Suggestions for Students Wanting to Pursue Graduate Work
If you are interested in pursuing graduate work at Purdue,
and think that my research area may be of interest to you,
I offer the following suggestions:
- Read the Department Admission information,
and how To Apply, available from the department
graduate information homepage.
If you ask me questions about the admission process, I would just
look to those pages for the answer.
- Our admissions decisions are made by an admissions committee.
While individual faculty do have input to the process, we admit
people to the department rather than to work with a specific
faculty member. While we do assign a faculty member as an initial
advisor (largely based on student request), the decision as to
my serving as a student's advisor is a joint decision made after
a student has had some time on campus both to learn what is going
on and show their interests and capabilities.
-
Don't send me an email with your resume saying you are applying to
Purdue and would like to work with me.
I used to try to respond to these, until I realized the volume
of messages and the amount of time I was spending responding -
time that would otherwise be spent working with my current students.
In fairness to the students who are already here, I now ignore
these messages. Any information I would get from the email
should be contained in your application, which I will see as part
of the admissions process.
If you do send an email, at best it will be ignored. At worst it
will make me question your fitness for graduate study (e.g., the
person who wanted to work with me because of interest
in high performance networking, or worse still the student
who said
I am thinking to come to
Blacksburg
.)
-
Be honest in your application.
Your area of interest should be what you think you want to do, not
what you think Purdue is most likely to admit. Faculty often move
into new areas, and may find your real interests a better match than
if you copy from that faculty member's web page.
I am always looking for bright new students with the right background
and interests, and look forward to reviewing your application.
