All right, I think we have time for one more question about deep work. And this one comes from Rachel. Rachel asks, hi, Cal. I'm an undergraduate student. And I realized recently that I want to follow an academic career. Do you have any tips for a novice researcher? Which skills are the most important in the academic field?

Thanks. Well, Rachel, as an undergraduate, if you want an academic career-- and I'm assuming you're thinking about a traditional academic career, a tenure-track job at a university, maybe a research-focused university, the classical idea of what it's like to be a professor-- by far, the most important thing you should think about right now is being the best student in your major, in your grade.

Being a star in your field is going to be your first step of many steps towards becoming a professor, a classical tenure-track professor. If you are one of the best students in your program, in your grade, that is what's going to get you the type of recommendation letters that will put you into a top graduate program, because that's going to be step two.

You want to get into the absolute best graduate program possible. The academic market is incredibly competitive. If you want a tenure-track job, you essentially need to be a star on the market, which means if you're not coming from a top school, you're basically already out of luck. So you have to be a star at your department as an undergrad to get the letters that get you into a school that gives you the chance of being a really strong grad student at a very strong program.

Once you're in grad school, that's where really the research is going to very much matter, and you're going to have to pick up what is my specialty and pick up the skills, et cetera. But let's put that aside for now. So that's your goal number one, become a star in your field.

How do you do it? I used to write about this on my blog. Under schedule. Now, it's very important for what you're trying to do to make sure that you have more than enough time for your major classes. Don't double major. Don't triple major. Don't do seven minors. Don't join 19 clubs.

If you want to be an academic, there is no admissions officer in your future that's going to say, I love the diverse amount of activities that this person did and they seem like a really hard worker. They don't care. If you're going to apply to grad school, the officer is looking at your application.

Is this person a star? So get rid of all the other stuff. Focus on your main major. Make your schedule easy. So the courses outside of your majors, make sure that they're of a completely different character so you don't overload or burn out. If you have credits that you can deploy here, maybe AP credits, for example, that would allow you to essentially buy out of some classes, take a lighter than normal load some semesters, do that.

Maybe do an independent study. Give yourself excess amounts of time for your classes so that you can get it done, then go back and look at your work, and then read some stuff on your own, and just really be someone who stands out. That is the most important thing you can do.

Two, depending on the field you want to go to graduate school for, some demonstration that you are capable of self-directed research is important. So get involved with undergraduate research with the best person you can in your department. And this is not so much about the specific work I'm going to do is going to convince the grad school, like, oh, we want, in this case, Rachel to come do this same work.

It's showing them I was able to work with a professor. They could give me things to do, and I did it. You want one of your letters when you apply to grad school to say, Rachel worked with me on this project. This is an advanced project. She was doing graduate-level work.

I could count on her. She did high-quality work. That's what they want to see. And they want to see that you are a star. So those are my two main points of advice. The third thing I would say is care about, of course, your GREs if you're applying to a program where that matters.

When I was applying for computer science grad schools for the top schools that cared about GREs, basically what we were told is you need very close to a perfect score on the math GRE. Don't forget-- don't worry about the writing. Don't worry about the verbal. But you need 7.7, 7.80, 7.90, preferably an 800 on the math.

That's just a cost of doing business. So there's just a step of just doing that studying, that familiarity with the GREs so you can hit those scores. So become a star. Do research, not to change the world, but to prove that you can take directions and are responsible. And figure out what GRE score you need to get to the schools you want to get to.

Do those things, Rachel, and you're giving yourself the best possible chance of kicking off an academic career. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)