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STEM Academic Advising
How do you deal with weak background at the start of PhD?
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[QUOTE="Dr. Courtney, post: 6447558, member: 117790"] I'd slow down. Focus more on passing your general exams rather than wowing your research supervisor and peers. Coming from LSU, I had a pretty weak background among my peers at MIT. After a frank discussion with both my research supervisor and academic advisor, my plan was to retake the four core undergraduate courses my first year, and focus additional independent study on the first general exam. It felt remedial taking undergrad E&M, Stat Mech, Quantum Mechanics, and Classical Mechanics over again. But I gained a level of mastery that served me well not only on the PhD qualifying exams, but throughout my research and teaching career. The course load was also light enough that I could begin being active in the research program - mostly coming up the learning curve, but making a few small contributions based more on my technical skills than on my physics knowledge. It took me several years before I was really ready or any advanced topics. The first year was retaking undergrad courses, and the next couple were taking the meat and potatoes grad courses in prep for the 2nd PhD qualifying exam. It was a slow start, but by my third year, I was in demand as a collaborator both in the department and beyond since my programming skills and computational prowess put some tools in my toolbox that other groups appreciated (as well as my research advisor). By the time I completed my PhD, I had been a co-author on 8 theory papers and first author on four. [/QUOTE]
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How do you deal with weak background at the start of PhD?
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