What is graduate school like? Should you pursue it? What does it take to get in? Listen in as faculty share their insights and advice. Guests include Professors Angela Demke Brown, Chris Maddison, Carolina Nobre, Gennady Pekhimenko, Nandita Vijaykumar, and Ningning Xie.
[1:34] What is graduate school? Professor Angela Demke Brown, Associate Chair of Graduate Operations, talks about different grad programs.
[5:21] What's it like to be a graduate student? What grad students do and how the experience is different from undergrad.
[9:18] What is the role of your graduate school advisor? Professors Nandita Vijaykumar, Carolina Nobre, Chris Maddison, and Ninging Xie, reflect on their experience with their own advisor when they were grad students.
[14:00] What's wonderful about the grad school experience? Our faculty panel share what they enjoyed most as grad students.
[18:08] What makes graduate school challenging? The panel talk about what they struggled with in graduate school.
[21:53] How can you make sure you have a good graduate school experience? Our faculty panel share their insights.
[26:20] What does it take to get in to graduate school? Professor Demke Brown and Professor Gennady Pekhimenko talk about grades, letters of reference, and the importance of undergraduate research experience.
[30:15] Mario and Diane wrap up.
00:00:05 Mario
So, Diane, you know, these days it seems like there's a lot more people pursuing a masters degree. Is that degree inflation? Is it a good idea?
00:00:16 Diane
Yeah, those are good questions. I think for some students, they see a tight job market and they think why not? Why not get another qualification?
00:00:24 Mario
Or. Or maybe they're even wondering about doing a PhD.
00:00:27 Diane
Lots of students are thinking about a PhD. It's true.
00:00:30 Mario
So in this episode, why don't we spend it demystifying graduate?
00:00:35 Diane
School sounds good. Let's do it.
00:00:39 Chris Maddison
Grad school is a surprise for everybody.
00:00:43 Nandita Vijaykumar
I think the hardest part is the uncertainty.
00:00:47 Ningning Xie
You spend like months on an experiment that just doesn't work.
00:00:53 Chris Maddison
There's no question that it's the moments of discovery for me.
00:00:57 Carolina Nobre
But I remember feeling I love what I do. I can't wait to do more of this.
00:01:02 Mario
So, what we did was we interviewed several faculty members from the Department of Computer Science to get a better idea about their Graduate School experience so that we could share with you what Graduate School is really like.
00:01:14 Diane
Yeah. And we're also going to suggest some things you can do right now, even if you're in first year, that will help you to recognize whether grad school really might be a good idea for you and as well to put you in a great position to be a strong candidate when it comes time to apply.
00:01:35 Diane
So, let's start with the basics. Some of you may be wondering what the heck is Graduate School.
00:01:41 Mario
And who better to answer that than our associate chair of graduate operations, Professor Angela Demke Brown, who talks about the different pathways that you can take through Graduate School?
00:01:51 Angela Demke Brown
Broadly speaking, there is research based and course work based. The course work based tends to be a master's degree. They go by various names like a professional masters or terminal master's coursework master's, and these are really, I think, intended for people that want to do more in depth study of a topic, upgrade their skills but are not focused on research and are not a a very long-term commitment. Often, they'll be one year or at most two-year programs.
On the other side are the research-based programs, and from there there's either a starting point from undergraduate in a master's degree program, research based where you work with the supervisor and have some primary research topic leading to a paper. Hopefully some publishable research. And that is typically intended to feed into a PhD program. Also, research based longer time frame. Again, doing research with the supervisor.
00:03:02 Mario
Is there a way to go directly into the PhD?
00:03:05 Angela Demke Brown
Yes, I was just going to mention that there is indeed an option for direct entry PhD. This tends to be more common in the United States. It's also an option here. Yeah, in terms of what you have to do, it's essentially the same. Has a master's degree followed by a PhD, except that you are officially enrolled in a PhD program direct from undergraduate.
00:03:34 Mario
Alright, so to summarize, a master's can be course based which only involves courses, or it can be research based. But a PhD always has research at its core, and you can do a Master's degree and stop right there. You can do a master's degree and go on from there to a PhD.
00:03:54 Mario
And in some schools, you can go directly into that PhD.
00:03:58 Diane
And one other wrinkle at U of T we don't have a straight coursework based master's in computer science. Instead, we offer a program called the Master of Science in Applied Computing or MSC AC.
00:04:10 Mario
I'm glad you brought that up, because it's actually it's a very special program that begins with eight months, of course, work that course work. Sorry, but it culminates in an 8-month internship where students apply the state-of-the-art research techniques that they just learned to make a real difference in industry.
00:04:27 Diane
And these are no ordinary internships. They're very highly curated opportunities for students to work at some of the most innovative companies with professionals considered to be the best in their fields.
00:04:40 Mario
That's right. And then just going back to all those different pathways, remember, these pathways can vary across schools, particularly in the coursework or professional Masters stream. Even in the research stream, things vary. So, for instance, in some places a master's is a worthy goal on its own, whereas in others it's really a it's admission is directly to PhD and the Master’s is something that you just get along the way.
00:05:04 Diane
That's right. So, when it comes time to apply to schools, it's really important to know what exactly you're applying to.
00:05:21 Diane
What's it like to be a graduate student?
00:05:24 Chris Maddison
Grad school is a surprise for everybody.
00:05:27 Mario
That was Professor Chris Madison from the Department of Computer Science in Graduate School is a big surprise because it is very different from undergrad.
00:05:36 Angela Demke Brown
I think the big difference is you have a lot of flexibility to decide what to do with your time and what problems you're going to try to solve. So, you're an undergraduate, you're taking courses, and the courses will have very clearly outlined assignments with point values for you know you figure out like, OK, if I do, you know, question 1-2 and five, I'll get 70% of the Marks and you can kind of figure out exactly where you are based on very well-defined criteria.
And there's a lot more uncertainty, I think, in Graduate School. Even the graduate courses will tend to be much more open-ended in terms of what you were expected to do, and certainly when you get down to research. You not only have to worry about figuring out, you know what the right solution to the problem is, you also have to think about whether you're even working on the right problem.
00:06:43 Diane
So, you start out grad school with some courses, and that probably seems comfortable and familiar. But as Angela said, grad courses are quite different from undergrad courses. They're often a lot smaller, for example, and they may have a really different format than you're used to.
They could be organized around reading and discussing research papers, and the students may even lead the class. A lot of the time. Grad courses often have a huge project as well that can be really open-ended.
00:07:10 Mario
It's interesting that you're mentioning, you know, students leading some of the lectures here, because I remember in my master's program I took parallel programming and the majority of lectures actually began with one of the students. One of us presenting a research paper at the beginning that we were assigned.
And then we would have a discussion about it and the discussion was nothing like a summary of the research paper. It was more about how do we do some constructive critique to identify certain holes. And then we also had that open-ended research project at the end. So definitely resonates with me when you talk about stuff like that.
00:07:48 Diane
Those lectures, it's really different, absolutely. Another difference is that, at least in my experience at U of T, the number of hours you put into a single graduate course is substantially greater than what you have to put into an undergrad.
00:07:50 Mario
Yeah.
00:08:01 Diane
Of course, because you're you're really going deeper.
00:08:04 Mario
That I might not be the best gauge of that because I didn't put enough time in my graduate courses. But yes, I I put more time in Graduate School.
00:08:12 Diane
Ohh I can picture the stacks and stacks of proofs I did for my grad course in graph theory. Oh my gosh, I loved it though it was really fun.
00:08:21 Mario
That's great, that's.
00:08:22 Mario
Great. And you know another another thing that you do in Graduate School is you might also be working as a teaching assistant.
00:08:29 Diane
That's right. And you're also probably starting to attend research meetings in that first term or two when you're focused a lot on courses, you're still getting into the research by getting together with your group and discussing papers, hearing what other people are working on for their thesis, and you're starting, you're starting to think about.
00:08:49 Diane
What you'd like to work on for your own thesis?
00:08:52 Mario
Right. So that that's your first 2 terms or so when you get into that research phase though, things really start to diverge from undergrad?
00:09:01 Diane
That's right. Now you're going to focus all in on one big project. That is your project and it's different from any undergrad project. You've done another difference in grad school is that, at least in research based programs, you have your own advisor.
00:09:22 Diane
Whose job is to guide you through your degree, and this is going to be a very important relationship that will greatly impact not only your graduate experience, but your future.
00:09:32 Carolina Nobre
There.
00:09:33 Mario
Yeah, absolutely. I remember. So my advisor would do things like, you know, advise me on which courses I should be taking when I was early on in my masters, she actually had a topic for my Masters and helped me kind of navigate toward a topic in my PhD. And of course, you know, while I was actually doing the research, she was able to help by providing her own expertise and.
00:09:53 Mario
Feedback as I try to navigate the different problems that I.
00:09:57 Diane
Yeah, my supervisor was gave gave me a little bit more freedom and choosing my topics, and one of the things he was really strong at was teaching me all the soft skills, all the meta skills that you need to be a graduate student. Like, really practical things like what to do when you go to a conference, how to manage.
00:10:17 Diane
Meeting new people and getting to talk to the experts in your particular subfield, he was fantastic for that.
00:10:26 Mario
Here's Professor Nandita Vijay Kumar from the Department of Computer Science. To tell us her perspective.
00:10:32 Nandita Vijaykumar
Labs and groups vary very widely in terms of how they operate, and everyone's experiences are quite different.
00:10:41 Diane
Degree of freedom is 1 area where supervisors differ.
00:10:45 Nandita Vijaykumar
He was very flexible about what you worked on.
00:10:50 Nandita Vijaykumar
I didn't have a.
00:10:50 Carolina Nobre
Lot of freedom to choose my own projects.
00:10:54 Diane
And what's best for each student really depends on things like how they like to work, as well as how much research experience they already have.
00:11:03 Chris Maddison
So, by the time I started my PhD at the University of Oxford, I was already a little bit more senior, so to speak. I had done a master's here at U of TI, had spent a bit of time in the industry, so I came into the group already with a bit of a body of publications. And so I had two supervisors in my PhD.
00:11:24 Chris Maddison
Are not to say and elite.
00:11:26 Chris Maddison
And I think both of them wanted to give me a lot of room to work on my own thing. They did not feel they had no concerns about, you know, the basics. Like, was he even going to graduate was, you know, was I going to do enough work that was sufficient for a PhD? So.
00:11:44 Chris Maddison
Because they didn't have those concerns, they were actually very, very hands off. So they didn't give me a project. They didn't have any kind of agenda that they wanted me to work on.
00:11:53 Chris Maddison
I would say overall that's a great gift. I was very grateful to have that kind of freedom.
00:11:59 Diane
Professor Carolina Nobre was changing subject areas between her Masters and PHD's, and that was an important factor for her.
00:12:08 Carolina Nobre
I didn't have a lot of freedom to choose my own projects, which was OK for me because it was a new area. I came from an area of oceanography that was kind of new to computer science, so he had a lot of ideas.
00:12:18 Carolina Nobre
And I would essentially go. This sounds great. Let's do that. It worked well for me and towards the end of my PhD when I wanted more freedom, I graduated and got a postdoc.
00:12:27 Carolina Nobre
Session.
00:12:28 Mario
Another difference is when you meet with your supervisor.
00:12:31 Carolina Nobre
He was pretty hands on and very available. I'd pop in and we would have spontaneous conversations about whatever I was working on.
00:12:37 Mario
Some faculty, like the students, to initiate meetings when they have something to talk about, and this can work great, but it also leaves a lot.
00:12:44 Mario
Of room to procrastinate.
00:12:45 Diane
Yes.
00:12:47 Mario
Others will set a regular meeting time with each.
00:12:49 Gennady Pekhimenko
Student.
00:12:50 Ningning Xie
So my advisor and I had a weekly meetings to discuss progress challenges and the next steps and we usually set up the meeting to be like an hour, but sometimes they would go a little beyond an hour or sometimes not. It just depends.
00:13:09 Ningning Xie
And we also used a slack like online communication tool so I can ask questions on Slack and get a quick feedback.
00:13:20 Diane
Now, these may sound like trivial details, but whether or not they match your own personality and working style can make an enormous difference to your experience in Graduate School.
00:13:30 Mario
That's right. And another factor is actually the research group's culture. So do all of your supervisors. Students do their own thing? Do they meet as a group regularly so that they can, you know, talk and share and learn from each other? Are there meetings for all the faculty and students across the research group or research area? These are some really good things to find out.
00:13:51 Mario
Before deciding which faculty members you'd like to reach.
00:13:54 Mario
Out to and work.
00:14:01 Mario
OK. So Diane, before we get to the lows, I want to talk about the highs. I want to talk about what can make Graduate School such a wonderful experience.
00:14:10 Diane
I have to say to me one of the very lovely things is that you become a junior colleague.
00:14:16 Diane
An undergrad. You probably are one of hundreds in your courses and you might never see that Prof again, but now you become one of only a small handful of grad students in that professors group, and you have a close relationship with them that lasts throughout your degree and often well beyond.
00:14:33 Mario
Yeah. Well, let's also maybe talk about the money. So like, you know, you you probably get a modest stipend and it's not what you're going to be making an industry, but it's a pretty big improvement, at least for me over what I was making in undergrad.
00:14:46 Diane
Yeah, zero. Nobody paid me to go to.
00:14:49 Mario
Undergrad. I paid them, but also another really cool thing is you get to start attending international conferences, expenses paid where you meet other researchers working in your area.
00:15:02 Diane
My first conference was in Budapest and I couldn't believe I was being paid to go there.
00:15:08 Mario
I mean mine. Mine was like Portland, I think, but eventually I got to go to Vienna and Cambridge and all.
00:15:13 Mario
These other places.
00:15:13 Diane
I'm skipping over Buffalo. I do have a talking Buffalo ones, but many great places. Yeah, that was international. Yeah, I remember it well.
00:15:18 Mario
That's still international.
00:15:22 Mario
All right. So we asked colleagues who weren't that far out from their own PhD what was great about their Graduate School experience. And one big theme emerged.
00:15:32 Nandita Vijaykumar
When something that you've worked for for months, sometimes years, it all comes together really nicely.
00:15:40 Chris Maddison
There's no question that it's it's the moments of discovery for me.
00:15:45 Chris Maddison
You're the only one in a sense that holds that knowledge, and you just have to tell the world.
00:15:50 Ningning Xie
You might be the only one on Earth who knows about this particular piece of knowledge.
00:15:56 Carolina Nobre
I remember feeling I love what I do. I can't wait to.
00:15:58 Carolina Nobre
Do more of this.
00:16:00 Mario
That's so inspiring. Here's more from Professor Madison about his moments of discovery.
00:16:06 Chris Maddison
When I've had.
00:16:09 Chris Maddison
There's a couple lines of work that I was pursuing in my PhD that were, in a sense, wholly my own or wholly work that I had done with a collaborator, where it was a line of work, that it it felt like if no, if I didn't do it, no one else would. And when you, when you take steps along that path and you're understanding.
00:16:31 Chris Maddison
What a problem develops and you feel like?
00:16:34 Chris Maddison
You're the only one in a sense that holds that knowledge, and you just have to tell the world those moments are the absolute, most exciting and you just you walk home and it's like, you know, the stars are shining brighter and and you feel like you're you're the the, the custodian of secret knowledge. Those those moments are the best.
00:16:54 Diane
Let's hear from Professor Ming Ming Shi and Professor Nobre on their experiences.
00:17:00 Ningning Xie
This I had moments like when a complex concept finally clicks or you research on cover something new are incredibly rewarding, like for a moment you might be the only one on Earth.
00:17:14 Ningning Xie
He knows about this particular piece of knowledge.
00:17:18 Ningning Xie
Then you go to share it with your advisor. You may write a paper and publish it so that the whole community knows about what you have found and this feeling of like contributing to knowledge I think is is amazing.
00:17:34 Carolina Nobre
So amazing was definitely when I got into the flow. I think they called.
00:17:37 Carolina Nobre
Flow state and where you're working and you don't see time pass and you're very excited and you're you're potentially hitting some challenges, but you're overcoming them at a pace that is just very rewarding and you feel like you got this. I remember sometimes even if it was the weekend before paper deadline and I was making these figures or things and it was just coming along, I was so excited to show my advisor on Monday or the next time we were going to meet. So those were definitely moments where I remember.
00:17:58 Carolina Nobre
Feeling I love what I do. I can't wait to.
00:18:01 Carolina Nobre
Do more of this.
00:18:08 Mario
OK. So those were the highs and there are a lot of aspects of Graduate School that are wonderful at the same time. It is challenging in a really new way compared with undergrad.
00:18:19 Nandita Vijaykumar
I think the hardest part is the uncertainty in terms of research. There's a big difference compared to undergrad, or even working in a company where you're given very clearly defined tasks that are often.
00:18:36 Nandita Vijaykumar
Clear in the sense that you know that it can be solved and you know the amount of effort and that and the amount of time that it's going to take to solve it. And usually there's someone around you who knows that better that you can get some kind of guidance from either a professor or some kind of mentor or a tee. However, with research.
00:18:56 Nandita Vijaykumar
The most challenging part is you're working with a lot of unknowns. You don't know if the problem that you're solving can actually even be solved.
00:19:05 Chris Maddison
My grad school experience was a bit turbulent because it was, you know, at a time when the tech industry was expanding very, very quickly. It was right at the at the beginning of the AI boom in the early twenty 10s. And I was here in Jeff Hinton's group, at a kind of nucleating moment when the when the industry suddenly got very, very excited about deep learning neural networks.
00:19:27 Chris Maddison
And all of that movement that was happening around me, people changing positions, people moving in and out of academia into the industry.
00:19:35 Chris Maddison
We created all of this turbulence that that made you know my position as a grad student, very unstable. I ended up leaving U of T and doing my PhD at Oxford, partly because of that turbulence. And in general, you know, I just found myself always asking questions like am I in the right place?
00:19:56 Chris Maddison
Should I be trying to go closer to the industry? Should I be focusing more in academic work? You know, when there's all this movement and all this excitement?
00:20:04 Ningning Xie
But of course, there are moments when things can be really hard, like it's quite common that you spend like months on an experiment that just doesn't work or like you write a paper that you are really excited about, but it gets rejected and sometimes multiple times.
00:20:24 Ningning Xie
And these kinds of setbacks can be, I think, discouraged.
00:20:30 Carolina Nobre
I would say it's actually harder when my I didn't live up to my advisors expectations. So when he felt like we weren't making enough progress or if he seemed to feel like the what I was doing wasn't the best thing because of my relationship with him being one of, hey, you're doing great stuff. I really put him kind of on a pedestal that was hard for me. It was whenever I felt like I wasn't living up to his expectations.
00:20:52 Diane
Absolutely. There are some big challenges everybody faces in grad school. You're doing original research, and that has two sides to it. On the one hand, when you succeed, you're expanding the boundaries of what is known, and that's incredible. But at the same time, because you're attempting to do something that's never been done.
00:21:12 Diane
Before, otherwise it wouldn't be research, would it? There are some inherent challenges and risks.
00:21:18 Mario
Right, you can't just Google everything that you need.
00:21:20 Mario
You know, but I think that going into a research program, knowing about both the joys and the challenges is helpful preparation.
00:21:29 Diane
I agree, and I think it helps to know that nearly everybody has moments of self doubt.
00:21:35 Chris Maddison
Most grad students go through a phase where they ask themselves what the.
00:21:39 Chris Maddison
Heck am I.
00:21:39 Chris Maddison
Doing here, even the ones that you know are very, very successful, there's always that moment when you're when it's sort of like the growing pains.
00:21:53 Diane
OK, Mario, we've had a pretty frank discussion about what grad school is really like. Let's talk about what makes for a good experience, what you can actually do.
00:22:03 Mario
Yeah. And so one factor that might be surprising is that your motivation for going to Graduate School in the 1st place is really important.
00:22:14 Carolina Nobre
Interestingly, I've gone to grad school a few times, and the first time I had quite different motivations I was fresh out of college and essentially I thought that was the next step. You go to grad school after college. There was a lot of expectations for my family, so I went to grad school and I got a masters in oceanography. The reasons I went to grad school back then were not about the process of grad school.
00:22:34 Carolina Nobre
It was about that's the next thing you do. So my experience that masters wasn't didn't quite live up to what I thought it was going to be, mostly because I didn't know what it was going to be. And it was just not very interesting these contrasts with.
00:22:46 Carolina Nobre
How my motivation for doing a PhD later in life? So then it was really about the experience I had experience with grad school. I was motivated to do more of the actual research of digging in and writing papers, reading papers, having these discussions. And so in that case, definitely the motivation of going to grad school for the grad school experience and for what happens during grad school.
00:23:06 Carolina Nobre
More than what happens after or the degree made it a much more enjoyable experience and much more expected experience.
00:23:15 Ningning Xie
I think motivations can significantly influence the experience, especially since different motivations can lead to different expectations.
00:23:26 Ningning Xie
So if the motivations are about, say, a genuine interest in the field or a desire for deeper knowledge, your expectations are more likely aligned with what Graduate School is actually about, and that can make the whole experience way more positive and fulfilling.
00:23:48 Ningning Xie
And also if you are self motivated, you are more likely be able to handle challenges like work life balance or setbacks like paper rejections. But if you don't have the right motivation, things can be really tough. Like if you are only there.
00:24:09 Ningning Xie
Because your parents want you to, you may not enjoy your graduate life at all, and I think that can be really, really unfortunate.
00:24:20 Diane
Another important factor, and one that you actually have some control over, is finding a good match.
00:24:27 Nandita Vijaykumar
If the topics and the areas that you're working on is not a great match for the interests, or if there's a personality mismatch between the advisor and the students or the lab culture and the student, then it's.
00:24:42 Nandita Vijaykumar
It doesn't matter what your motivation is, it's just going to be a very difficult experience. So in that sense, I think those are the bigger determinants of success, rather than what your initial motivation is.
00:24:57 Diane
It's really important to be working on something you're genuinely interested in, otherwise it's very hard to get up and face that blank screen every day and get yourself to continue working and you need to be working in an environment ideally that fits your needs.
00:25:15 Mario
And you know your own personal traits can be very helpful too, like your drive.
00:25:21 Nandita Vijaykumar
Being able to work independently and being self motivated, I think this is extremely important.
00:25:27 Mario
And resilience is really helpful when you encounter the kinds of challenges we've discussed.
00:25:32 Nandita Vijaykumar
I think one of the key characteristics is resilience. So students who are determined to achieve a goal or succeed, regardless of the obstacles and the challenges.
00:25:47 Nandita Vijaykumar
That you're likely to face.
00:25:48
Yes.
00:25:50 Diane
And I'd like to add that there's research suggesting that resilience is something we can work on and improve.
00:25:56 Mario
That's right. And so this this last point may seem obvious, but it really helps if you actually enjoy learning.
00:26:04 Nandita Vijaykumar
If you just intrinsically enjoy learning, I think by default the experience tends to be a lot more enjoyable and just more positive.
00:26:20 Diane
OK. We hope at this point you have a good sense of what grad school is all about. We want to make sure you also know some basics about what it takes to get in. And even if you might not be applying for some time, this is important to know now.
00:26:34 Diane
Because it will suggest some things you can do right now, well in advance of your applications.
00:26:40 Mario
Right. And and what we see all the time is that some students get very focused on grades gunning for that 4.0 GPA. So we asked Professor Genadi vehemence O, how important really are these grades?
00:26:55 Gennady Pekhimenko
Yeah, so students frequently worry about the grades, but I have to say that I, for my experience, being on both sides of the fence, I would say the grades is more for check mark that you need to pass. But there are a lot of other more important things, especially getting into graduate schools, which reference letter research.
00:27:14 Gennady Pekhimenko
Experience, and especially publications and publications are not required, but would would help your case very strongly.
00:27:24 Mario
All right. So from that we see that you know super high grades not necessary to get into grad school and and grades are not actually the most important thing, Professor Denke Brown elaborated on how grades and other elements of the application factor into the decision on whether or not a student is admitted.
00:27:42 Angela Demke Brown
So I'd say the role of grades, there's sort of a a gatekeeper. You need a certain baseline level to be considered and that that level is not a 4.0 you.
00:27:57 Angela Demke Brown
It's hard to say exactly where the line is drawn because it is competitive and it's going to depend on the applicant pool in any given year. After that, we look at the applications more holistically. So we're looking to see we're looking at reference letters and CV's and we're looking to see.
00:28:18 Angela Demke Brown
Does the person have some research experience? How did they do with that and?
00:28:23 Angela Demke Brown
In many cases, what you want to see is not a.
00:28:28 Ningning Xie
Pacific.
00:28:31 Angela Demke Brown
Knowledge or expertise in a topic that you're going to research because we'll teach you that when you are in grad school, but it's more of a an aptitude for research. So dealing with uncertainty, independent thought, time management.
00:28:49 Angela Demke Brown
All of the kinds of things that give you a sense that this person is going to be able to work independently on a vaguely defined problem and manage their own time well and see it through to completion.
00:29:07 Diane
So doing some research as an undergrad is the best way to demonstrate your aptitude for it, and it's also the best way to get those strong letters of recommendation, which are a critical part of your application. It could even lead to a publication which will be an enormous boost to your application. So the implication is clear.
00:29:28 Gennady Pekhimenko
So if you earning your career thinking about grad school, you need to think about where I can get this experience of doing research, other doing a summer internship with their favorite faculty, or trying to get access to some research lab or even working part time during the semester.
00:29:47 Diane
I'm gonna add, Mario, that trying your hand at research as an undergrad will also help you know whether it's something you want.
00:29:53 Diane
To do more.
00:29:54 Mario
Of yeah, and. And you might even get a sense of what kind of research you'd like to do, what kinds of problems you'd like to contribute to, and what kinds of techniques and tools you want.
00:30:04 Mario
Apply you know, so on and so forth. So this can give you a bit of a head start when you get to graduates.
00:30:15 Diane
So I hope you've given our listeners a pretty good sense of what grad school is like, what makes it really wonderful, and what makes it challenging in new ways compared to undergrad.
00:30:25 Diane
That.
00:30:26 Diane
If you're thinking, hey, this might be right for me, I'm not really sure. Now is a fantastic time to look for opportunities to get research experience so you can discover what it's like for you.
00:30:38 Mario
That you really want to find out is this right for me before you actually end up in Graduate School? And remember that those points about motivation, right? You. You shouldn't just take Graduate School because you think it's the next step there. There should be some real motivating factors for you personally that you want to do research or you enjoy that research.
00:30:59 Mario
Process.
00:31:00 Mario
What about the opportunities that you can actually find at the University of Toronto if you're in second year, one that's probably coming up in the fall of your second year is the applications for PRISM, which is preparation for research through immersion skills and mentorship. What better way to introduce yourself to the wonderful world of research than applying to this program?
00:31:23 Diane
Yeah, it's designed exactly for students who want to get their feet wet and and need some help getting started. So it'll teach you all the basics and and get you on the road to your first research experience.
00:31:35 Diane
Dance.
00:31:36 Mario
And check out our show notes for links to other things like 490 fours, four 90's, the USRA's how to apply to these, and then the links for those will be there in the show notes. And if you're in fourth year.
00:31:51 Mario
What should you do?
00:31:52 Diane
Diane, or even leading up to 4th year, check out our next episode, which gets into all the new degree nitty gritty details of applying to grad school.
00:32:02 Mario
I'm Mario batter.
00:32:03 Diane
And I'm Diane Horton. And you are?
00:32:05 Mario
In the leaf.
00:32:18 Diane
Hey, Mario, what kind of computer sings the best?
00:32:22 Mario
I don't know what kind.
00:32:24 Diane
A Dell (Adele).
00:32:29 Mario
Wow, that's. That's bad.