Should I pursue Ph.D. While working?

Should I pursue Ph.D. While working?

By Jayaprakash G  (My personal view and experience)

I am often asked this question how to do Ph.D. while working?

I have tried to put together the steps I followed/learned while I am living the experience. First answer the four questions Why?  Where? How? How long?

Deciding to do...

Question #1 – Why you want to do Ph.D.?

• Whether you want to pursue academics 
• Want to work for R & D / Technology company
• Want to add Dr. to your name

Question #2 – How you want to do, full time or part time?

• Whether you want to quit/take long leave
• Whether you want to continue working and do it part time

Question #3 – Where to do?

Whether in India or Abroad

Question #4 – How long you are prepared to commit?

Whether you can commit your time for 4-6 years

These are very important questions you will need to answer before you decide to take the big leap. Based on these answers, you choices differ

For ex:- 

• Let us say you want to pursue academics, then IITs are preferred. If  not IITs then you should pursue either Ph.D. or post-doc abroad in a good university.
• Let us say you want to continue working and do it part time, then decide on Indian University

Decided to do:  (If you answer is Part time and Indian University)

1.  Pick an area you would to like to work; it can be broad topic as IoT Security, Software Engineering, Cloud security, economics, HR, etc

2.  Find out which professors are working in this area. All universities have detailed profile of their professors. Professors often provide their contact email Ids

3.   Do your homework, literature survey on this area

4.   Approach the professor with your interest to work with them

5.   Often professors respond to have a call or ask for face to face meeting

6.   Discuss with professor, talk about your experience and discuss your research interests

7.   More often professors would ask you to do some homework like reading papers/journals or give you few assignments to test your skills/expertise

8.   Once professor is convinced, they would ask you to apply for the Ph.D. and follow process

9.   Each university has different process for Ph.D. candidate selection

o    Test, Interview, Assignment and final selection

o    It requires letter of interest from the professor

Selected and doing:

1.   If you are BTech/BE,  than it requires you to do acquire 32 credits.

2.   If Masters, then it is 16 credits

3.   This requires you to be present in university. It takes about 1-2 years

4.   During these two years along with acquiring the credits, you are required to do detailed literature survey

5.   By the end of 2nd year, you should have completed the detailed literature survey of your area

o    Academic work - Papers, Journals

o    Industry - State of the art, Current products, existing solutions

o    Emerging technology - Work in progress products/solutions

6.   Comprehensive report should cover

o    Literature survey

o    Problem statement

o    Gaps, Thesis area, and future work plan

7.   Comprehensive exam

o    Defend your report. This is an important step in the Ph.D. life cycle.

Ph.D. in Progress:

Each professor/university has different criteria like number of conference papers, journals and which conference to target

Finished:

Best wishes to all of you who pursued PhD and completed. I finished my PhD and working as a researcher in a Information security. Do write to me about your experience. I will continue improving/updating my blog.

Life on Planet Earth!!!!

I believe our Planet earth is the most beautiful, most endearing, most special thing in this universe and we are lucky ones to have been born on this planet. I think and say so because this is one and only known living planet in this universe among the billions and billions galaxies and still expanding universe. It is one of its kind, at least no other of this kind have been discovered so far...only planet which is known to nurture life, home for millions of species evolved so very beautifully and still evolving...only place in the entire universe which is known to have beautiful tree covered mountains, snow covered mountains, flowing rivers, deep oceans with full of life ...
People have been searching for life elsewhere for over decades now. While the search will goon....we the lucky ones, should be living it to fullest cherishing, enjoying every moment of it. Learning from our past mistakes and leaving the past behind, focusing on the present and planning for the better future for you, for people around us & for our future generations. Guess we all have come to this place with a purpose in life.
I am a Technologist with research interests at heart (guess at least that is what I have led myself to believe), avid traveler, hobbyist story writer, bad poet :) and many more things. I have tried my best to describe my travel experiences, scripting short stories, scribbling poems, our technology views, innovation ideas & post my personal views on the various happenings in the world in my blog. All my posts are my very personal views only. Any resemblance to living or dead cannot be coincidental and should me only again…I am passionate about coding, I create software, technology solutions to solve real world problems. As a hobby, i have created technology software solutions for my friends to solve their business needs. My research interests are forensics and security on Web, Mobile, Wearables and Cloud computing. Currently pursuing my research in security and forensics on Mobile devices…..
-JP