Guidelines for Prospective Ph.D. Students:

• Thank you for your interest in my research and in WNCG and UT Austin.

• I typically recruit 1 or 2 new students a year, and generally only for the Fall. Sometimes the students I recruit are already at UT Austin doing BS or MS degrees.

• A typical student I would recruit would have most (not necessarily all) of the following traits:
  
  
  (1) Top GPA at one of their country's top universities, and other top academic credentials. Your GRE score is not very important to me as long as it is respectable (it needs to be to be admitted).
  
  (2) A strong aptitude and curiousity for fundamental research, demonstrated usually by early-career research achievements. For example, most post-MS students I recruit have already published a paper in a top IEEE conference or journal. Most post-BS students are near valedictorians and have done at least one interesting project and have glowing letters from their faculty mentors.
  
  (3) A drive to be a leader in our field, i.e. a professor, leading researcher, entrepreneur, industry executive, etc. If your goal is simply to "get a job" after graduating, I suggest getting an MS.
  
  (4) I typically offer students I recruit a TA position, and once they are ready to contribute at a PhD-level on a research project, I move them to RA. This is typically after 1 or 2 semesters if the student applies themselves to the fullest.
  
  (5) That said, a fellowship or supplemental funding is beneficial to your chances.
  
  (6) Please check out my research group webpage to see the type of students in my group and what they are working on.

• As noted above, I do not offer RA positions to students without having worked with them first at UT.

• I cannot reply to every e-mail I receive. I will only usually reply to students I am personally interested in recruiting. Some weeks I can get over 50 such emails so pleasee don't take it personally if I can't respond. Thank you for your understanding.

• If you do decide to e-mail me, please send a resume which clearly indicates your GPA, GRE scores, awards, and publications. I recommend an easy-to-read resume along the lines of the suggestions of Prof. Brian Evans. Also, please indicate why you are contacting me in particular. (If you are sending a form letter to a dozen professors, I can tell this quite easily and you probably won’t get a reply)

• For general information on our program, Brian Evans maintains a lot of information on his website, for example here.

Contacting me by email: jandrews@ece.utexas.edu