It's not about discoveries, it's all about publishing!

Some people want to pursue a research career because they hope to make exciting and valuable discoveries. Unfortunately, being a professor is is not about making discoveries. Academia is all about publishing!

So what's the difference between research many aspiring PhD students hope for and publishing? I think the reality is that a scholar may only have 1-2 useful ideas/discoveries in his or her life time. In fact, many people are not that lucky.

Despite the fact that most researchers do not really have anything new to offer, they have to publish regularly. Because of that, they often publish things that are not even worth reading. I'd say that in many fields about 95% of top publications are not even worth reading, since they don't offer much beyond common sense or what has been said in the past.

How to get accepted into a PhD program

Pragmatically, there's only one reason as to why a professor would want to have you as his or her PhD student. And that is to get some publications out of you. Publications is the most valuable thing in the world for a professor, because his or career largely depends on the quantity and quantity of publications.

So if you want to get into a PhD program, you must demonstrate that you have a great potential for conducting and publishing research. Preferably, you should try to publish a paper or two before you apply to a PhD program. Even a trade press publication might help.

So everything that you write and say during the application processes should be geared towards making a strong case that you can co-author a lot of papers with professors in the department.