I would like to share my perspective on what advisors care about most in PhD applications.

Passion, Curiosity, and Initiative for Research

Pursuing a PhD is a long-term commitment, and it’s inevitable to have moments of frustration along the way. Passion for research and the persistence to push through challenges are essential for success. Being proactive is also important. Students cannot rely solely on their advisor’s guidance. They should take initiative to explore independently, try new ideas, and even actively seek collaboration opportunities.

Solid Research Experience and Implementation Skills

AI research moves extremely fast nowadays, with new results coming out every month. As a result, a student’s ability to quickly implement ideas, design experiments, test existing baselines, and analyze results becomes a crucial factor. This is also why many advisors value publications, as they demonstrate that the student has completed a full cycle of research training and can quickly get started on new projects.

Critical Thinking

To produce impactful work, it’s essential to be able to expand a simple idea into a meaningful research direction. For example, if you read a paper where method A improves performance on task X, would you think further about questions such as: Which component B of method A plays the key role? What underlying capability C does B enhance? Could method A also benefit other tasks W, Y, and Z that require capability C? Can we design an alternative method D that targets capability C? And under certain constraints P, what adjustments would method A require? This style of thiking helps you deeply understand the nature of a research problem and is, of course, one of the most important abilities for a PhD student.

Research Vision

Pursuing a PhD is not the same as completing a single project. The outcome of a PhD typically consists of multiple high-quality projects that collectively advance a specific research direction. Therefore, students need to have a clear understanding of what problems have been solved, what challenges remain, and what the next steps should be. In fast-moving fields like AI, it’s also crucial to catch up current research trends, including what directions are gaining attention, what limitations existing approaches have, what limitations exist in current approaches, and how your work connects to those.

Communication, Writing, and Presentation skills

Many students focus heavily on research experience when preparing for PhD applications but overlook how important communication skills are. You’ll meet with your advisor every week, and poor communication can slow down progress or even affect the advisor–student relationship. Strong presentation skills are essential for effectively conveying your findings, and solid writing skills are crucial for successful publications. Discussion with labmates is also a key part of PhD success and requires strong communication skills.