Master's student research quick

[cabby]

Hello. I'm a CS master's student at Stanford. I have not had any research experience at all but have decided during my first quarter as a master's student that I'd like to do research and apply for PhDs.

I am most interested in AI type stuff that has applied math or linguistics.

I am a little bit worried because Stanford MS degree doesn't really focus on research and I'm having difficulty getting involved with research here. I do plan on trying to do the distinction in research if I can arrange a project. Also, I talked to a member of the PhD acceptance committee here and he said that they look for two recommendation letters from research supervisors who are very enthusiastic about having done research with the applicant.

I have only a year before I would want to apply for PhD, and I haven't taken too many of the advanced courses in my area of research, so haven't come up with a lot of ideas for research projects yet. I was wondering if anyone had advice for me about what I should do to get the research experience to make for a strong PhD application in time for next year. About how much time do I have to be doing research before I should apply PhD?

Thanks!

[liszt85]

I have only a year before I would want to apply for PhD, and I haven't taken too many of the advanced courses in my area of research, so haven't come up with a lot of ideas for research projects yet. I was wondering if anyone had advice for me about what I should do to get the research experience to make for a strong PhD application in time for next year. About how much time do I have to be doing research before I should apply PhD?

Thanks!

One year of good work is good enough. You should aim to get yourself in a research group ASAP. Talk to your own professors, I'm sure one of them could use manpower, esp if you don't demand to get paid. Some departments however cannot accept students without paying them and for this reason, you may find it difficult to get involved in research. So if you're in a taught course track, you probably are too late to convert that to a thesis/research track and probably will find it difficult to get into a research group. However, that's the only way you can get to do some research before you start applying. Look at other departments also. Computational linguistics I'm sure does work on the stuff you might be interested in. So contact professors at the math and linguistics departments and see if one of them will let you work on a project with them.