I was having a conversation with a friend looking at all possible mid career options available to him. He is looking for a safe way to migrate to Australia soon. As he asked me this question I recommended him to go for PhD, as it can give him financial support and a long term safety at job. He paused and told me that on his recent visit he met couple of PhD student there worried about their position. Few of them even moved to regular jobs like programmer and started their career with undergrads.
When I told him about research associate jobs in Australia he said PhD’s in Australia are not able to compete from people who are apply from abroad specially from US, Canada, Europe and South Korea. I was surprised by his answer. He said in Australia, Japan and some parts of Europe give PhD without a single paper. Whereas in other parts of the world they need to publish papers that in some good journals to get their degrees.
This lead me to think what is single important thing to do in PhD to have a competitive position in future and compete with best in the world. After thinking and looking back at my own PhD time I could find you need to have a good number of publications in as best as possible journals and conferences.
Number of publications during a research program tells a lot about you. The first and foremost important thing it tells is you cracked an important problem and moved things a bit forward. Second thing it reveals is that you know how to present you results to the world. Third thing it shows your commitment, as one need to review the same paper multiple times before it goes to final publication stage in any good journal. Fourth thing it confirms is you research writing skills. Fifth it shows your patience, willingness to improve and collaborate.
When someone repeat the process of publishing good papers, it’s a representation that they know what problem they are solving specially first author papers. This is impossible to achieve without self motivation. PhD and MS are quite long programs and without much burden of evaluation through exams, if someone doesn’t publish during these tell a lot about them.
If you are into PhD or MS by research program do remember the most important thing based on which you will be assessed is number of quality papers and how often you wrote them and how many times you were the lead researcher. Keep your focus on that you will see a great future too.
Hope this give you an idea what and why writing papers in PhD or MS by research is important. If you have any questions dont hesitate to drop a comment. Do like us for on fb and subscribe for more updates on PhD and MS by research.
I will do Mtech from State college. What to do next to pursue Phd?
“Especially in countries like India we don’t have much support for research for computer science” this is what many say when it is about PhD . I want to know do we need to choose only teaching after PhD if we are doing PhD in India.
I feel I have wasted my 2 yrs of mtech. My cgpa is low, I have done no internships and I feel like a failure. I have always been a good student but due to some reasons I got distracted during Mtech and couldn’t perform well. I want admission in top colleges in India for PhD but I don’t see that happening. I an very badly depressed about it. Can you suggest any places other than IIT’s for Phd.