PhD Application Tips that got me into Stanford, Berkeley, MIT etc COMPREHENSIVE – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.hello everyone today i want to provide you with some valuable tips on how to craft a great phd application i myself went through this entire application process and using some of the advice that i'm going to share with you today i was lucky enough to have gotten into several nice phd programs including my top two choices which were stanford ee which is where i went and also uc berkeley ucsf's bioengineering program i specialize in medical imaging hence the two different departments i understand it can be a daunting process and my goal in this video is to provide you with good information that can help you maximize your chances of getting into a phd program that you are happy with some of this information may be new to you some of this info may be known but is important and should be re-emphasized i tried my best to make this video concise so if you watch the whole thing you should get good bang for your buck so the phd application is very similar in structure to the college application you have grades letter of recommendation statement of purpose gre scores which is basically sats you have extracurricular activities you also have awards but one big difference between phd admissions and college admissions is with phd admissions there's a greater emphasis on academic performance specifically the student's ability to do lab research now it is really important you understand why this is the case and who is involved in the admissions process with college admissions not grad admissions college admissions you basically have staff members who read these applications and cherry pick students with different perspectives talents backgrounds and then they put these students together to construct a unique student body phd admissions is different each department has its own phd admissions office and in the phd admissions office you have a lot of professors of that department who are very involved in reading applications in fact in most cases the professors have the final say as to which students get into the program so it is important that we put ourselves in the shoes of these professors reading the applications let's say i'm a professor i am basically going through these applications and trying to determine which of these students will join our program some of these students who come to our program will eventually be joining my lab doing research for me and while they're working for me i have to rely on them to produce good results that i can use to write research grant proposals and these proposals are important for bringing in money and funding to support my lab and essentially allow me to keep my job even professors with tenure require grant money to pay for salaries in the lab in short the professors and the success of their lab is directly impacted by how the phd students coming in will perform in lab so it's easy to see that if i was one of these professors reading these applications i would want to make sure that the students possess at least three things number one is that they love doing research number two is that they are good at doing research or at least have the potential to be good at doing research and number three is that the student is excited about the research areas and topics that our department is involved with with this very important understanding in mind we should go back to the application itself throughout writing your application you should constantly remind yourself to project those three things that you have a passion for doing research that you're good at doing research and that this school's department is where you want to go to grow in this area now how do we do that now before we even talk about the sections it is important to know that students need to have had research experience as an undergrad or in the years between undergrad and applying for the phd program if you're planning to apply to a phd program in the future and you don't have research experience i recommend you get research experience immediately the easiest way to get research experience is obviously to join a professor's lab you can also get similar experience doing other things like industry internships self projects i also had a friend who ta'ed a class and helped write some of the labs for the professor and he was able to get into top-tier phd programs because the professor was vouching for his problem-solving ability so you don't have to get lab research that being said i still think that working in a lab is the easiest way to go and in some cases if you manage to get your name on a publication more power to you that looks great on an application now let's go through the main sections of the application and i'll give you some thoughts about them letters of recommendations if you've managed to work for a professor in a lab you should ask that professor to provide you with a letter of recommendation vouching for your research ability this is why i recommend volunteering or working in a lab there's also an added benefit the academic community is actually very small and a lot of professors in different schools actually know each other so there's actually a chance that if you apply to a program some of the professors reading the applications they might be friends with the person recommending you and they'll be like oh well if my buddy at mit or ucla loves this student then i'm a lot more excited about having this student join our program i worked for two different labs while i was in undergrad so i had both of the professors involved recommend me i also had a third recommendation from a class that i did very well in and that recommendation is the least important of the three if you've never worked for a professor's lab then whatever experience you did have like internship or ta ship you want to ask your supervisor to provide a recommendation basically vouching for your ability to solve new problems which is basically research alright next let's talk about grades grades are actually very important in fact grades for grad school might be more important than grades were for college applications obviously you want to make sure you're taking the relevant courses that being said good grades should not come at the cost of not doing research if you have a perfect gpa and no research experience that is not a good place to be it is much more desirable for you to take some of your time out of your schedule to work in a lab and take that small hit to your gpa good grades don't necessarily correlate with great research ability however it does make the reader more comfortable with the applicant although in some cases if you have an undergrad who has a very impressive research portfolio top-tier phd programs may take that student even with mediocre grades but those kind of students are not common now let's talk about statement of purpose so there's a main statement of purpose and there's usually a few smaller prompts but i'm gonna focus on the main one because that's where the meat of it is most of the time the question is pretty much the same basically asking why are you doing a phd and this is an opportunity to show that you are a human being explain to them what's motivating you to do a phd what do you want to do in the future if you say something like well i want to do a startup that's not really the reason why people choose to do phds on the other hand if you say something like i want to go in academia or i might want to be a professor in the future that makes a lot more sense also i recommend personalizing each essay for whatever school it is that you're applying to you should specify which professors at this school that you want to work with and which particular research topics in areas at this school that you're excited about working on you could be a stellar student and a great researcher but if the research area or topic that you want to study is not offered by this department then it's not really a good match and the readers will know it gre scores gre scores truth be told doesn't matter that much what i mean by that is a great gre score or a perfect gre score is not going to get you into a top-tier phd program but a really bad gre score could keep you out truth be told if you are applying for a phd program in math or engineering or some stem field and your math gre score is atrocious that does look very odd intrinsically your math gre score should just be close to perfect due to your background on the other hand with gre reading or your writing score there is a lot of leeway for instance when i took the exam it was still out of 800 and i knew students at stanford with gre scores in the 500 600 range in reading and writing scores of around four but the gre score is one of those things where they look at it make sure it's good enough and then they look at the rest of the application instead now a lot of grad programs they'll also have a section talking about clubs or organizations or extracurricular activities or some variation of those unless these experiences are academic they usually don't matter that much for instance if you're ta that could help for your phd application on the other hand if you're say like the president of a volunteering organization or if you're a world-class baton twirler those activities don't really affect whether or not you get into a phd program doesn't mean you shouldn't do these things if you enjoy them but they don't really have much of an impact on your application as a whole and finally there usually is some sort of a section where you can write your publications or your awards patents that is a great place to put in any publications that you were involved in again if you joined a lab and you managed to get your name on some sort of publication or you're involved in writing a conference paper that certainly looks very impressive and you should write that down in your application when i was applying i had one or two conference papers to my name and i was also a co-author on another journal paper and i certainly think that having that helped to bolster my application well i think i covered all the important points i wanted to talk about in this video i hope this was useful information to you i had a lot of really great teachers provide me with good advice when i was applying to the phd program so i hope that you know i can provide some of that knowledge to you like and comment if this was helpful also consider subscribing because if i make more videos in the future with good information you'll actually be able to see it i wish you all the best thanks for watching and have a nice day