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Comment by eli_gottlieb | Hacker News Reader

That sounds nice. Now try getting into a PhD program with Bs.

Nobody ever asked for my grades. There are plenty of (quality) PhD programmes out there that aren't that competitive to get into. Or did you just mean a top-10 US Ivy League school, because those PhD's are the only ones that count?

Being ambitious and willing to work to get As and get into a top program is different than being so obsessed with it that you punish yourself if you get a B on a paper (even if you get an A in the class).

I'm not so sure about that. Most people I've met who actually got into PhD programs weren't particularly ambitious, and didn't have a precise idea what they wanted to do with their prospective research careers. They'd just been raised as academic perfectionists and gone onto the "obvious" next step in academic perfectionism.

I got into a PhD program with < 3.0 GPA average.

I got into a Top 15 MBA program with a sub 3.0 undergrad GPA. Just means I had to show progress and initiative post-bachelors, do well on my tests, and have a good reason for it in my essays in interviews.

Wow, neat. Something must have sold you other than your GPA. Did you have a professional track record, or was it something else?

I applied to a mid-tier research institution for graduate physics and I believe they liked the amount of research I did as an undergrad, which amounted to every summer having a research internship and my last full year being advised by a professor. No publications came from undergrad btw.

As a grad student I did lag a big behind in classes but I joined a research lab my 1st year and published some well-cited papers in Physical Review Letters, a top Physics journal[1]. In my grad application I reaffirmed my passion for research as being the reason I wanted to attend a graduate school.

After that I took a postdoc at a top-tier international research lab and again published well-cited papers in Journal of the American Chemical Society, another top journal[1]. So from the grad school's perspective, I should classify as a 'good' hire :).

[1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=e...

I think p-hacking is a form of BS. So a lot of PhD students, post docs, and tenured researchers are engaged in BS. Then there's impact statements for research topics that obviously have no societal impact. And yet statements get written and funding is allocated.

So it's not clear to me what your challenge is trying to get at. BS is rife everywhere. Maybe you meant, "try being a researcher without having to resort to BS".

I think parent means B's not BS, although p-hacking is very much an overoptimization over easily defined gials.

Urgh. That makes so much more sense. Thanks

Why bother getting into a PhD program?

Is that a real question, or do you just default to thinking that everything in life is pointless?

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