Hello.
Hello to all of you.
You're joining us here at M.I.T..
We are a bunch of community members in the Department
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
And we are delighted to be here with you to have a conversation.
My name is Leslie Kolodziejski
and I am a faculty member here in our department.
I'm a professor of electrical engineering
since 1988,
and I've been also serving the department
as the graduate officer, where I am in charge of the Ph.D.
program.
And since 2010, I've also been the chair
of the EECS Graduate Committee on Ph.D.
Admissions.
So I'm delighted to be here to talk with you.
And what we'd like to do in our conversation today is we will begin
where I would like to share a little bit about the department.
I'd like to tell you a little bit about the Ph.D.
program, some details and then we're going to have a conversation with current
electrical engineering and computer science Ph.D.
students.
Earlier this morning, I sent all of you the bio sheet for our speakers,
our panelists, and so we'll get to that in just a few minutes.
So if you don't mind, I'm going to share my screen.
I have a few slides and
we'll go through those very quickly.
Okay.
Everyone can see my slides okay?
Okay.
All right.
So I want to tell you a little bit about the department.
Here at M.I.T., our department, Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science, is the largest department.
We have 145 faculty members
across all of EECS.
And believe it or not, if you look at our undergraduate student body,
48% of all of MIT undergraduates are in our department.
At the moment we have a large graduate student body
where we have 872 Ph.D.
students.
And as our department head often says,
the department's research activities covers the full stack of computing,
where we have all kinds of research and hardware, all the way to software.
We have work in algorithms and lots of artificial intelligence
all across the entire department.
Now, the
department has one foot in the School of Engineering
and the other foot is in the Schwarzman College of Computing.
And this organizational structure is new, about three years old.
And the College is meant to infuse computing
into all of MIT, all programs and all departments.
And the reasoning is because of the fact that computer science and artificial
intelligence is is basically permeating
everything that we do in technology today.
And it gives us a chance to have multidisciplinary
efforts in both our educational activities
as well as our research activities.
And a very important part of the Schwarzman College of Computing
is the attention to the social and ethical implications
of computing.
Now, when we started,
when we created this new College of Computing organizational structure,
the EECS department decided that we had to restructure ourself as well.
And we are now divided or actually
separated into three different units.
And these units are what we refer to as a faculty.
We have a faculty of electrical engineering,
we have a faculty of Computer Science, and we have a faculty
of Artificial intelligence and decision making, AID for short.
And you can see in this Venn diagram that we have
research and educational activities that are specifically to each of the faculties,
but there are very large boundaries or porous regions
where these three faculties overlap, and that is where the
multidisciplinary collaboration
and partnership takes place.
I've listed for each of the faculties,
electrical engineering and computer science and AID, the very many different
areas of research that are being done across the entire department.
And you can see in some cases research is being done—similar
research is being done in each of the faculties.
For example, AI and machine learning is infusing all of EECS, as is robotics.
Here at MIT
in our department EECS, diversity,
equity and inclusion is a fundamental mission
that we are working on each and every day.
And we believe that if we can increase
the representation of underrepresented groups
and in particular gender,
we want to create an environment where all of us can do the very best work
and we can be our best selves as we do our our good work.
And some of the efforts that we have underway to increase
representation includes Rising Stars where we are trying to affect the
representation in faculty, in academia.
We have Thriving Stars, which has the goal
to improve gender representation in our Ph.D.
program.
Here in our department, we have a program called GAAP,
which is the Graduate Application Assistance Program, where our current
graduate students mentor underrepresented students
who are interested in applying to our program.
We have the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP),
where students can come for the summer as undergraduates
and work in our laboratories, in our department and do summer research.
And then we also have the Women's Technology Program,
which is to work with high school women who are interested
in pursuing STEM or technical fields, particularly
in electrical engineering and computer science.
So the question becomes, why would someone want to do a Ph.D.?
And the answers I have listed for you here
is if you are passionate about a particular subject
and you want to be the world's expert, then you need to get a Ph.D.
If you love to teach and you think academia is in store for you, a Ph.D.
will be needed.
Of course, PhD is a deep, deep dive into some topic.
So if you're thirsty for knowledge, this is where you want to be.
All kinds of opportunities are available for those with a Ph.D.
whether you go into academia,
if you go into industry, you want to start your own company.
You are interested in policy, philanthropic opportunities.
Anything you want, you will have it with a PhD degree.
And of course collaborations.
As I showed you earlier, the overlap
of EECS and AID allows many, many,
many collaborations and unbelievable unimagined partnerships to be created.
And as one professor just told me this past week,
when I asked what they do to have fun, their reply was, I do my work
because I love my work and for me my work is my fun.
So if you never want to work another day in your life, you should get a Ph.D.
so you'll have fun each and every day while you're at work.
So now let's go into a little bit about the Ph.D.
degree, and I want to tell you the requirements
of this degree in our department here at MIT.
Our degree is what we refer to as a milestone based degree,
because it's not based on completing so many units or so many subjects.
It's based on different milestones.
If you are entering our program with only a bachelor's degree,
the first thing you'll need to do is work towards a master's degree,
which is a research based master's, takes about two years.
That will require a proposal and a thesis.
The next thing you'll want to do is work on the qualifying process
for a PhD student, and ours is in two parts.
The first part is the technical qualifying evaluation, which is where you select
four graduate level subjects of your choosing from a list of about 80.
And you have to demonstrate mastery
of those topics by earning three A's and a B,
and then you will have passed the technical qualifying evaluation.
The next thing, once you do a body of research here,
you'll do the research qualifying exam,
which is actually quite fun because you talk about the research
you're doing to a committee of two professors
and they ask you about your work and it's really fun
to tell people, you know, all the things that you're learning in your research.
Each of our graduate students will do service
for the department as a teaching assistant for one semester.
Each of our graduate students will also select a minor program,
which can be anything that you are interested in.
It requires two subjects that have some commonality or some link between them,
but you can choose what that topic is as long as the topic is different
from your PhD research topic.
Some of our graduate students have a minor program in music.
One of our graduate students has a minor program in cooking,
so we give you great flexibility in the minor program.
Every graduate student will also do a professional perspective,
which are two activities that help you to understand all of your career options
that you will have upon earning your PhD degree.
Your thesis will be done by submission
of a proposal to a committee of three professors.
And then when you're ready to defend your work,
you will write a thesis and you'll have a public defense
where you talk about what you've learned
and you answer questions about your work.
On average,
the Masters degree plus a Ph.D.
degree take around 5 to 6 years.
We have all kinds of support for our PhD student body.
The first semester we have seminars
where students can
attend each of these seminars each week,
where we help them to have friends and create networking opportunities.
We have many different graduate student organizations
that provide different support as well as professional development as well as
a chance to, you know, have social activities.
We have the Graduate Student Association, the Graduate Student Council,
Graduate Women of Course 6, resources for easing friction
and stress (or REFS), Tools for Honing Resilience
and Inspiring Voices of Empowerment (or THRIVE), the CSAIL Student Committee,
and the RELAY Research Lab of Electronics Group.
All of our graduate students
are provided full MIT medical coverage,
so you'll be supported
both physically and mentally
with medical insurance.
And then each of our graduate students, in addition to having a research advisor,
you will also have a faculty member
or a research staff member who will be your graduate counselor,
who will help you with your academic program,
as well as any other resources
you may require or request.
From a financial point of view, the graduate students in our department
are supported with tuition, so tuition is fully covered.
Each student is provided a monthly living allowance
or a monthly stipend, which allows you to pay your rent and buy groceries.
And I already discussed medical insurance, and the kinds of support will be either
a fellowship, a research
assistantship appointment, or a teaching assistantship appointment.
In the first year, we don't ask
our grad students to be a teaching assistant.
Rather, we want them to get started immediately on their research,
and typically about 50-60% of our incoming
cohort
will be offered and awarded a fellowship.
And the monthly stipend for this year is shown here.
So around just over $50,000 annual
pay for Ph.D.
level student and just a hair under $50,000 for a person
working towards their master's degree.
And as you probably know, you know how to apply.
You all of you here have already
started the application in our Grad Apply tool.
The deadline for applying is midnight on December 15th.
The elements of the application includes the personal information that you submit.
You'll need to provide a transcript.
This year we have, instead of a statement of purpose,
we have now replaced it with two essays.
An essay is specifically to be
discussing your research goals and your experience.
Where do you want to go?
Where do you see yourself in your career?
What are your aspirations?
And the second essay is more about, you know, how you got to where you are,
what experiences have led you, or made you to be the kind of person that you are?
And how has that caused you or helped you to be passionate about your
research that you're interested in pursuing?
And of course, each application to be complete
will require three letters of recommendation.
And our EECS visit days for those students
that are admitted in 2024 will be the first
weekend in March.
So I think that's all.
Yep, that's all I have to say about the Ph.D.
program and I'm going to stop sharing.
And now we'll be able to have our conversation
with our current EECS graduate students.
So thank you all for being here.
It's so great to see all of you on my zoom window.
What I think would be fun for us to start with
is let's introduce ourselves to the people that are on this conversation today.
And the way that I'd like you to introduce yourself
is definitely your name, what year or semester you are in the program
and your undergraduate institution
and maybe your hometown.
And if you want to also give a short description of your research
or what you're interested in that would help to,
you know, for our
guests to know where you are in the department.
All right.
So I'm going to go around my Zoom window and Tommy, you're in my top left.
So would you like to begin?
Sure. So, hi, everyone.
My name is Tommy.
I'm a second year Ph.D. student.
I'm studying robot motion planning with Russ Tedrake.
I went to the University of Michigan for my undergrad, and I grew up there
in Ann Arbor.
Thank you.
Kimia, you're next to Tommy.
Hi. My name is Kimia.
I'm a first semester PhD student, so I've started for three months now.
I did my undergrad back in my hometown, Tehran, at Sharif
university, and I'm in the networking and mobile systems
group in CSAIL, and I think that's it.
Okay, thank you.
Phineas?
Hi everyone, my name is Phineas Nyang’oro.
I am from Durham, North Carolina.
My undergrad institutions were North Carolina Central University and North
Carolina State University, and I'm currently doing research
with the Electric Energy Systems Group in LIDS.
I'm forgetting one thing.
What else was it?
Your home—oh no, you did your home town.
My year.
I am a first semester grad student.
Yes, Yes.
Awesome.
Thank you. Jinbi?
My name is Jinbi.
I am a second year PhD student.
I did my undergrad at the George Washington University in Washington, DC,
and my undergrad was in biomedical engineering
and currently I work at the Koch Institutes
and my research is at the intersection of devices and drug delivery.
And I grew up in China.
Ticha. Hi.
I'm Ticha Sethapakdi.
I am a fifth year PhD student in the Human Computer Interaction engineering group.
I develop design tools for fabrication processes.
I went to the Carnegie Mellon University for my undergrad,
and I grew up in Bangkok, Thailand.
Thank you.
Mila?
Hi, everybody.
My name's Mila.
I'm a fourth year PhD student, and on more of the EE side.
I actually do research in materials or in the materials department
studying spintronics, which basically involves a lot of magnets and magnetism.
And I'm originally from San Diego.
I went to school undergrad at UC Berkeley.
So first time outside of California.
Thank you.
Let's start the questioning.
So the first question I want to ask and I'll ask all of you to give an answer is
how has your experience thus far, being a grad student, completely
been different than what you expected from undergrad when you were an undergrad?
So what what were you completely
wrong about?
Kimia, can I start with you?
You look like you have a good answer.
I think it's like early
for me to say that, but so far I've realized because
my only, like, research experience when I was in undergrad
was through internships or, like, my bachelor's thesis
and there were like, short term programs.
So there were like I had,
I don't know, like three months, four months to do some kind of research.
And that was it.
And I had a lot of support from everyone.
So the research project was defined already.
I had a lot of source code that I could use, but here in Ph.D.
you're doing research, of course, But it's different because you're expected
to, you know, do a lot of research you yourself.
You know, everything is not like prepared and you have to do it yourself.
So it might take more time than you would expect.
I thought maybe I can do like a research paper in three months,
but that was really unrealistic.
Though as you Leslie always mentioned,
PhD is a marathon, so we should be patient
and we should spend more time
and be in more depth to do research successfully.
So that was something that I expected but turned out to be different.
Very nice.
Thank you, Kimia.
Tommy, how about you?
What did you have wrong as undergrad thinking about grad school?
So going into grad school, I really thought that
the biggest thing that we were going to do was be a student.
I sort of had the expectation that classes and sort of more structured
learning opportunities would be most of the work
and research was something that, at least for the first few years,
you were only just starting to do on the side.
And I don't know how unique this is to MIT or other programs,
but what I found is that very much so the focus is on research,
and there are classes you need to take and you need to do that learning.
But that sort of it's almost a secondary goal to your research a lot of the time
I feel
much more a researcher than I do a student.
Yeah, excellent point.
Xavier,
are you able to come back?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
You want to introduce yourself?
Yeah. Do you want to introduce yourself?
Yeah. Okay.
So I'm Xavier Smith.
I’m a first year of PhD student in EECS.
I work with Polina Anikeeva.
We do bio electronics. Everything bio electronics research.
My specific project is magnetic particle imaging,
which is a biomedical imaging modality.
Hometown is Laurel, Maryland.
Yeah, I don't know.
I forget what the other one was that there was any other.
Think you got everything.
Okay. Do you want to answer this question?
The question is
What did you get wrong
from when you were an undergrad?
Now that you're in grad school, like,
what did you expect which was completely wrong?
I think the the one the biggest thing is
that when you come to grad school, it's like you have to know everything.
The point of graduate school is to get you to, I guess,
hone in on the fundamentals.
And more often than not in undergrad, like
everything is about, like the grades, you know, trying to make sure
that you get your resume together if you know,
I guess the next stage of, you know, applying to a job
or maybe even graduate school.
But when I got into my classes,
it's actually the reverse.
I guess in my classes I'm learning that
I need to just hone in on the fundamentals and the grade will follow.
Like the A will follow as long as I understand the material.
And so that helps me also a little bit with the imposter syndrome,
because you feel like everyone else, especially at MIT, like everyone
feels like they everyone else around them is smarter than them.
But in reality, I mean, you got admitted and it doesn't matter if you did,
you did or not. Like you're still bright,
but being
in my classes and seeing that has helped me
to, I guess, feel confident enough to do well on the exam
sort of approach to problems that are on the problem sets and stuff like that. So.
Thank you. Thank you.
Ticha, can you remember back when you were an undergrad
and and think back about how grad
school is different than what you were expecting?
You know, I'm so old.
It's been so long ago, but yeah, I, I would say that
maybe one one big thing was that I initially kind of coming
coming into grad school, I thought that you'd have to know
sort of exactly what you want to do
for research from the start of your PhD.
I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do for research,
and I think that especially during this application
period, people feel somewhat pressured to come in with some sort of research
agenda because you have to talk about it in your statement of purpose.
And to some, to some extent you do like you do need to demonstrate that
you have some purpose and direction and people need to know
what you're interested in so that,
you know, they can they can match you with the appropriate advisors.
But, you know, at the end of the day, no one's really going to hold you
accountable for what you say in your SOP.
And, you know, sometimes you might be sort of chugging
along in grad school and maybe you'll find out like something
interesting and and change your your topic or realize that you're interested
in doing something different from what you thought you would do.
And that's totally fine.
And that's that's totally cool.
It's all part of the process.
Yeah, part of the process.
That's absolutely right.
Mila, what about you?
Hi, okay, Ticha said one that I was going to say it was really good one.
And second that.
Something a little more straightforward and I didn't know until like starting
the application process was that PhD programs are paid.
I feel like that's something that is not common
knowledge in general.
Yeah, that is not common knowledge.
So that's a very good point to make.
Phineas or Jinbi, do you would you like to comment?
Phineas, please. I can chime in, yeah.
So mine might be a little more specific to this semester.
Again, you know, just starting out,
I'm not sure I really have the full breadth of understanding
of what exactly is going on just yet, but I didn’t expect
there to be such an overlap between my classes
and the research that I'm looking to do for my master's thesis.
So coming in, I originally thought that, you know, classes
would provide more auxiliary information rather than allowing me to work on my
research directly,
and I might just be a consequence of me being in my advisor’s class.
And that's what we're doing for our term project.
But I think that
it was kind of relieving as I feel like it was easier to kind of
connect the dots between, you know, all the information
that's being thrown our way drinking from the hose right now. But
yeah, so basically it was a happy surprise to find that I was getting information
that was going to directly impact my research rather than to spend
so much time outside of my coursework trying to connect it back.
So that has been kind of like a fortunate coincidence this semester.
But I tried to keep an open mind coming into grad school
because I realized I just I didn't know anything yet, but,
so I think that's where I'm coming from now.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
And Jinbi?
Yeah.
I feel like my experience might be
the opposite of what Tommy shared coming in.
I think
I had the expectation that I'm going to spend
the majority of my time on research and class is just add-on piece to my Ph.D.
or it's going to take not much time away from my research.
And that's turned out to not be true.
the first semester.
I think I ended up spending more time on problem sets and going to lectures
and just preparing for exams more time then what I did as an undergrad,
even though I was taking way more courses as an undergrad.
I think here in the department
class is an important component of the qualifying process.
So I think I did have the pressure to keep up with my grades
and actually go to lectures and do well in class.
So that was outside of my expectations.
Would you like to
share how many subjects you were taking in your first year?
I only took one and
it's not— I took Silicon Photonics.
It's a great class, but I had zero background in Silicon Photonics
and yeah, it turned out to be great, did well in the class.
But first semester was way harder than I expected in terms of coursework.
Yeah.
So I'm a graduate counselor for our graduate students
and my advice is always your first semester,
even your first year, just take one class each semester
and that way you can do some classwork and you can do some research both.
So just, just to normalize, Jinbi taking one class.
It's highly advised.
Thank you.
So the next question,
anyone who would like to share is welcome.
So I want I want to
ask the questions like, what do you love about grad school?
And what is hard about grad school for you?
And anyone can can offer— Mila?
Thank you.
Okay, I'll just do something that's maybe a little more obvious.
But what's hard about grad school is it's very self-paced
and that has its advantages and disadvantages.
But like trying to set your own
deadlines is a little bit more challenging than I expected.
Especially like I might I might be a little bit more on the Type
A kind of like want to be diligent
and then all of a sudden, like, things can just slip through the cracks.
But on the other hand, it's great because say like you want to
go—if you need to go do something
one day or focus on class for one week, then you can be like, All right.
Now, I'm going to go
this next week and focus on research because you have that freedom.
So it's a double edged sword.
Yes, yes, it is.
Anyone else.
Yeah. Okay. Go ahead, Tommy.
So I'll second enjoying
the sort of the general freedom that comes from being a grad student.
I think once you build up
sort of a relationship of trust in collaboration with your advisor,
I think it's very possible to just sort of,
you know, you can—as long as you're getting the things you need
to get done, done, How you get them done isn't so important.
So yeah, I also have had days where I did no research
because I just needed to get some classwork done or other things.
But as long as long-term things are working, that's really nice.
But I think what's hard about that
is that sort of the like
the quantitative rewards that you get are very sparse.
So like when you're working on a research project, you'll be working on something
for months or even more a year or two years at a time.
And then you write the paper on it and you submit it and you wait,
and then you get reviews back and maybe the paper gets in and maybe it doesn't.
And it feels like you're looking back at the past
months or even years of work
you've done and in sort of one instant deciding, well, did it work?
And of course, that's not exactly the case.
Like the learning experience is incredibly valuable, whether or not
the paper’s accepted and there's time for improvement and come back to it.
But it can be very stressful
to sort of look back on the time you've spent
and whether or not it sort of succeeded in that.
It's— So true, so true.
A deep dive, right?
Deep dive.
And as Kimia mentioned, it's a marathon.
So it's it's very, very different
from achieving a learning process in an undergrad class.
Kimia, I see your hand.
Yeah.
I want to, like, agree with what Mila and Thomas said.
So, like the freedom that you have in grad
school can be very exciting.
So the thing that you do what you love every day, so it's not like undergrad
that you have to maybe take some courses that you might not love.
So we have like all we have, we all have like curriculum in our undergrad.
We might enjoy part of the courses, but
we might not like some of the parts, but we have to take them anyway.
But in grad school you have chosen your advisor, your research group,
you know you're passionate about them and you do what you love every day.
So that's very I think that's what I love about being in grad school.
But this freedom can also have some sometimes can be stressful
because you have to, as Mila says, set your own deadlines and,
you know, you can kind of have to evaluate yourself based on that. But
yeah,
I think that that's should be the only hard thing that at least
I have discovered during these past months.
Would anyone else like to comment?
Yeah, I can.
So I guess the second part of the question I’ll answer first, what’s difficult
about graduate school?
Specifically in a Ph.D., you are your own principal
investigator of ideas that you come up with and you have the time
and money, the resources and the like, the community support to help,
to approach the ideas that no one else has ever done.
So you have to kind of get into this mindset of
no one else knows the answers out there, and I not only have to
like venture over that valley, but I have to communicate that effectively
and explain as to why what I'm doing will improve the intellectual like
like intellectually improve
the field and also how it can how like the broader impacts and whatnot.
I guess the point of where I'm getting at is
what's difficult about it is that you're like
going to be the first person that approaches that new idea.
And so it's not—It's not going to be trivial or straightforward.
But the thing that I love about it, which is why it's so difficult, it's
it being a PhD student teaches you how to solve—and not only—well, identify,
solve, and communicate problems.
So identify the problem,
solve the problems, and communicate how you solve that problem,
which is an important skill when you go after you graduate, whatever you do after,
it teaches you kind of how to understand the physical world
and how to solve problems kind of thing,
which—and do it effectively.
You know, once you graduate, you kind of have an idea of how to how to do that.
And I think that's a really valuable skill which is useful anywhere where you're,
you know, wherever you graduate or whatever you want to do after.
But yeah, that's the that's the thing that I love about it
that's also difficult.
Thank you. Thank you.
Another
another thing that I'm thinking about is
it's a word that Xavier mentioned a few minutes ago,
which was imposter syndrome or imposter mindset.
And maybe by a show of hands if you're if you feel
comfortable, have have any of you had imposter mindset?
I mean, I know I have when I came as assistant professor a long time ago.
And the way that I realized how to get over imposter mindset
was by realizing that so many people
are dealing with it as well.
Did do any of you have any strategies that you want to share
when that mindset is creeping into your head?
So I get like these little
spikes of anxiety any time something doesn't work the first time,
which is awful when writing computer code because I'm constantly writing bugs
in my code and then those are oftentimes the reason why something hasn't worked.
So I try to keep like things that I'm very confident will work
and like that will be fun to do research wise,
but maybe not the most important thing, sort of kept in my back pocket.
So if I'm ever really having a bad time, I can go and do something that I know
will be fun and still useful in some sense of the word
so I can feel like I'm still being productive,
but it's sort of a safe option,
and I find that that usually helps me to center myself and get back to work.
Excellent, excellent idea.
Very good.
Any other strategies?
Yeah, I have one.
I guess something I think about sometimes that was, humans—we
only know what we discover.
We only know so much about our physical world because we're going and
I guess looking at what the data,
the how the data leads us to the true answers.
So, I mean, it may seem like, especially in class, that's a very abstract
like thought, but I guess in class, you know, other people around you
seem as if like they're they they know more material than you do.
It it only takes—You can get to that that point where you feel like
you may know where you feel like you know the material through practice.
And it's it's
sort of like continuous thing. But
sometimes even
professors were in the same— professors and other researchers around
you were still in the same
the same position as you were were they didn't know as much, but they continued.
So when you feel like you may not know something, the imposter syndrome,
for me at least, creeps in, but I know that I can only develop
the intuition that comes
with practice and time and patience and then also perseverance, right?
Continuing to
get like, I guess, reach after the information that I may not know,
but it's not like I'm the only person that's ever gone through it.
Everyone has gone through it.
They just may not show it.
So but keeping that in mind is important because that's
how you become an expert in your field when you graduate,
because people will be coming you and then now the process repeats itself.
Now you have to kind of like teach people and so like, Hey,
you are not alone in this kind of thing.
I was like where you were.
Yeah.
Excellent point.
Phineas, I think you also wanted to comment.
Definitely.
So one thing I always, especially when I get into those times where
I'm feeling like insecure or I believe that maybe out of a group of people
I know the least about a subject, I always try to take a
you know, take a moment in my own mind is provide myself some grace.
Like it's been said, we're all human.
We're not going to know everything.
And also, it's
just another thing I like to think about is just logically,
if I'm sitting here beating myself up because I don't know something
that's going to that's not helpful to anyone, let alone myself.
So I just from the emotional aspect and the logical aspect, I'm just
I like to kind of take a step back and see like,
you know, remember why you're here.
You're here to learn, right?
If you knew everything, you wouldn't be here.
But also
in those moments where I feel like, you know, there might be people who,
you know, well, there are people who know more about this subject than me.
I think I try to frame in my mind, you know, it's less being intimidated,
intimidated by people, but more think of the more, you know, resources
with the great environment that we have here at MIT you know, I feel like
in most cases, if you're unsure about something or a subject,
you just ask and people will be happy
to, you know, kind of walk you through their understanding of a subject.
And ultimately everybody learns more. So,
you know, I just try to
think about it in that respect
because essentially it's eyes on the prize.
You know, don't beat yourself up.
Don't be too in—don't be so focused on yourself
that you're denying yourself an opportunity to learn, right.
Yeah, very well said Phineas, very nice.
And any other speakers want to comment?
Yeah.
My advice would be to just talk to people around
you, talk to your cohort and talk to your classmates.
I think my imposter syndrome creeped in when I assume other people know things
or assume I'm the only one struggling and sometimes that's just not true.
I think it's important to get to know people holistically.
So to get to know who they are, why they are good at the thing
that you're not good at.
Maybe they have a background in certain subject, and you don't.
And that's okay.
But the only way to find out is to just open yourself up
and talk to people and get to know them.
And I think another mindset that's helpful is to have a growth mindset, to think,
okay, I maybe I'm not good at this yet and it doesn't mean that
I'm not good at it forever.
So yeah.
I love that—growth mindset. Yes, Ticha.
Yeah.
I just wanted to add to what Jinbi was saying.
I think it's super important to talk to people and make connections
with people in your cohort, but also, you know, make connections
with people who are older and younger than you
because, you know, even even that super, super cool senior
PhD student who you look up to, they probably still have imposter syndrome.
And they went through the same
sorts of doubts that you're going through right now.
And, you know, once you get further along in the program and you sort of
get to know younger students, you'll find that they look up to you
and they think that you know what you're doing.
And you'd be like, No, I don't.
I don't truly know what you're doing, what I'm doing.
And, you know, I, I think it's
just very, I guess, humbling to think that
even even if you think
you're not good or like, not not super cool, there's at least,
you know, one person out there who thinks that you're you're super cool.
And at the end of the day, you probably know a lot
more than you think you do.
And yeah, just be kind to yourself.
Yeah.
I love that. Be kind to yourself.
Very important.
And I'm going to go to another question
that I received from
the attendees that we have invited.
They were able to submit their questions on a Slido app,
and I read the questions over the weekend and I read over and over,
the question is: does MIT have a work-life
balance or a work-work balance?
And so can you comment about your work-life
balance or or your work-work balance?
Mila?
Do you have work-life balance?
I like to say I do.
One thing, disclaimer: Work-life balance is different for every single person
and looks like something different for every single person.
Don't compare yourself to others.
I do think when you're looking for
work life balance or work work balance,
looking at the PI and their work life balance
and how that matches yours is always a good indicator.
Yeah, very good.
I can say something, I guess.
So I think for me the work life
balance is, I guess pretty okay.
I mean, I'm only taking two classes at the moment,
so I'm just focusing on classes.
But I started in the summer and so I felt like I had like
I was going like 8, 9 hours a day.
So it wasn't like too too, like different
from I guess undergrad, like, I guess work.
But I guess a piece of advice
that I've learned that I guess I can give would be
if we learn to take things one day at a time, then the work life balance will
then I guess create itself for us.
So meaning that if we try not to rush through our PhD,
trying to cram everything else, everything that we want to do in
like a week or a couple of days or maybe even a couple of months,
that might realistically take a couple of years to do
the work life balance will, I guess, be manifested in that way.
So that, like I said, something that takes a couple of years will take,
if we learn to break up the the the whole goal of, let's say,
finishing this project into small, tiny little goals.
If we reach, refine and try to, you know, get
those
individual goals done, then we might see that
the work life balance is manifested for us, meaning
that we actually get regular sleep, you know, 8 hours a day or
we feel like we can go out
and eat lunch with other people instead of at our desk, for example.
Right.
I mean, that having detail, having like a control
over the small little details or being at least paying attention to it,
is important because at the end of the day,
you still are human and your performance is extremely important
for the long goal of finishing your PhD.
Very good.
Good points.
Others?
I can chime in unless someone else was about to go.
But yeah,
I definitely agree with the point Xavier brought up about taking it one day
at a time.
If try to think of everything you need to do in a week
or a decently long timespan, you're just going to mentally fatigue yourself.
But personally, I would say
my work life balance fluctuates
usually depending on whether or not there is a p set due.
All right.
But I try to try to space that out as well.
But I think one thing that's really important
is I usually try to plan my days or maybe my weeks around the things
I like to do outside of academia, because I know this is important to me.
It's basically supporting my livelihood right now.
I'm not going to I'm not going to not do things right, but
I have to make a conscious effort, say if I want to go to clubs
or the club, not, sorry, clubs here, not like the club, right. But
okay.
Or, you know, just sleep in general or just take some time to myself.
Just I make sure I put that on my calendar before I would put any work in
or do homework or studying because, you know, if need be I’ll
adjust to meet, you know, what reality's actually going to be.
But just seeing that I have that planned out
just makes everything feel so much more manageable.
And, you know, I'm just going to prevent any kind of burnout.
Excellent points.
I do the exact same thing.
Every Saturday and Sunday, I have an hour and a half to walk the dogs
and I put that down on my calendar first.
Very good strategy, it works.
Other thoughts about
work life balance or
strategies to achieve it and to maintain it.
So I think that it can be easy to lose your work
life balance if you don't consciously try to maintain it.
Like there are so many things that I have to do that
sort of feel like work, even though they're not related to research or classes
like doing laundry or cooking food or cleaning my apartment.
And if I don't explicitly plan to do those things,
then I'll spend all of my mental energy on research and homework.
And then I have no clothes, I have no food in the house.
Everything's a mess and it's not good for my mental health.
So I try to actually schedule
that just as particularly as I schedule research and homework and problem sets.
Because otherwise
the things that fall apart first are sort of the most important ones in some sense.
Yeah.
Thank you, Tommy.
Ticha, you're you're in your fifth year.
Have you achieved work life balance?
I'm still figuring it out, but I guess I,
I totally agree with everything that was said so far.
And I guess just to add to that, even though it's called work
life balance, work doesn't always have to come before life.
In some ways life is or in many ways life is more important.
And you know, as people said, I think that it's it's good to sort of
treat it or schedule a schedule your life into your calendar as you would,
you know, your work into your calendar
and make sure that you are very intentional
about the time that you spend in both aspects.
Something that has helped me is just being
being part of social groups or
just, you know, social activities that are
that are explicitly scheduled because, you know, if it was always up to me
to just schedule everything, it might just fall through the cracks
and I might not end up doing things.
But if you join activities, that's just like, okay, for one hour
every Thursday we're all going to meet for coffee or something.
Then that is kind of a recurring
thing in your schedule that you know you will have.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you.
Ticha’s reply started making me
think about culture and M.I.T.
We have lots of different cultures here, right?
Micro cultures all over.
But if you think about your own MIT culture or EECS culture,
can you share it or describe it to
to our attendees today?
This is also a question that was on the Slido app from the weekend.
So people are interested.
They you know, they have maybe heard things about the MIT culture, but,
you know, let's share our real experience about our culture.
So anyone want to start?
Yeah, I guess I can.
Okay.
So I would say the the culture that I've experienced so far
intellectually, everyone is
everyone here is passionate about what they're doing.
So naturally, I feel like, especially in my lab,
the postdocs, the
other PhD students, they're all
they all care enough to, you know, provide support.
I feel intellectually safe, essentially
in my environment and with my advisor.
I definitely think that MIT has
and holds that reputation and will continue to do that.
I'd say interpersonally and socially.
I know the first week of orientation, all we did was hang out with each other.
So we got each others’ numbers.
We made like 15 different group chats for different things.
I don't know if we still use this stuff anymore,
but I mean, you know, cause of classes.
But point is, is that if you're looking for something, you’ll find it.
But it's important to kind of stick with it
as like throughout the semester, which is what we've been doing.
So, you know, people throw parties at their houses.
They have I’ve been to like five different house warmings like it's
the sense you I got what I'm getting at is like what you're looking
for, you'll find kind of, but you have to kind of go looking.
All right.
So the most important part, I feel like in that is to is the first orientation.
At least for me, that's the only thing that I've kind of seen. But
after that, it kind of gets blurred because everyone kind of goes
in their classes and like research started during the semester.
So I would say definitely look out for some stuff that people—this is like
an infinite amount of things going on, whether it be like music to like archery,
there's like other classes that are not STEM related
that you can do, I guess involved in based off your interest.
You can meet people on this.
You have another group for something.
They even have MIT sailing when it's warm.
So if you go looking you’ll find anything you don’t know, then just ask someone.
And they will just point in the right direction kind of thing.
So yeah.
Thank you. Thank you. Xavier.
Kimia you’re you're just in your third or fourth month here.
How have you found the culture in your environment?
Yeah.
I want to also add about the orientation events,
the amazing orientation events that we had this year.
I am an international student.
This is the first time I'm living by myself.
I'm in a whole new country, whole new department
like university, and the orientation events was amazing.
Like we just, as Xavier said, just we were just chatting all the time,
knowing each other, having fun, and everyone was very supportive.
Like, any questions that I had,
there was someone that I could ask and they would help
with me.
And it was very nice.
And also in my research group, my advisor and the older,
like in the other years, PhD students are very supportive.
Every time that I ask a question or I need to access some resources,
they put a lot of time to help me and also
there is like a very diverse
people, like in a community
in the department, and you can always find
a different backgrounds to talk to and chat to and learn from.
And this is very amazing.
I, I see that every day in the, in the only in the office that I have
and I am and we are all different from different countries
and from different backgrounds.
And it's just amazing when we chat during you know, when we are
taking a break from our research, our work, when we chat.
It's just amazing to see all of these people
and share our backgrounds with each other.
Thank you.
I'm so happy to hear that orientation is fun.
We spend a lot of the summer to prepare and organize that,
so I'm glad it's a fun event.
Anyone else like to share?
What's your culture like?
Coming
from the perspective of someone who missed the entire orientation,
it's still it's still been great.
So I think I'm very fortunate
that I'm in—for my lab we had four new incoming
graduate students, so that community, first off, has been great to be a part of.
You know, they've been really good friends so far.
But just speaking in terms of the culture at MIT, like,
you know, even though most people are usually like really busy
and kind of focused on their research, classes, if you just go up and, you know,
for any reason, if you just go up and have a conversation with people,
I believe it's pretty it's pretty easy.
You know, everybody here is pretty passionate.
I believe for the most part have good hearts.
It's not hard to make friends and be sociable if you make the effort to.
So I've been grateful in that respect.
But also, you know, living off campus, that's kind of been necessary in order
to make sure that I actually engage with people socially.
But I think the crux of what I'm saying is if you just make the effort,
you'll find that most of the people here are great to talk to and be around
and it's it refreshes you, especially if you're having a hard week
with school or with some research in general.
Yeah, I can't really say anything negative about it so far.
That's awesome.
Tommy or Ticha?
Jinbi?
I found that the culture here was very collaborative,
and maybe that's just because there's so many different things to research
that the odds that people would be sort of competing to get same idea
in the same way are just so low as to that I haven't encountered it at all.
So anytime I'm having a conversation with someone,
whether they're in my lab or someone I know from a class
or just someone who I met a little while ago
because they're a friend of a friend of a friend.
Like there's just sort of a genuine interest and excitement
in what you're doing and vice versa. So
I think
I thought undergrad oftentimes felt very competitive
and I think the application process feels very competitive.
But I think once you've gotten over that threshold at that point,
there's not really a reason to be competitive anymore. So
because the only person you're competing against, I guess,
is yourself.
Yeah, I've felt that as a
as an assistant professor, I was feeling that all the time.
And it wasn't the competition of anyone but the competition with myself.
So I understand that.
Any other culture related
comments.
Okay.
All right.
Well, let's go on to another question.
Another thing that people are very interested to figure out
and to know is how does one go about finding their research
professor, their research advisor, or their project.
That's a task that everyone has to take and accomplish.
So can can any of you share how
how did you go about figuring out which research group
and which research advisor you were interested in working with?
How did you make that choice?
So I had a
slightly interesting experience where the professor I'm working with now,
I had not put his name down on my application as someone
that I was like one of the people that I really wanted to work with.
And he reached out to me
after after decisions had come out at some point
and suggested that we meet to talk about this.
And I had not put his name down because I thought that my interest didn’t
line up with his and he explained that maybe that wasn't quite the case.
Maybe there was some common interests.
So we got to talking and at some point
around visit days, I actually visited the lab and I met some of the students.
We went to get food.
I had a chance to have a conversation with him
and that made me pretty confident in wanting to work with him.
But also I didn't make the decision just yet,
and I had opportunities to meet with several other professors
during visit days and outside of that and before ultimately making my decision.
Very nice.
And that was Professor Tedrake. Yes.
Okay. Right. Okay.
Very nice.
Other other experiences in finding a professor.
Yeah, I guess I can add some, talk about mine.
I guess so.
I guess I'll give the general advice first and then I'll give specifically to me.
I guess picking your research advisor is the most important thing
when it comes to you actually get admitted because that's where you live.
The culture, the community, the atmosphere, everything intellectually
is number one because a lot of
the concepts are blended between labs.
For example, like, for example, if you're in a computational neuroscience lab,
some of the general concepts are universal between computational neuroscience labs.
But what how they apply it may be specific, meaning that
what's more important is not necessarily the, the, the what you see on a website.
It’s the culture of the lab itself.
So you can learn a lot of the good—learn a lot of like
the topics that you may need, the fundamentals.
For example,
in the case of computational neuroscience computational neuroscience labs.
But what's more most important is that you have an advisor
and a lab that supports your interests and what you want to
what you want to tackle in your PhD.
And then obviously you want to go ahead and talk to some of the
I guess that part’s maybe not necessarily obvious, but
it's important that you go and talk to the other PhD students and postdocs
and ask them their personal experiences about their lab or about the lab that you
may want to join because
their
end of their relationship may be end up, may end up
has may be similar to yours, meaning that, you know,
if that relationship is not good, then you may want to look at a different lab.
Point is, is that what's most important is the relationship
with your advisor in your lab.
And then from there
you'll you can learn the implements
that you can apply anywhere kind of thing.
So for me personally,
I found my advisor like two years ago and we've been talking ever since then.
But that was just, that was kind of unique because
my area is at the time is very small.
So I just, I knew all of the I knew
all the different advisors at the different schools.
So I kind of like emailed them and I'm like, I kind of knew who they were
already, so I'm like okay.
I kind of want to work on this magnetic particle imaging.
And they were like, Hey, we need people to work on this.
So I'm like, That kind of worked out really nicely,
but that's kind of happened to me.
But I still had to do my due diligence and ask the students and like, Hey,
how was your relationship with
my advisor? You know,
is this do you, in your opinion, like
do you think this is a good place for me to be?
Like ask them kind of thing.
But that that lab culture is like the number one thing.
Yeah.
Thank you, Xavier.
Very, very good points.
So Xavier is working with a professor who is not in EECS.
She is outside of EECS.
Mila, your advisor is not in EECS
and all of our grad students can work with faculty across MIT.
Mila, would you, would you want to talk about how you found your project?
Yeah, for sure, for sure, yeah.
So I applied the EECS program because I really thought
that it best accompanied like what I wanted to study.
But the topic spintronics kind of crosses over several different departments.
And basically I found Professor Caroline Ross, who's in the material science
department and after talking with her, I thought it was really clear
that our work life balances, like we were talking about, like aligned.
One other
thing that I really recommend is asking all the grad students
or a few of them that you think will give you honest answers,
what they don't like about the lab, like if they had to change one thing.
So basically most of the grad students
I talked to in that lab, like they're
like secret things were things that weren't
that big of a deal or they didn't really to me personally
or like have is didn't really have one to share.
And I definitely found that to be the case since and so I'm
very happy with my choice, but I definitely did some like deep
dive investigation into like all the good and evil of the lab.
groups I was interested in.
Thank you for that answer, because it's important
to understand that asking those hard questions is okay.
And when you do ask those hard questions,
no one's going to be upset with you.
It's it's okay.
Would anyone else
like to share how they found their advisor?
Sure. I can go.
So, yeah, essentially
I was part of
MSRP program or MSRP (program is in the P).
Anyways, and I was actually here studying or
working on a computational biophysics problem because I'm undergrad in physics
and electrical engineering.
And I knew that I really wanted to focus on power systems moving forward.
So fortunately enough,
I actually, you know, ask you, Leslie and then you connected me with Dr.
Maria Illic, who is my current advisor.
And you know, it was pretty much a straightforward process from there.
But before I had really committed to the Lab, you know, we had meetings
making sure that she would want to support my,
my research goals, which essentially is I want to help improve the electrification
in rural countries, specifically Tanzania, but you know, all across
third world countries as well.
But just I wanted to make sure that our desires and
our visions aligned which
we were able to meet before I got accepted and after I got accepted,
I had meetings with the current grad students in her lab
and again, like what Mila touched upon earlier,
like any problems or grievances they had weren’t really
huge deals to me or didn't even have anything negative to say.
So basically, you know,
I was able to find the person I want to work with pretty quickly, but
you kind of check some things off your list to confirm whether or not
that's where you really want to stay.
And fortunately, it's been it's been great so far.
So that was my process.
Very nice,
very good.
Then I'm going to ask
now a question that the attendees have put in Slido.
And you know, all of our attendees are right now
trying to decide where they want to go to grad school
and they're putting putting together applications.
And if you think back at that point when you were doing that
and think about how stressful it was because your future is on the line
and you don't, you won't know, these outcomes for a couple of months.
Can you share any strategies of how to handle that stress, like
to just manage it so that this next several months is not so painful?
Yeah, I can.
I can say something here,
the the answer to that question would be just not to worry about it
because where you where you will be is where you were meant to be.
So I feel like that's a very philosophical answer,
but it's nonetheless, it is true.
You can't like I guess you can do the best that you can.
Obviously, you do the best you can on those essays,
developing relationships with people.
But—with your advisors and
and whatnot. But
you can't—just worry about one day at a time, really.
Like worry about getting those essays in and then after you submit
just continuing to do well in undergrad graduate.
If you're in there in school at the moment then continue to take a day at a time.
Right.
But it's going to take a little while, right?
It's what we find out when—I guess everyone finds out in April, I believe.
Right.
So you have some a little bit from now is the point.
But you still so you have some time.
Worrying about it in the future will actually just steal time from you now.
So just worry about putting in the time to do as best as you can,
but in the case that say you get into another school,
and you don’t
get into MIT, or you get into MIT and you don’t get into another school.
Like there’s most definitely a reason for that.
So if you trust that, then
all the problems just kind of go away.
You kind of worry about one that you only have today to worry about kind of thing.
So yeah. I like that.
All the problems go away.
I'm going to remember that.
I'm going to use it all the time.
Jinbi can you remember how did you handle the stress
of applying to grad school and waiting for decisions to come back?
Can you can you share how many schools you applied to?
I think I roughly applied to
about ten schools, and I had a big spreadsheet
with all the due dates, materials required
and just a bunch of checklists.
So I think
around this time when I applied that year, it was pretty stressful.
But I think overall my advice would be just focus
on what can control and once the application is done,
then it's outside of your control and there's nothing to worry about.
And at the end of the day,
everyone's going to be okay whether you get in or not get in,
get into the work, get to work with the professor that you want to or not.
I think,
yeah, like
not putting your identity in a decision.
It's helpful.
So don't take any decision from grad school personally.
It doesn't define who you are as a person.
And if you're genuinely interested in pursuing
research, you're going to do great, whether at M.I.T.
or elsewhere or at another institution.
I think sometimes we have a pretty narrow vision,
but it's going to be okay.
That's so true.
There are so many excellent schools
all over, all across the world doing excellent research.
And so as long as you apply to more than one school, then you should be fine.
I agree.
And anyone else remember that
stressful period and glad it's behind you.
Any strategies? Mila?
Yeah, Again, I'm going to be brief because this is like a minute for me
since I’m a fourth year now, but when I was applying,
I kept thinking like, this is going to be like undergrad.
I don't ...
college counselors or people to talk to like because there's
just less resources in general out there.
It's not like undergrad, like keep calm,
because academia and pursuing a higher education is a whole different boat.
Like you were previously saying.
It's not—if you're don’t get in somewhere, maybe it's just not meant to be.
Try to keep an open mind.
It's easier said than done, but
try to just like take it day by day
is probably my best advice.
Thank you, Mila.
Another question that's come into the Slido app is,
I believe, from an international student,
and they're asking if they feel that international students
are at a disadvantage when applying to our program
or and and
how did you go about, you know, coming here and starting.
And so we have Kimia. She's from Iran.
Jinbi, you're from China, is that right?
Yes. Ticha, where are you?
Are you from
abroad?
I went to CMU for undergrad.
Okay, so maybe Kimia and Jinbi could answer
from the international perspective.
So for me, I really didn't feel
that I was being treated differently in the application process.
I think many schools that I applied were really fair
about deciding on my application and like the whole process of interviews
and everything, and especially MIT, I think
they read
all of the materials that you submit when you apply and they care
and they look at you as you’re
individual and like take, you know, pay attention to what you care
and what you're passionate about and your background.
So not really.
I didn't—I never felt that I would be different from other people.
I knew that it's hard because, like, MIT is like a big school
and like everyone from around the world, they're applying.
So I have a lot of other people that are
I’m sort of competing with.
And so I was aware of that.
But I never felt like,
you know, there's something different here.
And as I mentioned, like the community here is very diverse.
Everyone, like there are a lot of international students here.
And so I wouldn't say like—nothing is different really.
Okay.
Jinbi?
Yeah, I would say the same.
I don't think there's any disadvantage per se
and again, this like Mila said, this is not like undergrad.
And I feel like in a PhD program there are a large population
of international students already, so this is a norm.
And also at MIT, it's pretty supportive for international students.
There are different community events and also
the department makes sure you meet the language requirement.
You will understand everything in class and communicate effectively.
So I think
it's different, but it's not any
like anything that puts you in disadvantage.
Awesome.
Another Slido question has come in about the weather.
Is it cold in New England?
Especially if you might have,
you know, gone to undergrad in California, say, or
Florida or Brazil.
Any any comments about the weather?
I mean, we're about we're in November, about to go into December.
So it will start getting chillier.
Tommy, do you like the cold of New England?
Yeah, I love the cold.
So I'm maybe not the best person to ask about this, but I think there's
really only usually like one or two weeks of, like bitter, bitter cold.
Although, you know, for December, January,
February, you'll need a warm jacket when going outside.
Like I commute by bike and I bike year round.
I don't mind being outside.
I don't think it's as bad as some people said.
Yeah, how about you, Ticha?
Do you like the cold?
Five winters now.
Yeah, five winters.
And also, you know, I was in Pittsburgh before this for five or
so winters, so I'm very used to the cold.
Yeah.
Although before that,
I was in Bangkok for a while, which is just complete opposite.
I mean I, I got used to it and I quite like having seasons,
but I guess one sort of
challenge of living in the East Coast as opposed to,
I guess a warmer place like California, is that,
you know, when it gets to the winter, the days are really short.
It gets super dark really quickly.
Yeah. You might start to feel sad.
And to counter that.
I think that, you know, just try to have a healthy sleep schedule
and don't wake up at noon or something where you only have
maybe 3 or 4 hours of sunlight.
Take your vitamin D pills.
It's very common for people in the East Coast to have a vitamin D
deficiency, and that can make you very sad.
So yeah, I would say vitamin D pills.
Maybe get one of those like those lamps that are supposed to simulate sunlight.
I hear that that kind of helps as well.
And yeah, when when there's light outside,
you know, be sure to get outside, get some sun.
Very good advice.
Yeah it's it's now getting dark outside my window.
It's pitch black and it's only 4:51. So.
Okay, let's see.
I know what I wanted to ask you.
Visit Days.
Almost every school now that has a Ph.D.
program will, after they admit their cohort,
invite them to come and visit the campus.
Can you talk about what the goals of that visit are and
and how did you manage that visit?
Because all of the attendees will definitely be admitted to a Ph.D.
program, and then they're going to go to Visit Days.
It’s really important to participate in.
Yeah. So I guess I'll I'll start.
Okay Ticha, yes.
It's been a while for me,
but what I find really interesting about visiting Days,
is that,
you know, prior to getting admitted, you were the one who spent a lot of effort
just trying to convince these schools and the people to take you.
But now during visit days, the roles are kind of reversed, like they want you.
So you gotta take advantage of that and make the most out of that opportunity.
So I would
recommend, you know, just just talk to people,
talk to your advisor, especially your advisor’s students
and ask those hard questions because this is your opportunity
to really sort of understand the culture of your institution
and maybe like ask questions about things
that you can't just learn on a website
and, you know, get people's honest opinions
and, you know, like even talk to the other admits
because they are going to be part of your cohort.
And even if you don't end up going to the same school,
you might run into them at conferences in the future.
And it's really good
to build these connections early and it's good to make friends.
Yes, excellent advice.
Others want to comment about their Visit Day experience?
So—sorry. Yeah,
yeah.
Kimia go ahead and then we'll have Xavier go second.
I wanted to share my experience as someone who couldn't
attend any of the Visit Days.
So I attended all of the events
virtually and I think, like the experience of COVID
have made, you know, some—kind of all of the universities to
arrange some of these events
also virtually and that was very helpful.
And MIT specifically had a lot of,
you know, events that were recorded or like Zoom webinars and also some just
some recorded things of like how it's like to be in MIT in the EECS department.
And I watched all of those and they were very helpful.
And you can always contact anybody that you want to talk to.
And they were very welcoming.
And this happened both in other like schools that I applied and got into.
And so of course it would be better if I was here,
but I didn't feel like I'm missing
a big thing or something.
Thank you. Thank you.
I remember now that you could not come, but
I'm glad you came now.
Xavier, what about Visit Days for you?
I think there was someone else before me
that was trying to speak so I can go after them.
I'm sorry.
I was going to say
I as a second year my visit days were virtual,
so I think maybe that was a different experience.
But there were a lot of Zoom events that were that were nice.
And I, I did feel like I got to meet quite a few people
and, you know, I wish they could have been in person, but
but I did get a chance to talk
with both the professor who I’m now working with and several others.
I got to meet a bunch of students, some of whom I still know
now that I'm here at M.I.T., so I think was still
a really valuable experience, even if even if it was online.
Thank you, Tommy.
Xavier.
Would you like to comment now?
Yeah.
So I got to say, I think out of this, I applied to 7 programs, 5 schools,
I think I went to like,
I think there are like four of them, there were five of them
that were in person.
I would say go to every single one that you can.
If you can, it is imperative that you go because
and when you're there, me being slightly an introvert, it's
definitely not the time to be one because like everyone, I guess
not only the students but the the well the admitted students,
but the other like lab members,
the other administration, they're trying to put on like their best show.
So definitely like Ticha said like it's the roles are reversed now kind of right.
So it's like you you're interviewing them to see
now that you have admitted me I now have a choice.
So it's definitely like
you want to get as much as you can out of those 1 to 2 to 3 days
because that's not only, yes,
you're going to meet people that may not go to the same school with you,
which is important, especially in the same field as you.
Because normally in the admitted students visit days
they have you like grouped together with like similar interests,
whether it be research or research interest or the department
and like you know more often than not the students
may not—your other friends that you meet may not go to the same school as you,
but at least you now have the contact.
So it's important to go to go to everything.
I mean, after—like I remember for Stanford
one of Stanford's interviews, they had visit days.
They took everyone like down Palo Alto or Stanford.
I don't even know, the other cities that were there, they took us down there.
Right.
And, you know, showed us the area and we got a chance to meet other people.
Same thing here at MIT.
It's important that you go and like after everything is over, continue
to hang out with people
because those connections will last you throughout your PhD.
See people at conferences.
But, you know, you really get a chance to be exposed to like the city
and the place where you might be for the next five years, six years. So.
Yeah, and Xavier, for all of those schools, did they pay for
your travel and pay for your visit or how did you manage that financially?
Yeah, Yeah. So it's funny because
they everyone did.
Every, every, every school did.
Between Stanford and Berkeley, they knew both people were both student both
They knew the other had a visit day that was close to each other.
Right.
So what they did is they said, if you're going to both,
then we'll pay for like Stanford said, we'll pay for one
like the flight there and then Berkeley said
we’ll pay for flight back kind of thing.
So it depends.
I know for MIT it was a pretty quick process as in like
you submit your receipts and whatnot, but yeah, everything is paid for.
So that's another reason to go.
So nothing is out of pocket kind of thing.
Okay.
Yeah, it's definitely, definitely worth it.
Okay, well, we're coming to the close of our conversation.
I want to give the floor over to all of you in the event you have
a last word to share with the attendees any, any piece of advice
that you think will be helpful for them as they are thinking about the Ph.D.
applying to the Ph.D..
Anything you want to share?
I have I have one thing.
Okay.
When writing the essays,
the most important thing is that you highlight why you want to do research
and why your experiences, your unique experiences are like,
I guess suit you well to do research and why you're interested in that.
Research experience does not necessarily mean that you'll get into a PhD.
Most everyone who's applying to a PhD is because like, Hey,
I want to do research, right?
But the reality is not everyone can get in,
you can’t accept everyone.
So the important part is in the first couple sentences
of those essays highlight like make it like
clear, like abundantly clear why you want to do research
and why your experiences— I mean depending upon the question, right?
It's important that you highlight that.
That is the most important thing
because the recommender, the people who are are reading
those essays they’re reading like thousands
between all the schools like thousands of essays, right? So
that's the most important thing
to highlight why you want to do research and why your experiences
have helped you to get there.
So. Excellent piece of advice.
Yeah.
And I guess on the topic of SOPs, I think it's also really important
that for each school you identify at least maybe three or so advisors
who you think would be a good match for you and
kind of highlight that in your, your SOP as well and say, you know,
you want to work with these people
and you know why you think it would be a good match
because that would also make it easier for the admissions committee
to match you with people.
And my understanding is that for a lot of admissions committee,
it's it's not just about, you know, them finding,
you know, one good match for you in in the institution.
It's about, you know whether you can have multiple possible good matches.
Thank you.
I had just a blank paragraph and each school I applied
I re-wrote that paragraph with you know what are the three or two
or four professors from this university that I want to work with.
Thank you, Tommy.
I would just treat the application process as a process
to also just discover yourself because committing to a Ph.D.
program is
a huge decision in life.
So genuinely ask yourself, Why do I want to do a PhD?
Why am I interested in this research area?
And as you put down faculty names, ask yourself like, am I
someone who can—who is more suitable
for hands-on mentorship or hands off.
Why am I interested in this group?
And do I see myself being mentored by this person for five or six years?
So just yeah, discover yourself.
I love that. Very good advice.
Thank you, Jinbi.
And I would say in addition to, you know,
explaining why you're so passionate about the research you want to pursue,
also highlight who it's going to help, you know.
So basically, does your problem have a purpose and what's the
social impact?
Who is going to benefit from what you want to achieve?
Because you know, ultimately everybody is going to be very passionate
about their research. But
a big
I think a big focus of what MIT wants to achieve is,
you know, betterment for the world, right?
So you just want to make sure that's also being stated
very clearly in your statement of purpose.
Excellent point.
I love it.
Mila.
Yeah, I'm definitely I'd say yeah, there's like a,
like a broader if you all have done like
a GRFP application like that broader impact.
It's always good to bring that into things because not
everything is about research.
Like we want to also like what we're doing here try to increase DEI
efforts, try to make sure that you like to teach
if that's something you want to pursue, like academia.
But one other thing I really want to highlight
is make sure that you want to live in the places
you are applying to, because if you do get accepted into those places
and like you're like me who just went straight into grad school,
you're spending like most of your twenties in a PhD program.
Like it's important to really enjoy where you live
or at least be open to the idea.
And the visit days are good for that too, because like they're in March.
Are they in March still Leslie?
Yes, the beginning of March. Yes. Yes.
Okay. Yeah.
So like for me, being from San Diego, being from where it's like perfectly warm
or just moderate all the time, I was like, wow, it is cold here.
But I also was excited for it
because there are seasons like that just doesn't exist in San Diego.
So like, it was nice.
I don't think everybody from here from San Diego would have the same perspective
on Boston.
But long story short, like, I was like alright this is somewhere
I want to live somewhere I could totally see myself.
And I think that was really big
and also like making a choice on which school to choose.
Thank you, Mila. And Kimia.
I think we heard from everyone.
Do you have one last piece of advice?
Yeah.
So for for me, the case was that I have a lot of stress
and all of them turned out to be not real.
Like many of them, 95%.
So just I know it's like cliche
to say don't be stressed, but seriously,
nothing's going to happen— You have done all you had to do.
And, you know, you just go ahead and write your essays
and complete your resumé and just submit your application.
You cannot do anything else.
So just enjoy these last couple of months of your undergrad,
have a very good rest and then just
make yourself for grad school.
Excellent pieces of advice.
All of you are amazing, wonderful people and I just want to
thank each and every one of you for participating today
and sharing your experiences, sharing your wisdom,
sharing the advice that you have, reflecting on,
you know, what you were thinking of and experiencing, and
and helping all of our attendees to calm down.
Everything's okay.
It'll all be all right and
and helping them to get a
view into what it's like to be a graduate student working towards the Ph.D.
degree in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.
So thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Very grateful for all of you.
And we'll say goodbye to our attendees.
Thank you for joining us.
The conversation is going to be has been recorded.
We're going to add closed captioning to the conversation
and then we will post it on the department's YouTube channel
and we will then tell you how to find that recording.
So thank you for joining with us.
And don't worry, it's all okay
and have a great rest of your day, everyone.
Thank you, everyone. Bye bye.