College of Engineering & CS Wright State University Dayton, Ohio 45435-0001

Advice to All Grad Students Prabhaker Mateti

Advice On Writing

• Practical Advice on Writing  by Prabhaker Mateti
• thesisExample.tbz This is a collection of LaTeX-related suggestions by Prabhaker Mateti. You can use as a starting point to drafting your thesis by replacing its paragraphs with yours.  Untar it:  tar xvvfj thesisExample.tbz
• Writing Advice  by Professor David Patterson, UCBerkeley.
• How to write a Ph.D. dissertation by Professor Douglas Comer.
• Read the section on writing from How to do Research At the MIT AI Lab.
• www.cc.gatech.edu/~shivers/diss-advice.html ACM Distinguished Dissertation awards are not easy to get.  This advice is from someone who was nominated in 1991.  Note however that at WSU, we use the term "thesis" for M.S. and "dissertation" for Ph.D. exclusively.
• The Chicago Manual of Style  FAQ
• www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/formats/internet.pdf This document provides detailed instructions for citing all types of material found on the Internet, including homepages, Internet journals and books, databases, electronic mail, and discussion lists.
• bedford stmartins.com/ online/ cite5.html Citation style
• Advice on Research and Writing: Pointer to pointers. http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/mleone/web/how-to.html

Research Advice

• Allen Newell on how to do research  Desires and Diversions
• Edsger W. Dijkstra, "The Three Golden Rules for Successful Scientific Research", in Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective, Springer-Verlag, 1982, ISBN 0-387-90652-5.
• How to do Research At the MIT AI Lab  ... well, anywhere.
• Thesis Prevention: Advice to Supervisors.  Actually, students should read it. "Though the presentation of the document is deliberately light in tone, the contents are based on a collation of feedback from a fairly large number of students currently pursuing their studies for a Ph.D."

Career Advice

• Association for Support of Graduate Students From students to other students.
• Contemporary Problems In Science Jobs The job crunch and the grant crunch, etc.
• Grad School Advice Thinking about graduate school? This is by a professor in psychology about graduate work in psychology. But, most of it applies in general.
• For anyone considering a Ph.D. in Computer Science by Professor Douglas Comer.
• How to measure research  by Professor Douglas Comer.
• Networking on the Network  E.g., "Section 2 introduces the rationale behind professional networking and explains why it is not just politics."
• A few essays  (mostly serious) about Computer Science by Professor Douglas Comer of Purdue U.
  • How to escape during a Ph.D. Final Exam
  • How to generate a CS research topic
  • How to insult a Computer Scientist
  • How to stump students on an oral qualifier
  • How to measure research
• How to Have a Bad Career In Research/Academia by Professor David Patterson, UCBerkeley.
• Patterson's Rules for New Computer Science and Engineering Professors. For old ones too.  See if you can find any typos!