Thoughts on graduate school
I've been in graduate school for about five whole years and I have thoughts about that. Here are some incomplete notes.
Getting into graduate school
I found the following blogs essential reading:
Matt Might's blog is a treasure trove, but this article in particular: HOWTO: Get into grad school for science, engineering, math and computer science. I've read through just about every article, not just because it's so useful, but also because there's so much insight.
Jean Yang, then a graduate student at MIT, now assistant professor at CMU. Her series on applying to graduate schools in computer science were amazingly insightful, starting from step 1: Deciding to Apply. You'd better believe I felt starstruck when I had the chance to thank her for such an amazing blog.
Chris Fletcher, also a graduate student at MIT at the time, now an assistant professor at UIUC, had tremendously helpful thoughts on applying to graduate school and fellowships.
Selecting graduate school
I was incredibly privileged to have a terrific selection of graduate schools to attend. At the end, my choice was either to stay at UC Berkeley, or to go to MIT. The choice is clear now -- go to MIT -- but the reasons for that weren't so obvious back when I decided which grad school to attend.
My indecisiveness was so bad that Yunsup Lee, then a grad student, would ask, "is today a Berkeley day or an MIT day?" because I constantly vacillated between the two places up until the deadline. Only perhaps around April 11-12 did I actually settle on MIT.
I think I can attribute it to a simple, if somewhat pithy reason: I had a taste, however brief, of the research landscape at Berkeley. It was better for me to try something new. I was also able to frame it as, "I'd regret not knowing". Were the situation reversed -- that I was already at MIT and had to choose between staying at MIT and going to Berkeley -- I'd have chosen Berkeley in a heartbeat.
I found some help in Paul Graham's blog, in particular, his writing on Cities and Ambition.
In my early years in graduate school, I hadn't quite found the right footing, and only when I changed advisers did I start to have a better view of how graduate school worked. It's also when I realized just how important adviser fit is.