Fresh assistant Professor vs. Full Proffesor

[Benjohnson84]

Hi,

I have been admitted to two different PhD programs. Both are tier 1, but the first one (program A) is a higher ranked university and has a program which exactly fits to my current research interest, both in my RA position and the curriculum. The second one (program B ) is in the same field, but not exactly a fit to my interest, though close.    

Program A has offered me funding for two years vs. program B for 4 years, with a bonus for the first year.

In program A, the adviser would be a new, tenure track assistant professor which would expect me to work more as I am the only and first assistant of her. However, in program B, my adviser would be a full professor who is experienced, easygoing and with lower expectations.

If I go to program B, I would be able to work on my current research interest, but probably not as much as in program A. However, I would be exposed to a more diverse research area and experiences. In program A, my adviser's research and my RA duties would be same as my current research in MS.

Climate and living conditions were not important for me, but with such relatively equal options, I lean toward the program B which is situated in a college town with warmer and less cloudy climate than program A.

What would you do in such a situation? Would you give priority to the research fit or more comfortable life and duties with hopes to have opportunities to do your own research?

 

 

 

 

[rising_star]

They both sound like they are a good research fit for you. It's good to go beyond your MS research to do other things (by which I mean gain more skills) because it can make you more valuable as a postdoc or if you go into industry. I'd go with B because the professor is experienced and because they're giving you more guaranteed years of funding.

[TakeruK]

What field are you in? And what does guaranteed funding mean in your field?

I ask this because in my field, the offer letter usually only states 1 year of guaranteed funding (with additional funding conditional on performance) but this means that everyone will continue to get funded unless they fail out of the program. So, in my field, offer letters with 2 years of funding vs 4 years of funding are equivalent.

I also think that in my field, the difference between a new TT professor and an experienced professor is mostly a preference of style. I know that in some fields, a full professor is required to chair your committee and/or new TT professors do not really supervise students (and/or students are advised to avoid these professors). But in other fields, there is pretty much no difference between full professor and new TT professors. I could have had my entire thesis committee made up of professors all hired in the last 4 years if I wanted to (but I chose not to). 

Some of the advantages of working with a new TT professor are: 1) they generally have a lot of projects and lots of things for you to and many of these things are new ideas so you might end up on the cutting edge of research, 2) they usually have a large startup grant and if you're their first/only student, you're going to be the biggest beneficiary of this large grant, 3) they want to gain a lot of visibility so they will likely send you to a lot of conferences, 4) they might be able to connect with you more readily since they were a grad student not long ago, 5) if you're also looking for non-academic jobs, they may still have network connections outside of academia (e.g. many of their friends probably left academia too and they may still be in touch).

Some of the advantages of working with an experienced professor are: 1) they have a large and reputable body of work and immense wisdom/experience that you can draw on when seeking help, 2) they may have a lot of existing grants that can pay for things, 3) they would have a very large research network, 4) you're entering a very established group and the projects might be more reliable/guaranteed to deliver good results.

A lot of this depends a lot on the specific person too. That's where the downsides could come in. A new TT Professor could turn out to not be that great of a researcher (although unlikely if they are hired at a top program like in your case) or they might end up leaving and moving (but established professors move too). An experienced professor may already be "past their prime" if you know what I mean, and they may not care as much about research output of their group since it doesn't matter to me as much. So, it's hard to say one is better than the other.

I've worked with both types of professors and they were both good experiences. Personally though, if I had to compare, I would slightly prefer my experience with the new professor over the experienced professor. I really liked being part of a new group and being one of the first students, and getting a chance to be part of shaping the group and training new students etc. But that's my personal preference.

[Eigen]

I think a lot of this is going to be field dependent- at least knowing STEM vs Social Science vs Humanities would be really helpful in giving more specific advice. 

[Benjohnson84]

Thanks for your helpful answers! 

I am in Natural Resources field. In program A, the TT professor says she would fund me for two years with the RA and research money and most likely, I have to find a TAship or grants afterward to fund my studies. My offer in program B is a RA which is extendable for 4 years and the first year has a 50% more as an excellence fellowship. Both letters mention for 1 year, extendable upon performance.

@TakeruK: I have thought about all the factors you mentioned. I agree with you about the TT adviser, but as a con it might be that I will be overloaded due to the high work load and expectations of the professor. 

The other facts which I am considering are the living conditions in College Station, TX (program B ) vs. Columbus, OH (program A) which I prefer the former since it is a college town and has a preferable climate. Plus, the first year 50% bonus in the program B provides comfort and security in the beginning for an international student. I don't know how important are these!  

 

[TakeruK]

7 hours ago, Benjohnson84 said:

Thanks for your helpful answers! 

I am in Natural Resources field. In program A, the TT professor says she would fund me for two years with the RA and research money and most likely, I have to find a TAship or grants afterward to fund my studies. My offer in program B is a RA which is extendable for 4 years and the first year has a 50% more as an excellence fellowship. Both letters mention for 1 year, extendable upon performance.

@TakeruK: I have thought about all the factors you mentioned. I agree with you about the TT adviser, but as a con it might be that I will be overloaded due to the high work load and expectations of the professor. 

The other facts which I am considering are the living conditions in College Station, TX (program B ) vs. Columbus, OH (program A) which I prefer the former since it is a college town and has a preferable climate. Plus, the first year 50% bonus in the program B provides comfort and security in the beginning for an international student. I don't know how important are these!  

 

For the funding issue, then the only major factor remaining is whether or not finding a TAship in your 3rd year at Program A will be a sure thing or very tricky. Usually programs set up like this will have it be a "sure thing" but you should check with both the faculty and the current students (ask: has there been any students who wanted a TAship in 3rd year but did not get one?). If it is not a sure thing, then I would pick Program B in a heartbeat because being stuck without funding after committing 2 years is really really bad. However, if it is a sure thing, then Program B is still favourable in this aspect, because in general, RA funding is less time commitment on your part than TA funding (as you already state, I think).

For the work load issue, how do you know that your Advisor at Program A will push you beyond what you are comfortable with? Did they say this to you directly (if so, then wow, I'm really glad people are so up front and honest!)? Or did current students tell you about the workload. If so, then yeah these are good things to think about. But, if you are just guessing based on stereotypes about new TT professors then it might not be a good idea to put so much weight on this concern. My new TT advisor does not push me to work any more than I am comfortable. My advisor themselves sets limits on their workday---they do not work on weekends and keeps very reasonable hours in the office (~9:30am to 5pm, and maybe a little bit of reading/writing in the evening). My advisor encourages having a healthy work-life balance in their students too and I am glad that they lead by example in this regard.

[Benjohnson84]

3 hours ago, TakeruK said:

For the funding issue, then the only major factor remaining is whether or not finding a TAship in your 3rd year at Program A will be a sure thing or very tricky. Usually programs set up like this will have it be a "sure thing" but you should check with both the faculty and the current students (ask: has there been any students who wanted a TAship in 3rd year but did not get one?). If it is not a sure thing, then I would pick Program B in a heartbeat because being stuck without funding after committing 2 years is really really bad. However, if it is a sure thing, then Program B is still favourable in this aspect, because in general, RA funding is less time commitment on your part than TA funding (as you already state, I think).

For the work load issue, how do you know that your Advisor at Program A will push you beyond what you are comfortable with? Did they say this to you directly (if so, then wow, I'm really glad people are so up front and honest!)? Or did current students tell you about the workload. If so, then yeah these are good things to think about. But, if you are just guessing based on stereotypes about new TT professors then it might not be a good idea to put so much weight on this concern. My new TT advisor does not push me to work any more than I am comfortable. My advisor themselves sets limits on their workday---they do not work on weekends and keeps very reasonable hours in the office (~9:30am to 5pm, and maybe a little bit of reading/writing in the evening). My advisor encourages having a healthy work-life balance in their students too and I am glad that they lead by example in this regard.

I am the first PhD and RA student, so nobody knows how she is going to assign works to me! But, she ounce told me that she would expect me to work all the 20 hours and she is strict on it and she, herself, works a lot as she is busy! Maybe I am considering the worst case, but it might happen as I heard from my friends experiences. 

[TakeruK]

6 minutes ago, Benjohnson84 said:

I am the first PhD and RA student, so nobody knows how she is going to assign works to me! But, she ounce told me that she would expect me to work all the 20 hours and she is strict on it and she, herself, works a lot as she is busy! Maybe I am considering the worst case, but it might happen as I heard from my friends experiences. 

To me, this does not sound any different from any other RA appointment. I have never heard a professor say something like "I am going to pay you 20 hours a week for this RAship but you don't have to work all 20 hours." Also, if you are in a field where your RA appointment is actually work on your own dissertation (like my field), then you will be working much more than 20 hours a week on the RA appointment! Right now, I am paid as an RA 20 hours per week for my thesis work but I probably work for 40-45 hours per week on thesis work, like a full time job since I don't have any other work (no classes, no TAing right now). In other fields, the RAship is actually work outside of your own thesis work (and you don't get paid for thesis work) so in those cases I would work just what the contract says. But when it's my own thesis work, I think the expectation is that you want to put more hours into it so that you can get a good thesis (and a job) out of it. So, I view my 40-45 hours per week as 20 hours paid work and 20-25 hours "coursework" (technically thesis work is a course I am taking). But that's just one way to view it "on paper". The RAship is paid at a pretty high hourly rate, something like $30/hour. Practically, I think of it as getting paid $15/hour to do 40-45 hours of work per week and to get my PhD. 

** Also, as an international student, we are not allowed to work (on paper) more than 20 hours per week, which is why almost all TA and RAships are "on paper" 20 hours per week.

So, I would not interpret the professor's comment about expecting to work all of your paid hours as meaning you will be overworked. If the professor has said something like "I expect my students to work 80 hours per week" (as some professors have actually said!) then I would be concerned. 

[juilletmercredi]

It sounds like you are leaning towards B, so I'd go there.

I agree with TakeruK's characterization of what makes a new assistant professor different from a full professor. There are pros and cons in each situation, and what matters more than the rank itself is the personality and character of the individual doing the mentoring. One thing to note, though, is that new assistant professors tend to be very busy, especially when they hit mid-stream for their tenure file. My primary advisor in graduate school was an assistant professor who was on his third year (out of eight) on the tenure track when I started graduate school; he went up for tenure the same year I wrote my dissertation. He's a great person, warm, friendly, and generally attempts to be helpful. However, he was completely distracted as time went on. Particularly at top-tier research universities, assistant professors in the mid-years of their tenure stream tend to travel a lot as they attempt to set up a national reputation for themselves (often a criterion upon which they are judged), and then in the later years they are trying to push out the last of their papers and gather file materials. If you are independent, motivated, driven, and have a good idea of the professionalization you need to do to get where you want to go, that can be good for you - you can hop on all those papers, organize symposia, tag along at conferences and generally ride the train with your advisor. If you don't - and you need a little more guidance - this can be...not so great. (I thought that I was in the former, but it turns out that I was actually somewhere in the middle.)

Likewise, being funded for fewer years can be positive in a twisted way. In my doctoral program I was only funded for the first three years, with the expectation that I would bring in a grant or fellowship to cover the rest. It made me very motivated to apply out, and it made me start thinking very early about the grant/money machine that is academia. your thinking when you graduate and go to a postdoc is very different if you've had to work to cobble together support (much the way a professor does) than if you've just relied on a fellowship for 5 years. (That said, I wouldn't necessarily wish that on anyone as they are trying to get through a PhD program. More funding is almost always better!)

My secondary advisor in graduate school was a full professor who was pretty much exactly what you described - experienced, easygoing, had generally lower expectations. He had a sort of laissez-faire glide about it, and a lot of clout in the department and in the field in general, which was really helpful on a large scale. On the other hand, he had far fewer active projects going on in his research group to work on. And although he had published prolifically in the past, his publication clip was slower - so there wasn't a lot for me to co-author with him (we did get one thing out together). Also, he spent 2 of the 6 years I was in my program on sabbatical. (One was a fake sabbatical - he was around and available, he just happened to be writing a book and not teaching any classes. The second one was a real sabbatical, which ALSO just happened to be the same year I was writing my dissertation. So yeah, in my dissertation year I had one advisor who was AWOL trying to get tenure and another who was on sabbatical and literally not physically present or easily reachabe for 9 months. FUN.)

Anyway, coming back around full circle, it sounds like you want B and like B is a good fit for you in a lot of ways. So go to B.