POI: Experience vs. Program Ranking?

[EdSocPhD]

Hi, 

I'm curious to hear what people think about this situation in general. I've narrowed it down to two universities, both with POIs who fit my interests really well and with whom I think I'd get along in the long-term. Professor A is an older, bigger name in a lower-ranking department with a lot of resources. Professor B is very new (hired in the past 2-3 years) but probably up-and-coming name, and in a higher-ranked department. I've heard that bigger names may be a better bet for external grants, research opportunities, etc., but I've also heard that younger professors might have the advantage of being more energetic and in-tune with more recent work and where the field is going.

I'm leaning towards Professor B's school for reasons mostly unrelated to the POI decision. Has anyone here had (or heard of others having) really wonderful or horrible experiences with a younger/less experienced adviser? 

[juilletmercredi]

I'd say that your listed advantages of bigger names/more experienced professors are generally true, but the listed ones for younger/less experiences professors are more of a mixed bag. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I don't think they're really that true - it really depends on the level of the professor herself and her own personality. For example, I think there's a marked difference between a mid-career associate professor who was awarded tenure maybe 2-3 years ago, but is still trying for national reputation or promotion to full professor (or who has to fund part of their salary with grants) and a full professor near the end of their career. And even then, there was a famous professor emeritus in my department who could go toe to toe with any of the young whippersnappers coming in on new developments in the field. He was still very research active, and still took on students, and was basically emeritus in name only. I've had more experienced mentors who were slowing down a bit and I've had more experienced mentors who published a lot, very often, very quickly.

Luckily that is the kind of thing that you can check out. Look for the more experienced professor's recent publications and grant work - what has she done in the last 5 years? You can check out NIH RePORTER or the NSF website to see what grants she's been awarded when and on what. Chat with her students and they should be able to tell you how productive she is and her expectations for work. They should also be able to tell you how connected she is to the current pulse of the field.

My primary advisor in graduate school was a new up-and-comer in the field who had been hired in the 2-3 years prior to me beginning the program. He went up for tenure the year I finished my dissertation and graduated (my university had a long tenure clock). I had an overall positive experience with him as a mentor, with some notes. He was trying to get tenure at a university that historically denies tenure to most assistant professors they hire and also requires professors to pay the majority of their salary on grants, so he was very "hungry" so to speak. As a result, there were always papers and grants being written in the research group, and I had the opportunity to observe these processes up close and see how it was done. When I graduated from grad school, I felt like I had a really, really good handle on the business of academia and what needed to be done in order to succeed in a postdoc and secure a tenure-track position, as well as a bit of what getting tenure looked like at a top R1. (In fact, my view may have been too good, because I resolutely did not want to do what he did.) My mentor was also a warm, personable person and pretty good at transmitting advice and feedback to students, so I felt like his mentorship in certain areas - like the improvement of my writing and thinking as a scholar - were pretty good.

The other side of this, though, is that young hungry assistant professors are also very very busy. Yes, all professors are busy, but assistant professors in the middle of their tenure cycle (where your professor will be, should you choose to attend her school) are busy in a way that affects them differently psychically. They spend the first couple of years struggling to put together a research group big enough to sustain the fast clip of work they want to do, potentially transforming dissertation and postdoc work into papers, and getting their research program off the ground. And the next couple of years after that are a panoply of travel as they have to establish a national reputation (at top departments, at least) to get tenure and elicit good external letters of rec from the field. I remember my advisor basically going from trip to trip to trip with a couple days or maybe a week on the ground in between. (I felt bad for him. He seemed very tired.) And in my last year, he was preparing his tenure file and making plans, so...yes. I imagine it's probably very emotionally exhausting to be so worried about your own career and then have to turn around and try to develop the career of someone else, especially when you yourself are not so much farther along than they are. The lack of experience also shows in different ways. Everyone has to learn on someone and I was independent enough that I didn't mind being the guinea pig, but my advisor essentially had no frame of reference for getting people out into the job market or what you needed to do to be successful other than his own very, very atypical application process. Experienced advisors who have graduated dozens of students have more perspective.

And then there's always the spectre of what if they don't get tenure? What will you do? If the tenure clock is normal at your school (~6 years) then you may be just about halfway through the program when your advisor has to leave if she doesn't get tenure. Will you still want to be in that department if she does not?

For all of these reasons, I always advise students considering working with an untenured assistant professor to adopt a more experienced mentor - formally or informally - as a secondary person. Due to the nature of my program I had to have a secondary mentor and mine was a big name in the field and a very experienced person. There are many advantages to having an experienced, well-known professor in your corner. Grants, papers, postdocs, networking...all of it. Even clout within the department of getting things done - there were a few times during which mentioning my second mentors name made things magically happen. So at Program B, is there another experienced mentor you can identify as someone you might want to work with? The research fit doesn't have to be perfect; it just needs to be someone you feel like you can get to know, maybe work on a paper or two with, and who might be in your corner, go to bat for you, write you recommendation letters when the time comes, etc.

[eternallyephemeral]

I don't think there's anything to add onto @juilletmercredi as far as recommendations go. That basically sums it up, quite perfectly in my opinion. I'll just share some of my experiences, if that helps.

I've had a range of supervisors (disclaimer: in my undergraduate research). One of my supervisors was officially emeritus, but he still had many students and was constantly working on projects. This older, more established supervisor also had wonderful statistics and experimental design skills, and a lot of experience so he could recommend to us which avenues to pursue and which to avoid, without having the anxiety and stress that comes with trying to do fast turnaround work. I also worked with a full professor doing administrative work, who had a very large lab but still made time to meet with us. This prof was extremely productive and definitely not slowing down anytime soon. I've also worked with a very productive department chair, who stayed productive due to co-supervising and sharing students with other professors, and a new associate (so newly tenured) professor that was still very 'hungry' so to speak, without the career concerns of a pre-tenure professor.

So it's really up to you, but definitely think about what would happen if your supervisor at school B moved because they did not get tenure.