There are a lot of resources out there on whether you should apply for a PhD or not. I receive a few inquiries every now and then on my experience applying to a PhD program, so I figured I could write something to share.
Please note that I did apply for PhD programs for admission in the Fall of 2019, so my process may or may not be different from yours. And also that I am writing this as I am about to begin my 6th year of the program.
Should you do a PhD program?
I was very lucky to have been exposed to research at an earlier stage of my undergraduate program. I did a research program the summer after my sophomore year, and then reached out to professors and researchers to continue my exposure until I started grad school. I was also exposed to different flavors of research across Math, ML, and HCI. All this to say that early exposure to research is very helpful and can be indicative on whether or not should you do a PhD program.
Research means very different across fields, universities, and labs. And if you want to do a PhD program, this means research for at least 5 years and so forth. So if there's something you're passionate about and willing to spend years of your life doing research to make a scientific contribution, then yes you should do a PhD program.
If not, then maybe it's not the right time or place, or you haven't run into the right field, or you're just not that passionate about anything yet, I would recommend you to take a pass.
Okay. I want to apply, what should I do?
There are a couple of things to consider when narrowing down the list of schools. I'd recommend looking at research specialization and advisor fit.
Research specialization or focus usually refers to the subdomain that you want to work in. I like to thing I fall under Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Social Computing. You can find these specializations in different departments, like here at UW there are professors in the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE), and Information School (iSchool) that can work with you in this research space.
One way that helped me narrow down the dpecialization is by reading papers and seeing what kind of conferences these papers can be found. When I ran into papers that I was interested, I found that they were published at CHI and CSCW conferences, which helped me narrow down the field.
This can also help you narrow down professors that you want to work with. They are either referred to as advisors or principal investigators (PIs)
I know where to apply and who I want to work with. Is there anything to do besides apply?
I highly recommend you to reach out to the professors you've identified. They either have some information on their website telling you that they're too busy and will have a faq to help with your application. Or they may respond to your email and take the time to chat with you. Another approach is asking a professor or a mentor to make the introduction for you. In this call, you really just want to signal interest in their research so that they would remember you and have a face when theyre actually going through the applications.
I'd also recommend you to reach out to their students. You can either find this on the professor's website, or do some reverse search by looking at their recent publications and see who their co-authors are. Talking to a student is probably the most authentic response you'll get with respect to how the student and the advisor works together, what research and grad school is like on a daily basis, and other lifestyle questions.
There's definitely a lot more to write about, but here's just a few thoughts to get you started. If you decide to apply, I'm sending you the biggest luck!