Getting a Thesis

Shoutout to this blog post: https://ruchikmishra.blogspot.com/2020/09/want-to-go-for-off-campus-undergraduate.html by Ruchik Mishra, a BITSian who went to Polimi for a thesis in robotics. You'll get a lot of good info from there as well. I have divided the topic of thesis into 2 articles, "All About Thesis" and "Getting a Thesis". I suggest going through the previous article, if you still haven't.

Timelines and Starting Off

Ideally, your plan for a thesis should start from your 2-1 or 2-2. Why? Well, you're likely to get accepted if you have a good project under your belt. Hence, a 2-2 SOP can be important in that case. However, 2-1 is pretty early to finalise your project interests, which would ultimately help you get a thesis in a similar area. If you have a decent CG, you can hope that your PS-1 project would be impactful enough to put to your mail and CV. You can also take a SOP in your 3-1, and add that. For a SOP, you'll have to apply in your 2nd year (one semester earlier).

In any of these scenarios, your projects until 3-1 should be impactful enough. Do refer to articles in the Projects & Research section to learn how to do impactful projects and research, and convert them into publications if possible.

For a 4-1 thesis starting in August, you can start mailing from December. For an extended thesis (starting from June), you can start mailing in October. For 4-2, you can use a similar gap in months.

P.S. If you're a dualite, add one year to everything (2-1 -> 3-1, etc.).

Step 1: Drafting your CV

If you've come till here, I'm assuming that it's 3-1 for you. If earlier, please go back and work on your projects.

Specifically for getting your thesis, your CV should be 1 page. You can ignore stuff like high school education, PoRs/extra-curricular (unless it's a tech team closer to your thesis area), and achievements not related to your field of interest.

I would suggest that you draft your CV on overleaf.com. There are a lot of LaTeX CV templates, which look professional and are widely accepted in academia. Keep editing your CV, get suggestions from friends and parents, and keep it on Google Drive with a shareable link (viewable by anyone with the link). You can keep updating your CV and adding new versions to the same Google Drive link.

Step 2: Making a list of Profs

Use Google Scholar (keyword search), faculty profiles of top universities, etc. If a BITS prof, who knows you well, has a personal contact, take that. Prepare an Excel/Notion file of various Profs you'll be aiming to mail. This list should have a minimum of 100 profs with their profile links, email ID, research areas, etc. You can also keep a track of whom you've mailed and followed up with.

Step 3: Mailing Profs

I used 2 templates for my thesis mailing. Template #1 is inspired by the blog link I mentioned above. That mail template is also the inspiration for my internship mail template, given here. There's also another template that I used, which I'll mention in this article.

Subject: Seeking an internship in MRSLab

Why did I mention an internship instead of a thesis? I thought there could be higher chances for a lab taking in interns, who can help them in their own work as well, rather than a thesis student, who would be more engrossed in his or her own report. Ultimately, I can easily model my internship report into a thesis report and keep BITS happy. Yes, it is allowed to use an internship in a lab as an off-campus thesis for BITS.

Dear Prof. <full name>,

Para 1: Hope you are doing well. I am XXX, a pre-final year B.E. XXX Engineering student at BITS Pilani (India). I am a merit scholar with a cumulative GPA of X.XX/10, placing me among the top 1% of students at BITS, one of the eminent engineering institutes in India. I am writing this email looking for an internship opportunity in the fall semester (Aug-Dec 2021). Please find my resumé attached here.

Link the last sentence to your resumé (Google Drive). Add any academic achievement or department ranking here. If not, then even your research interests can be mentioned along with any achievements which you might have related to it. This para should capture the Prof's attention.

Para 2: I recently came across the ongoing projects in XXX Lab and was highly intrigued by the research in human-robot interaction. Orthotic devices, limb neuroprosthetics using EMG signals, and SMARTsurg are novel research projects which have motivated me to pursue further research on medical robotics in the future. My interest in learning robotics and computational methods led me to work towards modelling a 3-DOF parallel manipulator and developing an inverse kinematic algorithm for the end effector in my internship at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). For the coming summer, I will be a new product development intern at Boston Scientific, to learn more about medical innovations.

This para should focus on their research areas and how your experience/projects match. Ensure that the Prof feels that you are a great fit for their lab.

Para 3: I believe that my experiences and skillsets are a great match to assist you in some of the ongoing projects in your lab. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Signature: Add something cool, to make an impression. The BITS format which is used by many can be taken. Something like this:

Tips for mailing:

1. Schedule the mail to be sent at 8:00 or 8:01 am at their local time. This would get your mail to the top of the unread pile whenever they open their mail in the morning.

2. Avoid mailing on Saturdays, Sundays or national holidays.

3. Aim for 1 mail every weekday, you may increase it to 2 emails every weekday if you don't get an acceptance within the first 50 emails.

4. If you want to track the mail, use Streak. Don't use other trackers that have a visible watermark/logo in the mail.

5. Follow-ups are important! A simple 1-2 para mail to follow-up / send a gentle reminder at least 3 days after the first mail. Do this for every single mail which has been ignored.

6. Put your CV on Google Drive, change view settings, copy the link and paste it into your mail (either first para or last). Avoid attaching it directly. You will be able to manage and update different versions of your CV, so that's a plus point.

7. Do not get disheartened if you do not receive any reply! Everyone goes through this phase, and it may take more than 100 mails to finally get an acceptance. But keep grinding, don't skip any day for mailing. Be confident in your abilities and you'll get lucky with at least one of these mails.

8. Check your first mail by sending it to a friend, in case all the links and formatting are fine. Also, get it cross-checked through Grammarly for any mistakes.