Am I in good shape for graduate school?

MWolf
Thu, 14 May 2020 03:56:22 +0000

Why do you want to do a PhD?

Here is the thing - a PhD is not a senior thesis. Being interested enough to spend a year engaging in research part time will not get you through a PhD.

A PhD is a major research project, likely the biggest project you will do in your life. It has to be original and be of importance in the field. If you are doing your PhD in a highly competitive university in the field, like MIT, the expectations are much much higher. You are expected to further the knowledge in your field.

This is not providing answers that please your professors. This is asking questions which impress your professors and their colleagues, and figuring out how to answer them on your own. You will spending 80-100 hours a week engaging in research on a sub-sub topic in your field. You will be spending most of this time on your own.

Do you feel that this is what you want to do for the next 5-7 years?

As you wrote, you are attending a mid-tier university. The people who will be deciding whether to accept you are a committee of faculty and graduate students. Most have attended top tier universities for their undergraduates, and the faculty have mostly attended top tier schools for their PhDs.

Academia is severely prestige-ridden, and the fact that you are from a mid-tier university will negatively affect their impression of you. So you need to have better accomplishments and have a better demonstration of your understanding of the field. You also have to do a better job at demonstrating that you are as well trained as any applicants from Harvard or MIT.

You will likely need publications and letters of recommendation from well known figures in your field.

Being a minority may help, but it also may not. There are no Black PhD students at either MIT or Princeton, and Columbia has two Black PhD students (out of 130), and one of them is from Africa. Read into that what you may, but it also may be something to consider.