foreign professors and postgrad job placement

[Quantum Buckyball]

Here is my 2 cents of the day and it's something for the prospective students to think about when selecting a research group.

 

If you decide to join a research group full of foreign students and the PI is a foreigner himself/herself, and the group is publishing a great number of publications/year. Then, you are mostly will have a tough(er) time to land a job (both academia and industry) in the US after graduation, because there is always a bias against foreign groups like this and there is nothing you can do about it despise of your excellent track record and the number of publications. Of course,

 

if you are an international student yourself, then you should know that there are research groups that do not take international students and only domestic students, even if you have a killer GRE/sub GRE score, a Masters, and published >3 papers. 

 

When you visiting the school(s) of interest, make sure you ask the current students about this question. Do not ask the professor(s) this question because they are most likely will deny it, but track record doesn't lie, people lie. 

Edited February 26, 2014 by Quantum Buckyball

[St Andrews Lynx]

Not necessarily. If a "foreign" professor did his PhD & postdoc in the USA, and is well-established in the States then their connections will be just as good as any "American" professor. Also, a huge chunk professors in American universities come from somewhere else - as do the grad students. I'd say "Good Luck" if you want to find a 100% American research lab to work in.

 

I find this post slightly irritating to me because I *am* a foreigner in a foreigner-heavy research group (albeit not a mono-ethnic one), and I don't think that what you've said is necessarily true, or that big of an issue. It seems more like an excuse to complain about foreigners...

[Quantum Buckyball]

Not necessarily. If a "foreign" professor did his PhD & postdoc in the USA, and is well-established in the States then their connections will be just as good as any "American" professor. Also, a huge chunk professors in American universities come from somewhere else - as do the grad students. I'd say "Good Luck" if you want to find a 100% American research lab to work in.

 

I find this post slightly irritating to me because I *am* a foreigner in a foreigner-heavy research group (albeit not a mono-ethnic one), and I don't think that what you've said is necessarily true, or that big of an issue. It seems more like an excuse to complain about foreigners...

 

I am aware that the way I worded may sound a bit offensive to someone, but the post was meant for the prospective students and encourage them to ask sensitive questions during visitation weekends. 

[DropTheBase]

Asking the grad students isn't going to give you anything useful either. At most, they only know the experiences of a few group members who graduated. No one can make a decent conclusion based on a sample size that small. 

 

This question can easily be answered by looking up where all the group alumni went. That information is usually on the group webpage. If not, you can usually Google all the names of the group alumni.

 

Not to mention, there are so many factors that influence job placement that it would be absurd to even consider this while selecting a group. Students first have to make it through their PhDs before even thinking about landing a job.

 

Lastly, prospectives shouldn't think about selecting groups during visitations. There's no guarantee they'll even get to work with the professors they like most. They should just focus on fit. 

[loginofpscl]

There may be some merit to your recommendation, but as long as the PI is well regarded by other PIs it shouldn't be a problem. It's worth asking about, and you should probably do your homework as well (where they did their PhD/postdoc, where are their students now...) This is true for any PI you're considering, domestic or not. I imagine that a PI from an R1 institution is pretty well regarded by their peers: you do not get hired, or get tenure, at an R1 without being respected by your peers.

[Quantum Buckyball]

Asking the grad students isn't going to give you anything useful either. At most, they only know the experiences of a few group members who graduated. No one can make a decent conclusion based on a sample size that small. 

 

This question can easily be answered by looking up where all the group alumni went. That information is usually on the group webpage. If not, you can usually Google all the names of the group alumni.

 

Not to mention, there are so many factors that influence job placement that it would be absurd to even consider this while selecting a group. Students first have to make it through their PhDs before even thinking about landing a job.

 

Lastly, prospectives shouldn't think about selecting groups during visitations. There's no guarantee they'll even get to work with the professors they like most. They should just focus on fit. 

 

 

There are plenty of research groups without a website. Over 70% of the physical chemistry research groups at my school either don't have a website, or have a website that hasn't been updated for over 10 years. Professors are not required to have a website online, most of them only have a short version of CV, which typically don't have the information regarding what happened to the former students.

[bsharpe269]

Lastly, prospectives shouldn't think about selecting groups during visitations. There's no guarantee they'll even get to work with the professors they like most. They should just focus on fit. 

 

How would someone focus on fit without selecting a group? Shouldnt we be applying to the grad programs where the top 10-15 people in our subfield are?

[DropTheBase]

There are plenty of research groups without a website. Over 70% of the physical chemistry research groups at my school either don't have a website, or have a website that hasn't been updated for over 10 years. Professors are not required to have a website online, most of them only have a short version of CV, which typically don't have the information regarding what happened to the former students.

 

I'll concede on this point. The way I decided which schools to apply to was by finding 2-3 professors whose research interested me. A few of those professors were personally recommended to me by my undergraduate research advisor, but for the majority: if the professors didn't have websites, I likely wouldn't have found them, meaning I wouldn't apply to their schools. So I don't have any experience with this situation.

 

 

How would someone focus on fit without selecting a group? Shouldnt we be applying to the grad programs where the top 10-15 people in our subfield are?

 

Let me clarify: "selecting" a research group refers to actually committing to a single professor. For all the schools I visited, professors were very much prohibited from promising students spots in their labs. Things change by the time you arrive: the professor doesn't get funding renewed, there are other grad students who want to work for your POI but there's limited space....etc. It's very dangerous to select a school based on your hopes of only working for one professor. The best thing to do is keep an open mind and find more than one professor that you think you can be happy with, in addition to all the other factors that influence grad student life.

 

 

(At risk of derailing this thread...) applying to schools where the top 10-15 in your subfield are is a fine strategy, but making a decision to attend a school based on that is a very different story. There are numerous threads on GradCafe about research fit vs. ranking.  

[St Andrews Lynx]

There are also a whole lot of home-grown American Professors whose all-American students struggle to find jobs, too. 

 

I'd say there isn't really a magical nationality/ethnicity formula that can predict what your job prospects are going to be like after working in one research group.

[wishfulthinking2]

Also look at the publications. Some PIs have former group members magically "disappear" from their group web sites.

[Quantum Buckyball]

Also look at the publications. Some PIs have former group members magically "disappear" from their group web sites.

 

It would be very hard to track down the disappeared members I think... some professors only list the former students that landed a job on their page which is a bit ....deceiving ..

Edited March 27, 2014 by Quantum Buckyball