Resources to Help Global Equality for PhDs in NLP / AI

This repo originates with a wish to promote Global Equality for people who want to do a PhD in NLP, following the idea that mentorship programs are an effective way to fight against segregation, according to The Human Networks (Jackson, 2019). Specifically, we wish people from all over the world and with all types of backgrounds can share the same source of information, so that success will be a reward to those who are determined and hardworking, regardless of external contrainsts.

One non-negligible reason for success is access to information, such as (1) knowing what a PhD in NLP is like, (2) knowing what top grad schools look for when reviewing PhD applications, (3) broadening your horizon of what is good work, (4) knowing how careers in NLP in both academia and industry are like, and many others.

Contributor: Zhijing Jin (PhD student in NLP at Max Planck Institute, co-organizer of the ACL Year-Round Mentorship Program).

You are welcome to be a collaborator, -- you can make an issue/pull request, and I can add you :).

Endorsers of this repo: Prof Rada Mihalcea (University of Michigan). Please add your name here (by a pull request) if you endorse this repo :).

Contents (Actively Updating)

• Top Resources
• Stage 1. (Non-PhD -> PhD) How to Apply to PhD?
  • Specific Suggestions
  • Improve Your Proficiency with Tools
• Stage 2. (Doing PhD) How to Succeed in PhD?
  • What Is Weekly Meeting with Advisors like?
  • Practical Guides
  • Memoir-Like Narratives
  • How to Excel Your Research
  • Other Books
• Stage 3. (After PhD -> Industry) How is life as an industry researcher?
• Stage 4. (Being a Prof) How to get an academic position? And how to be a good prof?
• Stage 5. (Whole Career Path) How to live out a life career as an NLP research?
• Further Readings: Technical Materials to Improve Your NLP Research Skills
• Contributions

Top Resources

1. Online ACL Year-Round Mentorship Program: https://acl-mentorship.github.io (You can apply as a mentee, as a mentor, or as a volunteer. For mentees, you will be able to attend monthly zoom Q&A sessions hosted senior researchers in NLP. You will also join a global slack channel, where you can constantly post your questions, and we will collect answers from senior NLP researchers.)

Stage 1. (Non-PhD -> PhD) How to Apply to PhD?

1. (Prof Philip Guo@UCSD) Finding CS Ph.D. programs to apply to. [Video]

2. (Prof Mor Harchol-Balter@CMU) Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Computer Science (2014). [Guide]

3. (Prof Jason Eisner@JHU) Advice for Research Students (last updated: 2021). [List of suggestions]

4. (CS Rankings) Advice on Applying to Grad School in Computer Science. [Pointers]

5. (Nelson Liu, PhD@Stanfard) Student Perspectives on Applying to NLP PhD Programs (2019). [Suggestions Based on Surveys]

6. A Princeton CS Major's Guide to Applying to Graduate School. [List of suggestions]

7. (John Hewitt, PhD@Stanford) Undergrad to PhD, or not - advice for undergrads interested in research (2018). [Suggestions]

8. (Kalpesh Krishna, PhD@UMass Amherst) Grad School Resources (2018). [Article] (This list lots of useful pointers!)

9. (Prof Scott E. Fahlman@CMU) Quora answers on the LTI program at CMU (2017). [Article]

10. (Albert Webson et al., PhDs@Brown University) Resources for Underrepresented Groups, including Brown's Own Applicant Mentorship Program (2020, but we will keep updating it throughout the 2021 application season.) [List of Resources]

Specific Suggestions

1. (Prof Nathan Schneider@Georgetown University) Inside Ph.D. admissions: What readers look for in a Statement of Purpose. [Article]

Improve Your Proficiency with Tools

1. (MIT 2020) The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (e.g., master the command-line, ssh into remote machines, use fancy features of version control systems).

Stage 2. (Doing PhD) How to Succeed in PhD?

1. (Maxwell Forbes, PhD@UW) Every PhD Is Different. [Suggestions]

2. (Prof Mark Dredze@JHU, Prof Hanna M. Wallach@UMass Amherst) How to be a successful PhD student (in computer science (in NLP/ML)). [Suggestions]

3. (Andrej Karpathy) A Survival Guide to a PhD (2016). [Suggestions]

4. (Prof Kevin Gimpel@TTIC) Kevin Gimpel's Advice to PhD Students. [Suggestions]

5. (Prof Marie desJardins@Simmons University) How to Succeed in Graduate School: A Guide for Students and Advisors (1994). [Article] [Part II]

6. (Prof Eric Gilbert@UMich) Syllabus for Eric’s PhD students (incl. Prof's expectation for PhD students). [syllabus]

7. (Prof H.T. Kung@Harvard) Useful Thoughts about Research (1987). [Suggestions]

8. (Prof Phil Agre@UCLA) Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students (last updated: 2015). [Suggestions]

9. (Prof Stephen C. Stearns@Yale) Some Modest Advice for Graduate Students. [Article]

10. (Prof Tao Xie@UIUC) Graduate Student Survival/Success Guide. [Slides]

11. (Mu Li@Amazon) 博士这五年 (A Chinese article about five years in PhD at CMU). [Article]

12. (Karl Stratos) A Note to a Prospective Student. [Suggestions]

What Is Weekly Meeting with Advisors like?

1. (Prof Jason Eisner@JHU) What do PhD students talk about in their once-a-week meetings with their advisers during their first year? (2015). [Article]

2. (Brown University) Guide to Meetings with Your Advisor. [Suggestions]

Practical Guides

1. (Prof Srinivasan Keshav@Cambridge) How to Read a Paper (2007). [Suggestions]

2. (Prof Jason Eisner@JHU) How to Read a Technical Paper (2009). [Suggestions]

3. (Prof Jason Eisner@JHU) How to write a paper? (2010). [Suggestions]

Memoir-Like Narratives

1. (Prof Philip Guo@UCSD) The Ph.D. Grind: A Ph.D. Student Memoir (last updated: 2015). [Video] (For the book, you have to dig deeply, and then you will find the book.)

2. (Prof Tianqi Chen@CMU) 陈天奇：机器学习科研的十年 (2019) (A Chinese article about ten years of research in ML). [Article]

3. (Jean Yang) What My PhD Was Like. [Article]

How to Excel Your Research

1. The most important step: (Prof Jason Eisner@JHU) How to Find Research Problems (1997). [Suggestions]

Grad School Fellowships

1. (List compiled by CMU) Graduate Fellowship Opportunities [link]
2. CYD Fellowship for Grad Students in Switzerland [link]

Other Books

1. The craft of Research by Wayne Booth, Greg Colomb and Joseph Williams.

2. How to write a better thesis by Paul Gruba and David Evans

3. Helping Doctoral Students to write by Barbara Kamler and Pat Thomson

4. The unwritten rules of PhD research by Marian Petre and Gordon Rugg

Stage 3. (After PhD -> Industry) How is life as an industry researcher?

1. (Mu Li@Amazon) 工作五年反思 (A Chinese article about reflections on the five years working in industry). [Article]

Stage 4. (Being a Prof) How to get an academic position? And how to be a good prof?

1. (Prof Jason Eisner@JHU) How to write an academic research statement (when applying for a faculty job) (2017). [Article]

2. (Prof Jason Eisner@JHU) How to Give a Talk (2015). [Suggestions]

3. (Prof Jason Eisner@JHU) Teaching Philosophy. [Article]

Stage 5. (Whole Career Path) How to live out a life career as an NLP research?

1. (Prof Charles Ling@Western University, Prof Qiang Yang@HKUST)Crafting Your Research Future: A Guide to Successful Master's and Ph.D. Degrees in Science & Engineering. [Book]

Further Readings: Technical Materials to Improve Your NLP Research Skills

1. (Prof Jason Eisner@JHU) Technical Tutorials, Notes, and Suggested Reading (last updated: 2018) [Reading list]

Contributions

All types of contributions to this resource list is welcome. Feel free to open a Pull Request.

Contact: Zhijing Jin, PhD in NLP at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, working on NLP & Causality.

How to Cite This Repo

@misc{resources2021jin,
  author = {Zhijing Jin},
  title = {Resources to Help Global Equality for PhDs in NLP},
  year = {2021},
  publisher = {GitHub},
  journal = {GitHub repository},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/zhijing-jin/nlp-phd-global-equality}}
}