A Ph.D. is like haute couture: it’s a complete disaster without perfect fit
How to pick a Ph.D. program
It’s that time of the year when I get dozens of emails, phone calls, and office visits with the same question: “Which graduate school should I attend?” And I usually give the same answer: “What size pants do you wear?”
See, most graduate students have similar intellectual, interpersonal, and managerial capacity (plus or minus epsilon) and from my experience what determines success aren’t necessarily exceptional abilities in one of the three skills listed above. Rather, it comes down to fit. Think of it as a team sport, you might be an excellent athlete but you success depends on how well your talents fit within the team. You might be the fastest human alive, but if you team prefers to slow down the tempo on every possession you will never reach your full potential.
By now you should have started planning your visits to prospective graduate institutions and after your visit you should answer all of these questions with a strong “yes!” before accepting an offer:
1- Do I know about the general type of research I want to conduct and the infrastructure needed for such research (i.e. equipment, lab, training, etc.) Can my potential advisor provide such infrastructure?
If you want to conduct brain research, does the lab have access to an MRI machine? Does your group have a quota on the number of hours you can use the machine? How many other students will contribute to that quota? etc.
Basically, if you want to be a wizard you better have access to a wand. If you have any doubts about the group’s infrastructure you should seriously reconsider joining. That’s because infrastructure delay can eat-up months of your graduate career without even running a single experiment.
2-What is my working style and does it match the style of my potential advisor?
While there are numerous working-styles, graduate advisors can be broadly categorized into two groups: hands-off and micromanagers. Yes, these are the extremes but you should know at least which style you definitely don’t want to work for. For instance, if you are a creative type you might not want to work for a micromanager. However, if you tend to be bad with self-discipline, then maybe a micromanager is a better fit. Ask other students in the lab what is the prospective advisor’s working style. How do these students balance their working style with the advisor’s. If you feel uncomfortable with what you hear, it is very likely that it will be hard to maintain a good working relationship with that advisor.
3-What kind of person is my prospective advisor?
While a Ph.D. is billed as a solitary endeavor, it is much more about relationships than people think. If there are two skills every advisor should have they would be:appreciation and empathy. Neither of which deal with research or intelligence. Yes, as a student you will be the eternally overworked and under-appreciated research assistant (get over that already!) That being said, I have seen countless graduate students drop out because of the emotional abuse suffered from advisors and colleagues. This is not a joke. You need to find out right away if your prospective advisor is supportive and appreciative of his/her graduate students and colleagues. If not, I can almost guarantee you will have a miserable time working for that person. You may graduate and even do well with him/her, but emotionally you will be severely scarred. I believe graduate school is a wonderful part of your life that you should enjoy and not dread remembering. As a general rule of thumb an optimistic advisor tends to be more supportive and appreciative. So lookout for optimism!
4- What is the level of collaboration in the lab?
As I mentioned earlier, a Ph.D. is about relationships as well as excellent research. A lab where team members are supportive of one another can be a great environment to work in. You should closely examine if lab members collaborate on papers and experiments. If not, you should use your visit to figure out why. Once you find out, you should honestly evaluate whether you are you comfortable with that level of collaboration. When trying to answer that question you must be certain that the lab culture will allow you to be productive. For instance, I was once part of a group that had zero interactions! No journal club, no research updates, and certainly no collaborations. As you can guess, I was extremely unproductive in that environment.
Did I miss anything? Please let me know how your site visits go and if these pointers were useful?
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