Tsinghua University suddenly changed its policy again and took back the admission rights of all its tenure-track professors, so the recruitment notice is temporarily invalid. Let’s wait until I’ve struggled my way to tenure and then talk about it……
The recruitment notice was published, and already several students have contacted me to express their intention to apply. Why not say exactly how many? Because I’m not entirely sure myself. Most students simply expressed their intention in a brief way, without further contact, and some are not from this year’s cohort.
I have now successfully been added to Tsinghua’s admissions roster, and after the summer vacation, in September, I will be able to admit the first batch of PhD students for 2018 entry. That is to say, before the final interview at Tsinghua, there is not much time left for us to communicate in advance, and I hope to have sufficient exchanges with potential applicants during the summer vacation itself.
Why is advance communication necessary at all? There are mainly three reasons.
First, it is so that I can understand the students more comprehensively, because during the very brief official application and interview process, I can only gain some of the most superficial impressions and cannot obtain a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of academic grounding and learning ability. A deeper understanding always has to be achieved in the course of interactive communication; only through back-and-forth discussion can one gain a deeper understanding, one that is also difficult to fake.
Of course, in the absence of advance communication, might I decide on the spot during the interview to admit someone? That is also possible. But in that case, external advantages such as educational background will be more heavily emphasized. For example, if you are from Peking University and tell me that you took a course on the history of Western philosophy, I ask who taught it? You say Xian Gang, or Shang Xinjian, or so-and-so. Hearing that, I think, ah, I know the score, reliable! But if you graduated from a non-211 university and also tell me that you took a course on the history of Western philosophy, then who taught it? I’m not familiar with them. Was the course any good or not? I don’t know. Maybe with the help of a terrible teacher and a shallow textbook, you ended up acquiring a lot of stale prejudices instead of learning anything—perhaps you’d have been better off not taking the course at all? I really can’t be sure. So even if, during the interview, you merely say, “I took a course on the history of Western philosophy,” the better your school is, the more points that can add. But there are also plenty of Peking University and Tsinghua students who just muddle through, and students from third-rate schools or even self-taught people in the folk tradition may also have very solid foundations—what are we to make of that? Under the previous recruitment notice, there was even a netizen who would not buy it and spoke in a very nasty way, as if the discrimination faced by non-211 students needed to be paid for by me. Utter nonsense.
It is precisely because I hope that students who are at a disadvantage in terms of external conditions will also have the chance to show me strengths that are hard to fully display during an interview that I want to spend a longer time in more充分 exchange, to eliminate prejudices as much as possible and understand more deeply.
Second, it is so that students can understand me more comprehensively. Applying for a doctorate is a matter of mutual selection between supervisor and student. For a student committed to the academic path, the doctoral supervisor is the most important guide on the road to scholarship. The relationship with the supervisor is not only crucial during the four years of student life ahead; it will also continue to affect your entire academic career, so one must be cautious. If the supervisor is respected, you benefit from it; if the supervisor offends others, you suffer along with them.
Even if one considers only the next four years spent working toward the PhD, if your style does not mesh with your supervisor’s, that is already a very hard thing to endure. Of course, differences in viewpoint can create sparks, and that may be a good thing. But if, at a deeper level, the style and approach do not align, if your interests are different, and you cannot even disagree in the same language, that is the worst of all.
Moreover, in this respect, if the supervisor is dissatisfied with the student admitted, at worst it is merely a wasted slot; in truth it is of little consequence. But if the student chooses the wrong supervisor, what may be wasted is a full four years (and if the supervisor is unsuitable, it is even more likely to drag on to five, six, seven, or eight years), and it may even affect the whole academic career—how could one not be cautious? This is rather like matchmaking: although I have published a lot of information online, you should surely actually talk, or even meet in person, before you can feel at ease, right? But unlike matchmaking, ours is a one-teacher-to-many-students system: I can admit many students, but you can only choose one teacher. So even if I don’t care about advance communication, you should care about it more than I do.
Lastly, our ideal is all to do academic work. Which school you attend, which supervisor you follow—ultimately all of it is still for the sake of doing research better. And anyone who wants to be my student must surely have something in common with me in terms of academic interests, so it is worth exchanging ideas and learning from one another. Whether you first became interested in the relevant academic field and then thought of finding me as a supervisor, or first saw my admissions opportunity and only then discovered a point of resonance in interests, in any case you must ultimately have an academic point of intersection with me, and in this respect you surely believe you can get help from me, which is why you are willing to come and be my student. So if that is the case, then whether you ultimately become my student or not, communicating with me should be something you hope for and think worthwhile. If, before becoming my student, you are not at all willing to communicate with me, and in fact have no common interests with me at all, merely hoping to use me as a stepping stone and get yourself a Tsinghua diploma, then you really should give up that idea early.
Given the three reasons above, communicating with me as early as possible before the exam should be the student’s own urgent need, rather than a requirement imposed by me.
So what do I hope to see in advance communication?
First are the things also needed in the final official process: a resume (with a self-statement), and a PhD-stage research proposal (5,000 words). Of course, when you send them to me in advance, they do not necessarily have to be written in a very formal way; they can be drafts, outlines, or even just an initial direction. After we discuss them with one another, they can then be revised and improved.
Second are representative works, including academic papers, essays, reading reports, and so on; it is best to provide three to five pieces in various forms. Anything related to the history of technology or philosophy of technology is of course best. Some people say they came to this field by a roundabout route and have nothing impressive to show here; in that case, works from other fields, or even non-academic ones, can also be sent to me for a look (of course I may not respond to every piece).
Finally, there are comments on my academic direction or research work, including articles on the blog, dissertations, and other works. I especially welcome direct comments on the blog, and even more especially welcome trying out the newly launched marginalia-style commenting function.
If you are not leaving a comment directly on the blog, please try to get in touch via Email (hyl510@gmail.com).
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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