Day 603 of 1000

We have two kids about to finish their Junior years at North Carolina State University.  Both of them want to go to graduate school, but they have very different goals.  Christian, the Applied Math major, wants to go to a tier one University to get a PhD in Control Systems with the idea that he will work as a researcher in industry when he gets out.  Kelly, the Statistics major, wants to get a one or two year Masters degree at a school known for its close association with industry so she can get a good job and start her “real” life.  This summer, both kids will travel to a number of universities on the west coast to talk to professors before for they start applying.

It has always seemed that things work better in both business and school when people have a personal connection with each other.  I have two good friends from Russian.  One, Stepan, has a PhD in Chemistry from Moscow State University and has done post-docs at University of Texas at Austin and University of Houston.  The other, Igor, has a PhD in Mathematical Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and has worked as a scientist at universities in the US and Europe.  They have a very interesting outsiders view of post-graduate education in the United States.  They both highly recommended that the number one criteria in selecting a graduate program is to find the right professor to serve as your thesis adviser.  The best way to chose a good thesis adviser is to research and go meet as many of them as possible.

That makes a whole lot of sense to me.  People are a lot more important than than institutions.  So, based on that advise, the kids have started doing research and writing introduction letters to professors at a number of universities they think they might like to attend.  The plan is to talk face-to-face with as many professors as possible to increase the chance they will be accepted into a good school and to be able to make an informed decision about which program is best for them.  I will write more about the process as we move through it.