's the certain case but all right any more questions uh we're at the hour mark now okay if not uh we have the other um resources that I think is useful so I found a couple of Twitter Thread about just general advice on a thread about all the uh statements and purpose and we just a research statement that people shared um a couple of links from DVM about this case in general and the last thing give a shout out to the c4l scholar program so if you're going to improve your profile I think this program is definitely very helpful um it pays you and you gain research experience um that's probably the best combination and best of luck of your applications um I hope this session is helpful for you let us know um let us know if you have other ideas other topics you want us to cover Maybe interview for PhD program I don't know um but yeah thank you for showing up and thank you the panel members uh for helping