 Now we're moving on to the last part of the workshop and that is a workshop within a workshop on preparing your graduate school applications. I'm really happy to have some materials that both Professor Genevines who was part of the faculty panel and another Professor Denai Koutra have prepared in the past and I hope that this is going to be material that is going to be helpful to you as well. As always please feel free to post any questions or comments in the group chat and I will try my best to to monitor that as well. All right so then let's start. I first want to mention something and that is that there exist application fee waivers for EGS participants but I have to point out that this is for citizens or permanent residents of the United States to be able to check if you are eligible for a fee waiver. You can always go to our graduate admissions webpage and there you will find a link called graduate application fee waiver request form. If you click on that you will be able to get more information about this so please do that when you get a chance and one of the things that you will see there once you click on the form they will ask you what is the reason and one of the reasons that you can list is that you actually participated in explore graduate studies in CSE. All right so in this last session we will cover quite a few things but if at any point you feel like you need a little bit more clarification about any of these steps please let me know in the chat and I will try to spend some more time on on those. In particular we're going to be talking about the statement of purpose it's one of the sort of main documents that you will be submitting for your application we're going to talk about personal statement we'll touch on recommendation letters as well and then just some sort of tips on do's and do not of what to do after you get your offers from different graduate programs. So the first thing is the statement of purpose. Now here I just want try and point out some of the pitfalls that we often see in statements of purpose but also give you some insights into what makes a statement of purpose strong. Now one of the things that probably doesn't make it strong is trying to write it all as a poem as you see in this example. Now if you look at the official admissions website it says something to the extent that that your statement of purpose should address your academic and research interests and I here I want to say that there's emphasis on academic interests for your MS application and in particular research for your PhD though you can do it for both if you have both interests your past experience any past experience is valuable experience but it is important to mention if you have any past research experience for your PhD applications and if you don't that is also something that we can that we can talk about a little bit more in this session and then of course one of the important things is your future career goals throughout our panels one of the the highlight or one of the things that that we have seen panelists mentioned is being able to explain why you actually want to get a PhD or why you want to get your masters and one of the things to point out here is that the statement of purpose itself is not an autobiography it's not where you write about your experiences more broadly oops sorry actually what it is about it is about your research and academic interests goals and in some ways accomplishments but I'll tell you more about the accomplishments later and the most important thing to note here is that you have specific audience you're trying to persuade professors sitting on the graduate admissions committee that you should be admitted into into this program and the most important thing is to really consider the purpose in applying to the program just having aspirations oh I really want to have a PhD it's probably not going to be enough it's probably not a good reason to begin with just one thing to have some kind of a title or a designation unless it your PhD or your master's education helps you accomplish a certain kind of goal then what is the reason for even getting it and also raises concerns about well would you stick out would you stick with it as you are as you're going through this often challenging process because graduate school is challenging what they also want to do is to see can you do research and have a vision for what you want to contribute and again maybe less emphasis on research for master students but it doesn't hurt if you have those interests as well and you want to really convince them that you will be successful in the program the program of course needs to make you enable you give you opportunities to be successful but given those opportunities will you respond to them and will you be able to succeed those are the things that most graduate admission committees are looking at and individual faculty as well this is not a laundry list of your academic accomplishments you have your CV for that where you will list everything that you've done this is a story an essay an argument that you're writing in support of your own application any of your current academic accomplishments are their examples that help support your argument that you're making about why you will be successful in the PhD program if you have research experience listing that research experience is there in support of perhaps making a claim that you have the right kind of foundation that prepares you well or at least gives you some understanding of what it means to do research and of course other experiences count as well if you have experience working in the industry that has already put you in in a position that you can talk about how you face certain challenges and how you were able to overcome even if you don't necessarily have research experience industry experience there are other experiences that you have there are other challenges that you were facing there are the reasons why you had to work hard to get the kind of opportunities that you have calling out those is very very important and using some of the accomplishments as examples is what it means to write a strong statement of purpose so then the question is well how do you actually organize your statement that in particular mean statement of purpose so some of the things that you want to think about is what research area interests you even if you're a master's student there's some kind of a concentration within computer science and engineering that might interest you maybe it's AI maybe it's hardware maybe it's software systems maybe it's security within software systems you're coming to your master's program to get broader education in in in CSE but still to specialize in some aspect of it because it is too broad you already had broad education and maybe in CSE if you were a CSE undergraduate now it's time to pick something that you specialize in identifying what that is is important it's not necessarily committing you to doing research in that area or specifically taking courses in that area but it does show that you are able to research these different areas or learn about them and that you have a good understanding of what they are you want to talk about what research what experience you have what are the things that you have done now I say it doesn't necessarily have to be researched research helps if it's specifically for the PhD program but maybe you worked as a I don't know software developer and had to deal with a lot of challenges of of deploying software in real world situations that experience counts and what do you want to do what research do you want to do and what in particular do you want to learn about and then also it's fairly important to say why this particular university that you're applying to and this is going to be different and tailored for every school if you're applying to Michigan it's going to be different from what you write for Stanford or for any other school that you choose to apply to because there are some specifics about those schools those universities those programs and you want to show that you actually understand and you want to show that that you understand what kind of effect they can have on your education and later on for how they allow you to accomplish the goals that you set out to to accomplish getting a master's is not necessarily a goal getting a PhD is not necessarily a goal it is a step towards a goal getting an academic position getting a position in the industry doing a startup or any other goals that you might have now how do you how do you get started well you have to start learning about these different concentration areas about people in those areas so that you can establish that interest and if you already establish some interest then start reading papers for example academic papers from those areas because one of the best ways to actually connect with your audience faculty on these these admission committees graduate admission committees is to have an understanding of the areas you have interest in and the areas perhaps that they contribute to so here's some dues you want to be concise not just that you have a limit I believe for University of Michigan the limit might be three pages for some other universities it might be even less you want to be to the point graduate admissions committee members have to go through thousands of applications maybe not each of them but as a committee as a whole usually gets about thousand applications help them get to the important information in your statement quickly they're going to have limited time to scan through your statement make sure that there are things that will catch their eyes if you're too verbose it's going to be difficult to do that now one of the ways that you can call out important pieces of information is by using both face you have to be careful though if everything is important in your statement of purpose then probably nothing is so you don't you don't want your statement of purpose to be all involved but calling out certain keywords perhaps certain names of people can help you want to tailor your statement now this is this this means many things how would you usually start by telling students you want to tailor it to yourself you don't want to necessarily write a statement of purpose that isn't new that isn't about your interest that it's geared towards getting into some university because you think that's what they want to hear i would always suggest write them about what you want to tell about your interests about your accomplishments about your goals and even if you don't get into some school that you really wanted to get into based on that statement then you probably know that you wouldn't be happy there anyways because they do not they did not accept you for the statement that describes who you are now it needs to also be tailored for the university but in a way where you are speaking in the language of those people who are reading your statement so they can understand it and of course it can be tailored towards specific people in those universities so you will remember from the previous slide we said there is always a part of your statement of purpose that is targeted at a specific university it might be tailored for specific faculty members that you want to work with because most of statements of purpose will ask you for some of these names even even if you are applying for master's program the universities or at least people on the graduate admissions committee they want to know that you have an understanding of who are the even let's say instructors who will be teaching specific courses that you really want to take but those courses will be related to their research areas so again we're going back to research even for for the master's program under at least understanding of it even if you don't necessarily want to do research if this goes back to naming specific professors now we're going to talk about don't side of naming specific professors but the do side here is knowing who those professors are matching them to the actual interests that they have and not making a completely make a wrong association between a professor and and a research interest and just use simple English the goal isn't really to persuade someone that you know what you're talking about by using some kind of jargon or some kind of complicated language the goal is to show them that you can explain things in a simple accessible way and then of course proof read it proof read it for typos for grammar errors have somebody else read it to make sure that they understand it as well let's just to make sure they understand so they can also perhaps provide some feedback constructive criticism on your statement even if they're not in cse all the better because you I want to get a sense of whether people outside of your immediate interest area understand what you're talking about about what not to do not to do well you don't want to be too long or too short and I know that's not really helpful because what does it mean to be too long and what does it mean to be too short well you're lucky about too long because there's usually a page limit so you really don't want to go over that page limit in fact even if a university is allowing you to go over two pages you probably want to keep it down to two pages you want to stay concise but what you don't want is to leave way too much blank space because you were given space and opportunity to write about your own goals and interests and and you simply did not take advantage of of that opportunity you could have told the graduate admissions committee so much more about yourself and you didn't do it that's what too short means in this particular case you don't want to be too general too narrow again not really helpful but what it means is that you don't want to necessarily talk about computer science and engineering broadly in your interest in it because even you know if you're you know master's student just taking courses let's say you're still going to take targeted courses if you're a phd student even though we are you know expecting phd students to to explore a specific idea in depth we want them to have some kind of a breadth of knowledge but again if you start talking about i'm interested broadly in csc it's not really going to tell much about your specific goals and it also shows that that maybe you do not have the awareness that you cannot tackle at all in either your master's or your phd program you also don't want to be too narrow part of the reason is because you might not know what you actually want to do i always like to tell a story how a few years after i started my phd program i went back and i read my own statement of purpose and i have to say i i laughed a little bit because it was miles away from what i was actually doing at the time but it also showed me how much i had to learn it is fine you might not know the specifics because if you already figured out what your dissertations should be if you already done it then why are you getting a phd at the same time there's some logistics here as well if you're very very specific very very specific targeting one and only one specific faculty member and you're making it appear like no one else can work with you and you would not want to work with anyone else and it just so happens that that faculty member is not taking students that year maybe they took on an administrative role maybe they're on a on sabbatical maybe they simply don't have the funds to support more students or more or time you will simply not be considered for that program because you're too narrow too narrowly scope so be careful about that as well now you definitely don't want spelling and grammar mistakes so again goes back to proof reading you don't want to name the wrong school department or professors i know you're going to be writing a lot of applications but it is really one of those mistakes that really stands out so again proof read you don't want to start with things like respected sirs jenna mentioned that during the the faculty panel so you want to be you want to understand you want to be also inclusive and understand the composition of your audience you don't want to mention everyone on the faculty that goes back to being too general because you can't work with everyone and there's no way that your interests include everyone in many ways that that shows that you haven't really explored your interests or you haven't really thought about them because as much as there is so many interesting things out there at the end of the day we have to pick a subset of whether you're a master's student or a phd student and you don't want to talk necessarily about high school or childhood that is not what statement of purpose is for that goes back to that comment about this not being an autobiography there are opportunities to talk about some of these things but statement of purpose is not a place and you want to check your adjectives because at the end of the day they do not add much to the statement of course you're passionate of course you're very very excited you will be thrilled to be at the best university enter the name no matter what university it is they're going to look at and say oh yeah we are the best and even if they don't think that they are the best at the moment they probably have in mind you know who is standing in the way and and you know how one day they will be the best university joking aside you want to persuade your audience with examples not adjectives all right let's uh let's keep going because we have um a little bit of time left and still some things to look at now one of the things that we need to look at is the personal statement it is part of your application now your personal statement should describe how your life experience has affected your decisions to pursue a graduate degree they're still relevant to your graduate application but this is the place where you can talk about your life experiences about the challenges that you face the ways you try to overcome those challenges and again who reads it well members of the graduate admissions committees mostly faculty professors so your audience is the same now this is not about your research experiences anything about research experiences belongs to your state in your statement of purpose now here's some examples here's an opportunity to talk about the environment that you grew up in again assuming that it affected your decision to go to grad school you don't want to just keep listing irrelevant things that had no effect on on your decision to pursue graduate degree you may want to call out certain things such as for example being a first generation college student those are the kind of challenges or situations perhaps defined your academic as i mentioned before any kinds of difficulties especially if they reflected on things like your academic record and the ways that you work to to overcome those or the ways that you're working on overcoming them as well doesn't have to mean that you always you know where it was successfully able to overcome all of your challenges we all face challenges at all times it's it's not necessarily a state where you're done anything that is related to you know different kinds of activities that you have participated in extracurricular outreach all of these define who you are and who you will be as a graduate student already mentioned now treat your degrees and what you're looking for is anything that may distinguish you from from others because again graduate admissions committee members go through thousands of statements in some ways they have to make that decision why you and why not someone else help them explain to them who you are as an individual now realistically speaking being pragmatic about this the SOP is more important and if the members of the graduate admissions committee are already impressed with the SOP your letters which are very very important your CV your your transcripts and so on then you know those members of the committee will pay attention to the personal statement as well now some more than the others and that's something that we have to acknowledge I take some effort in reading these personal statements because I really think that they define who you are as applicants but the reality is that an amazing personal statement alone in most cases will not get you into graduate school and an amazing recommendation letter can for sure but one thing is for sure that a really bad personal statement will raise some concerns and it might change the admission decision for the worst so again quickly some dos you want to be concise you want to use simple English and you want to proofread it this is a sample of your writing style some might say true writing so right one was more academic this is about yourself so you want feedback on this as well now again being too long or too short is never good you don't want to make the same mistakes from the from the SOP and the challenge here is that too often applicants leave the personal statement for the last thing they neglect it and they put it last minute and it shows and it hurts their overall application all right so here we have a question what about being a victim of larceny and having mental health issues that severely impacted by GPA that's exactly something that you want to call up in your in your personal statement if there's any concern that you have about how members of the graduate admissions committee will perceive your application your case or any part of it the personal statement is a place where you can address that recommendation letters now recommendation letters are also exceptionally important and it's also important who you ask and this is this is a challenging part this is something that we as departments have to reflect on and I'll tell you why but I first want to tell you who are traditionally good recommendation letter writers faculty usually with PhD whom you've worked on research now again this is specific to to csc programs faculty who know who you are who can give specific information about you beyond what we can already see in your transcripts or your CV maybe there's there's a specific last project where you uh you know where the faculty noticed you maybe you were a TA for one of the courses it's important to give them an opportunity to or some something to write about you and maybe there you're an industry mentor preferably with a PhD that always helps because then they have understanding of how you would perform or how some of your accomplishments in an internship would translate in academia but you also don't want to go overboard with number of industry mentors and this is this is for PhD right and of course you know if there's a specific postdoc who really knows you very well that you work with closely they are also an option but this this is kind of in order of of sort of preference in many ways now just asking a faculty that you took a class from uh it's it's good but it's not ideal unless you have taken classes with them uh you know a couple of classes maybe maybe there's something in particular to distinguish you giving them some opportunity to write about something and then finally uh faculty and industry mentors without PhD who know you well they can still paint a picture about you but sometimes there's this uh perception that maybe they don't necessarily know what it takes to to succeed in the academic program a PhD academic program okay now this calls out challenges of asking for recommendation letters because maybe you are at a university that does not put emphasis on research maybe your recommendation letter writers do not necessarily understand uh the what is important to write in your letter all of these are challenges that we are also constantly thinking about in trying to see how do we overcome them so that we don't necessarily negatively affect people who are coming from different backgrounds and with different opportunities and similar thing applies for letters for masters but um it's not necessary that you focus on the first four overall being able to get any of these recommendation letters is a plus all right now we have to keep going i'm sorry we're already five minutes over our time for this this session but i think this is important so i will just call this out so the question here is how can you help your letter writers because at the end of the day you're asking them you know could you write me a good recommendation letter or in fact a much better way is to say do you have the time to write me a good recommendation letter and notice the emphasis on good because sometimes people will just write you any recommendation letter that is not necessarily good and if they are not willing to write you a good recommendation letter you perhaps want to give them an out and a good out is saying do you have the time so they can always say i'm sorry i don't have the time if they don't want to write you a good letter but if they do want to write you a good letter how do you help them well you want to prepare things for them in systems that they already use to submit these applications you want to send them the information that you already have so it refreshes their mind but also they know what is it that you have accomplished since they worked with you or since the last time they spoke with you you want to give them some kind of a write-up not necessarily i mean not a write-up of a letter more a write-up of what you think is important or that they should remember so they they can refer back to it oh there's another example maybe you want to call out a project that you worked on with them some of the ideas that you contributed some of your future goals some of your future goals remind them of your strengths and so on the key here is remind them of certain things if you do classes with them remind them what class you took with them how well you did what are some of the specific interactions that you had that might give them an opportunity to write about something positive what have you done in those classes were your ta or not and so on and so on maybe you were an active member of a certain group that was that had that particular faculty as a faculty advisor maybe they were specifically your mentor at some point and again if you have anything that you need to that you want to explain if you're concerned how they will perceive it this this contact this this would be part of the information that you include when you're contacting them so we have some questions that i just want to come back to very very quickly what is a good average length of a personal history statement there's obviously page limits i have seen statements that are effective that are about a page long page and a half long but again you always have the whole page limit if you if you need to write more you definitely don't want to stop at just one paragraph um is there a minimum or maximum number of recommendation letters uh different programs will tell you specifically how many recommendation letters they are accepting uh and whether they will consider more or not uh usually they don't um now again please check with the program that you are applying to because it's difficult for me to tell you um what if we create on a massive course that had the very little one-on-one interaction with the professors they were more than 50 members of the course staff similar situation uh as when you are just another student in a large class try to remind them what are potentially some of the things that you have done or or why you did well as a TA and maybe they can then refer to some of the other staff members that you worked closely with that can confirm these things or maybe you know uh help with their memory but again you're seeking to uh to uh get recommendation letters from faculty that know you in some ways so you have to weigh whether this this would be the right faculty or not uh is interpolate compatible with any uh or every university know it isn't uh and this was this was more of an example right so so find out what is it that the university is using uh and then try to try to simplify the process for them sometimes faculty might have certain preferences so I will actually tell students okay give me a spreadsheet with all the universities where you're applying and all the dates and I can go through it and and just make sure as a checklist that that I'm submitting these letters for you and then of course you know send me your SOP send me your CV send me you know the things that I need I don't usually look at transcripts but you know sometimes students really want to call out some of the things so give them the materials that that they need and organize it for them are the recommendation letter program specific or is the general letter the recommender rights for all the programs the students applying to it depends mostly these are general letters that sometimes recommenders will at the very end maybe customize or tailor for a specific university but most of the time there are there are more generic because they probably apply broadly to all universities because they are about you they're not about you in the context of a specific university what should I emphasize if I have not been able to deliver proofs for theorems as an undergraduate but still interested in pursuing theoretical computer science this is a very very specific question where to the point where I would actually suggest you go ahead and contact professors from theory that that you're really interested in working with and try to better understand what is it that they are looking for in this particular case but there should never be expectation that you have already done everything that you would have you know learned in your masters or your PhD goes back to some of the earlier comments that I made then what's the point of of going to graduate school if you have already done everything so usually the requirements are not so strict that to show that you have already done all these things or that you know how to do them is it okay to submit recommendation from other departments other than csc you worked research with on a co-advised research project of course this is this is not just csc right especially if you have interdisciplinary background right you might only have references from other departments but it is important that they have some understanding of the of the graduate graduate programs because then they know how to tailor their recommendation letters for members of these graduate admission committees at at well especially at its research universities does it help if your recommenders faculty sponsors reach out to potential advisors to tell them about yourself this is this is a personal preference but I think it's also important to show that I'm going to speak more for myself I think it's it is important to to show some level of independence that you are able to also reach out so I would prefer when students reach out to me and even if they just mentioned who they are working with and where the connection is coming from and you know why they heard about my work maybe they heard about my work from their their advisor but I would still appreciate that kind of what's the right word here initiative from the from the student rather than than being just recommended by by someone else all right so I think I think we cover most of those questions and here I will just let me see if there's anything else oh one one last thing after you get offers and then we will we will stop with this session so when you get an offer this is this is important in many ways acknowledge that you received it and I mean you don't have to say that you're excited about it if you're not that is perfectly fine but you know at the very least you know let us know if if you are excited let us know that you are excited and this is not just Michigan this is this is any program it goes a long way to establish those kinds of relationships even if you are not going to go to that university maybe you will years later you know come back as a as a you know potential faculty as a you know job applicant who knows use these opportunities to establish good relationships with potentially your colleagues career colleagues respond to emails from potential mentors and of course talk to their students that is that is always a good thing to learn and understand oh sorry sorry I mean there is always a good way to establish those kinds of relationships if it's important because you know faculty are usually recruiting small number of students right they specifically you know thought about you as as an applicant and and it's important to to respond to them if especially if they are the ones reaching out to you with an offer there's a couple of reasons for that but it's very important to note that not responding at all inevitably is going to be perceived as a lack of interest on on your part right it's not like oh one of the hundred students didn't respond back it's it's one student that I made an offer to you know this year or that I wanted to to join my research lab this year and this is again more maybe more specific to phd students than master students but it's important to know and of course I would suggest go to the visit days this one is for you uh if if visit days um are organized and I hope they are in many universities where you get offers from this is your chance to go and get to know the place and even if you are not extremely excited about the place going gives an opportunity to that place to persuade you why it is a good place for you um and also gives you an opportunity to see whether the place that you really wanted to go to truly is on the inside how you thought it was looking at it from the outside um there are a couple of questions but I will answer them in in a moment so once you make your decision remember to you know kindly well either accept obviously but more importantly decline the offer some universities have wait lists and if you decline there's another student will get an opportunity to to do graduate school that is very important um and of course you know if you're if you're talking to mentors across different universities make sure that they know about your decision because they have obviously invested some time in in talking to you and and it's it's you know a good way to acknowledge that and it is a good way to again keep building that kind of relationship just to decline it the system again shows that that you're not necessarily interested in in building that relationship with your potential future colleague all right so that's that's you know what what we have for the the letters and for what to do after you are after you get your offers I just want to quickly go through some of these questions and answer them and then just tell you a little bit about the next steps after we're done with with the workshop so we have a question here um who do you acknowledge to potential advisors I assume that this question is about who will you tell that you are maybe declining an offer and that if that's the case usually what happens is when you get an offer you will get emails from specific people from the program coordinators from the chairs of the graduate admission committees in cases of PhDs maybe specific faculty who would like to reach out to you and you know say that they are also interested in working with you all of those are the people that you have an opportunity to then later on email back and tell them about your decision whether you're accepting it or whether you're declining it and even in the case of a master's program there's going to be you know the chair of the of the committee will will reach out to you in a letter or an email this is how you can respond back to them directly and not just use the system to say no our visit dates likely to be virtual in the next few years it is difficult to say we are navigating these challenges and we're trying to sort of do what is best given all of the risks if the travel restrictions if event restrictions remain in place then it's very very obvious that we will have to have these events virtually which makes it a lot more challenging and I'm really sorry for that because these these in-person visit days are fairly important in making decisions and then this is not a question so so yeah so with this I think we we're done with the with the workshop actually I will just stop sharing for a brief moment and bring back the other presentation show you where we are we are at the end of the workshop I really want to thank you all once again for taking part it is challenging to take part in these virtual workshops I understand that there's a lot of material and it's difficult to follow it through these kinds of virtual means through zoom we all get tired after spending you know X number of hours so in many ways we had to cut down some of the content but I'm hoping that the content that you did get today help you not just you know in terms of learning more about the Michigan but in general about the way you think about graduate school what programs you you're considering and and how you will apply in the next few days we will send you a couple of more emails one of them also with a survey about the event it would really really help us if you were to respond because the feedback that you provide us help us improve this event and this year it's exceptionally important for us so that we can better understand how these kinds of virtual events work what are the challenges and what are the things that we can actually do to improve for future years now of course we hope that we will be able to go back to our original physical format but it's difficult to to say so again thank you all I will stick around for a little bit more just if you have any specific questions but I will just like to echo some of the other comments both from faculty panels from student panels feel free to reach out to us with with any kind of questions that you might have whether they're question specific to the faculty but they're question specific to the students and I cannot emphasize this enough reaching out to your peers to your potential future colleagues that is the source where you can learn about the experiences that are particularly relevant to you so do reach out to them and we hope to see your application at the University of Michigan and also we hope to have an opportunity to work with you in the future as colleagues as graduate students and even later on so thank you all again for taking part and have a wonderful rest of your weekend. Hey Dr. Nicole may I have a quick question probably more about the recommender recommender of course so I mean let me get my V2 sound so I have right now I'm working on the operating system and system system level research but before then I have done some research particularly in the machine learning but in a very applied way with another ECE professor I'm wondering I mean definitely that like later well well helped but I'm wondering how like how strong will it help like in comparison given the condition then I will be applying for the system area. I think that this is these are very close areas even even in if you're applying let's say with a political science degree and you're applying to CSE I still would encourage you to apply because that is not something that will disqualify you and especially would not make your recommender letter any less relevant. At the end of the day what they're doing is they're comment your recommenders they're commenting on your current performance and your ability the kind of foundation that you established to be a successful PhD or a master's student if they're able and in your case if they're able to comment on the methods that you applied at the end of the day these are these could be scientific methods these could be engineering methods this could be design methods any kind of methods if they're able to show that that you're able to learn a method that you're able to apply it that you're able to reflect back on how the results of that method relate to the hypothesis that you started off or any kind of idea that you started off it already shows a lot about what you have learned so far so it's definitely not at this advantage you don't have to it's it's it almost sounds like well if i don't have the phd in the area that i'm applying the phd for what what are my chances that that's not necessarily how it works we're more looking at sort of how have you dealt with the challenges that were placed before you rather than do you already know how to do what what we are admitting you to learn how to do okay gosh thank you so much thank you my pleasure yeah thank you for the answer see you maybe challenging to um just uh you know ask a question right now even in comments or by unmuting yourself but that's why i invite you to send us any of your questions via email through the email that you use to communicate with us the email that we use to send the information relevant to the workshop to you and then if i am able to answer i would be more than happy to do that and if it requires me to route it to someone who can answer it for you we will do that as well so even if you don't get a chance to ask a question right now or if you didn't get a chance to ask a question during the workshop we are here to to try and help i have a question dr banovic go ahead so i know you i know you spoke you you made it very clear that the statement of purpose is more important than the um the personal statement uh and i thank you for going over some examples with us um but i don't really have a lot of insight as to what a good uh personal statement looks like do you have any recommendations or places where you can recommend where we can search for good examples uh that is that is a very good point and part of the reason probably here is because uh personal statement is very very personal it is very much uh an opportunity for you to tell your own story in a way that you would like to tell that story and maybe that's part of the reason why you know we are not um you know providing you with with templates actually even even for statement of purpose i would say avoid templates but still understand what is important uh to note in your in your statement and as long as you are following a sort of a format of an essay that is presenting an argument you will be fine uh and in many ways your personal statement is presenting an argument but it's more about who you are as a person and how your uh experiences shaped not just who you are but your decisions to apply to school so it's very very difficult to to provide relevant examples that that will somehow relate directly to you but again you know if you really really need to see some examples i would suggest reaching out to students at universities where you're applying in areas where you're applying and ask them perhaps for for their own personal statements because they will also be able to uh if you if you have a chance to talk to them they will be able to clarify why they've wrote their personal statements the way the way they did and they will be able to reflect on what they think was was good and what what wasn't so good so that's my best suggestion all right thank you that very much helps my pleasure um sorry i couldn't hear you pass that uh did you have another question or yeah yeah i was debating a little bit whether to ask it or not but i guess i can ask anyway uh the personal statement i know you gave some good examples about what to do like you know a lot of people coming from from first generation into college or like i think one person in this um during this program mentioned her being a victim of some crime like that um uh so i am none of i am none of these i have a i've lived a pretty i guess you can say good a good chat i had a pretty good you know upbringing plus college really no financial hardships any of that sort um how can i still write a good personal statement out of like a boring i guess you can say situation um so uh before i answered that somebody did point to Berkeley's personal statement it seems like they provide some more tips there and maybe even i don't know if they have examples or not but i again you know it's it's about going back and looking at uh your own personal experiences um and and trying to better understand your own motivations uh why you have decided to um to pursue graduate school and at the end of the day uh what are your personal goals after you uh get your degree after you get your master's degree after you get your phd degree those also have a lot to say about who you are as as a as a person um so um so that that's probably the best i can i can answer without necessarily knowing your your personal situation right so so try to reflect more on uh you know what where where where did you start and where are you hoping to to be once you get your degree all right thank you that was very informative you're welcome hi uh i had a question of course i am an undergraduate student and uh from where i am the school year is not very certain because of covid so i am expected to graduate by 2021 but i might not do that uh should i get an offer for a phd program can i ask for a deferral and how do i go about that that is a very good question and um i am not necessarily in a position to make you any promises or give you any sort of certain answers and i and i hope you understand because this really comes down to the universities where you're going to be applying and whether they are going to um have special considerations um and even then even if they have some or if they don't have any special considerations now they might come up with them in in a month the part of the reason is because we we're all still learning about the situation that we are facing we're still responding to it very often the response is not the best but what we try to do is we do try to learn from it and improve so it's very uncertain times exceptionally uncertain times so it's very very difficult to answer your question but what i would suggest is to send this particular questions to the graduate um uh admissions staff the email that uh or graduate sorry graduate program staff email that we use to communicate with you um uh with your question and then we'll try to get you in touch with the people who know more about it in particular the graduate admissions chairs and the graduate admissions or graduate program coordinators who might know more thank you very much your work is a um a comment that says i thought an undergraduate degree is the key uh a prerequisite for all pc and master's programs for what i've heard you usually send an application six to nine months before you uh start so just to clarify a lot of undergraduate students will be applying to graduate school while still uh in their undergraduate program and sometimes things happen uh it doesn't have to be covid related and at those times um i would always recommend that the the students who face those kinds of special circumstances reach out to the graduate program coordinators at universities where they were admitted or where they got offers from uh to tell them about these these special um special circumstances and sonia it looks like um sonia also posted some um some more clarification about maybe maybe even in response to that question um there is a question that was asked privately although does seem like it i could potentially ask it to uh sorry i could potentially answer it but please i still would like to to have your permission uh in the chat if you could tell me that did you're fine uh me answering this this question uh uh publicly um right and that's actually the last question that we that we have but again you know please feel free to unmute yourself um and ask your question directly or i'm sorry i mean you can give me a permission to talk about this publicly in chat but if you have if somebody else has other questions please feel free to either post them in chat or unmute yourself and ask i think uh this was a response that the granted me the permission um will there be recordings of the workshop sent out for us to refer back to yes part of the reason why we recorded the the workshop is so that we can that we can edit it and uh make it available uh to those who participated today and and hopefully even um uh more publicly uh to others who did not get a chance to participate uh for whatever reason and we will try to inform you of that um as well when when it is available can you please send the link use for egs application fee waivers i missed it in the i missed it the first time yes uh well well uh so basically it is on the uh admissions page uh but we will uh i'll i'll try to take notes to uh to send this to you uh specifically so we will send you an email with some of these links and then we'll try to specifically call out the um the link that we talked about you're welcome we have another private message so again um i would have to ask for permission to the to discuss this public or to read it and answer it publicly please let me know in the in the chat if that is okay meantime sonja just shared the fee waiver link and we will send this link to you in an email as well all right so i just got the permission to um uh to answer this question so the question says i'm currently working in industry for over three years from all the material required for applications they feel the program is not inclined to someone who is already working just a feeling what are your thoughts um i i think uh so you first of all having worked in the industry for for such a long period of time you have over them already demonstrated additional experience that uh perhaps prepared you so much better for any graduate school um than if you were you know simply you know just out of undergrad without any experience other than just courses um and uh if i if i can you know i would also like to to share a personal story i am someone who quit uh my undergraduate degree in the middle um and started a company with a with a friend and then came back after many years um uh to do my hunter grad um not even to to to to do uh graduate school and and i and i only think that perhaps that is something that enriched my experience not disqualified me from uh from uh these programs so i would actually say um uh leverage that um and and talk about uh uh how that experience strengthened your foundation now i do understand that that maybe some of the things that we talked about um in terms of recommendation letters uh are maybe a little bit more difficult um uh to come by uh because uh you're thinking well these faculty they don't remember me um and and that's that's in many ways sort of a special uh a special consideration that uh any graduate admissions committee will will have because they will understand that hey you know your recommenders or people who are talking about your your recent experience um and and usually usually it is not a problem i have never seen someone with extensive industry experience uh uh that be used uh you know or that be somehow um a disqualifying um uh circumstance does it help to submit a phd application any earlier than the deadline or are all applications read after that uh no it will not necessarily i am not aware of any advantage because um the the graduate admissions committee does not look at these applications until all of them are in and it might actually take a little bit of time after they're all in because maybe some of the you know recommendation letters are still coming in maybe they need to request some additional documents from from students they might have to address some some issues um so no i i do not think i i hope that that is not a not a case for for any admissions committee uh unless uh they specifically tell you you know they're they're two deadlines and you know the first deadline is what what you should submit uh at and then you know the second deadline is to to you know um uh fill uh fill spots that we haven't filled in the first uh in the first uh deadline pay attention to that but usually i've never heard at least i can say in University of Michigan it is not the case it will not give you advantage or it will not disadvantage you if you apply earlier oh sorry i i just read the the whole question at at the end it says that you may answer this publicly thank you so um the question is i'm planning to transfer programs from a master's at one university to a phd at i assume another maybe even michigan how would i fill out the section where it asks the degree expected or date degree expected if i anticipate switching out of the program you may answer this publicly um this is this is a very special case and i would suggest um reaching out to the graduate program coordinators with this question they will know more my understanding here is that you have a case where you haven't where you attended a master's but you will not complete that master's degree and that if that is the case you would have to somehow specify that um but um sonia i don't know if if maybe uh you have uh an answer to this right away or if this is something that we should uh try and answer at uh at a different time i think it probably would be best to send an email to csc grad staff and we can answer it a little email yeah that makes sense so um whoever posted this please please do that and we'll try our best to to give you the answer through email and um um the there's another message privately uh that says convey my thanks to sonia as well you're welcome any other questions either in chat or feel free to unmute yourself as well sonia just shared um the email address where you can send your inquiries and well i'll wait for another say one minute uh in case you have any questions and if um other questions come up at any point again please feel free to email us uh and we will do our best to answer any questions that you might have okay well i want to thank you all once again for taking part in the workshop and uh i wish you a wonderful rest of your weekend we look forward to uh seeing your application at University of Michigan and you know hope that we'll have an opportunity to work together again