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There are oh so many things to say; I am sure I will forget some. Please
send me any info you have that
is of use.
Finding a Graduate Institution and Advisor
After spending most of a weekend advising prospective graduate students
and I found myself saying a lot of the same things, so maybe I have
achieved a state of cognitive coherence that will allow me to offer
some useful advice on this subject.
Finding a school - Know what you want, but prioritize
This will depend on what is most important to you. There are some key
factors that often come up:
- Your Needs
- Salary - is it enough to support an adequate quality of life
for your? Will you need to get financial aid?
- Medical benefits - do you get them (if you don't, I recommend
finding another school)? Will you have to pay for them (unfortunately
many schools take money back from you for this)?
- How well do they treat graduate students? Some schools treat
graduate students well, confering a full range of benefits upon
them; however, Brown University (Providence, RI) will not even
confer the protection of workers' compensation (I recommend you
don't go there).
- Location
- Urban, suburban, college town?
- Local, same country, foreign country?
- Climate?
- Cost of living?
- Prestige - be careful what you wish for.
- School - if you can, you should try to take a step up or at
least sideways during each phase of your academic career. If you
take a step back and go from a great school to a good school,
there should be a good reason. A specific and strong desire to
work in a research area is usually the best reason.
- Advisor - see
- Programs - do they have the program you want?
- Research area
- Time you spend narrowing down your areas of interest will be
invaluable
- I know what I want to do - are advisors doing the work you want
to do?
- I do not know what I want to do - Do not sweat too much if you
do not know exactly what it is that you want to do; however, you
should at least look at prospective schools and identify if there
are things that you would not mind doing. I would not consider
a school that did not have at least three advisors with work that
sounded like something I wanted to do
Visiting the school - Do it!
- Talk to the advisor
- What would you do?
- How long will it take to earn your degree?
- Where have past students ended up?
- Does he have tenure? (you may want to ask someone else this
questions)
- Warning: there is often a period of up to one year in which
students are in a "honeymoon" period and the advisor
is unusually nice, patient, tolerant, etc.
- Talk to the graduate students! A prospect once asked me what
questions to ask their advisor, my answer was: Ask them, "Where
are your graduate students, and can you please leave the room?"
Advisors enthusiastically put prospective students in touch with graduate
students in their lab if there is nothing amiss, because graduate
students can address many of the concerns the prospect has, and they
can spend a lot more time with them. If you are not allowed to talk
to the graduate students, then the advisor is likely hiding something,
and that is not good. If there are no graduate students, then you
should find out why - is he a new professor or has he driven them
all away?
- Beware naivety - The first year or two of graduate school can
be dominated by a very naive perception. Depending on the advisor,
he may not have had any great demands of the student. His tasks
thus far may have been interesting and challenging but not frustrating
and years-long.
- Beware excessive bitterness - Starting in about the fourth year,
students can be prone to an inappropriate amount of bitterness.
Graduate school involves work on a time scale that is somewhat unique.
It is generally not filled with lots of little, immediately gratifying
tasks. It is also easy to get caught up with trying to reach a point
of resolution that encourages a student to work incessantly for
an extended time. This can create a very dark and hostile mindset,
especially if you catch the student at the tail end of such a period.
It's growing pains, plain and simple.
- Talk to all of the graduate students - your best information will
come from talking to all of the graduate students. That will help
you identify what are personal issues and which are lab-wide.
- Questions
- How long is a typical work week? work day?
- Do you have to work evenings? weekends?
- How often do they attend conferences?
- How often do they get publications?
- How long does it take to earn a degree?
- What is the nature of the work?
- What is their advisor really like?
- How much do they see their advisor?
- How accountable are they to deadlines and such? Do they need
to accomplish something daily and report, or are they given
larger goals and given more freedom to generally make progress?
Finding your advisor - Set personal priorities
- Prestige - this can be a blessing and a curse. Working in a high
profile lab can really give you a sense of making a significant contribution
to the world. The more prestigious your advisor, the more clout he
has, which usually means you will have the resources you need to do
research; however, there will be less avenues of appeal if you have
any problems in your advisor relationship. Generally, hours of work
and pressure will scale proportionally with prestige; I doubt anyone
will be able to fix the constant for that relationship anytime soon
- Mentoring - generally more prevalent in low profile labs
- Research equipment & supplies - generally more abundant
and newer in high profile labs
- Length of work week - generally longer in high profile labs
- Pressure - often varies widely, but generally higher in high
profile labs
- Job prospects - if you are staying in the same field, then there
may be almost no difference, but a very high prestige advisor's
reputation crosses discipline lines and can facilitate jobs outside
of your field.
- Time to Ph.D. - that often has little to do with prestige, although
a high prestige advisor might feel more justified in keeping a
student longer to enjoy the privilege of working with such a prestigious
researcher. :-)
- Example 1: A friend of mine worked in a low profile lab. His
work week was very manageable and flexible. He was able to maintain
a full life outside of work with little difficulty. He had a
lot
of very good mentoring and received his Ph.D. in a timely fashion.
He easily secured a post-Doc in a very similar field, then went
on to a Research Scientist position at a University.
- Example 2: Another friend worked in a very high profile lab.
He had little mentoring, had an erratic schedule, and sometimes
a great deal of pressure. More than once, his schedule was subordinated
completely and suddenly by work. However, he always had ready
access to the materials he needed for research, to include the
resources to buy whatever he needed. He went on to a prestigious
post-Doc position at a prestigious school and will likely have
a great pick of faculty positions. This sort of environment can
be sink or swim, but if you survive it, you can be a very strong
swimmer indeed when you finish.
Graduate School Timeline
Generally, the timeline for Physics (in years) is as follows:
- Woo-hoo, science is soo cool!
- I am making progress and classes are over forever. Yeah!
- Are you sure I can't just finish up now?
- Will this ever end? [Some Chemistry and Biology Ph.D.s awarded
by now]
- What do I have to do before you will release me from this prison?
[Most Chemistry and Biology Ph.D.s awarded by now]
- Just hand over the Ph.D. and no one gets hurt. [Most Physics Ph.D.s
awarded by now]
- Please shoot me.
- Please shoot me.
- Please shoot me.
- Please shoot me.
The lesson here is don't stay in graduate school too long. The deficient
pay, respect, and authority will grind you down. This can be mitigated
by good advisors and good projects, but there is something to be said
for moving on. If you stay too long, you can get stuck in a rut. Don't
stress if you take a year or two longer than your buddy. People
get out earlier for lots of reasons and in my experience it is rarely
because
they were gifted, usually it was necessity (spouse moving, family member
needs assistance, job opportunity) or blind luck (falling into an project
with an easily obtained result and/or minimal complications from good
ol' mother nature).
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