I’m not sure whether this piece of advice is generally useful or not, and it’s almost certainly variable depending on field; but I do wish I had followed this when I was in graduate school.
Fairly early on, choose a thesis topic or problem you’re interested in, and pursue it. Don’t get side-tracked into something just because it’s what the department or your advisor is working on. In fact, I’d go so far to say you should pick your thesis topic before you apply. Use that to help you decide where to apply. If you don’t have a thesis topic you’re committed to, you’re not ready for grad school; and should stay out.
If you can swing it, get informal approval for your topic and an agreement from a faculty member to serve as your advisor before you apply. This is easier if you’re attending grad school the same place where you’re an undergraduate, but it can be done as long as you have some notable research chops as an undergraduate.
I heard the opposite too: don’t try to push your own research too hard, especially in the beginning, but try to find something the others in the lab group are working on, learn stuff from them, and after a while you’ll end up with your own ideas anyway.
Pros and cons for both of the approaches exist, but “picking a thesis early on” might be hard as you don’t necessarily know what the good problems are in your field. But that might depend on your field / advisor too.
Perhaps. All I can say is I was told that too; I tried that; and it really, really didn’t work out. I think I might have been more successful had I focused on my own interests more. Certainly looking at my career in my adult life, almost all my biggest successes, with maybe one exception, were when I chose what to work on instead of agreeing to work on someone else’s idea.
Of course you do need to adjust this for your field. If you’re working in pure math or Roman history, it’s not all that hard to do your own thing. In experimental high energy physics, maybe not so much. If you need a million dollar laboratory to get started in a field, then you may not have a lot of choice in what you work on. Though even in the experimental field I’m most familiar with, observational astronomy, it still appears to me as if the most successful people did their own thing. It probably does matter than in astronomy, it’s standard practice to allot telescope time based on proposals rather than ownership.
Also, of course, if you can decide early on your area and aim at the program that does that well, then that’s the best of both worlds. If you know you want to work on high temperature superconductivity, you’re better off in a department that does a lot of work on solid state physics and better yet superconductivity specifically rather than one that specializes in string theory or experimental high energy physics.
In any case, however, I think it’s pretty important to start doing some kind of research as early as possible. My own experience is with math grad school, where it’s common to just focus on taking classes for the first year or two; but it’s better to also be doing research during that time if you can.
Fairly early on, choose a thesis topic or problem you’re interested in, and pursue it. Don’t get side-tracked into something just because it’s what the department or your advisor is working on. In fact, I’d go so far to say you should pick your thesis topic before you apply. Use that to help you decide where to apply. If you don’t have a thesis topic you’re committed to, you’re not ready for grad school; and should stay out.
This may actually depend on the field. In PhD programs in linguistics in the US, you are usually expected to pick you thesis topic only in the third of five years, and you actually have to work on other topics, too. The programs are structured in a way that you wouldn’t even have the time to focus on your thesis topic right from the beginning.
I’m not sure whether this piece of advice is generally useful or not, and it’s almost certainly variable depending on field; but I do wish I had followed this when I was in graduate school.
Fairly early on, choose a thesis topic or problem you’re interested in, and pursue it. Don’t get side-tracked into something just because it’s what the department or your advisor is working on. In fact, I’d go so far to say you should pick your thesis topic before you apply. Use that to help you decide where to apply. If you don’t have a thesis topic you’re committed to, you’re not ready for grad school; and should stay out.
If you can swing it, get informal approval for your topic and an agreement from a faculty member to serve as your advisor before you apply. This is easier if you’re attending grad school the same place where you’re an undergraduate, but it can be done as long as you have some notable research chops as an undergraduate.
I heard the opposite too: don’t try to push your own research too hard, especially in the beginning, but try to find something the others in the lab group are working on, learn stuff from them, and after a while you’ll end up with your own ideas anyway.
Pros and cons for both of the approaches exist, but “picking a thesis early on” might be hard as you don’t necessarily know what the good problems are in your field. But that might depend on your field / advisor too.
Perhaps. All I can say is I was told that too; I tried that; and it really, really didn’t work out. I think I might have been more successful had I focused on my own interests more. Certainly looking at my career in my adult life, almost all my biggest successes, with maybe one exception, were when I chose what to work on instead of agreeing to work on someone else’s idea.
Of course you do need to adjust this for your field. If you’re working in pure math or Roman history, it’s not all that hard to do your own thing. In experimental high energy physics, maybe not so much. If you need a million dollar laboratory to get started in a field, then you may not have a lot of choice in what you work on. Though even in the experimental field I’m most familiar with, observational astronomy, it still appears to me as if the most successful people did their own thing. It probably does matter than in astronomy, it’s standard practice to allot telescope time based on proposals rather than ownership.
Also, of course, if you can decide early on your area and aim at the program that does that well, then that’s the best of both worlds. If you know you want to work on high temperature superconductivity, you’re better off in a department that does a lot of work on solid state physics and better yet superconductivity specifically rather than one that specializes in string theory or experimental high energy physics.
In any case, however, I think it’s pretty important to start doing some kind of research as early as possible. My own experience is with math grad school, where it’s common to just focus on taking classes for the first year or two; but it’s better to also be doing research during that time if you can.
This may actually depend on the field. In PhD programs in linguistics in the US, you are usually expected to pick you thesis topic only in the third of five years, and you actually have to work on other topics, too. The programs are structured in a way that you wouldn’t even have the time to focus on your thesis topic right from the beginning.