28 Questions I Wish I Had Asked When Selecting My PhD Advisor
You’ve heard this before: One of the most important decisions in grad school is selecting a research advisor — also known as PI (principal investigator), research supervisor, or, wrongly, research “mentor”.
A good friend of mine says that in grad school, you’re forced to select two out of these three options:
- Good advisor
- Good team
- Good project
Contrary to how the selection process is usually run, the research project should have the least importance. If the project fails, you will probably feel bummed for a week or so but then can quickly pivot. If the advisor or team fails, however, you will have a challenging graduate school experience.
If you’re entering the process of selecting a research lab, keep in mind that no lab is perfect. You can de-risk your selection process, however, by asking questions and gathering data from prospective advisors.
Evidence-based introspection
Learning about the management style of potential research advisors is only one the first step. Next, you should compare what you learned from each lab to what you think will be a better fit for you.
At this stage, you can easily fall into a wishful thinking trap. Please, don’t.
Consider your previous research and work experiences and note what worked and what didn’t. List the aspects you think helped you thrive in those specific environments. In other words, to evaluate fit, take an evidence-based introspection approach in which you rely on facts about how you work, as well as what motivates and frustrates you.
Questions I wish I had asked
Some of the questions below are more suitable to ask prospective advisors directly, while others are more targeted towards members of the group. Like with any experiment, gather as many data points as you can. Most questions can be modified depending on whether you’re interviewing the faculty member or their students.
List of questions:
1. Advisor-student relationship: Will the advisor-student relationship be more casual (“let’s get a beer and chat about life”) or just formal, and work-focused?
2. Are there lab retreats or other opportunities for team building?
3. Is the advisor involved in the student’s professional development outside of research?
4. How would my project change if I am interested in academia vs. industry?
5. Where do lab alumni tend to go next? Postdoc, professorship, industry?
6. How long does it take on average to graduate from the lab?
7. How soon do papers get published — during the thesis, or towards the end or after defending?
8. Is there a funded project, or will I have to find my own funding and/or establish a new research area? How will this affect my timeline?
9. How long has the lab been around? Any plans to move? (good luck getting an answer on this one)
10. What kind of person thrives in this lab?
11. What do the lab demographics look like?
12. How would you describe lab culture?
13. How difficult is it to make progress in the lab? What makes it difficult?
14. Are projects well defined, and separate or will you be working as part of a collaborative team? How are roles assigned?
15. Is the lab (or its members) involved in any diversity initiatives?
16. In the case of an external fellowship holder, how does that affect (if at all) the type of project I get assigned to?
17. How busy is the advisor? Is it hard to get a meeting with them?
18. What’s the 1 on 1 meeting frequency? Do they prefer meetings within a structured schedule or as needed?
19. How often are lab meetings? How is the meeting structured?
20. How and when do they give feedback?
21. Does the advisor seek feedback? How do they react?
22. How involved are they during the manuscript-writing process? What about during the PhD proposal writing phase?
23. How would you describe the advisor’s management style? Are they micro-managers or more hands-off? How does this style affect your work/your student’s work?
24. Are they the kind of advisor to monitor their student’s time in the lab?
25. What skillset can I expect to develop from working on this specific project/in this lab?
26. How has the advisor responded in cases where a student has struggled — either because of personal or academic issues? Were they supportive?
27. Will I have the opportunity (or be forced to, depending on how you look at it) to write research grant proposals?
28. Is there anything else I should know that we haven’t discussed yet?
Pay attention to the excuses red flags
You will rarely have a lab member or prospective advisor tell you straight up what their red flags are. In my experience, however, red flags are often covered up by excuses.
“Oh, yeah, we don’t meet as often, but it’s because they’re so busy!”
“There have been some conflicts with lab members, but it’s because they’ve got a lot of pressure to get funding.”
Don’t ignore the red flags.
