Graduate School

*This article is aimed at people interested in doing a Math/Science/Engineering Ph.D.

If you plan to do a Ph.D, you might want to start researching on potential graduate schools early. After seeing so much advice on Collegetalk and other sources such as the Brightsparks website on how important it is to plan ahead. Planning might start after you matriculate into a college, or even when choosing a college and a scholarship. Ph.D usually takes between 4 to 6 years depending on the student, or it can be as short as 2 years or as long as 8 years. A Ph.D is a mainly a research degree, so how quickly people complete it can depend on luck as well. If they decide to become teaching assistants to help fund their Ph.D. studies, teaching duties can take up a large portion of their time, so of course the length of time needed for the Ph.D. will be longer than what someone who focuses solely on his research takes.

In the US, you need to pass some exams to become a Ph.D candidate. I think it’s the same in NUS, but last I checked you just get accepted by a grad school in UK and you can start straightaway.

If let’s say Mr N gets into Y University and loves it so much he wants to go back for his graduate degree there, it’s actually harder for Mr N to get into graduate school at Y University as most schools encourage students to go to a new place to broaden their views. Personally, I believe most people would want a change no matter how nice their college was, or you’ll likely be (3/4 years for undergraduate)+(1 year for masters)+(about 4 years for Ph.D) = 8, 9 years at the same place. But everyone’s different. Or they may have no choice but to change because their college doesn’t cater to graduate students, or they see Z University has this professor working on BBB research topic which is so exciting that they want to join in the fun.

What Grad schools look for: As usual, your grades, the type of courses you take, and your undergraduate thesis is king, as is your tutor’s recommendation. So it’s the same criteria as the applications to undergraduate schools – do well and be proactive in learning. There’s also the GRE (Graduate Record Examination), graded upon 1600, which is the analogous version of the SAT I. The GRE is supposed to measure a candidates verbal and quantitative skills. It probably has the same use as the SAT, to see how applicants from different colleges compare relative to each other. Extracurriculars definitely help also.

Most people actually start visiting all the schools they get into before they actually matriculate there. They talk to their college professors, who might know many of the other professors at other universities, and may recommend certain professors as the Ph.D. supervisor for a particular student. Usually most of them would speak to the professors at the different schools they were accepted into, get a feel of whether they might want them as their supervisor, and talk to that professor’s current graduate students about what they are doing and how they feel. A Ph.D usually takes a few years to do, so of course everyone wants to get a supervisor they can work well under. Also, while a certain professor may like to push the student beyond what is needed to be awarded a Ph.D, some people who may want to set up a family/ start working faster might decide to find another professor who is more willing to let a student graduate once the student has done enough to earn his doctorate. Ph.D students are generally under varying degrees of pressure as there is a self-imposed limit on how long they can take to wrap up their Ph.D thesis, and some may only have a limited number of years of funding.

And there’s always the fear that there may be a massive flaw somewhere in the thesis that they can’t fix in time. Usually most people managed to complete and get their doctorate, but there have been cases of people who couldn’t finish and was awarded a Master’s. I know someone who still had nightmares of getting their Ph.D thesis rejected five years after getting their doctorate.

Ph.D can be very different from the undergraduate degree. In class, if you don’t know something, your fields or professor probably will. But is research, no one will. You’ll have to find it yourself. There’s this article on “The importance of stupidity in scientific research” by Dr. Martin A. Schwartz. Very relevant and interesting.

A lot of institutes of higher education offer both undergraduate schooling and graduate studies. There are some purely graduate schools include the Scripps Research Institute, and the Rockefeller University, which are mainly for biomedical sciences related research. So whether you choose for you graduate school may partially depend on whether you fancy being a part time teaching assistant or want to focus solely on research. There are some private companies in the US which may also take in Ph.D students.

Funding. It is generally easier to get funding for your Ph.D than your undergraduate degree, because Ph.D. candidates already have at least a Bachelor’s degree and more or less know what they are doing, needing only a bit of guidance from their supervising professor. So they can help out and are viewed as staff by their sponsoring institution. They can get grants from some foundations, or become a teaching assistant, or if you’re an A*STAR scholar, A*STAR will fund just about all your foreseeable expenses during your Ph.D years. A*STAR also offers scholarships to do your Ph.D at selected institutes if you didn’t sign on with them for your undergraduate studies.

A lot of people end up working for some time before starting their Ph.D. I guess this is sensible unless you are sure of what topic you want for your thesis, since you want a project which can sustain your interest for about five years. Or some people didn’t decide whether to do a Ph.D until after working for some time and deciding they want to do one. I’ve seen some Ph.D. students working overnight quite often running experiments all the time, coming back on weekends, and you really need the passion to sustain this sort of lifestyle.

I have not gone through the Ph.D application process. All said here is what I know from talking to Ph.D candidates and people who have already gotten their doctorates, as well as my own research. Thus, if anyone finds that something I wrote is inaccurate and wants to change that, contact me and I will try my best to do so.