The content below serves as a reminder and reference for several requirements for upper year students, as well as general advice for the bigger worries an upper year student might have.
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The office draw is the process by which graduate students select their offices and office mates.
Each student is assigned a priority number (1-5) based on the number of years they have been at Berkeley. The smaller your number, the higher priority you have. Officers of MGSA have priority 0 as a small compensation for the service they provide the math department. There will be a time before the office draw to block with other students to form an office group, if you have people you would prefer sharing an office with. On the day of the office draw, students select offices in order of their priority numbers.
For a more detailed explanation of the process please see the MGSA office draw page.
Main article: Language Exam
The math department requires all grad students to pass a language exam in either French, German or Russian. The exams are administered by the math department once a year and consist of a short passage from a mathematics article written in the language, which must be translated reasonably well into English with the help of a dictionary.
We have a helpful study guide of commonly used French words in mathematical exposition.
Finding a good advisor can sometimes be more difficult than finding a good spouse. Ideally, you want an advisor who's not only knowledgeable in your specialty, but also someone who you can work and communicate with easily.
There are several ways you can get to know professors better and get a sense of their advising and collaborational style. The best way to get to know them (and for them to notice you) is to take a seminar from them or a class with a small enrollment. This way, you get to see the professor's interactions on a more personal level, and you have the opportunity to stand out as an interested student. If a seminar isn't available, or you'd like to make a stronger impression, you can ask to do a reading course with the professor. The professor may not agree because of the time commitment, but it never hurts to ask.
You also might want to seek out the professor's current students to see how they like their advisor. Don't be discouraged if the professor seems to have too many or too few students: what matters most is how much time they devote to them and how fruitfully the time is used.
Once you're ready to pop the question, you should schedule a meeting with the professor. Hopefully, they'll say yes. If not, that's too bad, but there are many other professors in the sea.
Main Article: Qualifying Exam
This is the big and scary oral exam that you have to take by the end of your second year. The reassuring statistic is that most people pass on their first try, and it is extremely rare for someone to fail out because of this exam.
The exam is three hours long in theory, though frequently shorter in practice. There are three subjects on the exam: two major topics and one minor. You choose the topics, as well as specific concepts in each area. The topics must come from at least two different branches of mathematics; past qual syllabi are available in the math grad office as helpful guides.
You should discuss the qual syllabus with your advisor to discuss the material to put on it. There is a fine line between too little material and just enough; it's best to approximate that line as closely as possible. Even though you may feel ambitious in planning the exam, once you start studying, you can quickly become overwhelmed.
You must place your qual syllabus into the mailboxes of all professors in the appropriate fields at least 6 weeks ahead of the exam date. The professors then have 2 weeks to comment on your syllabus. This is mostly a formality, because you've hopefully already gotten the approval of your qual committee at this stage and most other professors won't even look at the syllabus. However, this is the point at which you might get faulted for failing to meet the breadth requirement.
The qual committee consists of four members: 3 members of the math department and one outside member. There is a chair of the committee—this must be an inside member. The committee chair can NEVER become your advisor, so he or she is usually the professor most distant from your area of research. The outside member must come from a department other than mathematics; frequent choices are Statistics, Physics, Computer Science, and Philosophy. Most of the time, the outside member just sits there completely bored for the duration of the exam, so it's a really unappealing job and you may get turned down (sometimes viciously) by many people. It's best to find your outside member very early; ironically this can be one of the hardest parts of the exam.
Expect to put in at least two months of intensive studying. It also helps to have one or two mock qual exams administered by your friends who have already passed their quals. That way you can get a feel for the level of questions and become more comfortable with the oral format.
Past qual questions are available.
This step is a minor, yet bureaucratically important, formality. After you have passed your Qualifying exam, you must fill out an Advancement to Candidacy form and have your advisor sign it. This should be done in a timely manner after your qual, so it's best to just have the form ready to be signed at your qual. There is a $65 fee to advance to candidacy.
Main Article: Dissertation Year
Filing fee is in lieu of registration and is used to submit your completed dissertation. Filing fee may only be used once. You had to be registered the previous semester (fall/spring/summer) to be eligible to use filing fee. NOTE: You are not a registered student while on filing fee and therefore have no access to University facilities (i.e., libraries, gyms, and health insurance. If you want to purchase health insurance while on filing fee, check with the Tang Center. Also note that student loans may go into repayment when you are not a registered student.)
Students who wish to use filing fee should consult with their advisor. International students will need to have approval from the International Office at I-house.
The application to go on filing fee is available at http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/policies/pdf/FilingFee.pdf.
Start working early. Jot down notes when you talk to your advisor and keep them somewhere that you'll be able to find them again. Often, you find that little notes you write can serve as a "seed" to start the writing process.
Write a little each day. This may be obvious, yet few people follow this advice. Even just one hour a day, divided into four 15-minute sessions, goes a long way if you keep at it for a month.
Attend one of the Grad Division's day-long "Dissertation Workshops," offered for free to UCB grad students every semester. They're reasonably entertaining, and even if you don't follow all the advice offered there, it will at least get you thinking about your own writing process.
Start using the ucthesis format below right from the start, to save yourself the trouble of reformatting. While you're working on a draft, use the "draft" option to avoid double-spacing (it'll save you printing time). Take it out at the end for your final draft.
Get your advisor to look at small parts of drafts and chapters early on.
Get Graduate Division's outline of formatting, pagination, thesis paper brand requirements, and other sundry annoyances here. Thesis paper of the appropriate specification is available from MGSA.
Before submitting: Re-read the Grad Degree Office's requirements handout. Call the Office to double-check with them your records fit theirs. Your name has to match theirs (e.g. if you got married and changed your name), the exact degree you hold from your undergraduate institution has to match exactly what they have (e.g. is it a "B.Sc." or "A.B" or "B.A"?), and your dissertation committee, with a Chair specified, has to match their most recent records (if you switched advisors or changed your outside member, you should double check).
You have to fill out quite a few long forms that the Grad Deg Office before you hand in your thesis. To minimize your suffering in dealing with the utter chaos of the Grad Degrees Office close to filing deadlines, get these forms and fill them out well ahead of time.
Make 4-5 extra copies of your title page and abstract. Take these with you when you file. Bring something into which to put your library-copy thesis plus the extra copy. The boxes that your expensive thesis paper come in will do—bring two of them, one for each copy.
The standard tex templates for UC Berkeley theses and instructions can be found here.
Before you begin the job search, you should ask yourself if an academic job is what you really want. There are practical reasons to ask this question: look at some recent statistics for academic employment and salaries (check out the AMS website), and check out the UCB Career Center. The AMS website has useful links for employment in non-academic jobs, as well as articles on mathematical careers.
There are several books which can illustrate what academic jobs are like before you tie yourself down to teaching calculus or linear algebra every year for another 30-odd years. These books go into the nitty gritty details, like the monolith of academic bureaucracy, the tenure game, et cetera.
There is a separate webpage specifically about applying to postdocs.
If you've decided on an academic career and you're graduating this academic year, here are the things to do.
It depends on the institution, but here are the basic ingredients of a typical application:
Cover letter: Introduce yourself. State your name, advisor, Ph.D. topic, and who in the department to which you're applying is supporting your application. You might give a brief description of your research. Address your teaching: list your teaching awards, your high evaluation scores. If you've taught during the summer, say so. Address your non-academic service activities, indicating you take an active role in the math community: list your roles, e.g. as an organizer of the mentor program for first-years, your service as an MGSA officer, organizer of Many Cheerful Facts, etc. Don't forget to itemize and/or list the reference letters you'll be sending, e.g. "I have arranged for letters of reference to be sent to you separately by Profs. X and Y and Z..." In closing, make sure they know how to contact you: give them your email address and phone number, and if you're attending the big January joint meetings and giving a talk, say so, and tell them exactly which session you'll be attending and the time and location of your talk.
AMS coversheet. This is straightforward; download it from the AMS website and fill it in.
Curriculum Vitae. Again, not in any order, a CV should contain the following information: your name and address; citizenship status; educational background (here you should give your complete PhD dissertation title, along with your advisor's name); list of awards (but OMIT undergraduate stuff); teaching experience; list of publications; current research (i.e. papers in progress); list of talks; list of collaborators; memberships in mathematical organizations (e.g. AMS, MAA, AWM, etc.); other academic functions (such as MGSA, Noetherian Ring, Many Cheerful Facts, etc).
Do NOT make the list of teaching experience exhaustive, especially if you've taught the same course many times. On the other hand, make sure to include all the different courses you have taught. Distinguish between being a TA and an Instructor if you've taught during the summer (and hence were the sole instructor for a course). The list of publications should be those papers which are in a "published in...", "to appear in...", or "submitted to..." state. The list of talks consists of all the talks you've given at conferences and at faculty-sponsored Berkeley seminars. Giving a poster at an AMS session counts. The information you give regarding a talk should be the month/year of your talk, the seminar/conference title, and the title of your talk. For the list of collaborators you should give their names and institutions.
Research statement. Some words of wisdom: remember, you're now writing for a wide audience, not just your advisor or your buddies in your field. Learn to explain your results and your plans for your future research, without too much technical language. An important preliminary step is to have your grad student buddies who aren't in your field read your research statement and give you feedback on whether they feel they understand the big picture of your results. It's also important to get feedback from people who are more experienced with reading such statements, so get your advisor and your post-doc friends to read it also.
Publication list. This should be an itemized list of your publications, with title and abstracts. You can include papers in progress if you have some partial results.
Teaching Statement. Keep it short and to the point. Focus on one or two aspects of how you interact with students in a classroom which you believe distinguises you from other teachers.
Preprints. If you have them, send them along--it can't hurt.
Logistics. To help you with producing cover letters en masse:
These are generic sample files (the originals were generously contributed by Emma Carberry) which will help you generate lots of cover letters at once. The file robocover.tex reads in the file addresses.tex to generate custom-made letters to each of your institutions. If you look at the files, it should be straightforward to figure out how they work.
ONE LAST NOTE: Barb is the staff person who will be helping you with your applications. In particular, she is the one who is responsible for sending the letters of reference to the appropriate places for you. Please be considerate of Barb's time. She's dealing with a lot of you who are graduating at once, and it helps her (and you) if you are well-organized and give her plenty of time (e.g. a week or more) and keep on top of when things to be sent off. You can help her out in her job by LaTeXing the address labels for her.