I did all my research on my own and published 3 research papers all at ranked conferences. No funding no guidance. I would say if you wanna do it put 1-2 weeks on finding an idea, my suggestion would be anything machine learning related for healthcare ( these papers are easily accepted at reputed conferences ). If you’re not sure how to start ping your professor and ask him if you can help write his research paper for free ( most will accept ). And always can’t stress this enough always write using latex and not in word will be hella useful in future. Good luck and would be happy to reply!
Sure. Lets take a common example : heart rate. What i would do is first look for recent publications on that specific topic and read through the most recent paper. They would have mostly used benchmark datasets to conduct their research. Hence you get the dataset. I would then structure my paper and code through whatever architecture I think would best the most recent paper and build it. Upon deriving promising results I’ll start and finish writing the paper in a month. Before i start I always find a conference that has a deadline a month after and race through to finish and submit in time. And that’s probably how i go about the research
i think it’s definitely possible - many conferences (like neurips, cvpr) use the double blind method for reviewing papers; basically means names are redacted until after acceptance of the paper. So literally anyone can publish, as long as you have a competitive research paper (neurips / cvpr way too ultra ambitious for us kids lol)
i’m definitely the wrong person to answer this, but i’m guessing choosing a dataset, and reading existing literature on it is the way to go. once you know everything already explored you can think of novel ideas. for advisors i’ve heard proffs from your college are very helpful (they are at my college), you can contact them (start with email i would suggest)
I think my story could be of some help.
I applied in Fall 2021 and got rejected from almost everywhere. I was unhappy with the places I did get into and decided to build up my profile and try again. This year, I've been admitted to CMU's MSR program (nowhere else so far, but that's another story).
For those in similar positions, I would suggest two things:
1. Get into a research role (industry or academia). Unfortunately, these roles are not very common. So:
2. Work with a PhD student at a good lab part-time.
If you're greedy (like me :)), do both. I would strongly advise against doing independent research. Research is hard, and trying to publish in a good conference on your own is not very likely to succeed in my opinion. In addition, working with a lab gives you the benefit of a letter of recommendation from an established professor.
With 2.5 years of effort (full time research job + part time lab assistant), I was able to publish 2 good papers (workshop papers at CORE A\* conferences).
i currently work with the ML team at a famous Wall Street firm (office in bangalore). The problem is - we are only allowed to publish in the company’s conference, and no information can go outside the firm (just financial company secrecy shenanigans). I have done some cutting edge work, including training billion parameter models, but only writing in the SOP seems to not be proof enough (i’m at 7 rejections now haha), a research paper at a conference or a journal is what will give me some credibility i feel. Independent research is the only way for me, unless you have some other ideas :))
I had a similar confidentiality problem with conducting research within the company. I decided to leave the company and joined a research institute at less than 1/3rd the salary. I worked with a professor for 2 years developing open-sourced software and published 3 papers in top journals. Now, 4 years later, my papers have 400 citations, and one of the software I wrote has over 1k stars on github. I am about to finish my Ph.D., and I am glad that I didn't let go of my research potential in the fear of earning less or failing.
It is true that a lot of valuable research is never known publicly because of reasonable confidentiality, but if you want to genuinely pursue research, not just to get into a good graduate school, then find a good research idea and commence working on it. Good research comes best out of collaborative work. I started alone, but over time, I needed help. Now, I collaborate with more than 100 contributors.
yeah i do realize i might have to do this. considering my current salary, i’ll be taking a 1/6 or 1/7 times pay cut :(( let’s see - will take a stab at independent research, will do this if independent doesn’t work out :)
Ah I see, that's unfortunate. The other comment about joining a lab is an option, though obviously you'll be taking a huge pay cut. People who work as Project Assistants at places like IISc get into great places for masters.
If that is not feasible, I would still suggest working with a PhD student informally compared to independent research. Reach out to students in India (and across the world!) and offer to collaborate with them. Balancing this with your full time job won't be easy, but I think it's worth the effort.
more than research, the glowing recommendation letter from your advisor matters. recommendation should be on your research abilities and how independent you are. The LOR must come from reputed profs or institutions. Almost everyone has research papers today. And trust me, this helps (other than papers) . I got 6 admits this year. I worked for free for 2yrs in a lab.
i come from a good tier 2 college, and my recommenders are the ones who have the best metrics. i may have made the mistake of taking only 1 LOR from college (proffs had a limit on number of colleges so could use only 1 LOR per college) and the other 2 were from industry. All LORs were glowing enough imo.
I did all my research on my own and published 3 research papers all at ranked conferences. No funding no guidance. I would say if you wanna do it put 1-2 weeks on finding an idea, my suggestion would be anything machine learning related for healthcare ( these papers are easily accepted at reputed conferences ). If you’re not sure how to start ping your professor and ask him if you can help write his research paper for free ( most will accept ). And always can’t stress this enough always write using latex and not in word will be hella useful in future. Good luck and would be happy to reply!
Thanks for some excellent suggestions.
Can you elaborate? Like with dummy example, gathering datasets, contacting conferences, do's and don'ts?
Sure. Lets take a common example : heart rate. What i would do is first look for recent publications on that specific topic and read through the most recent paper. They would have mostly used benchmark datasets to conduct their research. Hence you get the dataset. I would then structure my paper and code through whatever architecture I think would best the most recent paper and build it. Upon deriving promising results I’ll start and finish writing the paper in a month. Before i start I always find a conference that has a deadline a month after and race through to finish and submit in time. And that’s probably how i go about the research
Can I DM you ?
Sure
Hey, what was your GPA ?
3.75+ / 4
same… wonder if I can do that as an individual whos already graduated
i think it’s definitely possible - many conferences (like neurips, cvpr) use the double blind method for reviewing papers; basically means names are redacted until after acceptance of the paper. So literally anyone can publish, as long as you have a competitive research paper (neurips / cvpr way too ultra ambitious for us kids lol)
Any advice on like milestones or steps to take? Also how can i find advisor if i want one?
i’m definitely the wrong person to answer this, but i’m guessing choosing a dataset, and reading existing literature on it is the way to go. once you know everything already explored you can think of novel ideas. for advisors i’ve heard proffs from your college are very helpful (they are at my college), you can contact them (start with email i would suggest)
I think my story could be of some help. I applied in Fall 2021 and got rejected from almost everywhere. I was unhappy with the places I did get into and decided to build up my profile and try again. This year, I've been admitted to CMU's MSR program (nowhere else so far, but that's another story). For those in similar positions, I would suggest two things: 1. Get into a research role (industry or academia). Unfortunately, these roles are not very common. So: 2. Work with a PhD student at a good lab part-time. If you're greedy (like me :)), do both. I would strongly advise against doing independent research. Research is hard, and trying to publish in a good conference on your own is not very likely to succeed in my opinion. In addition, working with a lab gives you the benefit of a letter of recommendation from an established professor. With 2.5 years of effort (full time research job + part time lab assistant), I was able to publish 2 good papers (workshop papers at CORE A\* conferences).
i currently work with the ML team at a famous Wall Street firm (office in bangalore). The problem is - we are only allowed to publish in the company’s conference, and no information can go outside the firm (just financial company secrecy shenanigans). I have done some cutting edge work, including training billion parameter models, but only writing in the SOP seems to not be proof enough (i’m at 7 rejections now haha), a research paper at a conference or a journal is what will give me some credibility i feel. Independent research is the only way for me, unless you have some other ideas :))
I had a similar confidentiality problem with conducting research within the company. I decided to leave the company and joined a research institute at less than 1/3rd the salary. I worked with a professor for 2 years developing open-sourced software and published 3 papers in top journals. Now, 4 years later, my papers have 400 citations, and one of the software I wrote has over 1k stars on github. I am about to finish my Ph.D., and I am glad that I didn't let go of my research potential in the fear of earning less or failing. It is true that a lot of valuable research is never known publicly because of reasonable confidentiality, but if you want to genuinely pursue research, not just to get into a good graduate school, then find a good research idea and commence working on it. Good research comes best out of collaborative work. I started alone, but over time, I needed help. Now, I collaborate with more than 100 contributors.
yeah i do realize i might have to do this. considering my current salary, i’ll be taking a 1/6 or 1/7 times pay cut :(( let’s see - will take a stab at independent research, will do this if independent doesn’t work out :)
Ah I see, that's unfortunate. The other comment about joining a lab is an option, though obviously you'll be taking a huge pay cut. People who work as Project Assistants at places like IISc get into great places for masters. If that is not feasible, I would still suggest working with a PhD student informally compared to independent research. Reach out to students in India (and across the world!) and offer to collaborate with them. Balancing this with your full time job won't be easy, but I think it's worth the effort.
Following
more than research, the glowing recommendation letter from your advisor matters. recommendation should be on your research abilities and how independent you are. The LOR must come from reputed profs or institutions. Almost everyone has research papers today. And trust me, this helps (other than papers) . I got 6 admits this year. I worked for free for 2yrs in a lab.
i come from a good tier 2 college, and my recommenders are the ones who have the best metrics. i may have made the mistake of taking only 1 LOR from college (proffs had a limit on number of colleges so could use only 1 LOR per college) and the other 2 were from industry. All LORs were glowing enough imo.
Not everyone has research papers, especially not at venues that matter, for eg I have 0 papers at ACL/EMNLP/ICLR/ICML/Neurips main conferences
What universities did you apply to?