8 Strategies to Speed-Run Graduate School
Stuff I wish I knew, but no-one told me.
Hey, I’m Vikram 👋!
Several of you proposed that we have an online space where we can discuss engineering and career related topics, which seems to me like a great idea! To make this happen…
I’m glad to announce that we have a Discord server dedicated to this community! You can join using the invite link here. It is completely free!
We already have 15+ people on there. It would be awesome to have you on board!
In other news, we just had our first newsletter meetup in San Diego! It was great to connect with each other. If you’d like to organize one in your local area, let me know via email.
My last article on deciding if graduate school is for you, seemed to have resonated with quite a few readers. Read it below if you missed it.
In this article, we discuss actionable strategies to make the most of your graduate education. These strategies are distilled from reflections on my Ph.D experience. In hindsight, I feel these methods helped me publish a significant volume of research papers in a short span of time. By sharing my methods, I’m hoping it will help you.
Some of these methods equally apply to a workplace. I still employ them and they have served me well for over a dozen years in the industry.
Here is a quick list:
Choosing a graduate program
Choosing the right advisor
Setting expectations
Write as you go
Market research
Level 12 intensity
Minimize distractions
Use the right tools
Read Time: 12 mins
[1] Choosing a Graduate Program
If you’ve decided to pursue a graduate degree, there is a simple way to decide your specialization. What are you most interested in? What made you go wow? What amazing idea did you feel the need to tell your friends and family?
This is the criteria you should use to decide your area of expertise. Choosing an area of specialization based on the current job economy is the wrong approach. A graduate program is a serious undertaking and if you are not sufficiently passionate about the subject, then you’ll have a difficult time motivating yourself through the challenges. Job markets change all the time and it is not something you can make long term decisions based on. Your curiosity is the best compass. Let it guide you.
What if you cannot commit to a topic that interests you? You have three options:
Wait till you figure out what interests you.
If you broadly know, then run with it. You can make adjustments later.
Use graduate school classes to sample what interests you. Talk to other graduate students, professors and school counselors.
The more you know a-priori what you want to pursue, the better your school choice will be. If you already know the research you want to pursue, then have direct conversations with professors to pitch your candidacy for their program. The cost of the program, availability of fellowships/assistantships, location, and acceptance rate are all other factors you will need to consider when choosing a school. A prestigious school will obviously look good on your resume, but other schools will still do the job especially if you want to get into industry after.
[2] Choosing the Right Advisor
Your graduate program requires a thesis advisor who will oversee your work, and eventually determine when you are ready to graduate. The choice of an advisor is a critical decision.
A lot of students try to get under the tutelage of the most well-known and renowned professors in their field. Having a famous professor as thesis advisor immediately gives you bragging rights, and for good reason too. A lot of academia is like a royal family. For a long time to come, you will be able to trace your academic lineage1. However, such a professor might not be the best fit for you, personally.
Ask yourself if you want a professor who is more hands-off, or intensely involved in your work. Choose one depending on your own personality.
If you are self-driven, have prior professional/research experience and need little guidance, then established professors are probably for you because they will be able to give you high-level guidance you can implement independently. Senior professors are usually involved in a lot more than just publishing papers: they consult with companies, have administrative positions, and give key-note speeches. As a result, their direct involvement with students will scale down according to the time they have available. The upside is that established professors are much more likely to have research funding readily available.
If you need more hand-holding then junior professors on tenure-track are a much better choice. They are intensely invested in your work because publishing papers is mutually beneficial to both of you. You will have a lot of status meetings, deeply technical discussions, and be able to close the loop much faster. With junior professors, research funding may not be readily available — in which case, you will have to write grant proposals. This is a great experience if you plan to go into academia.
If you ever feel your advisor is not a good fit for your style, engage in a conversation with them. Professors are reasonable about this since they’ve seen many students before you, and would appreciate your clarity on the matter before you waste everyone’s time.
[3] Setting Expectations
A lot of people don’t do this upfront with their advisors. Ask how many journal and conference papers you are expected to publish before you graduate. Every professor has a set of criteria you have to meet, and you need to understand what that is. If they provide vague answers, politely tell them that you need to have a goal to work towards. Depending on the field, the requirement will range from 1-3 journal papers, and a handful of conference papers in specific publications.
Have a clear understanding of the expectations on your work quality and quantity. Some professors might not care when or where you work as long as you get the work done. Others might require you to be in the office during fixed times so that you can work with other members of the team, or be available to the them when needed.
Discuss the career path you are interested in. Are you aiming for academia, or an industry job? Do you want to internships during your program? How many? What are your technical areas of interest? What kinds of classes do you feel you should take?
[4] Write as you go
When you start doing research, write, write, write. Let me tell you a story:
Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize winning physicist, once had a visitor in his office - a historian who wanted to interview him. When he looked at Feynman’s table full of his notebooks, he said how great it is to see “wonderful records of a genius’ thinking”.
“No, no!” Feynman protested. “They aren’t a record of my thinking. They are my thinking process!”
“Well, you did the work in your head, but this is the record of it right?,” the historian said.
“No, it’s not a record, you have to think on paper, and this is the paper!” Feynman said.
Thinking is writing. The first does not exist without the second.
Define the problem you are working on, list out possible solutions you want to try, record whether your ideas worked or failed and why, explain why your work is better than others, list what ideas can you borrow from other fields, what does literature say on this topic, what are the biggest unsolved problems in your field - basically write down everything that crosses your mind. Learn how to think in writing.
Here’s another trick: Start writing your paper while you do research. I don’t mean take notes. Literally start writing your paper or thesis in its final form. As you unfold your arguments, you will walk through the untamed garden that is your work, trimming as you go, refining ideas and arguments. Writing as you go gives direction to your research. I still do this at work, but now I write powerpoint reports. 🙄
If you have the first page of your paper written, with a placeholder title, author list and introduction, print it and stick it above your desk. It gives you a daily visual of what your completed product should look like, and motivates you to work towards it.
[5] Market Research
This might upset some purists, but here goes. A research paper is a product you have to deliver and sell it to a panel of reviewers. A product needs market research, and a lot of folks skip this step completely. There’s valuable data that will help you be successful, and I’ll explain how based on my own example.
Around 2010, during my PhD, I decided I would like to publish a microwave letter, a 3-page brief, on something new and get it published. I looked at all the published papers in the last three years, and categorized them according to topic. To my astonishment, I found that over 60% of the papers were related to ultra-wideband (UWB) technology. I guess that’s because it was a big thing back then. I immediately realized that coming up with an idea in this field would greatly improve my chances of success. At this point, I started literature review to find out what has been done and what the problems are to find a clever solution worth publishing. You can find my published paper on UWB here.
The difference between market research and literature review is that the former identifies the trends in publication, and what people are working on, while the latter is a more in-depth look at existing solutions to a problem. Identifying “hot-spots” in a domain gives you an advantage, and points to the general direction a field is headed. That is a good thing to know for a multitude of reasons.
[6] Level 12 Intensity
Intensity does not mean long working hours - that’s a misconception. In this context, intensity means designing work periods of incredible focus levels, that deliver an outsized outcome at the end. From my own experience, I needed about three intense two-hour periods a day to really move the needle. An additional hour or two here and there for shallow tasks, and sprinkle in a few hours during the weekend, you’re looking at 50 hour weeks. If you think that’s a lot, it’s not. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hours worked by a full time US employee in 2023 is 43 hours a week.
Here are a few tips to get your focus sessions going:
Set expectations with your advisor (see 3) about when you will engage in deep work. Most professors will appreciate this.
Maintain a work log for what you have accomplished in each session. It will hold you accountable, help you evaluate how you are doing, and give you clear answers to - “What have you been working on?”
Seek quiet spaces at odd hours that no one can find you. I usually holed myself up in the top floor of my university library as early as I could in the day. Not many people came through there, because there were mostly old reference books.
Define goals for each session. Ensure that in every two-hour period you are intentional about what you are working on. Just moving things around on a computer screen does not count. The goal should be sufficiently out of reach that there is a good chance you won’t complete it, but you’re going to try anyway.
If you’re wondering why I said “level 12” intensity, it was inspired by a podcast episode you can check out here. It explains everything from how Stallone wrote the screenplay for Rocky, how Zuckerberg bought Instagram, and how Jesse Itzler hired David Goggins to live with him.
[7] Minimize Distractions
I’m not talking about turning on your phone focus mode, disabling notifications, or not watching YouTube (or reading this article) while you’re supposed to be working. You know that already. There are other distractions you should avoid.
Courses: Choose only courses that you are absolutely sure will add to your skillset, and contribute positively to your research. Don’t pick courses because somebody said you should it, or because it is important for some future interview. The reason is the total demand on your time will increase with the classes you have to attend, homework you need to finish, and projects you need to complete.
For example, I took a course on digital communications, and I’m still not sure why. The instructor was fantastic and I learned a lot. But it was really hard and I spent a lot of time on it. On the other hand, I took a course on electrical noise which actually gave me an idea that helped me complete one of my proudest works.
Internships: They are not bad per se. They pay well compared to your grad school salary, and have the potential to land you a job. I’d recommend you move internships to when you are reasonably close to graduation, for two reasons: (1) you will have better technical skills, and (2) you will be in a position to accept a job when offered one. On the other hand, if you end up spending every summer away from your research, you lose the impetus needed to really push your research forward and graduate quickly.
[8] Use Proper Tools
I am a big proponent of using software tools effectively to save time, but it’s not something I really thought of in graduate school. I mangled plots in SigmaPlot, and I did a lot of stuff manually. A lot of excellent tools exist today to streamline your work. Apart from knowing your domain specific software tools, here are some others that may help you.
Overleaf: If you haven’t heard of LaTeX before, it is a syntactic way to typeset your paper or manuscript such that it repeatably renders the same way every time. Using Microsoft Word is a bad idea because it rearranges figures seemingly at random as you add content to your document. Academic publications follow strict guidelines on how things must be presented, and using LaTeX will help you generate manuscripts in a reliable fashion. Overleaf is a great, collaborative, online LaTeX editor that you can use to write your manuscripts.
MatplotLib + SciencePlots: There are many plotting tools out there, but this python package is especially suited to IEEE publications. Putting in the right style configuration delivers publication quality plots at the correct DPI. I posted about this on LinkedIn if you want to see quickly understand how it works.
What other suggestions do you have for graduate school? Let me know in the comments.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this newsletter are solely mine; they do not reflect the views or positions of my employer or any entities I am affiliated with. The content provided is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional or investment advice.
My advisor’s advisor (Prof. Gabriel Rebeiz) still jokes that I am his “grand-student.”
Thank you for making this!