GRAD ECHO

This is a great and very practical question.One way to navigate this is to treat your Bachelor’s program like a buffet table. This is your biggest opportunity to get a taste of a wide variety of fields. Use your electives very wisely. Your Bachelor’s program is not designed to give you too much depth, it is designed to give you a lot of breadth. So please get a taste of a fair share of courses before you find your calling. Once you have, look at different research opportunities with faculty at your institute who have worked in your domain of interest. By the end of senior year you should have a much clearer idea of what you want to pursue further. You can also use your masters as a stepping stone before you commit to a niche in a PhD. Even within master’s you take some fundamental coursework before finalizing your stream and you can shift and gravitate towards what you like better.

Broadly speaking, even in academia, many professors keep shifting their niche interests overtime. Explorers will be explorers, no matter where they end up. All you need to ensure is that if you are aiming for a PhD, you should be invested enough in a field to invest at least 5 years of your hard work and time commitment while enjoying the process.

Regarding building your portfolio, I’d like to request you to first pick a sport. As an exercise or training that you do everyday. Now let me tell you why. If you pick a profession or field which requires you to sit everyday, enclosed in a space, sometimes up to 17-18 hours a day, your mental and physical capacities will begin to decline. Many people start developing mental health issues, they go into depression or develop physical issues. You might graduate with a 3.97 but would it have been worth it if you also graduate with a lifelong backbone problem? This is honestly the first piece of advice I give to all my students, and something me and my colleagues also practice. Pick a game or physical activity that you like and stick to it.

Secondly, I would like to emphasize that one thing that is very hard to recover or improve is your GPA. I am not saying that a high GPA is a hard prerequisite for admission. There are countless examples of students with very low GPAs that have made into some of the most brilliant institutes worldwide. Dr. Ihsan, Dr. Zafar and myself have advised and mentored several students who fall in this category. However, It does become very difficult with a low GPA. Students often have to do some outstanding work in other components to counteract a low GPA. While of course, GPAs are relative and in some universities it is much harder to get the same GPA, you should aim for a number close to 3.5 or above. This is a decent enough number to make you competitive and you should try to remain above this number. Even if you have a lower GPA right now, you can still touch this number or come close with requisite effort in your remaining courses.

Regarding the competition in ML: As someone who teaches and conducts workshops in the field of ML and generative AI, I want you to know that the industry is still in the ‘euphoria’ phase of it all. Many companies that make LLMs for example, are realizing that a primary bottleneck is going to be network bandwidth and there is going to be a subsequent boom in Network-centered solutions too. We are still in the phase where we do not fully realize the complete repercussions of these developments. Similarly, security is going to be a big issue moving forward. ChatGPT for example, sometimes shares URLs mistakenly which leave the user prone to comm-injection attacks.Furthermore, bots are only as good as the interface they are embedded into and its level of engagement with the user, meaning HCI is also going to be essential to this boom. So rest assured, all fields are going to remain relevant in their own unique way and you should follow your passion. Conduct a small mental exercise with me. If you were at a bus stop, and you needed to go to a particular destination but all buses leading to that destination were full, you wouldn’t pick just any other random bus now would you? In a very similar manner, please do not apply to programs you think are easier to get into, but are actually not passionately invested in. You are in your prime and at the peak of your learning ability. It would be a grave mistake to believe you can later on switch easily into your relevant field after you have graduated or settled into a specific industry. I believe that if getting admitted is harder now, it is going to be even more difficult to switch fields later on, given how competitive the arena is now. Follow what you like, and the path to success will follow you too. Be good at what you do, and you will always have plenty of opportunities in terms of admissions, funding and jobs.

If you already know you want to switch from a program, then don't apply. Only apply to programs you're genuinely excited about. Don’t waste your prime years doing something you’re not excited about and try switching later.

It isn’t important that you’ve to go to grad school right after undergrad. Not everyone has the same situation. There are alternate pathways as well. It isn't important that you apply in your last semester. You can do an RAship for one year, do independent research, or get enrolled at a local good program and get a good GPA. Longer gaps are difficult to justify and they have the tendency to make your ability rusty and knowledge obsolete. The field of CS is constantly changing so don’t stay idle for too long.

You should consider applying to China, Japan, Middle East, e.g., CMU Qatar and NYUAD. These are highly reputable satellites campuses of top U.S. universities and they are internationally recognized as well. However, for many of these countries, you need to learn their native language, and cultural adaptability is a little difficult compared to the North American region.

Funding comes in many shapes and sizes. You should be aware of all aspects of funding. There’s a professor funding, which means the professor has some research project they are hiring for, typically geared towards PhD students, because they can stick for a while. You have the funding as long as you're working with the Professor. Then there’s a department or university funding, such as that at Wisconsin Madison, where you can change the project and professor. Then there are third-party funding like Fulbright, Erasmus Mundus, and Commonwealth, which have some strings attached, such as repaying by coming back to Pakistan and serving the country for a certain amount of time. Other sources of funding also include TAships. The money can cover most of your tuition. Once you get one of those TAships, you’re usually able to get more. Then there are RAships - some people self-fund their first semester and then they’re able to get RAships and TAships that help cover their tuition. There are plenty of opportunities, you'll just have to look. Niche programs encourage people to apply by offering them funding. So, if it aligns with your interests, you can apply there and get some funding.

The university application fee is now non-negligible. l having said that some universities have waivers, so you should be looking for those, even if they're not explicitly stated on their websites. You should be targeting 10-12 universities, at maximum. These should include your desired programs, high-risk ones, and some safe universities.

When you're aspiring for a master's, you’re looking for a university and a program.When you are aspiring for a PhD you’re probably looking for a professor or a lab. University selection is a very involved process and includes a lot of different variables. Such as, what kind of professors you want to work with and even down to things like what the specific state in the U.S is like, what the tuition would be etc.

You should be targeting the end of November to the beginning of December, by this time all your content should be ready for the application. You should also have some buffer time to do things like retaking exams in case you don’t do well on them on the first attempt. So, try to get done with standardized tests, like the GRE, in the summer. Give yourself a couple of months for GRE preparation. Similarly, for letters, reach out to your referees ahead of time and be prepared to remind them of the specific interactions you have had with them. You can’t send them an email and expect a wonderful letter in return. They might ask for more details or even an interview.

The strength of a letter is a product of three things; the profile of the referee, the interaction, and the quality of the actual letter. Because it’s a product, if one of these things is low, then the overall letter is low. For example, if an amazing referee has written a high-quality letter but has had a short interaction with you in a workshop, it would not be a good letter overall. You need real overlap between these three things. For example, doing an SProj or being a co-author with the referee, being an RA or TA with the referee, or having taken a course you did really well in. These things allow the referee to comment on different aspects of your personality.

PhD is a huge decision, and you absolutely need a huge reason other than funding. It’s like being handed a fishing rod and being asked to get back with a fish nobody has ever seen before. Such is the uncertainty inherent in a PhD. The purpose of a PhD is to receive formal training in research, the goal of a PhD is to actually go through this process and produce a novel finding at the end. There is most definitely going to be a time when this need for novelty makes you desperate. It is then that you need a magical combination of passion and love for your field, and faith in the process to get you through. At times, even your advisor may not be able to get you through a specific research progress slump. This is where your grit and drive get tested to the best of your ability. A drive you’re likely to possess only if you are entering a PhD with a strong reason to begin with.

I would encourage you to first assess what the final destination in your head is. Do you want to go into academia and pursue research full time? Do you want to go into an industry that demands a PhD and high technical acumen? Do you want to pursue research within industry in their research wings? Be sure that you only pursue a PhD if your desired goal absolutely necessitates it. If you have a specific profession or dream job in mind, go meet people who do that and engage with them about their experiences and learn if you can imagine yourself having the experiences they describe. Do you actually want what they get out of their experience or not? If you still want to be like them, then investigate if a PhD is absolutely necessary to get there.

I never wanted to be a Computer Scientist. I wanted to be an astronomer. I thought physics could take me anywhere. Between subatomic particles and beyond galaxies. Through a series of events partially out of my control, I ended up at FAST, instead of UET (the only name I had heard of right up until the point of my application to FAST). I hated everything they were teaching in a CS degree. It took me to get through 3 semesters of torturous courses to finally find a course I liked. Assembly language particularly appealed to me because I absolutely loved the way my instructor engaged with me. I found myself so deeply involved that I gave up my gaming nights just to design microprocessors. I quite literally quit my first passion for that. Later on in my undergraduate, I was discouraged from taking the Phonetic course(for the simple reason that the course was useless). Today, I hold a PhD specializing in the same subject. My primary purpose for sharing these details is that life will eventually give you an opportunity to pursue something that brings you sheer joy. Be fearless in your pursuit whenever that time comes. Please forget about your GPA, it legitimately will not matter. Go for amazing teachers even if they are bad graders. If you have the passion you will find your way into your dream job or dream program.