• 1. For Prospective Students
  • 1.1. Letters of Recommendation (LOR)
  • 1.2. Statement of purpose (SOP)
  • 1.3. Research Experience (Publications and all)
  • 1.4. GPA and Standard Tests (GREs, IELETS, TOEFL)
  • 1.5. Funding (TA, RA, Fellowships)
    • 1.5.1. Fellowships
  • 1.6. Choosing Advisor and School
• 2. For Current Students
  • 2.1. Attending Conference
  • 2.2. Presenting
  • 2.3. Research
  • 2.4. Reviewing
  • 2.5. Reading
  • 2.6. Writing
  • 2.7. Miscs
• 3. For Graduating Students (Job Search)
• 4. Memoirs
• 5. Miscs

This collection was originally started by Paul Liang for current PhD students. This fork has a new focus on PhD admission to CS and related fields in the US (but also includes advice for current and graduating students). It reorganizes and updates the content to fit the new focus. Please feel free to contribute by sending a pull request. Credit goes out to Paul and the original authors of each link.

1. Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science by Mor Harchol-Balter

2. Demystifying PhD Admissions in Computer Science in the US: a Guide for International (and Domestic) Students by ThanhVu Nguyen

3. Getting a Computer Science PhD in the USA by Shriram Krishnamurthi

4. Blog post on PhD Admission by Philip Guo

5. PhD Admission post by Yonatan Bisk (customized for CMU admission)

6. HOWTO: Get into grad school for science, engineering, math and computer science by Matt Might

7. Ph.D. Applications: FAQ by Noah Smith

8. Undergrad to PhD, or not - advice for undergrads interested in research by John Hewitt

9. Quora answer on the admission committee process by Scott Fahlman

10. Reflecting on CS Graduate Admissions by David Anderson

11. The PhD in CS: Getting There and Being Successful (Youtube) by Michael Hilton, Janet Davis, and Ian Ludden

12. Applying for a PhD in NLP by Zhijing Jin and ACL Year-Round Mentorship Session

13. Demystifying ML PhD Admissions to US Universities by Hima Lakkaraju

1. Student Perspectives on Applying to NLP PhD Programs by Akari Asai, John Hewitt, Sidd Karamcheti, Kalpesh Krishna, Nelson Liu, Roma Patel, and Nicholas Tomlin

2. Machine Learning PhD Applications — Everything You Need to Know by Tim Dettmers

1. Advice for Requesting Letters of Recommendation - Goldhaber-Gordon Group, Stanford University
2. Advice to Graduate School Recommendation Letter Writers - Brown University
3. HOWTO: How to get a great LOR - Matt Might

1. Database of Example PhD SOPs by the CS-SOP initiative

2. Some Suggestions on writing your statement of purpose by Jennifer Mankoff

3. Graduate School Personal Statements by Christopher Fletcher

4. Inside PhD admissions: What readers look for in a Statement of Purpose by Nathan Schneider

5. How to Write a Bad Statement by Andy Pavlo

6. Tips and Tricks, How-To Guide for Grad School SoPs by Erica Weng

7. Graduate School Statement of Purpose by MIT EECS

8. How to write personal statement for graduate school application by Stanley Chan

9. Writing a Google AI Residency Cover Letter by Katherine Lee and Ben Eysenbach

10. Public examples: [Cody Coleman], [Sai Rallabandi], [Jeremy Lacomis], [Sean Kross], [Zahid Hossain], [Jean Yang]

Tips for the NSF GRFP Application by Danielle Perry

NSF GRFP Advice by Christine Liu

NSF Fellowship by Alex Lang

Tips by Tara Safavi

Public examples: [Extensive NSF collection by Alex Lang], [Victoria Dean (NSF personal)], [Victoria Dean (NSF research)], [Tara Safavi (NSF)], [Paul Liang (Facebook)], [Devendra Chaplot (Facebook)], [Sai Rallabandi (Facebook)]

Questions to Ask a Prospective Ph.D. Advisor on Visit Day, With Thorough and Forthright Explanations by Andrew Kuznetsov

How to Choose Your Grad School by Tim Dettmers

How to Pick a Graduate Advisor by Ben Barres

The Definitive ‘what do I ask/look for’ in a PhD Advisor Guide by Columbia CS

So long, and thanks for the PhD by Ronald T. Azuma

Graduate School: Keys To Success by Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau

The illustrated guide to a PhD by Matt Might

How to Be a Successful PhD Student by Mark Dredze, Hanna Wallach

Time Management by Randy Pausch

Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student by Manuel Blum

Finances for CS PhD students by David Anderson

A Survival Guide to a PhD by Andrej Karpathy

15 pieces of advice I wish my PhD advisor had given me by Jim Kurose

The Tao of PhD: Thriving in the Allen School’s Graduate Program by University of Washington

10 tips for PhD students by Daniela Witten

Expectation Setting by Eugene Vinitsky

Grad School Advice by Jason Hong

Advice for Research Students by Jason Eisner

Advice for researchers and students by Michael Ernst

Advice Collection by Tao Xie and Yuan Xie

Awesome CS PhD application advice by Jed Yang

CS PhD the greatest hits by Angela Jiang

List of PhD reflections by Stephen Tu

Thread of PhD application resources by Chaitanya Joshi

Useful computer vision PhD resources by Yana Hasson

Checklists for Stat-ML PhD students by Aaditya Ramdas

Grad School Resources by Kalpesh Krishna

AI Research Experiences by Pranav Rajpurkar

Graduate School Advice by Stanford CS

Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students by Phil Agre How to Be a Teaching Assistant by Jason Eisner

Hitchhiker’s guide to organizing an academic workshop by Ben Eysenbach and Surya Bhupatiraju

Nine things I wish I had known the first time I came to NeurIPS by Jennifer Vaughan

NeurIPS 2018 through the eyes of first-timers by Fangyu Cai

How To Make A Plan To Attend International Academic Conferences

Giving an Academic Talk by Jonathan Shewchuk

How to give a technical presentation by Michael Ernst

How to Do Great Research by Nick Feamster and Alex Gray

How to Have a Bad Career How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia by David Patterson

Useful Thoughts about Research by H.T. Kung

You and Your Research by Richard Hamming

Advice on Research and Writing by Mark Leone

Reviewer Tutorial by CVPR 2022

How to write a good review by CVPR 2020

How to write a reviewer report by Stanley Chan

How to Read a Paper by Srinivasan Keshav

How to Read a Technical Paper by Jason Eisner

How to write a good CVPR submission by Bill Freeman

Ten Simple Rules for Mathematical Writing by Dimitri Bertsekas

Notes on writing by Fredo Durand

How to write a (hopefully good) paper by Martin Vetterli

Tips for Computer Science Faculty Applications

How to Ask for a Letter of Recommendation

Interview Questions for Computer Science Faculty Jobs

The Ph.D. Job Hunt - Helping Students Find the Right Positions by Ed Lazowska

The N Things I wish I Knew Before the Job Search, by Maria Ebling, Guerney Hunt, Lily Mummert, Bill Tetzlaff, and John Davis

The academic job search for computer scientists in 10 questions by Nicolas Papernot and Elissa Redmiles

Checklist for faculty job-hunting in Stat/ML by Aaditya Ramdas

Tips on the interview process by Jeannette Wing

Getting an academic job by Michael Ernst

Computer science graduate job and interview guide by Wes Weimer, Claire Le Goues, Zak Fry, Kevin Leach, Yu Huang, and Kevin Angstadt

Academic job search advice by Matt Might

• I loved graduate school by Peter Bailis

• What my PhD was like by Jean Yang

• How to get a Ph.D. in computer science if you're me by Chris Martens

The N=1 guide to grad school by Adam Marcus

• A PhD is Not Enough: A Guide to Survival in Science by Peter Feibelman PhDLife Blog
• A collection of blog posts from Warwick University