Choosing between advisors and different research areas

[adelashk]

Hello all,

It has been a while since I last posted something on TGC. I am deciding between a couple of advisors who are willing to advise me. How would I choose between advisors? What are the most important factors after research area? Should I consider the fact that one area might be easier (in terms of advisor difficulty/expectations)? What about advisor's background and reputation? Any factors I have not mentioned? (assume funding is not an issue/factor)

Thanks

Edited June 24, 2012 by adelashk

[Cici Beanz]

Whose work is most in line with your goals?

[ktel]

I was in your position and went with the research area I thought I wanted to learn and then my next criteria was based on reputation mostly. Although it was a really tough choice. I am just doing a Master's degree and was open to several different research areas.

[TakeruK]

My current and former advisors told me that I should also look for someone who would train me well as a scientist (i.e. writing papers clearly, making efficient presentations). Sometimes the best researchers aren't very good at training graduate students. It's hard to find this out yourself though -- you'd have to ask their former grad students, or other students in their department, or faculty members that you know and know these people.

My advisor also suggested that I make sure my potential PhD advisor will have good projects/opportunities for me. He suggested that I find out their former students and then look up papers coauthored by the two of them, especially while the student was still a PhD student. See if they do interesting projects, if they have papers out, etc. Also good to find out where their former students have gone and what they have done.

If your goal after PhD is post-doc/academia, my advisor thinks you should make sure you get to work on something that is both interesting to you and the research community in 5 years. You don't want to be doing a project you love but not interesting to others in your field. You want to make sure you are working on something that will get you known in your field as an expert on topic X, and you want topic X to be interesting so that other departments would want to hire you so that they can have an expert in topic X. You also don't want to be part of a project where you are just a "gear in the (paper) machine". Some profs will have some model that they thought up a long time ago and they might get their grads students to do the menial work of applying that model to experiments/data and writing up papers comparing them. It's a good introduction to research type project but not something you want to do as a PhD thesis!

I think this advice is pretty good and it helped me decide for Fall 2012 a bit. Other factors that are important to me are how well we get along during visits/skype/etc., expectations of the advisor (one prof has group meetings on Sunday afternoons, no thanks!), how much they micromanage (I prefer a little bit, 1 or 2 weekly meetings is ideal for me), how much travel will you get to do (for my MSc, we kind of agreed on sending me to 1 conference per year during my prospective visit), and how much funding the prof has (find out if they have big grants). I also like to ask them about themselves -- what do they do for fun (one prof said, astronomy is his one and only passion) and I think I get along better with people who have families and might understand that my career isn't my overall #1 priority in life.

Edited June 24, 2012 by TakeruK

[ladyling]

I think it's critical that your advisor be someone you can work with and someone you can trust. Honestly, to me that's more important than having an advisor who works on the same types of projects that I do, because you can always ask other faculty for help if you need it. A lot depends on you, though. Are you someone who works independently with little prodding? Do you have a good sense of your own limits? Are you a perfectionist, or do you tend to scrape by? If you're good at working on your own, you want someone who can help you suss out what to do next but who won't constantly breathe down your neck. On the other hand, if you need pressure to get work done, someone who will ask about your progress regularly might be better for you. One tension I found in picking an advisor was whether to pick someone later in their career who was established and knew how things *had* been done, or whether to pick someone who had just started out and really knew what the job market was like, etc. In the end, I picked both. In many (but not all) programs, that's an option, too.

Edited June 24, 2012 by ladyling

[adelashk]

Thanks for the replies everyone, this is not an easy decision. The first advisor's research is in the area I am very familiar with yet I feel like he is a bit more distant. The other advisor is in a very specific research area that is not very popular yet he seems more chill. I think I am leaning towards the first advisor since I should not pursue something that just looks more laid back, that defies the purpose of why I applied to graduate school in the first place!

Thanks again for the insight.