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Section 3.1 Graduate Students

This section provides some tips for incoming graduate students - from thesis writing, useful tools, guide to responding to examiners, etc.

If you are feeling lost about research, or doing research for the first time, heres a short note that may help Tips to new research students. You can also read about JHU's Prof Dredze's guide for "Guide on How to be a Successful PhD Student"

Heres a video in a graduation event thats funny and uplifting: Tim Minchin - Live To Learn, 9 life lessons. Which lessons resonate with you?

To all reading this, wishing you all the very best in studies and life.

Subsection 3.1.1 Writing your QE/PhD Thesis and presenting PhD defence

My take in how you can organize your thesis.

How to organize your thesis: word document

I consider structure to be the most important consideration. To have structure, first write a series of questions to drive the report (revise it many times), and with the (finalised) questions, generate a power point file to provide more contents towards answering the questions. Repeat until satisfied, and then write the report. See examples below.

To study structure in a paper, find a good paper that reads well. See the example of how I analysed this paper. It demonstrates how the title is mapped to the abstract, which then maps to the introduction. There is no missing content as it expands. Analysis of a paper

Use ChatGPT to help improve your writing. See: ChatGPT Promots as well as YouTube: Epic ChatGPT Prompts (to help research writing)

Examples below:

  1. Trong Duc Tuan github for QE (2024) preparation for his QE thesis, slides, and presentation
  2. Fabian RITTER's github for QE preparation for his QE thesis, slides, and presentation (2024).
  3. Andrew Koh Jin Jie's github for QE preparation for his QE thesis, slides, and presentation (May 2021).
  4. Zhao Yingzhu preparation for her QE thesis (July 2020): Preparation Suggestions and QE Presentation Slides and Youtube Link presentationand Thesis

  5. Khassan Yerbolat's experience for his QE and PhD presentation:

    1. QE preparation: List of Questions and Initial Draft QE
    2. Khassan's final PhD thesis, and an example of reply, for examiner.
    3. During COVID lockdown (April 2020) he presented his PhD defence. The presentation was clear, and coherent. See the Questions used to guide its development, Slides and finally the Online Presentation.
  6. Chong Tze Yuang preparation for his PhD thesis (2018): List of questions and Power point preparations for thesis and thesisand Presentation Slides

Subsection 3.1.2 How to prepare your Slides for QE and final Defence

  1. Example: Suggestions for your slides: word document
  2. Khassan's example: how to prepare for PhD presentation (typically 40-45 mins). During COVID lockdown (April 2020) he presented his PhD defence. The presentation was clear, and coherent. See the Questions used to guide its development, Slides and finally the Online Presentation.
  3. TianRui's slides (2025) showing clarity in figures and information. This style is very good: pdf document

Subsection 3.1.3 SCSE Thesis formatting requirements

  1. Template for NTU thesis: GitHub URL: link
  2. A 2020 example of NTU PhD thesis (required front/back matters and formatting) in SCSE, see SCSE thesis suggestion

Subsection 3.1.4 Yearly reporting to TAC (Thesis Advisory Committe)

You will need to meet up with your TAC yearly. TAC members are there to help your progress in your PhD journey and to sign off the TAC report. Hence, for their evaluation, arrange for a meeting with them individually or together yearly. Depending on their availability/request, you can meet you physically to report, or just send them your slides as update, and/or record a 20~30 mins presentation for update as video for their verification.

Your presentation to them should include:

  1. Academic: Your current CGPA, subjects taken, to be taken, etc
  2. Updated publications
  3. Current progress in research (like a QE presentation, or Phd thesis presentation) ~ about 15~20 mins
  4. Future research plans/goals.

Example from Hou Nana (Oct 2020) submitting this to her TAC panel for their endoresement. Link here TAC HOU Nana (2020)

Subsection 3.1.5 Guideline for Responses to examiner and journal

This section suggests how to respond to examines for your PhD thesis revisions as well as responses to journal for revisions. In short, you have to be clear, state if you agree or disagree, reply appropriately with depth and indicate where the changes are made. This allows the reviewer to quickly go through all the points to endorse or reject your resubmission.
  1. Example replies to Examiner in SCSE PhD thesis revision: Great example of a good response
  2. Khassan's response for PhD revision (see above for his thesis, presentation, etc): reply, for examiner.
  3. Andrew Koh's response (Nov 2023) for PhD thesis: reply, for examiner.
  4. An example in IEEE Trans antenna: response
  5. An example by Steven Atkinson (U of Queensland, CS) pdf paper
  6. A template (remember you need to cross ref in detail to your revision (where are the changes)) template

Subsection 3.1.6 Tools for writing

  1. Please use latex for your writing - it will help a lot! In windows you have miktex. You can get a host of templates here. My editor of choice is TexStudio - but ask Quora for the latest answer.
  2. If you need to watch a youtube video on latex, see overleaf latex
  3. For drawing, you can try draw.io its a very nice software.
  4. For collating all your papers, try mendely, or zotero.
  5. To link all your ideas, I am now trying obsidian , and some of my student prefer roamresearch. I also use iThoughtsHD to generate mindmaps in my iPad.
  6. Jonathan Dennis experience: tip on tools he used for writing thesis.

Subsection 3.1.7 Tools to organize your work

  1. notion: keep your notes notion
  2. MindMap: organize your thoughts with Obsidian.md, Roam Research, or iThoughtsHD.
  3. Using Google CoLab

Subsection 3.1.8 Writing Advise from others

  1. PhD Proof Reader - how to write an abstract and other resources - writing abstract,knowledge base,Writing Template
  2. American Graduate School suggestion - guidelines
  3. Karpathy's writing on "A survival guide to a PhD" - link
  4. Karpathy's "Doing well in a course" - link
  5. Kristin Sainani - writing for the sciences youtube link
  6. Professor Simon Peyton Jones (Cambridge) - How to write a Great Research Paper youtube Link.
  7. Judy Swan (Princeton) - Scientific Writing youtube Link.
  8. Steve Easterbrook - how thesis get written.

Subsection 3.1.9 Subjects, Software you should know

A list of subjects you can and should pick up before starting your graduate school with speech lab: see list of things to know