Guidelines for Graduate Students

The Masters

The Ph.D.

• SEPLL CHEKC!!!! =)
• Don't attempt to critique everything; pick a few major points and go into depth on those
• When criticizing, offer alternative options (constructive suggestions).
• When quoting strong statements, first analyze if the statements are justified.
• Organize around major themes in the paper, and how they relate
• Go into depth on strengths and limitations, not just a superficial analysis
• Do not just summarize - discuss/compare/contrast/criticize
• Don't contradict yourself.
• Explain how the approaches are applicable to real-world problems.
• Do not quote the papers too much.
• Explain the motivation of the paper
• For any claim you make (a limitation, a usefulness, etc), justify it
• FORMAT
  Begin with a tutorial on the concepts in the papers, as if teaching it to a 500-level course
  Summarize methods used
  Critique methods used (unnecessary steps? additional steps? done differently?)
  Summarize and critique conclusions/contributions
  conclusions weak? how/why? strong? how/why? agree with contributions? why/why not?

• If you don't know, say so.
  If you try to fudge, they'll know it.
• If asked to clarify something, don't repeat what you've already said.
  Find another way to explain it.
• If the paper was incomplete, add background information from other papers so that you can explain it properly
• FORMAT
  same as written