In the US graduate universities, Ph.D. students have to take courses. Can a student with low GPA do good research? I think doing research is solving problems. If someone cannot solve a homework or an exam, how the person can even solve more complicated problems to publish?
15870
I was reading the following article by Mathew Might.  I saw the following the paragraph  What doesn't matter GPA? I don't care if it's 2.0 or 4.0. I won't even look at it. The school you went to? I'll judge you the same whether you went to Nowhere State U or a top-ten school. Transcripts? Never seen one. GREs? Irrelevant. Where you work/worked? Unless it's a research lab, it's not important. I don't think these items have much predictive capacity as to whether or not someone can complete a Ph.D.  Is Mathew Might telling the truth? For me it's very hard believe that GPA, GRE scores and undergraduate school don't matter. I used to think that they play an extremely important role in grad school admission.
109320
I am applying for PhD programs in the USA, one of the schools requested a PhD research interest. The problem is I do not know how to write it, and I didn't done any research in my masters degree, are there any solution?
22149
Quite often, graduate level research is done by researchers from different institutions, whether different universities or cooperation between a university and a private corporation.   How do the researchers get to know each other? How does the collaboration begin?
7358
What I'm trying to understand is, to what degree does the status/rank of the University (where one completes his/her Ph.D) matter while shaping his/her career after graduation? I would like to know the weight given to one's school in both the following cases:   While applying for post-docs/faculty positions in academia While applying to industrial research labs   For instance, I've read on some forums (I can't locate the link now) that while considering prospective applications for tenure-track faculty positions, very few Universities accept a candidate who has completed his/her Ph.D from a lower ranked school having a lesser "brand" value, irrespective of the fact whether he/she has published equally original work as his/her counterpart from an Ivy league college. How much truth is in this statement? It would be really great if someone already in academia, either as a newly-accepted faculty or someone on the Faculty Hiring committee could share their experiences/statistics on this regard. I'm simply interested to know the answer, without commenting at all on whether such a practice is justifiable.  Similarly, what about recruitment to internationally acclaimed research labs (like  or ) - what importance do they place on the pedigree of a candidate's college, before taking into consideration what they published ?  I'm personally interested in answers related to the field of Computer Science (theory), but the question is applicable to any prospective grad student in any discipline in my opinion. Feel free to share your personal experiences post-Ph.D in detail, as that would give me (and future viewers of this question) about what its like to carve a career once you are out of school!
718
When applying to a PhD program in the US, how does the admissions process work? If an applicant is weak in a particular area, is it possible to offset that by being strong in a different area?  Note that this question originated from this . Please feel free to edit the question to improve it.
70651
When applying for PhD programs (or  or ) that require only a statement of purpose and , I was advised to first check if some faculty members (or is one good enough?) in the university have the same research interests as I do. I remember reading or hearing something like, it may be helpful to read up on the research that those faculty members have done and possibly contact some of those faculty members, and then incorporate the reading and contacting in the statement of purpose.   So what could I ask those faculty members? What I think:      Hello Prof/Dr ___ .I'm interested in applying in your univ and am interested in X. Can I ask more about what you research? This is my  (I'm from blah blah blah. I have a master's, but it's in applied not pure math. I've done some self-study blah blah blah). Do you think I am a good fit for the university? Would you consider taking me on as a PhD student? Do you think I am better suited for MS/MPhil than a PhD?    And then how do I incorporate the e-mails in my statement of purpose?
116094
I am in High-School but want to pursue research in Computer Science, but as you know High-School usually does not offer any such options or tasks.   So I want to explore avenues where I can get these options and tasks as I am very very interested and really want to do it.   I would also like to say that I have good-strong knowledge of C++, C and assorted APIs from that (3 years programming for 5+ hours daily). So I wouldn't call my self too new to programming and think I can handle programming and so on.   Now, these are my questions:   How can I get involved in research? How can I contact academics to ask them for research position or even an intern position in research for that matter without coming across as a "waste of time"?
50126
I have started solving problems from the American Mathematical Monthly. While I will definitely continue this, I am not sure how much this will help for math graduate school admissions (assuming I submit my solutions and they are recognized by the Monthly). How significant would multiple solutions to Monthly problems be in admissions? What about having the published solution to a problem? One issue is that I don't know how difficult the problems are presumed to be: all I know is that I personally have solved at least one of them!
15869
I have a master's degree in International Studies, and a double major with Computer Science from undergrad.  My transcripts suck.  There's no other way to dress it up.  I have pretty good teaching experience, and my GRE scores are awesome, and I suspect my recommendations are as bland as everyone else's.  Basically, to an admissions committee, I suspect I'm the model of a student who is probably smart enough but didn't work hard enough.  I want to do a Ph.D. in Political Science, but the response from my applications is looking pretty grim.  Am I permanently out of the running, or is there something I can do for the next few years which will help to counterbalance my unfavorable GPA?
48326
Critical reading is a very useful skill for most PhD students (and postdocs and researchers in general).  Instead of assuming that everything you read in a scientific paper is right, it's useful to learn how to evaluate the paper critically: e.g., to question its content, to identify shortcomings and limitations and ways it could be improved.  Experience with reviewing papers is a powerful way to gain experience at critical reading of papers. Writing reviews for journals and/or conference helps a PhD student learn to get better at reading a paper with a critical perspective.  Unfortunately, review opportunities for PhD students are rare.  For instance, it is rare for PhD students to be invited to serve on program committees or asked to review papers. In addition, some may think that PhD students are not competent enough to write correct reviews of scientific papers.  How does one solve this problem?  How can a PhD student get opportunities to practice reviewing papers?  What would you suggest to a PhD student who wants to do some reviews?
105654
I will be a second year math under-grad in September, and currently doing an internship at applied math research institute. Most probably, I will come up with a research paper at the end of the internship.  However, my interest after my bachelors is to do PhD in pure math from a top math school.My question is this:     Would the admission committee consider my current research since it is in applied math?    In addition, if anyone can suggest me some ideas on how can I bridge the gap between my paper in applied math and my interest in analysis, I would be extremely grateful.  P.S.:  is a related but different question also of mine.
10808
I'm currently an M. Phil student in Math and I failed a course last semester because I was not able to hand in a home work assignment (which was worth 40% of my grade) on time (I was 30 minutes late).   Apart from that I'd say I'm a fairly decent student, I got an upper second class honours bachelors degree, I have a B+ and A's for all my other courses in my current programme and I'm almost finished with my first paper to be published.   I've however been deeply worried about this failure as it would reflect poorly on my transcript if I were to apply to a Ph.D or another Master's programme.   Will my failing grade affect my chances of getting into a competitive programme or greatly lower my chances of getting a scholarship?
33593
OK, I know this is a pretty basic question but I haven't been able to come up with any really satisfactory solutions. (I have searched around on this site, but none of the related questions precisely answer my problem.) I'm a first-year PhD student working mostly in evolution, phylogenomics, and conservation biology. I'm looking for basic tips on how I can become more effective at finding papers when I need to research a subject for any of the usual reasons like developing a methodology or drafting a proposal.  Right now I seem to be pretty bad at this. My search strategy pretty much consists of putting likely keywords into Web of Science and Google Scholar, and then looking at whatever papers appear that seem like they might be relevant to my query. Frequently this fails to yield satisfactory results, even when the subjects that I am researching seem like they ought to have a significant body of existing work behind them. I know I must be able to do better, because I see other people coming up with papers that I don't seem to be able to find.  What are some basic best practices for conducting a literature search? I feel like this is a big gap in my existing skillset, and something that will really hold me back if I don't get on top of it soon. Again, I realize that this is a pretty remedial-level question and I appreciate your patience and guidance here.
94268
At what stage of research career one can write a 'review article'?   Obviously a graduate student in the beginning stages cannot/may not write one. But how experienced does one need to be before attempting to write reviews? Does authoring a number of papers in the relevant field equips one for that?   Can a graduate student publish a review article? Do acceptance of review article (for publication) depends on the reputation of the author or co-authors?  EDIT:  As @JeffE has pointed out anyone can write a review article; the question is about getting this write-up published.
74696
My interests are very broad. Before grad school I did a lot of things, but now it's expected that I only do one thing. Provided that I can demonstrate research competence in more than one field, by publishing for example, is it possible to write a thesis that consists of several smaller, orthogonal projects instead of a single great push? I understand why this isn't encouraged - diluting yourself is not an efficient way to get things done and it's unlikely that one would be able to become a PhD-level "expert" in more than one deep subject. But provided that one is very industrious and willing to give up the prospect of having any kind of normal life, which I am, has this ever been done?  Also: I realize this is funding-dependent - assume that I have external funding from a fellowship.
61578
I am a physics Master's student.  I have good grades, with CGPA above 9(/10)(However, all courses in my university are graded on a curve so the actual marks are significantly lower than 90%). This has been my marks throughout my undergraduate and graduate courses and I was happy because this was above average. Also, my summer projects in UG were usually computational and any difficulty I had in theoretical aspects I attributed it to my inexperience in advanced Physics.   However, recently I have started to work on pure theoretical project and while reading for the project I realized that I consistently miss some details from each topic. I understand the general idea, can re-derive most of the equations(with some effort) however when I discuss things with my professor or when I read further topics I realize that I have missed certain key-details. This is exactly similar to the case of me missing a few key questions in my exams and getting that 9 grade point instead of 10(or at-least I think so). I was not worried about this before but now I realize that there is some flaw in the way I study (but I do not know what).   Since I want to apply for Physics PhD I realized that I will need to have solid concepts and it would be best to correct my mistakes but I do not know how or even what could be the reason for my imperfect understanding.  Any direct suggestion would help or even certain general guidelines on what I can do.    Things I've tried recently -   1) I've started to written down almost everything I read. This is slightly laborious but is certainly helping. It also helps me to gloss over the things I read previously when I come back the next day.  2) I completely avoid smartphone when I'm library/study room so that I won't get distracted. Not sure if it helps me solve the above problem but certainly helps me study better in general.  3) I've tried to read the topics from several sources. The books I am reading is somewhat like a collection of research papers and hence does not have a exercises. So I though reading from various sources might help get better ideas but it's not really helping because most other sources are too high level as an introductory text. But this will probably help me in cases where it's practical to do this.  4) Somewhat similar to point (1)- I am trying reread, whenever I can, what I've done until that point. But not sure how much this will help me in filling the gaps.
28451
First of all, I know that your work speaks for you, and if you have really good papers, you have better chances, but just bear with me, and for the sake of argument lets assume that your research is only one of the points to consider.  I did my undergrad in what could be considered the best University in my Country (Mexico)and got a Magna Cum Laude.  And then, I did my Graduate studies in the University of Tokyo publishing a couple of Journal Papers (I'm really pushing for that 3rd one!)  This question is directed to people in the US, since I'm looking to find a permanent position.  What is the perception Universities in the US have of foreign Universities? I happen to know that UK Universities like Cambridge and Oxford have no problem (for obvious reasons), but a professor friend of mine told me that other Universities are just not that well known. And having a degree from the Hawaii University was better than having a degree from Tokyo University. (As a side note, he is a professor at Haw Univ, and he wanted me to apply over there)  I just want to know how true or false this is, and realistically speaking how hard/easy is to get a position as a postdoc and eventually a full time professor if you are not from a US univ.  For example, do I have the same chances as someone who graduated from a top University (your Ivy leagues, Public Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, etc) or do I least have the same chances as middle range Universities?  As a side note, I have a postdoc in the UCLA lined up, so I guess that'll boost my chances a bit.