http://manas.tungare.name/blog/grad-school-101/ has the accompanying document. A presentation given at Virginia Tech by members of the Grad Council to 1st and 2nd year grad students about life in grad school.

1. Grad School 101
Graduate Council,
Dept. of Computer Science
http://csgrad.cs.vt.edu

2. What is this all about?
• Getting started in grad school
• Classes, research, independent studies
• Conferences
• Jobs: academic, industry
• Service
• Social life

3. Getting Started

4. Undergrad Grad
≠

5. Classes
• Classes are an opportunity to learn about
new areas, gain some depth in your area
• GPA is not as important as research
• Make sure you cover all breadth areas in
time

6. Independent studies
• Explore working with a particular faculty
advisor
• It's OK to double up class projects, or
follow them up as independent studies.

7. Choosing an advisor
• Matching research interests
• Personality match
• Ask around: talk to current students
• Some advisors graduate students rapidly;
• Others are seldom around, so their
students take longer to graduate

8. Choosing an advisor
• Kinds of relationship
• frequent interactions?
• collaborative work?
• independence?
• Senior versus junior faculty

9. Managing Research

10. Managing research
• Choice of software: consider LaTeX
• No more corrupt documents moments
before a big deadline
• Managing bibliographies
• One library to cite them all
• Use from Day One
• Pain to switch later

11. Conferences

12. Attending ...
• Attend even if you’re not presenting
• Meet people from your field: these are your
future interviewers and colleagues
• OK to pay your own way if needed
• More action in the hallways than in session
rooms

13. Future Topics

14. More to come ...
• Submitting to conferences
• Presenting at conferences
• Job search: academia and industry
• Service
• On the social side

15. Remember ...
• Take care of yourself first
• Maintain your health
• You’re here because you love it, so enjoy
your years here

16. Join us!
Right afterwards