“I’m sorry, Mr. Dong. We don’t offer that here. You could look into other programs in the university or consider transferring to another institution.”
That was the response that I got from Bill, my then undergrad advisor, when I mentioned my wish to study digital literacy during our first advising session. He did the right thing; I wouldn’t have gotten an honest answer from others.
My inner pragmatist wasn’t disappointed to hear that answer. Staying in New Media was still a good plan. It’s just that, back then, I didn’t know how picky I would be of my career choice yet. It took seven years and a total burnout before I finally came to terms with this realization.
I wish I could say that getting a master’s degree was enough — it was not. And looming over my head throughout the time in school were the anxiety of my dwindling savings (I was now responsible for feeding two humans and one feline), difficulties with unexpected higher-ed bureaucracies, and worries about the viability of pursuing a technical librarian career... Grad school was a blast. I learned a lot of fascinating things and met cool people, but all these other things? Not so much.
After months of fruitless attempt of a career switch, I gave up on the idea of becoming a technical librarian and returned to a corporation; the bills weren’t going to pay themselves.
What pushed me over the edge was a train wreck of a few months in 2021: once again, I found myself burnt out from my job, having frequent nightmares about dealing with the enormous ego of business managers. I tried to convince myself that I should keep my golden handcuffs on because of the pandemic, but truth to be told, I was just paralyzed from exhaustion.
Fool me twice, shame on corporate nonsense.
(Lesson learned too late: Other than people who have selflessly cared for you, don’t trust anyone who claims that you’re part of their “family.” A real family won’t throw you under the bus just to save their face.)
The idea of getting a PhD had been floating in the edge of my mind for some years. While I did keep up with some research here and there, I wasn’t so sure about pursuing it then — not with uncertain prospects and budget cuts during COVID.
But my frustration with my job did the trick. I wouldn’t want to look back twenty years down the road, realizing that I’ve squandered away my youth, getting paid a decent wage in exchange of doing things that I really don’t care about; shareholders can value my toenails. And what change is better than to put myself in a position to work on niche problems that nobody in my family can understand, for the next five to six years, earning a quarter of my income in industry? Sounds wonderful, sign me up.
Twelve years, six jobs, and two degrees later, I finally arrived at a point where I feel reassured about the choices I’m taking on. “A roundabout process of elimination” was how I described this to a friend.
What followed were weeks of rewriting admission letters, researching different school programs and contacting potential advisors. The start of this process was unnecessarily exhausting, partly due to the fact school websites are structured differently — many of which are littered with outdated or missing info, not to speak of confusing design and navigation schemes. You’d think that world-leading institutions would at least have reasonably designed website.
That was the first sign that the next few months weren’t going to be as smooth sailing as I had thought. When applying for jobs, the turnaround times would take utmost a few weeks, but grad school applications require weeks of prep time and thousands of dollars of upfront investment, followed by three to four months of waiting. If this isn’t a good test for patience, I don’t know what is.
(I was immensely relieved to find out that many grad schools no longer require submission of GRE exam scores. I’d hate to waste more time and money to test myself with elaborate brain teasers. It’s not that good of an indicator for success in PhD to begin with.)
Talking to Prospective Advisors
There’s a quote that I read a while back that goes something like:
You should apply to an advisor and compromise on the university, not apply to a university and compromise on the advisor.
So I took that advice to heart: I spent weeks to research and compile a list of faculty members I’m interested in working for. “Talk to potential advisors, learn more about them and their work” sounds reasonable on paper, but in reality, few professors are open to meet with prospective students. Out of the thirty or so that I contacted, less than half of them replied, and only six of them have agreed to an online meeting; the rest is a split between “I prefer not to talk but good luck to your application” and radio silence.
Considering that PhD students are expected to work closely with their academic advisor, it’s odd that schools would encourage applicants to apply even without knowing whether there’s a suitable advisor who is open (and has the funding) to take on new students. I suppose grad schools are indifferent about this as long as they can receive as many applications.
The mental burden of applying for grad school should not be understated, which is even more so for international applicants. For any sort of application process, information asymmetry is a big hurdle that every candidate has to confront — unless you are already in the system or have sources within it, you’re always in need of more information than what you can find.
But PhD is a special case because of the skewed power dynamics: If you don’t like your boss, you can always hunt for the next employer sooner than later; if you don’t like your PhD advisor, it’s a lot harder to jump ship, as it entails delay your graduation and other headaches. The applicants also have to account for funding: most PhD students get paid below the US national median wage level, which makes it difficult to choose a school located in a high cost-of-living area.
As much as I understand faculty members receive a ton of emails and tend to be quite busy — “exhibit varying degrees of brain damage,” as Jason Hong puts. But given that applicants are already in an heightened state of anxiousness, even a brief response would go a long way to help ease our mind. So, it goes without saying that I feel more reassured to be applying to places that I have managed to meet with potential advisors. They were kind enough take time out of their tight schedule to talk to me, despite knowing that I might not be getting an offer in the end.
Personal Research Diversity Graduate Admission Statement of Purpose...?
The game is guessing what will catch the attention of the admissions committee, but the rules might as well be free-for-all.
(Okay, a bit of an exaggeration. Obviously, you can’t submit an erotica and expect it to be well-received — unless you’re aiming for an innovative angle to get into creative writing, I suppose.)
If you look and ask around online, you’d come across dozens of different suggestions as to how you should compose a great statement. Some say you should delve more into personal motivations; some say you should stick to academic achievements. Some say you should use less fancy structures to maintain a sense of sincerity; some say it’s better to be expressive and make your prose more enjoyable to read. Some say you should sacrifice your firstborn to craft a winning letter; some say you are better off by hacking into the school system, mark your profile as “admitted,” and thereby bypassing the dance of admission process altogether. (That’s a joke. Don’t do it.)
Anyway, you can see how this led me to conclude that there are no rules.
Having spent a few too many hours writing, rereading, and editing these pieces, I do think there are three principles that applicants must abide by:
Follow the instructions exactly and literally as the admission requirements say, and don’t read too much into the details.
Compose a persuasive and easy to follow narrative that’s free of grammatical and spelling errors, for the given topic.
Ensure that some content is specifically tailored towards the program and faculty members of the school you’re applying for.
... And besides that, there is indeed a great deal of flexibility. I read through several dozens of admission statements written by master’s and doctoral students from different schools and fields, and it’s safe to say that, aside from the items I listed above, there seems to be no one-size-fits-all solution to cracking the puzzle. There’s a wide range of variation in terms of formats, lengths, styles, or levels of details.
(One unexpected benefit of blogging is that it has improved my writing skills. While organizing my jumbled brain wasn’t a cakewalk, I didn’t have as much problem when it came to articulating the ideas. I had helped review statements written by others and it’s obvious as to who haven’t kept up with their writing.
Last but not least, my sincere gratitude to all the friends and mentors who’ve read and gave feedback on my earlier drafts. If I were to get any offer, more than half of the credit should go to these kind people.)
The CS Grad School Battleground: An Observation
Computer Science (CS) became one of the most popular academic fields in the past fifteen years or so — and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. This applies to adjacent fields like Electrical Engineering and others as well. Heck, even when I was in my Library and Information Science master’s program, I had met a dozen of students who couldn’t make the cut into the CS department and chose to force their way into programming courses through alternative means. (And it worked!)
With the growing demand for tech specialists around the world, this is only natural. This phenomenon is further amplified by the fact skilled-based immigration is a common pathway that foreigners pursue, especially for high-income countries like the US and Canada. While most international students cannot afford a 4-year undergrad tuition, a 2-year master’s degree is a much more cost and time-efficient alternative. And, of course, universities are happy to take them in as well, considering that international tuition rates are a markup of anywhere from 20-40% more than the domestic ones.
As a result, there’s always a massive influx of CS grad school social media postings comes the application cycle. Anything from “please evaluate whether my profile would get me into this Ivy League school” to “how do I decide which school I should accept the offer from” to “I AM FREAKING OUT PLEASE HELP ME SHORTLIST”... It really is a bit of unique seasonal view.
This creates an interesting feedback loop: the more competitive the admission process becomes, the more applicants share their qualifications and voice their concerns online, and the even more fierce the competition appears to be.
It goes without saying that tuning too much into these postings when applying for grad school is not good for one’s mental health. If you’re a grad school applicant reading this, check out my references and suggestions below and try to distance yourself from such online communities.
Goodies and Tips for Applicants
I referenced these on and off throughout the past few months:
Ronald Azuma’s “So long, and thanks for the Ph.D.!”
Matt Might’s “HOWTO: Get into grad school for science, engineering, math and computer science”
Donald Asher’s “Graduate Admission Essays”
Casey Fiesler’s video series, especially recommended if you’re a first-gen student
Some lessons learned. Hopefully they are applicable to your circumstances as well:
If you’re still in school or have just graduated recently, meet with faculty members you’re close with and get their feedback on your plans. It’s better if you arrange these earlier in the semester, as people are going to be busy later on.
Start your research and outline your statements early, but don’t commit to writing in great detail until you’ve done talking to people and finalized your list of programs, otherwise you’re going to have to do unnecessary revisions back and forth.
For the many reasons that I won’t go into here, there seems to be no “safe” school when it comes to PhD applications, just as there is not a guaranteed way to win a bet, so don’t categorize your choices as such. Pick the programs that you think you’d be a good fit for and just apply.
Start your online applications early. Fill out the generic fields first and get a sense what exactly you need to prepare, and save the document uploads last so you don’t have to re-upload revisions. Most systems allow you to send out recommendation request emails before you submit your applications; you might run into a few absurd ones that require you to pay and submit first before you can do so.
Notify your recommenders before you request letters from them, and make sure they are willing to write a positive recommendation. Give them your drafts and whatever materials that you think will help them compose a strong letter. But just be prepared that they will wait until the last minute before submitting. (I notified mine 10 weeks in advance and two of them waited until a few days before the deadline to submit.)
Join a community early on — a small and supportive one, not a toxic waste dump like TheGradCafe — and make friends with other members. You’d be surprised how much help you can get.
I came across several peer reading programs for grad school applications (e.g., Cornell’s Information Science admission). They are immensely helpful based on my experience, but the slots do fill up quite quickly during the application season, so act fast if you see them.
It’s a slow, tedious, and nerve-wracking process, but try to remind yourself to stay calm and not panic. To use my oft referenced analogy: this is a marathon, not a sprint. Slow and steady might not win the race, but it will get you to the finish line in (more or less) one piece.
Closing Thoughts: “Why a PhD?”
This question came up a few times when I talked to friends who are pursuing their PhD and with potential advisors.
Because other than doing research, I see no other way for me to nudge the status quo of digital literacy and privacy matters towards the right direction. After I asked Bill that question a decade ago, I’ve came full circle to this conclusion.
I don’t foresee myself partaking in politics ever, so the most influential option is out of the picture. Tech companies tend to create prescriptive solutions that unevenly cater to the educated or the ones who can afford their products. Libraries are doing great work, but their scope of impact tends to be localized.
So, if I have to do something with my time in this world, might as well work towards something I believe in. Or so I hope.
"some say you are better off by hacking into the school system, mark your profile as “admitted,” and thereby bypassing the dance of admission process altogether."
This resume hack really stays, LMAO!