How to choose PhD advisor
Peter Chen
http://bbs.creaders.net/education/bbsviewer.php?trd_id=884488
Most PhD students do not realize that their career fates in US or other industrialized
countries are often determined on the day they have chosen their PhD advisors.
Typically, an average PhD candidate in a US university is intelligent enough to
become a CEO of a company, a wall-street trader, or a professor in a US major research
university. However, most PhD graduates will not end up at their desirable jobs,
even if they work very hard and have strong motivations. In fact, many top university
PhD graduates cannot find decent jobs in US, while many people who earn their
PhD degrees from median universities become professors, industrial leaders, CEOs,
etc. Unfortunately, many PhD students are misled by the rankings of
universities and particularly the rankings of undergraduate colleges. An
essential fact is that in this top level of professional trainings, it is one’s
PhD advisor, rather than one’s university, that determines one’s career future.
For a hard-working PhD candidate, one can foresee his/her
career fate by the job statistics of one’s PhD advisor’s former PhD graduates. For
a senior professor who has produced more than 10 PhD graduates, the job statistics
is quite accurate. If 75% of the former PhD graduates are currently professors in
major research universities, then an average current student in the group will
most likely end up as a professor in a major research university in the future
too. Similarly, if 75% of the former PhD graduates cannot find jobs, then an
average current PhD student in the group will most likely become unemployed on
the day of his/her graduation. Note that for chemistry, physics, mathematics,
computer science, etc, one can find a list of one’s former group members at
genealogy webpages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_genealogy.
Additionally, if one’s PhD advisor is a very senior professor who is
near the end of his/her career, one has to pay a close attention to the job
statistics of recent PhD graduates in the past 5 years. Very often, such a
senior professor is in a rapidly decaying (old) field and does not have the
energy and knowledge to move to a new field (why bother if one is going to
retire in 5 years?). Then, his/her current students will be most likely to face
more difficulties in finding desirable jobs than group’s statistics would
suggest. There are exceptions, though --- some true researchers always enjoy
new ideas and new fields. However, such senior professors are few and far
between.
On the other hand, if one’s PhD advisor is a junior professor who has
not yet produced enough PhD graduates to offer a good statistics, then there is
more uncertainty. Sometimes, an excellent student can help shaping the
advisor’s career profile in this situation. A good thing is that the junior
professor usually works hard and tries to get his/her tenure. However, in
general, a junior advisor offers less help in your career development. In this
case, the ranking of one’s university may play a more important role in one’s
job hunting.
If you are a foreign PhD student, you actually should use the aforementioned
job statistics with caution because it is not applicable to you directly. It is
typically more difficulty for a foreign PhD student to find a desirable job in
US, such as a faculty position, than one’s American lab-mates. Typically, to
offset one’s culture and language disadvantages, foreign PhD students need to put
about threefold more effort to achieve the same career goals. For example, if
it takes about 4 papers for an average America PhD student to find a faculty
job, an average foreign PhD student may have to produce more than 10 papers of the
same quality to find a similar faculty position. Therefore, one should pay more
attention to the statistics of former foreign PhD graduates in the lab, which
is more suitable for one’s case. If one cannot find all data for the statistics
of one’s advisor’ former PhD graduates, one can check a couple of other crucial
indicators, namely, advisor’s publication record and grant record. Publication
record can be easily found at ``Web of Science’’. One should pay a close
attention to the publication in the last five years, which are roughly
equivalent to the publication period of a student with his/her advisor. If a PhD advisor publishes only about 2 papers with each of his/her
typical PhD student and the number of papers for a successful job seeker on the
job market is 8, the PhD candidate will have a great difficulty to fulfill
his/her job goal with such an advisor.
Note that one’s career development depends crucially on one’s advisor’s
academic status, reputation and connection. A minimal requirement for an advisor
to be a qualified one is that he/she should regularly have external research
grants in his/her career, except for people in some disciplines such as social
sciences and liberal arts where federal research grants might be rare. This is not an issue for a PhD candidate who is
supported by a research assistantship (RA) from his/her advisor. On the other
hand, if one is, or is going to be, supported by a teaching assistantship (TA)
from one’s department, one has to watch out pitfalls. Many advisors might never
have any external grant, which means their academic statuses are very low in
their fields. Typically, by playing local politics, these advisors are able to have
PhD students either as their cannon fodders or as their career savers (Be aware
that people who are inactive in research usually have much more time to play local
politics). Unfortunately, these advisors might deliberately conceal partial or
full information from their (potential) students. However, it is quite easy to do
an ``Award Search’’ in public domains to find out an advisor’s grant situation.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Health Institute (NIH) are
among the most respected funding agencies. There are some other useful indications
of academic status: committees of professional organizations and conferences,
editorships of international journals, and panels of federal funding agencies. In
fact, NIH study section members are in public domain. Typically, a PhD
candidate’s career is on a dead-end track if his/her advisor’s academic status
is very low. To avert this fate, one should
either switch to a qualified advisor or change a school as soon as possible.
Finally, a good advisor is typically willing to spend time on his/her
students, cares about his/her students’ career development, responses to
students’ needs and first of all, has a superb job record for his/her former
PhD graduates. However, what contributes to a good advisor is a complicated and
subjective issue. A good PhD advisor for one student might not be a good one
for another person. The last word is
that it makes no sense to spend about four or five years to pursue a PhD degree
if it does not lead you to a decent career.
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