Graduate School Expectations
Many students wonder what is expected of them in graduate school. This is an outline of what you you will encounter in my group. Although styles vary, you will find that this is similar to many engineering groups throughout the United States.
Fellowships and Research Assistanceships:
Some students enter with a fellowship, and some are admitted with a graduate student researcher position. In either case, you will initially be taking classes about half time, and working in the laboratory for the remainder of your time.
If you have a fellowship, you are expected to find a professor to work with when the fellowship expires, typically after one year. You should use this time wisely, and I suggest that you attend several group meetings and then start doing research with a group that fits your interests. Use this time to explore what you like, and also to prove yourself.
If you have a research assistanceship, you will be associated with a particular professor who is paying you from one of their grants or contracts. You can read more about that below.
Classes:
Some students are under the misconception that grades do not matter in graduate school. This could not be farther from the truth. You will have to take a preliminary exam based on the classes in your major field, and the professors on your committee will remember you. You will find the preliminary exam to be much less stressful if you did well in your classes. You will also need to apply the material that you learned in your classes to your research. Although many students go through an adjustment period after arriving here, you need to address any issues quickly in order to keep your grades up.
Research:
The centerpiece of your Ph.D. will be your research work. Different groups are organized in different ways. In my group, each student is expected to do everything - come up with concepts, develop a theoretical foundation, perform simulations, build and measure their ideas, and interpret the results. This means you must be proficient in many different areas, or be able to rapidly come up to speed in them. You must be able to use mathematical tools such as Mathematica or MATLAB, electromagnetic solvers such as HFSS, and/or circuit simulation tools such as ADS or Cadence. You should be familiar with both Windows and Linux operating systems at a minimum. You should also be able to use microwave equipment such as network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, and other such things. You will also find LabView to be useful. You should be able to write up your results coherently in English to produce high quality journal publications, and convincingly present your ideas to others at conferences, and in our group meetings.
You will be given an initial idea and direction, based on a grant or contract from which you are being paid. However, the main thing that differentiates a Ph.D. from an M.S. is that you must be able to show substantial original thought, and eventually become the world's expert in a particular topic. Most of my research work is very high-risk, so you must be able to persevere in spite of repeated failures, and few clear answers or directions. You will likely also need to learn about other areas of engineering, science, or mathematics to achieve breakthroughs. However, I will help you through this process, and at the end you will know how to think, and you will be well-trained to take on nearly any technical challenge throughout your career.
Responsibilities:
In addition to your classes, preliminary and qualifying exams, etc., you will have additional responsibilities. You will be paid from a contract or grant that I have spent much time and effort to win in a competitive process, usually before you arrived. This funding comes with the expectation of rapid progress, and it often comes with deliverables. This means that I will need results from you in a timely manner, charts, text and figures for reports, or hardware for demonstrations. I may also need results from you to support a new proposal. If we fail at these things, we face potential loss of funding. This is the same as what you will find when you get out into the "real world" - it actually starts now.
Workload:
Graduate school in engineering is hard, and you will be expected to produce results. This is no different from what you will find after graduation. To excel at anything takes a lot of effort. If you have done well enough so far that you are joining my group, you probably already know this.
Timeframe:
There is not a set timeframe for graduation. However, we generally measure students by the depth and breadth of the body of knowledge that they create, and this is often assessed through publications. As a very rough guide, we generally consider three top-quality journal publications in a coherent topic to be about the right amount of material for a thesis. However, you must be able to tell a good story with this material. You will likely generate other papers, letters, conference presentations, etc. throughout this process, and you may work on other tangential topics along the way that you will write up as well. If you are doing good work, you may produce about one full journal paper each year. It typically takes students about 4-5 years to complete a Ph.D. or a little less if you already have an M.S., but this depends strongly on your experience, abilities, and personal motivation.
Outcome:
At the end of this process, you will have a highly valuable degree in an area that is interesting, fun, and very marketable. You will also have developed skills that will serve you for the rest of your career, including the ability to think, and to solve complex problems for which there is no straightforward answer. You will have a background in a broad range of technical topics, and you will have developed the personal resourcefullness that is necessary to work in a rapidly changing technical environment. You will also get exposure to the process of how to raise money and market your ideas, and you will likely have developed contacts in local industry that will provide you with a good start in your career.
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