Frequently Asked Questions

Every question I asked myself throughout my PhD. Some of the answers are very specific to the ESE Department at Washington University in St. Louis (especially the pre-grad school questions), but I hope most answers will provide a helpful starting point for most PhD students at most universities.

Pre-Grad School

What do I need to do to prepare?

Nothing. You’re already accepted, so you’ll be fine once you get here. One thing I regret not doing enough of the summer before my PhD is resting. I’d advise against working an intense internship or trying to prepare like crazy for graduate school. You’ll have time enough to learn once you get here.

How do I find housing? And where should I live?

Wash U has official housing through Quadrangle, but there’s also the apartment referral service. Additionally, you can find apartments on sites like Zillow and Apartments.com.

There are a lot of great areas in St. Louis to live, but most students live either near the Danforth or medical campus for an easy commute. The most popular places are the Delmar Loop for the Danforth Campus and the Central West End for the medical campus, but there are plenty of great places to live in Demun, Skinker-Debaliviere, the Grove, Dogtown, and University City which are all close to campus. If you don’t mind a longer commute, you can explore other neighborhoods in St. Louis, which all have their unique flavor.

What classes should I take?

This will likely be highly dependent on what lab you’re in, so ask the PI for your first rotation if you’re not sure. You can also ask older students in your first rotation lab what courses they’d recommend.

What is St. Louis like?

It’s great! (a completely unbiased opinion) I think St. Louis is very unique and has a lot of cool things. It’s very much defined by its neighborhoods, which all have a unique atmosphere: Soulard has the most French influence and is famous for its Mardi Gras celebration, the Loop has a lot of Wash U students and several music venues, Central West End is slightly upscale, the Grove is very LGBTQ+ friendly, South City has a ton of cool restaurants & dive bars, etc.

There are things to do for most interests; if you like sports you can go see the Blues (hockey), the Cardinals (baseball), or the STL City Soccer Club. If you like music there’s a thriving local music scene, if you like museums there’s several in Forest Park (they’re all free), and if you like the outdoors you can go to one of the city’s several large parks or drive about 30min to get to good hiking & camping.

Is it dangerous in St. Louis?

Depends on who you ask & where you live. The areas around both of Wash U’s campuses are incredibly safe & you can also take a campus shuttle or ask campus police to take you home if it’s nighttime and you live in a nearby area. The Metrolink is also safe during the day and after dark. I’ve lived in several areas around St. Louis, and personally never felt unsafe in any of them, though some have a reputation of being more dangerous than others.

First Year

It’s my first day of school, I’m ready to go, and…I don’t have class till 4pm. What do I do all day and during this first week?

Relax. Just hang out till it’s time for your first class. It may be beneficial to find a desk in your rotation lab and meet your labmates in person, you can walk around campus if you want, but don’t worry. No one’s expecting you to change the world your first week. Your PI will set a meeting with you this first week to get you set up with research – if it’s your first day & they haven’t scheduled that, you can reach out, but otherwise don’t worry.

How exactly do I do research?

Honestly learning to do research is a lot of trial and error, and it will take the entire course of your degree (or longer!). The best Pis will guide you through it while also letting you remain in control of your degree. In your first year, it’s likely that you will do a lot of things exactly as your PI suggests, but start thinking about innovative ideas you might like to try. Try to focus more on the big picture of your research problem, rather than the little details. Reading papers can be good too, but realize that you won’t find the solution to your problem perfectly laid out in a paper.

How do I make friends?

In graduate school you’ll likely have friends at school and outside of school. To make friends at school, you should start with your cohort and your lab. Your lab is great because they’re all doing similar research and can offer really good advice for approaching your research. The more senior students in your lab can also likely give you good advice for just about any problem you’re facing. Your cohort, on the other hand, is going through the same things you are right now, and can help reassure you that you’re not alone.

Outside of graduate school, you can make friends in the community by doing whatever it is you like to do. Maybe you join a cycling group, or a band, or take a dance class. Maybe you just introduce yourself to your neighbors or to someone at a party. Regardless of how you meet them, I encourage everyone to have people in their life that aren’t currently in graduate school so that you can disconnect and not think about school/work for a bit when you need to.

Every paper I read is way over my head - what do I do?

Reading papers is a skill, and most people are not super proficient in it when they start graduate school. The most useful thing to do is practice – an easy way to motivate yourself to do this is to join a journal club or take a class that focuses on reading papers. They will likely still be over your head at first, but if you keep reading them it will get easier.

More specific steps you can do to improve your paper reading skills depend on what you’re struggling with. If it’s too much jargon, highlight terms you don’t know and look them up. If you can’t follow the writing, try taking notes on the points the author is trying to make and what evidence they are presenting. Looking at figures is really helpful for being able to skim papers, but reading figures also takes practice, so don’t skip every figure you don’t understand. My personal favorite paper-reading (and literature review in general) advice is on my Resources page.

I don’t like my rotation advisor - how do I find a new one? Is it okay to do a second rotation or does it look bad?

It’s totally okay to do a second rotation! I actually recommend it in many situations. And it’s totally fine if you don’t like your advisor. Not everybody gets along well or finds a great advisor for them right off the bat.

How you look for a new advisor will likely depend on what it is you dislike about your current advisor. If you like their research area but don’t like their supervision style, you can reach out about doing a rotation with your advisor’s collaborators, or professors in the same general area. For a PhD in ESE, your advisor must be affiliated with the ESE department, but you can be co-supervised by two professors.

If you don’t care for the research your professor is doing, then think about what problems you would like to work on. Are there any professors in the department doing related work? Are there any professors teaching your classes that talk about interesting research in their labs? Which faculty attend the seminars you are most interested in? Once you’ve identified those faculty, you can approach them about doing a rotation. It’s fine to talk to them casually in person, or to send them an email.

Even if you don’t dislike your rotation advisor, it can still be a good experience to do a second rotation so you get a good idea of all the potential research you can do here if you’re curious about opportunities outside of the first lab you rotated in. If you do a second rotation, you can choose to stay with either your first or your second rotation advisor. If you’ve had two rotation advisors and still don’t fit, you can work with the department to find one to work with.

I love my rotation advisor - is it bad if I don’t do a second rotation?

Nope! If you love your rotation advisor and your research area, you can continue with them for the rest of your PhD. If you’re curious about other research opportunities or other faculty’s supervision styles, you can do a second rotation to explore your options, and then choose to work with either your first or second rotation advisor at the end of your second rotation. But if you love the work you’re doing and the people you’re doing it with, don’t feel like you need to try out another lab.

How do breaks work? Do I get Christmas break? Spring break? Summer break?

Breaks in graduate school are very fluid, and a lot depends on your PI’s expectations. In general, you do not get a summer break unless you do an internship (likely after your third or fourth year if you would like to go into industry). However, many PIs and students will take some time off (around a week or two) in the summer to visit family or take vacations.

Typically PhD students do not take spring or fall break off. There are some exceptions, but usually people will remain in the lab over these breaks, or maybe a day or a half day off. It depends on how busy things are with your research.

As far as I know, there is no official policy on Christmas break for graduate students, but most take around a week off if they celebrate Christmas (or just want to take advantage of the lab being slow).

If you are an international student, you may need to travel to your home country for visa renewal. Typically PIs are understanding of this and will work with you to ensure that you can handle the visa requirements and still progress toward your degree.

How does the qualifying exam work?

In the spring of the first year of the ESE PhD program, each student will take the qualifying exam. This consists of a 20-minute presentation of research undertaken during the first semester’s rotation, followed by ~40 minutes of questions from a committee of three faculty in related areas. The key steps necessary to prepare for the exam are preparing the presentation, and preparing to answer questions related to the presentation and your research process.

Do I get to choose my qualifying committee?

You do not get to choose your committee for the qualifying exam, but you will get the opportunity to either suggest professors, or select 2-3 relevant areas from which the department will pick professors.

I have to defend my research from my rotation? To professors that will ask me questions? That sounds really intense and scary. How do I prepare for that?

Don’t panic. The purpose of the qualifying exam is not to try to trick you or to test every aspect of your knowledge. The purpose is to get a feel for your research capabilities and the way you approach research. It’s fine too if you haven’t done any hands on project work in your rotation. Some rotations focus more on reading papers and getting up to speed in the field. If this is your case, you can structure your presentation as an introduction to a project you might work on and the prior work in the area.

The best way to prepare is to review what you did during the past semester’s rotation and be confident in it. You’ve put in a lot of work and you’re the expert on what you’ve done! That said, practice as much as possible. You can practice in front of anyone, but you’ll get the best comments and questions from people in your area. The PhD student advisory board has historically set up a qualifying exam practice session where you can get feedback from students on the board, but feel free to ask more senior students in your lab to listen and give you feedback that is relevant to your project area specifically.

Some questions you might get from your committee are more suggestions than questions (e.g., have you thought about using x statistical method to analyze your data?) It’s easy to take these as criticism, but the faculty are not berating you for not thinking about x statistical method – they are trying to offer useful suggestions for you if you continue to work on the project. Similarly, you may not know the answer to every question. Don’t make up an answer, and don’t be afraid to say you don’t know. Again, the questioning part is not meant to catch you in something you don’t know, but rather to get a feel for your research ability.

Second/Third Year

How do I complete my teaching requirement? What’s involved in being a TA/AI?

You need to do two things to complete the teaching requirement: 1) attend two seminars put on by the Center for Teaching & Learning, and 2) partake in two mentored teaching experiences (essentially, TA twice).

How much effort goes into your MTEs varies based on which professor you’re working with, and your own goals. You can have a very hands off experience where you mostly grade, or you can have a very hands on experience in which you write assignments, give lectures, and help design the course structure.

It is useful to be a TA for your PI, so that the person giving you teaching responsibilities and the person giving you research responsibilities are the same person. This will help avoid having a lot of work for your TA class the same week you are, say, submitting a paper. This is nice, but it’s not always possible. If it’s not possible, clear communication with the person you’re teaching with and your PI can also help avoid these issues.

You can TA both undergraduate and graduate classes, and each has costs and benefits. Graduate students are a little more independent than undergrads but ask harder questions. Undergraduate content is typically simpler to explain but undergraduates typically need more help. Of course there is a gradation, and upper level undergraduate courses fall roughly in between freshman courses and graduate courses. I use TA (teaching assistant) and AI (assistant to the instructor) interchangeably, but I think the technical distinction is that AIs have more teaching duties whereas TAs can be just graders.

If you wait till the end of your degree to take the CTL seminars, you it might be a busier time for you, but you can also take ones which directly pertain to your upcoming job applications.

How do I balance classes, teaching, and research?

Very carefully. You will likely make a lot of mistakes and adjust this throughout your degree. After your first year or two, try not to do more than two classes (as a TA and a student combined) per semester. This will give you time to focus on research.

As a general note, grades don’t matter in graduate school. You do not need to do perfect work in your classes, you just need to do enough work to get a C and take away the content you need for your research.

Should I submit to a conference? To a journal?

That depends – what does your research look like right now? Conferences are easier to submit to because they limit submissions to either abstracts or short papers (4-6 pages), so you can write a good conference submission with research that is less fully fleshed out than what you would need for a journal paper.

Journal papers are generally more prestigious than conference papers*, because they are typically longer and have more rigorous standards. A good strategy is to submit to conferences in the early stages of your work and then turn your conference submissions into journal papers by adding on to what you could put in your conference submissions. Regardless, you should be consulting with your PI about possible conferences and journals to submit to. They will have good advice about which conferences and which journals are good for the work you do, as will more senior students in your lab.

*There are exceptions to this: for instance if you are in a computer science or machine learning area, conference papers are often considered as prestigious as journal papers.

Can I write my papers in Word?

You can (if your PI is okay with it), but why would you? Write in LaTeX and putting figures and equations in your papers will be much easier. You can easily look up LaTeX tips and tutorials online, but an easy way to get started is to play around with the IEEE conference template.

Overleaf online is great because it’s like Google Docs for LaTeX. You can share your LaTeX documents with others (like your PI) and then people you’ve shared it with can edit it.

You can also use LaTeX to make presentations (with the Beamer class). For big presentations like the qualifying exam or proposal, this can be really useful. If you’re just showing a few figures in a lab or collaborator meeting, it may be faster to use PowerPoint.

What if I get stuck in my research?

Getting stuck in your research is normal, especially since part of a PhD is learning how to be a researcher. Not every idea you have will pan out, you will miss something seemingly obvious in retrospect, and there may be periods where it just seems like nothing is working. This is not meant to be a downer, but to encourage students going through it that this is common.

To get through this, the most important thing is to just keep going. Keep going to lab. Keep doing the work that seems like it’s not going anywhere. Keep hunting for new ideas. Eventually, you’ll make a breakthrough or you’ll realize that you should switch projects. It can be useful to do a deep dive into the literature at this point. What have other people done in this area? What ideas can you gain from the literature? Are there any methods that you can use to simplify a part of the pipeline for your project?

Another thing you can do is explain your problem to a labmate. They may have good advice, or the process of explaining it may help you understand the problem better, but regardless it’s a good thing to try.

You should definitely do is talk to your PI. Don’t be afraid to tell them that you’re struggling with your project. They may know already, and be trying not to micromanage you, or they may not know, but it’s their job to help. They will likely have good ideas to help you get unstuck. It can be hard to ask for help from your PI when you are trying to grow more independent as a researcher, or if you don’t want to let them down, but remember that you are learning to be a researcher. No one expects you to have it all figured out during your PhD.