2. Applying to Graduate School w/ Andrei Fedorov

The main ideas from this information are: - Communication in the graduate school application process is crucial and involves shaping an idea of ourselves through our choices. - The graduate school application should be designed with specific goals in mind, such as getting admitted and aligning with degree objectives. - Designing the application to appeal to potential faculty members for research assistantships is important for receiving financial support. - Well-written statements can make an average applicant shine, while poorly-written statements can undermine a strong application. - Communication should construct a vision of oneself in the minds of the audience, and an amazing CV alone may not be enough to make a lasting impression. - The application should be designed to speak to multiple readers with different preferences and interests. - A successful application can be summarized by the acronym CRSP: creative, research-focused, integrative, specific, and personal. Okay, we are going to show you the report, that looks like an okay volume we made, and turn it up a little bit more. Testing, testing. Okay, I think that's good. I'm going to go ahead and start with the script, and then we'll go on to the questions. Today we're discussing the communication task involved in the graduate school application process. However, our focus extends to a broader theme crucial for success in communication, what I often refer to as communicative design, or what is classically known as ethos. Regardless of the term, the main idea is that as we communicate, we shape an idea of ourselves in the minds of our audience through our choices. This process happens whether we intend it or not. So to maximize our effectiveness, we should intentionally control this image construction and design ourselves in a way we want our intended audience to perceive us. I'm joined today by Dr. Andrei Fedorov, who is the Associate Chair for the Graduate Studies at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Andrei is a professor and the Ray S. and Frank H. Neely Chair, as well as a regent entrepreneur. He joins us today to talk about his experience as a recurring graduate application reviewer and to offer some insights on communication best practices. Hi, Andrei. Hey. Thank you. I'll try to be as descriptive and useful as possible. Yeah. I really wanted to interview you because I know you work a lot with graduate students and you've been on the Graduate Application Review Committee for quite a while. And writing the graduate school application is a very unique process that I think we can help students better understand how they should go about applying and really how these different statements should be different from each other in serving separate purposes. Good. So I think maybe I will just pull some questions that you suggested to navigate this process. So, first of all, I think there is one aspect of any successful statement is to achieve the goal, what the statement is supposed to intend to achieve. Obviously, in the case of graduate admission statement, you want to get admitted. That's the number one. So that's what you should think through. And the second thing, you need to know or design it in the context of a particular degree objectives. There is a substantial difference, at least in the science and engineering, whether you're pursuing a master's degree or a doctoral degree. And the difference is really all about future career choices and trajectory and how research-intensive this experience will be. So this is an important thing. It cannot be generic. And the third thing, especially if you are interested in receiving financial support in terms of research assistantship for your studies, and most of us desire to do so, you need to design your statement in such a way that not only you get admitted to the school, but you will be an attractive candidate for faculty members who are really providing funding support and may be interested in bringing you on board to their research group subsequently once you're admitted. So these kind of three objectives have to be very clearly kept in mind when you design your sign and develop your, essentially, application materials. I want to add also, just as a preamble, because it's probably not going to fit anywhere else in our conversation, one thing that I noticed as far as quality of communication and proper managed communication flow and the content of your application is that what I've seen over the years is that well-put-together statements could make, you know, essentially an average applicant shine, literally. Becoming very attractive for multiple reviewers, and they always say, well, it's interesting. Whereas what we'd also have, you could have stellar credentials, kind of on the paper, but poorly put-together statements could create a tank, otherwise, you know, extremely successful, what should be a very successful application. So I feel like it's probably even more important sometimes than some of your grades and scores. Obviously, you have to be a very solid student to be at this in competitive program. But 4.0 and maximum 98% in GRE would not get you there if you did not actually provide a very compelling statement, application statement, and a variety of processes, et cetera. So I'm kind of going to stop here and go explore further, I guess, details. Yeah, I think that really gets to the sort of broader theme of what this particular episode gets at, which is your communication is constructing that vision of yourself in the minds of your audience. And you could have an amazing CV, but if the reviewers can't envision you, envision you in their labs, in their classrooms, it's not going to be as, it's not going to stick in their minds in the way that you really want them to as an applicant. That's absolutely right. And maybe a couple of comments that I'm going to make, and this is to you also overall on the general philosophy of this unique application that you should be aiming to produce, that will kind of excite and stick in the minds of people. You also have to remember that there will be multiple people who are reading your application. So your application has to be designed to speak to all of them. And you can probably somewhat imagine that there could be, you know, someone maybe more extrovert or more introvert in their emotional profile. You can imagine that someone who may be reading your application is much more research-focused, whereas someone else who maybe values substantially more in educational experiences, you know, maybe some involvement in what you do as far as proctor, I mean, maybe tutoring or assisting students in the teaching environment. So don't make your application one-sided. It can be fairly dangerous because it can be very competitive to one person but will not generate positive responses and interaction. Overall, here's why I use it. And I have to talk to many audiences about their greatest application. I have developed a visual acronym for what is a successful application is in graduate school. And it all comes, I use it before. Successful application is CRSP, CRSP all in capital letters, sexual abbreviation of five words. Start with C. It stands that it should be creative. So the application, you can imagine that people may be reading your application late in the evening, after dinner, they may be tired. If it is dull, it just, they will simply just skim through, or maybe even not predict very far. So creative, and I emphasize here, creative, it's not a creative writing exercise. Or creative, it should be funny. Or that creative, that means it really portrays story and people's interests. The second letter in CRSP is R. And R stands, again, for the different or the degraded studies focus and emphasis. But if it is a doctoral degree, research will be central piece of your graduate education. So when you write your research statements, they should be focused. Research should be a common thread that goes through everything. It does not have to be necessarily a specific statement as far as your individual research experience, but you probably need to bring quite a bit of that. But R, this research aspect, being central theme of everything you're going to talk about, is very important. And here I would like to contrast some probably experiences many of you have applying to college. These days, especially in the selective colleges, you know, all of the applicants, even to graduate school, they all come in with stellar credentials, you know, scores to the roof, SAT, ACT, whatever those scores that they take as the spectacular, and will separate those personal stories. So people write those essays. Oftentimes, it can be almost any topic, right? How you helped your grandma to, you know, to raise her chicken. As long as you do it well and it shines a light on your character features, that will be successful. I would not advise writing a graduate essay focusing on the genetic topic just to show your ability to creatively put together a story. Okay? So R is important in CRISP. The third letter in CRISP is I. And I stands for integrative. So all of your personal statements should not be viewed as stand-alone piece. They all should be integrated in a way that they provide, kind of, shine a light on different facets of you as a personality, your personality, your experiences, your capabilities, your character, in such a way that they all fit into each other. It's not just set with this drawing tape. So the integrative kind of statements provide a picture of you as a whole person. So this is the third letter, I. And then we go into S in CRISP. And S stands for specific. When I say specific, it is the worst application that could be there. And unfortunately, we have, well, I see way too many of those. Application where this precious room with most of these prompts or statements you have to write there is not, you know, five pages, maybe so better. It's very, very confined, one or two or three paragraphs at most, where you have to get to the point. So specific means utilize either example or very specific statements as far as what your vision for your education, what you plan to do to, you know, better yourself, better the world, and avoid genetic phrases. You know, I want to study engineering because I want to change the world. Oh, I want to pursue a PhD degree because I want to solve the global climate crisis. We all obviously know that you do want that. You all want that. You want to save humanity. Treat the cancer. Specific is very important in showing the maturity of thought, ability to put your ideas in the perspective of a bigger team. So I'm not trying to tell you that, you know, just get into a weeds. Specific means it's you and your experience, your view, how you will benefit from this and how you or your engagement will benefit the school, the university, the department, the community of graduate students, and then maybe a bigger world to make a change, to improve it in some way. So specific is important. Crisp, right? The last letter is P. And the last letter is P really comes after you put together all this C, R, I, S. If you do this all well, it will come out as powerful. And we all, this is really not as easy to describe, but we all know when you read a little piece and you feel that it comes out very powerful. It has this almost a wake producing, emotional wake or emotional response. So that's really probably already a refined highest level R step. And that will indicate that your entire materials are put together very effectively, that they communicate you as a whole, your view of the world as a whole, how the education will benefit you, and what you will do to, you know, benefit your community. So this crisp, simple way how I usually describe what should be the content of the graduate college. Yeah, that reminds me of some of the advice I was given whenever I was applying, which is that you need to show that you're ready to be a junior colleague, that you have the correct perspective, and that you see your research's place within the community. Yeah, that kind of shows, to emphasize, it shows that you need to do research when you prepare your personal statement. There's no one generic personal statement. Put yourself in place for the community probably implies, because all the different communities are different. So prepare those personal statements for each individual school that you are looking at. As you were talking, I heard a lot of different words that seemed to circle around the idea that across the application materials, there needs to be some coherence and consistency. You said things like common thread, central themes, and integrated but with different facets. So can you share a story where an applicant's lack of coherence or amazing coherence had a big impact on the review process? Yeah, obviously, I guess without reading the entire statement, it may be somewhat more difficult to describe the specific example of a coherent process. Maybe I'll step back. It's probably very easy to illustrate an application which lacks coherence. So that's kind of by definition, by looking at what it should not be, that will hopefully tell you how you should tailor your application aiming for coherence. So let's say an applicant is looking, an engineer, a mechanical engineer, looking for a doctoral position, pursuing a Ph.D. in a particular field, let's say one of the common fields of engineering and manufacturing. And a particular interest for this applicant or for the future career goals is related to finding an opportunity in industry and becoming, let's say, a leader in industry as far as engineering, design, manufacturing, equipment, and so on. And then you read an application which, let's say, spends a significant amount of time speaking of the student's joy of taking courses and just being kind of part of this great educational teaching kind of institution where a lot of emphasis is placed on what I refer to as I mean, just educational aspect. I love to take courses, be in the classroom, just get advanced education, whereas the research emphasis, which was supposed to be a doctoral one, is really not coming through very strongly that my goal here is to acquire the critical skills to be able to conduct an independent research, formulate the inquiries into questions that are, you know, difficult to conceive. All of this is illustrated through personal experiences. It was completely missed, so it's kind of not mapped into object. Secondary, let's say a student is applying to this field of manufacturing, but most of the specific examples that this student is using as far as the particular courses, let's say that they excel in a particular way, all related to the field of thermodynamics. So that's a classical, again, disconnect between a proclaimed statement of interest in the beginning and the supporting evidence that illustrates kind of the interest in this particular topic. So it's like the classic show, don't tell. Exactly. Show, don't tell. And kind of the same, the last piece, you know, you started, let's say this particular process started to state that the interest is in pursuing then eventually career in industry, but there is no, and it doesn't have to be then eventually the discussion is, oh, I'm just going to talk about academia. But instead, kind of to hedge the bet, all the discussion is now focused on all possible pathways that the student may consider pursuing. Kind of almost hedging your bet. An applicant should realize that faculty understand that people's interests may change. They're not naive because with education more experiences may change. And so when you kind of create this, you know, buffet of past potential options, but none of them thought through and carefully crafted to show the thread and coherence, it portrays a lack of maturity in a sense, and maybe a somewhat intellectual opportunism, which is not necessarily viewed as extremely positive. So you have views and kind of support in that. Some other subtle aspects that would be also kind of attentive in communication. For example, if someone looks at career in industry, realizing that it's not just the technical, pure technical skills to solve some sort of specific manufacturing problem will be important. If you are actually looking for a career in industry, most likely, very rapidly with advanced degree, you will be moving into a position of leadership. So talking about your experiences and interests and capabilities, innovation capabilities, leadership, interaction with other people. Communication, good communication. That will strongly kind of connect to your focus on industry. So I guess that's maybe some examples of incoherent application and just kind of emphasize how you may repair that. Yeah, that reminds me of when I was getting ready to apply for a master's program as an English major. And my advisors told me, absolutely do not say, I like to read or I love to read. I want to go get my master's because I'm an English major and I love to read and I just want to continue reading. Because no one cares that you like to read. Lots of people like to read. You can do that in your free time after you get off work and not go to graduate school. Instead, it should be about what kind of arguments do you want to make and why are you the best person to make those arguments? Is going to their school going to really unify the arguments you want to make? You being the best person to make those arguments and that school's resources or professors? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a very great point because I think students oftentimes don't realize that those faculty review committees, and it's probably just how the people's minds train. Not only they look at, is this applicant capable of carrying academic load here or meets academic requirements here, would be able to pass the classes or conduct the research. They actually intellectually project this vector. What is this person going to benefit as a community? And then once this person graduates, is this person going to be a good reflection or use of investments that were put in the school and carry forward the reputation of the institution? So, in other words, you're not even a graduate yet, but your application will really be viewed from this perspective of your long-term trajectory of how you may be a good seed for this institution from this perspective. Great points. So, since we're talking about these common threads and the idea of showing consistency across your documents, can you dig into a little bit and tell our listeners what the main or key or generally the expected documents that most people will use when applying to graduate school, what those are and how they're supposed to be different from each other? Yeah, okay. Can you maybe segue into specifics for the kind of prompt-based application package that most of the schools these days employ? Right, because today we're talking about graduate school applications in general, and so I think it's important to discuss how different schools may have different expectations. The Woodruff School does the prompt-based, correct? But some schools still use the personal statement-based. What I really like about the way the Woodruff School uses the prompt-based is that it's basically leading the graduate students to produce the content that should be in a good personal statement. Yeah, that's kind of the attempt exactly to guide the students into do the best they can to describe themselves. Still, though, within this prompt system, there's unfortunately plenty of variability to do well and poorly. So, you have to think about that. So, we in the Woodruff School also change a little bit those prompts. The prompts may not be every year, but periodically, and it's based on we look at the kind of responses we get from the students. And sometimes we wonder if our prompts maybe were not really very precise, maybe, in the choice of words, or it guides the applicants to share aspects that you really want to know about that. So, I'll give an example of what we have right now. I think this year, our three prompts, I mean, they're fairly standard. I would not say they're very unique, but the very first one is kind of starts with, this is more descriptive. I would always refer to this as introduce yourself type of. So, describe any research and educational experiences that shaped you as a successful student, learner, researcher, and kind of elaborate on a particular set of accomplishments that you are most proud of. So, this is really an opportunity for you to kind of describe in more story-like manner everything that is already written in your resume, right? Your resume is already, you know, talks about, includes your GPA, all of your experiences working in this lab, so did that, then there, and so on. But these are just the statements, whereas the prompt kind of makes you to create a story from that, and how all of these experiences emphasize or build different aspects of your personality. So, in this aspect, I always say, when you write this description, don't just recite whatever you, with more extended wording, what you have in your resume. Remember what is your purpose in this greatest student application. Remember, your purpose is to get admitted and potentially in the future get funded through, let's say, research assistantship with one of the faculty members. That means this whole discussion of accomplishments and your experiences will be read by the review committee through the prism, they'll try to see all the seeds of, would those experiences, or is this person having all of these features of being a successful greatest student, especially in a doctoral program, which is research-focused. What are those aspects? You know, obviously, we're looking for intellectual maturity. So, it's not just saying, look, I have GPA 4.0. You know, maybe you want to emphasize a particular difficult course that you took, and reflect on some of them beyond just the level grade A that you received. Right. The second aspect that's so critical in, you know, in graduate school is independence. So, emphasizing the description of your experiences, how you either demonstrated your independence, for instance, or how you learn and mature in a way that you now become more and more independent in all aspects, from, you know, practical work in laboratory to also independent, maybe emotional, and such. The third aspect of graduate school, which is difficult and somewhat unique to graduate experience, is you need to build stamina for perseverance, ability to handle setbacks, failures. So, even though we talked there about all about accomplishments, but when you talk about your accomplishments, you may want to actually structure this discussion of accomplishments also in a way how that was not an easy, straightforward path, but you actually have to overcome substantial difficulty that you manage many setbacks, and how exactly you navigate it to achieve those remarkable things that you already discussed. So, the second prompt, you know, we kind of ask you about what's always your accomplishment. The second prompt we are saying, explain us what distinguishes your application and why we should consider you as the best candidate for the Buddhist schools. So, now you kind of almost set in the position to reflect on all of your accomplishments, your skills, your unique background, character, but now in a way that you will be part of many other applicants. Essentially, you have to be able to set yourself apart in a positive way, not trying to... So, this, obviously, this statement should not be written as, all other people don't have that, all other people don't have this experience. It's all about your experiences. You don't know what other people have or not, but how they uniquely position, what, in combination, how they uniquely position you to be a really best prepared and most wonderful candidate to be a graduate student, a PhD student at the Woodrow School, and that has to be also done in the context of the institutional particular department. Just to give you a simple example, there will be substantial difference if you apply to a very large department versus a very small department. There will be substantial difference in if this department, let's say the research or educational department is significantly focused on engineering practice versus fundamental research. It depends upon what you know from this department. That's how you should tailor your application. And the last prompt is probably the most common prompt that almost every school asks to do, or even if they don't ask, you usually put it in your personal statement. It's simply, why George Tech and why Woodrow School? So, that is an opportunity for you to research the Woodrow School from all available information. It can be maybe, you know, the professor who wrote your reference letter who is an alum from George Tech and you discussed with him. Research the website, all the faculty, what they do, how they position themselves. Usually there's a plethora of information on how they try to describe themselves. And this part also, I emphasize it's important to be specific. Like, for example, you know, example of a bad response. You know, Woodrow School is highly ranked, top five graded program in mechanical engineering. That's why I applied to George Tech. Well, you know, we appreciate that, that you applied to top school. But then, you know, there's other five schools. Why George Tech? Maybe you should go to other four schools. You know, kind of, I can interview probably equal students. So, that's very important to do this research reflection and connect your experiences and project them into particular schools. Right. So, it might be a good idea, for example, to connect maybe what you said and prompt to why you're the best candidate to growth that you can foresee in a specific lab or under a specific professor. Yeah, absolutely. And mention specific people is a great way to make it very personal, specific, and effective way to connect what is unique about you and how it probably benefits this particular faculty member, their research group, and how you can further enhance your capabilities by being affiliated with this particular group or individual. And it doesn't have to be just one person. That's the other thing. Just kind of say, I really want to come here only because of Dr. such and such doing such and such thing. You don't want to be generic, but you may want to, you know, have at least, you know, maybe three examples, you know, for example, that can emphasize those points. Right, because you don't know if that professor might be taking a sabbatical or has some different fellowship that's going to have them overseas for five years. Absolutely. Or even may not have funding to support you. This can be as practical as it is. The other thing is you also don't know exactly if by this or other aspect of your application, this particular faculty member will say, you know what, it really resonates with me. It may not, right? But maybe the other two, it may be very competitive. So you have to be, you know, specific but not overly narrow. So to sum up on the way that the Woodruff School uses prompts instead of a personal statement, there are usually three that are along the lines of, one, tell us who you are via your accomplishments. Two, tell us why you're the best candidate. And three, tell us why this specific place, Georgia Tech and the Woodruff School. And can you see those prompts as what people should be doing in a personal statement anyways? I think that's what should be there. Right. It already would be there. That would be a successful personal statement. Correct. Yeah. So you kind of almost broke it into three pieces and provide already some sort of explicit guidance. Right. Let's talk about that. All of this advice that you've given on the prompts. Right. Absolutely, yeah. Because in the graduate school application process, universities that use prompts usually don't also have a personal statement. That would be very abnormal. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. It's either one way or another. So thinking about the other documents that students might be asked to write, and I think this also circles back to how you were talking about the first prompt that the Woodruff School uses is the resume or the CV. What is that? And how is that serving a different purpose or job than the personal statement or the prompts? So usually the CV is not common among the graduate students because they simply don't have enough experience to accommodate this bulk academic document of 50 pages. Typically, it is a resume, but it can be a more extensive resume that students are used to when they, let's say, apply at a regular job in industry, where the recommendation is usually limited to one page. Depending upon your experiences and how much you want to kind of emphasize them even in your resume, you may extend it to two pages. You probably don't want to have more than two because it's now kind of stops serving the purpose of resume. The utility of resume and well-put-together resume is in one shot. You don't even need to read all the details. Really, by looking at one page, you have a very collective picture, not only applicant as a person or the story, but a collective experience is an accomplishment. So that's why also your resume, I would always emphasize, should de-emphasize lists in the activities, but emphasize because whenever you state, let's say, you don't have education, then academic experience where you can indicate different, I don't know, internships you had, research assistantships, research experience for undergraduate projects, and all of these different aspects that you've done. And on the issue of this category, you have usually kind of in a bulletized form, you typically mention something more about this position. So I always emphasize, avoid those single-sentence type of statements, the work in the laboratory collecting data. Rather, you know, develop the process of data acquisition which resulted in new hypothesis for scientific case of design in biomedical robotics. Semi-colon. The work resulted in the patent application and the new project supported by such company. So there is a significant difference between kind of activity listing, very passive, first of all, and not very clear what exact results of this activity versus clearly result-oriented statements. So that's kind of what resume does very effectively. Absolutely. I mean, I remember when I was applying, and I had listed out my honors and awards, like different scholarships, 5.1, things like that. And one of my advisors very nicely pointed out to me that people at other universities aren't going to know why the scholarship is impressive. So under it, you should probably write things about how many people generally apply for it, how many people win, how much money is associated with it. What are the criteria for selection? Exactly. So you can say, yeah, this is the most creative work in art for all graduates and seniors. That's very different from just, yeah, you know. Right. Because you're in it. You're in it. You're at the school. You have heard these terms for the last four years and seen the other people who won. But now you're talking to an audience who has no idea what the Smith and Johnson Award is. Absolutely. That's a really great point. So I think one of the things that is really difficult for novice writers and even emerging academics is how you sit down and you answer question one or you start your personal statement and you don't just list your CV. Yeah, this is a very different, completely different document as a matter of fact. Obviously, they're connected. You cannot talk about accomplishments or experiences that are completely disconnected from, you know, two different people. But in the personal statement, that's why there's the word personal there, personalize this very somewhat drier form that is being stated in the resume. Like, for example, when you talk about some particular award that you received for design of this robot and it was almost a thousand people competition, that's all that will be stated in your resume. It's specific and it emphasizes the importance. But the whole process to get there, that in your first iteration you completely failed. Right. And eventually you realize through a particular, I don't know, approach that you use, what is the right angle to take and how you spend the days and nights seemingly in unending process of iterating and finally coming up with this design. This would be completely inappropriate in a resume but extremely valuable in a personal statement because it also will emphasize those additional features we are looking for. Aspect of a successful graduate student is perseverance, ability to fight through failures, actually learn from failures and, you know, rise on the occasion and ability to work very hard. All of these features, you cannot put it in the resume. Right. But in the personal statement, through the storytelling, it's a magnificent way to illustrate that. So those successes will come in with also, essentially you create around, instead of one-dimensional kind of line, you put muscle around this. You make a three-dimensional picture of the whole experience and you. I think going back to your acronym CRISP is a good way to think about the personal statement and how it should be different from what the CV or resume is doing. Whereas the resume is just a list. But in the personal statement, this is your opportunity to select two or three from that list and talk about them in an anecdotal way that will demonstrate that you have the qualities that the reviewers are looking for. And that is the perseverance, the intellectual maturity, those sorts of things. Yes, absolutely. I could not emphasize this enough that no one would be able to figure out this story if you don't tell it. So that's, I think that's very, sometimes very challenging for people to realize that, because maybe that's also by nature of it, because you lived through this experience. For you, you may seem like, yeah, everyone already knows I wrote three words. Well, other things, everyone knows context. Summa cum laude. What else do you need? Exactly. This is it. So remember that people who read your application, they need the context. Right. You need to provide this context. And then go your line through it. That's how you really become memorable, that after they read your application and then it goes down the stack of all the other ones that's been read, they think about it later that night. And you kind of see that, I mean, one way maybe even to check whether or not your personal statement reached this level of being a compelling personal statement, give it to some, give it to people, not just some people, that not necessarily know you extremely well, but who would be open, because this is a sufficiently short document, but so speak open and have confidence in you taking this feedback, you know, properly, for lack of a better word, in a way that asks people this very specific question. If you read this personal statement, and then I ask you next day, what do you remember? What was something very unique or interesting that maybe, you know, kind of piqued your attention? If they cannot recall it, most likely it is not there. So that can be a very simple test, actually. And this is, if they pick up those key Cs, it actually produces sticky memory. Right. So that's, yeah, utilize those resources around you. This is also maybe a good, somewhat indirect connection with all of the additional tools that we have now at our disposal, like ChatGPT. Why, this guy, why ChatGPT? Regardless of how many prompts, how effective prompts you put in there, how many resumes you see there, would not produce your personal statement. Right. It usually produces a statement. Yeah, it just doesn't have the insight and the depth and the thoroughness that you're going to be able to do. Yeah, even the emotional part, because it just doesn't have that. When you get yourself into the right state of thinking and writing about these things, it usually gives you the appropriate emotional response. Those memories, how you looked at that, what is happening, and then to be able to lay down in terms of, you know, companion words. Right. That is all about. Hey, to go to graduate school, you have to really want it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it usually comes out from a good personal statement. So thinking about the different kinds of documents that we talked about, the resume or CV and the personal statement or prompts you may be given, and the way they're supposed to be doing different things for you as a reviewer to get this image of the person in your mind, how does the letter of recommendations come in with that? Yeah, so this is, in graduate school, general reference letter or recommendation letters are one of the most critical parts of the application on multiple levels. One thing is it's an opportunity for the reviewers to see the assessment of a particular individual in the eyes of their peers. So essentially, this adds credibility aspect. The second thing is, most likely, and I think it's also a good habit, is that when you write your personal statements or you choose your, because, you know, hopefully you have more than just three people to write your reference letters, recommendation letters, maybe more. It would be good to choose the people who are well familiar with you, both on the academic level, but also personal level. And most likely, whatever you write in your personal statement, they are familiar with those experiences, and they could actually amplify support and amplify and bring the additional perspective that strengthens the same statements. But now they are not just coming from you, but from someone with a reputation and external view of your accomplishments. So that speaks in both being strategic about choosing your references, and also there is nothing wrong about sharing with them your personal statement. This is not in any way or form bad. Speaking of coherence, an ideal application would be the one that has a personal statement almost completely supported in one way or another by reference letters. So this will not be totally destroyed through pieces of information. All right. I read one personal statement first, and then a set of letters which have no connection to these experiences. For one, if you choose a particular person to do the reference letters, I oftentimes empathize. If you were to choose the reference letters, and let's say someone is a Nobel laureate, and you took a course with this faculty member, and in this course there were 200 people, and you got an A in this, okay, versus someone who is an assistant professor. He's not a Nobel laureate, but you spent three years doing hand-in-hand research with this person, helped, let's say, build a laboratory to this young faculty member when they just started. Whose reference letters should you pick up? Absolutely not the Nobel laureate, because imagine what the Nobel laureate could add with their reference letters. The only thing that a Nobel laureate could add, they're probably going to look at whatever their grading roster, find that you got an A there, and say, you know, such and such student was in my class and did very well, received an A. I highly recommend this student for admission. And even though this is a Nobel laureate, this is not a good reference letter, right? Where is someone who you may be, you know, you spent so many days and nights building the lab from the ground up, who absorbed in all of these experiences, most likely you may even highlight this in your personal statement. That could be, for example, a great example. It shows you that you can build something from ground up from the beginning. That would produce a very, you know, elaborate, detailed, and powerful reference. So similar to the personal statement, you want to ask someone to write a letter of recommendation for you who can be anecdotal about your qualities, as opposed to this person got an A. Yeah, yeah. All right. So one of the things I often tell students who want to apply to graduate school is when they are asking someone to write a letter of recommendation for them. They might not have their personal statement finished yet. You probably actually won't because you should give your letter writers plenty of time and remind them over all of that time. But you should be thinking about what will be my best anecdotes to talk about in my personal statement. And maybe tell your recommenders what those anecdotes are likely to be as early as possible. And then once you get your personal statement written, you can send it to them. Yeah, I think that's a great advice. As a matter of fact, you don't even need to put those central theme or central ideas and anecdotes on the paper. You can just talk about that. You know, as a matter of fact, I think it's actually much more instructive to schedule time with your reference letter writers where you can go over what do you see your graded applications going to be built around. Maybe share with them some additional experiences that you find you want to highlight or maybe emphasize in your personal statement or your application which your reference letter writer may not be familiar with. You're not really asking them to write about this thing, but it will inform them. It will, one way or another, provide a more complete picture of you. And when they write this letter, it will be so much more personal. You can come across the tone and the excitement that they convey about you. Exactly. It's very different, yeah. And that's why it's also very difficult to portray these by statement, just a written statement. I always emphasize the value of just talking to the folks. Just find... Obviously, people are very busy and they may have changes finding time. They may say, oh, you just sent me whatever you said. Do everything possible to find a venue to actually spend some time to kind of, you know, talking through your plan and your experiences and your contacts with applications with your reference letter writers. So, to sum up this part of the conversation, can you, as someone who often reviews graduate school applications, talk about how these documents that serve clearly different purposes collectively make this vision of the applicant in the minds of the committee? So, I guess that, yeah, I'll try to sum this all up. So, again, different people approach evaluation or kind of developing this, I don't know, kind of coherent, conclusive statement about a given application differently. Some reviewers still utilize this, what I would say, kind of a rubrics approach. There may be, first of all, sometimes in evaluation there is really a rubric, literally, and a reviewer is being asked to rank an applicant. Personal statements, I don't know, completeness, concisiveness, demonstration and motivation, and you put, you know, I don't know, top 10 percent, top 20. We don't do that at the Woodrow schools. But some faculty even produce that for themselves. And so then you would say, hey, it really doesn't matter how all the different pieces integrate with each other. But I would argue that even when there is such a rubric, which is actually kind of interesting enough, typically it is designed or motivated to be used to avoid bias. So a typical application says, well, to make sure that we have a fair comparison between different applicants, we're going to produce a rubric. And because of the rubric, none of our biases will come through. So if in all of the aspects, I don't know, research, scholarship experience, academic experience, you've got everywhere 10, 10, you know, top 10, top 10, top 10, and then you look at the entire application and it's only top 30, oh, that cannot be, because everywhere is top 10. I would actually argue that's not really the case. It's almost probably the better way to think about this is you go to a museum and let's say you look at the Monet painting. And if you come closer, the impression is the way they use the strokes of the brush, it's like a collection of, they just throw, you know, a paint on canvas. You don't see any coherence, perspective. So really, when people read your entire application, they have to generate the best criteria, emotional response. That's what a good paint or a good piece of art does. You do not really pinpoint any particular aspect of it. And some of the aspects may not be fully refined, or maybe will have some deficiency in some way or another. But collectively, they generate this response of, this is really the right person for this school. So that's really what you should aim in putting together your package. It's that feeling of familiarity or that feeling of fit. Real fit, that's probably the best way to describe it. It's real fit. Right. While we're here in a building full of scientists, studies have shown that people, even people who are scientists, tend to make decisions emotionally and then verify them rationally after the fact. Yeah, maybe that's a bad description, yeah. And maybe with our emotional initial response, it does aggregate, you know, all of these little details that we pick up and they're all rational and reason-based. But also, certainly, the way all of this is discussed, communicated, can either amplify the message or sink it. You can actually, the way you word this, put things together, can, you know, get you to the top 10 or put you to the bottom 20. Right. So I think that really transitioned us well into the second half of this episode, which is a deeper dive just into the personal statement itself. Because between these documents that you're asked to produce in an agricultural application, the personal statement is really the one that requires the most labor. It's the most time-intensive to produce, and it has the greatest communication challenges, I think. And as we're continuing with the second half of the episode and talking about the personal statement, I think it's important to remind listeners that what we say here will also be applicable to those applicants that are prompt-based. What we talk about here, if you can see a way to work it into the prompt that the specific school is asking for, you probably should. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So my first question, as someone who has reviewed a lot of these, is because I know that I can envision students asking me this, how personal should the personal statement be? Good question. I guess it's also the eye of a beholder what personal means. Right. I probably would say, I don't think, you know, I personally would not necessarily find very compelling reading personal family history in great details that be front and central of the personal statement. On the other hand, anchoring it potentially in some, either your family background, your family situation, is absolutely appropriate and can be very memorable and useful. I'll give a very specific example. I just recently read, it's our current Woodrow School student who is now in, their third year in the school. And that was an example where a student's background was coming from a single-parent household which didn't have any, you know, steady income for years in a family with multiple siblings, and this person was kind of the most adult of all siblings, had to be able to navigate all the family situation at the same time, be able to go from the community college through night school all the way to college and still find time to do research and then even practice this research between the different jobs that this person had to keep. That created an extremely powerful, strong personal statement. And it was very personal. It is so much personal details. Actually, the majority of those personal statements are not so anchored on the family circumstances. Right. On the other hand, the word personal can be, maybe it is stated, shouldn't be a robotic statement of certain things versus writing as you as a person. I think writing you as a person, for example, the word passive stance, right? All this speak in the first person, in your voice. Right, it's your personal statement to say something like, it was found that blah, blah, blah. Yeah, exactly. So that's obviously really you want to do that. It has to be very personal in this regard. So it has to be content in your voice and the way it's active to speak. And it oftentimes reflects also who you are. So in this sense, I would say, yeah, it should be very personal. Right. I think the example that you gave was such a good example because the very deeply personal story that he told was relevant to demonstrating that he's an amazing time manager, which is important for graduates. That is wrong. So one of the rules that I tend to give people who ask me for my advice as the communications skills chair is that it can be as deeply personal as it is deeply relevant. If it is getting really personal, but that personal narrative part is not connecting to highly relevant ways that you're going to be evaluated, then it's getting away from the purpose here. So, for example, I was once helping someone who talked a lot about leadership that he had exhibited as a member of the football team. And that can be helpful. However, the amount of space that that took to just talk about leadership was not sort of merited by the ways in which he could demonstrate how he was going to show leadership in engineering in the future. So it's always better if the personal aspect can be tied to the science aspect. Can you give a narrative about you demonstrating leadership in an engineering lab? That would be more relevant. But you can use these personal narratives as you just demonstrated, even if they aren't connected to engineering or whatever it is that you're studying, as long as the payoff is worth it. Absolutely. You are so correct. It kind of comes back to our initial, I think in the beginning when we started the conversation. I don't remember anymore the specific question that you asked, but I think our first, almost initial, statement of the conversation was it's all about keeping an eye on the goal of your application. And your application's goal is to be admitted and potentially be positively considered for financial aid, maybe additionally fellowships and all of these aspects. That means anything that is not supporting the story, well, rudely speaking, is a waste of space. Right. How does what you're including on the page support your goal? And does it merit that much space? Because graduate school applications are short. Very short. Each of these prompts typically we ask for two, at most three paragraphs, short paragraphs. These are not long paragraphs. So you really got to get to the point there. And yes, and keep re-emphasizing. Don't assume. That's the other thing is. I think you don't want to assume that someone will draw all these parallels from you describing these experiences and realize, oh, that shows that this person has tremendous ability to manage his time. You really have to be explicit in making these linkages. I'll give a particular example. Let's say you were a student-athlete. And at the same time, you managed to navigate a hard major like engineering and still be able to achieve, let's say, 3.6 GPA out of 4. But you want to emphasize as a student-athlete that's required for you every day four hours of practice, constant absence in competition. Yet, in order to be able to excel also in your coursework, you also have to be able to manage your time so effectively and focus such that you are able to maintain such a high academic record by being a student-athlete. And so that shows that this specifically states your extremely useful quality and ability to manage your time very effectively, put the priority into different efforts at the right time. You know, the... But you need to state that. Right. That you do want to show, like give us the anecdote, because that's the evidence here. But don't be afraid to spell it out for us at the end. Absolutely. This shows that I was able to blah, blah, blah. That's a great way to end up, to sort of sum up and to end that anecdote. Absolutely. All right. So let's move on to another topic that I think is really important, and that is tailoring yourself to the school. So why is it important for writers to customize these statements for each school? I would even start by saying even though you'll take way more effort, but try to start each of these statements from the blank page. We oftentimes just in nature, optimizing time, you kind of go, I'm going to create a set of templates by doing your statements, and then I'll just build the story around them, which is tailored to school A, B, or C. If you come out very unnatural, that's just, it's almost like you mentioned that you are trying to, you go to, you know, you go for a date with someone, and you're planning to, or, you know, I don't know, to propose. And hopefully I'm not proposing to multiple people at the same time, but if you do that, probably to be successful in proposing to one person versus the other, this whole statement, the way you would approach, will be fundamentally different, even though you will probably say the same words, but the way you will approach that will be fundamentally different from one person to another if you want to have any success. So, in this regard, I would kind of start by saying is, research the school, a particular department, understand what they are proud of, what are those specific aspects that are unique and powerful and resonate with you, and then ultimately almost learn how to fall in love with this particular department. Once you do that, it naturally will elicit a response, and you're going to describe your accomplishments right in this, all from this angle of land, how you see for this school. It will be just naturally coming out. Instead of saying, look, I have now this paragraph that's all genetically described, now I'm just going to add the first sentence that, you know, I don't know, University of Georgia provides very strong emphasis on, whatever, I don't know, observance on, and then you put your accomplishments in their hands, you say, well, all my accomplishments fit very well with observational science in University of Georgia. There is none of that that links them all together. Right. So, that's... I think the same could be true or said for when you're thinking about applying for grants. You still have, like, one project, but the way you're going to talk about this project and talk about yourself is really going to be personalized to that audience and their interest. Absolutely. Yeah. This is a grant one example. I'm not sure if any applicants know about grants, but maybe most of the college applicants would know about applying for scholarships. So, oftentimes, you have just one can statement and you just try to replicate and multiplicate that and send that to all different scholarship organizations. You'll probably find yourself not to be very successful because all of them have their theme, have their emphasis, and unless it's written in mind of what these people value, how they approach their scholarship selection process, this will doom to be kind of put into, I will think about this application later, rather than, wow, that's exactly what we are. This person is just us. That's what you want. Right. So, in thinking about that, like how writers can convey their fit with research interests of the program, do you have any examples or successful strategies that applicants can use to showcase that fit? So, again, I emphasize CRISP, my whatever this little acronym that I use. Two parts of it, research and specific. So, these two descriptors are the most critical how to demonstrate the fit. So, first of all, in this case, probably application more on the doctoral level. So, make sure it sees it's really very tightly linked to research in the context of this particular school or department. Different schools approach and have different reputation how they approach research. Just to give an example, for Georgia Tech, it has been years after years, and that's still a big strength that is known that Georgia Tech produced what we call these no-nonsense engineers. What it refers to that there is no culture in this particular school or this department to just kind of, you know, look at hypothetical problems. They may be still very relevant and interesting scientifically, but they're hypothetical. This is not Georgia Tech. So, if you were to describe yourself from these lands or hypothetical problems, that probably would not resonate very much with the culture of this institution. No-nonsense kind of implies there is a strong emphasis on not necessarily with application, but just to transition this knowledge or whatever research you do into something that will make a change, will benefit to something, really in a tangible manner, not hypothetical, not multiple generations into the future, which is always still fine, but it's not Georgia Tech. Whereas, if you apply somewhere I love, big school, Harvard, let's say, maybe the engineering faculty, you know, maybe their angle is somewhat different. They are somewhat removed from the reality and they may be thinking a little bit in a different manner. Right. It reminds me of whenever I was applying to graduate school and I got my master's at a school that was very theory focused. So, they just like, we care about critical theory and producing critical theory and if you're going to come here, then you're going to really need to be a theory head. Whereas, the place I got my PhD was very much historicism focused. So, if you're going to write here, you really need to think about the historical context of the literature that you're reading. So, I guess the, I think the question that our listeners would have would be you're trying to, getting ready to apply for the top five. How do you find out what the different sort of culture is between these different schools? Well, it's interesting. Almost all departments, not necessarily even the entire university, although it would be useful even to look at the university at the university level before you kind of drill down to the individual department, these days have a strategic plan in place. This is now becoming almost common aspect of it. Any institutional academic institution. And so, typically those strategic plans have three components and I think for you all of those components are extremely useful. They start with providing a context. They kind of look at who are we asking these questions. They kind of set, they indicate the strengths of their institution. What are, what is the tradition known for? What are they excelling in? And that will tell you a lot about what these institutions care and what you should care, kind of think about. Then the next part of it, they actually will talk about what they aspire to. In other words, what their future trajectory, they see that. And that must also be useful because you don't want to only speak to the past, celebrate the history, but you want to, in your kind of, your personal statement, convey that you will be this wonderful conduit for the department to accomplish its vision for the future. So these are all, usually those strategic plans are not 100 pages document. They are described in very specific terms, actionable. And so that is a really great preparatory material which is already given to you. So you can do it. The other aspect, you sometimes, and that is more getting a feel for the environment, not all of the not all of the colleges have well-developed internet resources, but most of them now have very strong presence on social media. And there are different social media that people or different schools use, but, you know, I don't know, anywhere from more professional like LinkedIn to, you know, maybe I think more and more Twitter-related and maybe Facebook still is active. I don't know what other resources that people use, but typically if you were to look at what institution communicate, not individual faculty from the department, because their views can be somewhat different and not necessarily fully coherent or aligned with institutional objectives. But if you see a particular story, the types of stories, the types of resources being highlighted, the types of interactions being continuously emphasized and so on, that usually tells you what this institution values and puts emphasis in. You can actually learn a lot about the social side, community types of aspects of the school or institution that you can then relate or put together or emphasize in your application. You know, maybe there is a lot of emphasis on collaboration than individual accomplishment. So then you may want to highlight, especially if you have such experience, collaborative experience that you have and why you measure these and how you are effective in that. So, this is kind of what I refer to as the intelligence gathering. Basic intelligence gathering itself is very strict, like the strategic plan is. Some of them you actually get glimpses from other parts of the university profile. Right, it's getting to know your audience so you can tailor your communication to them. And this is to say that, you know, if the Woodruff School asks you specifically to tell us why you are the best candidate for the Woodruff School, but even if you are applying to a school that just has a regular personal statement, you should still say why this school. You really need to tailor your documents. I have a question for you. On the flip side of this, can this customization ever seem too tailored? Maybe it comes across as insincere or naive or even just cheesy. Absolutely. That's always a danger in it. Being insincere in this customization, I usually would fall back on what I already mentioned in the beginning. If you write this personal statement from the blank page, this will help you write it in a sincere and kind of honest manner. In such a way, it would not sound cheesy or just kind of make enough story just to be liked. Whereas, if you wrote whatever your set of attributes that you think every school will like, and then just populate the first sentence and the last sentence with just amplifying certain things, that will come out clearly. If not, it's off-putting or even it may be even destructive for your applications. So, I don't believe there is anything bad in falling in love with the institution the way your statement speaks about this, but it should be clearly coming from you reflecting about this institution, not just for the sake of just ... Yes, exactly. It doesn't have to be delusional statements. But, so that's kind of where I would say, and again, specific is very important. If you really do your research and then why this institution that you talked about, the value of the institution, was emphasized in a particular individual faculty member or research groups or research topics or research themes, that will show depths of appreciation rather than superficial I really like you. You guys are really great. You are well-known everywhere. You don't want to come across as the guy who just hedges his bets and gives a valentine to everyone. Exactly. Yes, exactly. That's so true. So, coming back to this idea of showcasing not just what you've done, but trying to really get across to your audience who you are as a learner and a researcher. Can you provide any insights into how listeners might can transform routine accomplishments into compelling stories that really reflect who they would be as a graduate student? So, this is, I mean, I think that's an art of communication. Right. And I'm not an English teacher. I'm not a creative writer. I'm not a creative writer. But you've seen a whole lot of these documents. And I like very much how you still emphasize in this create the anecdote from so every experience can be described in a manner that you can communicate to you don't have to be a cocktail party or be your grandmother that typically people you know write in such a way that your grandmother would appreciate it. It doesn't have to go all the way to the top but in fact maybe not extremely good. But if you were to describe it to someone with technical knowledge and an intellectual so to speak but in a manner that they will find that interesting who can them hear not just by the by just the stories themselves but also through what kind of interesting maybe the way I will say is the following is here in our lives there is no such thing as a mundane experience. I don't think it's possible especially if this is related to research or perseverance and kind of accomplishing certain things that are not trivial and that's what you usually write for a sustainer. This is not a collection of trivial things. Most likely in doing so there were aspects that are unusual. Aspects that maybe shed light in your character your ability is your preparation that is so relevant to what the applications should try to convey that you are wealthy well-trained well-prepared for greater school. I guess I should revise my earlier statement that it's not show don't tell it's show and tell. Show us the personal show us the experience that you had and then tell us how this experience cultivated some sort of quality in you that we should use to appreciate you as a learner researcher. Yeah, this is to emphasize that don't imagine that someone will mentally write this or explain that for themselves. Tell us. And I think it's also important that this telling part doesn't have to be you know paragraphs and paragraphs. It's not the stages of a successful application. You want to bring those aspects right on front and center state them as they are explain how they speak to who you are as a potential successful applicant. So yeah, don't hide it don't presume that someone will figure this out and don't create these long long long stories that seemingly you cannot quite figure out where to lead it to. Right. So again I'm going to think about the flip side of this how can writers effectively convey their extent of these accomplishments and all of their great qualities while still coming across as teachable coachable and not pompous? Well, so there's the Or is that even a risk? Yes, that is you know so there is I mean the one thing I would say here is try not to make and you will sincerely see that as you write this try not to make from whatever confined experience that you have more than what it is. So in other words let's say if you worked in you were helping a graduate student to design experiments there is plenty of original interesting useful changes that was there that you can describe and emphasize the quality that you learned about troubleshooting figuring out how to see through the failure a new way to approach the problem don't try to make out of it something that is worth already a period of dissertation. So in other words don't try to make out of it something that is worth already a period of dissertation. But still with sufficient detail that emphasizes that what important qualities that it probably allows you to display or learn and master yeah kind of going back I don't think you can do all of those things you know I'm already fully prepared to get my PhD and as soon as I start I will complete it and it's all going to be done. I haven't seen honestly I have not seen such an arrogant or displaced application. It sounds like it might be something people don't actually have way understated the level of maturity that students have. They oftentimes portray it in such a way wow I still have so much to learn because I really have so little master of that learning of this kind of not being able to I don't communicate that a lot of those experiences already well prepared to build on and be successful graduate students. So kind of more so lack of confidence rather than enthusiasm for using what you have and the capability to develop to build on that. So Yeah I can see how that might be a difficult thing to balance when you're talking about why you love the school so much and you have the skills to be there. Correct. Yeah. Absolutely. And probably for the schools you know we are lucky in this regard. If you decided to apply to one of the top schools most likely you are a very strong applicant in whatever metrics you can think of yourself. So you should not be in yourself and humble and confident when you put together your application. I have not seen too many applications which kind of came in as like very arrogant and I know it all, I'm already great and I think most students realize that this is a big journey ahead of them and it's quite a challenge. Right. Well I think we have come to the end of the episode so I wanted to close this out by asking you do you have any do's and don'ts if you want to make sure you convey to our audience any common pitfalls to avoid or anything you would like to add? Well you know in typical I would I'll be very specific and crisp so utilize very specific examples from your personal life story motivation to highlight bigger goals that you are planning to do. I'm not suggesting that you should downplay your aspirations. You should be very general and not specific. So this is one don't. The second don't is you're given space for three prompts for example you're talking about the personal statement and you have those three prompts. They are there and you have a very strong accomplishment part and very strong let's say why Georgia Tech or why this institution in the middle how I see well I just write something. So you are given the space with the thoughts that are taken. They're asked for a reason. Yeah, because they are all part of this application. I will emphasize again integration of all of your aspects. Avoid having all of these and so on. They're all speaking about different things. These do not have one common thread or coherence. So think about that. Use space for wording very wisely. Many of these prompts or personal statements are fairly short. So they all have to strongly be mapped on your objective. What do you want to portray to the committee? And again, you can imagine what does the addition committee look for? Hard-working, competent, driven, motivated, collaborative, intellectually mature, creative, original. All of these things that they have to find the evidence in your life story that you support that. Everything that you write should every single sentence have to be mapped in one of them. If you put a sentence there, just a connection sentence, or you just felt like it's such a unique to your story but it does not contribute to your story. So be careful what you put there, regardless how exactly it makes up. Anything that does not contribute is just extraneous cognitive load on your readers who already have a lot of cognitive load because they're looking over hundreds of applications. And the only last thing I want to mention is that if you don't get into your applications as part of CRISP, or maybe not to be dull, because remember, some, many of these, especially the places which have many, many, many applicants, people read this application at the end of the last sentence and skip everything in between. So quality of your writing in a way that's not dull is really important. You've got to grab their attention. You've got to stick in their mind. And maybe it's a collective document that produces sticky memory. Right. I guess all I could say. Okay. So bringing this back to communication at large, I think this episode today and how we've talked about personal statements really comes down to ethos and purpose. What is the vision of yourself you want to construct for this specific school? And that might be different than the purpose. We show different parts of ourselves in different communications all the time. And purpose. Why are you including every single sentence? What is the purpose that you're trying to get across to your audience there? Making sure that you have a strong handle on how you're constructing this vision of yourself, knowing exactly what that construction is key for success. And I think that's true in most writing, most communications. I have nothing to add here. I think you very nicely summed up everything I was talking about here. It's a great exercise. It's difficult. It's very difficult and time consuming. But it's a great exercise. And I think that's the purpose that you're trying to get across to your audience there. And I think that's the purpose that you're trying to get across to your audience there. And before that, it's a really perfect time to understand who you are, research the school, start creating these kind of key ingredients of your applications. What are those anecdotes that you can create? Who are they? It takes time for ideas to fully crystallize. And if you don't give them enough time to brew in your mind with some things that you put together and some prompts, writings and so on, and decide to put it all together in a month or a year, it's a great opportunity to start working on them. Right, because if you want other people to see you as more than just a good student, as a student researcher, future junior colleague, you have to see yourself as a person who you may end up by virtue of starting early and sleeping on it for so many weeks and days and think about this, fully even revise what you were planning in the beginning during your summer. But you will just find this product being so much better. You will find this product being so much better. You will find this product being so much better. You will find this product being so much better. You will find this product being so much better. You will find this product being so much better. You will find this product being so much better. 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