Guidelines for Prospective Ph.D. Students:

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

• Due to the overwhelming volume of email I receive, as a matter of policy I no longer read or reply to emails from prospective students. Around February or March, I will correspond with students who have been admitted to our program who are interested in working with me. Please do not call me or another professor on the telephone asking about your application or funding allocation, this will definitely not help your case, quite the opposite. In the meantime, here is some general information that you are probably seeking in emailing me.

• 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 (or any reputable American university), 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 touting their drive and initiative.
  
  (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) Please check out my research group webpage to see the type of students in my group and what they are working on.

• I do not offer RA positions to students without having worked with them first. 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.

• After you are admitted, 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 and why you think we are a good fit.

• 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.