Which faculty is more willing to supervise PhDs

[dreamerr33]

Hii,

I wish to apply for a PhD in Social sciences starting in the fall 2018 sessions in some of the Top US Universities. So I was searching for faculty with common research interests as that of mine in the department websites. I came across three types of them.

The Associate professors, Assistant professors and Professors

So I was wondering which of the three types of faculty would be more willing to supervise PhD students? Which faculty has more time?

[PokePsych]

That depends on a lot of things other than just their title - including budget, nr of students already working in their lab, whether or not they may plan to move soon, potential retirement, things in their private/personal life, etc. etc. 

I've worked with people at all three stages during my Master's. The assistant was great but also cared a lot (more than the others) about publishing, getting his name out there, etc. As he just came in he didn't have a lot of responsibilities in terms of projects/supervision yet so we ended up working quite closely. He was also less experienced in supervision though which let to some small clashes with some people in one of the group projects we did together.

The associate was cool - he just had a giant grant so he was taking on a lot of people to make use of the money. So he was quite busy but good.

The prof was involved in a bit too many projects and not always on top of his game. Had however an amazing network and gave me a lot of independence (was too busy anyway lol). 

 

However, I think most of these differences were related to their personalities, money, etc. 

[TakeruK]

Yeah, the differences are going to be much greater due to personalities and individual circumstances than just rank. The only exception is when the school happens to have some rules about who can do advise and who cannot. 

Generally, assistant professors are tenure-track faculty that do not have tenure. Associate professor are faculty who have earned tenure. Professor is a more senior person, the rules for promotion vary from place to place. But some places do not have Associate professors at all (i.e. get promoted from assistant professor to Professor after tenure). 

Also, it used to be that assistant profs are new hires and may not know the department culture as well while the other ranks are more locally established people. However, at least in my field, it's more and more common for faculty to move, usually post-tenure so a Professor may have only arrived a few years ago. Sometimes schools will offer tenure as part of the recruitment package (i.e. hire an untenured prof at School A as a tenured prof at School B). So, in my opinion, the rank really doesn't matter very much and I would treat each person as an individual!

[juilletmercredi]

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this question - it really depends on the professor's personality and competing interests.

In addition to what was said above, since assistant professors are usually untenured professors, they are generally striving towards tenure. That means different things at different universities. At elite, competitive universities, not every new assistant professor may get tenure (in fact, at many of these places most new assistant professors do not get tenure, and end up moving somewhere else somewhere between their third and seventh years on the tenure track). So the struggle is real, and often these professors are very busy trying to do all the things they need to do in order to be competitive: earn grants, write papers, give talks at conferences, become nationally or internationally known. There are pros and cons: these professors are very scientifically active, so if you are a savvy person you can latch onto this momentum and use it to get your own pubs, grants, and papers at conferences.

The cons are that these professors are generally building their labs, their networks, and their advisor style, so you are more or less a guinea pig for them in many respects. (Even that can sometimes be a pro: there are lots of things I did as a doctoral student that my old PI currently has undergraduate RAs doing, or has more staff to do, but I think I became more self-sufficient because of it, and learned interesting skills.) They are generally less well-connected than their more senior peers - but even that's not universally true. I've seen some superstar assistant professors who know EVERYBODY and are thought of very favorably. (One of my close friends is an assistant professor at a large prestigious R1 university, and she's got a sprawling and strong network in our field. She's also good at introducing you around to everybody; I met a lot of bigwigs in the field through her.)

Associate professors are usually professors who have 6+ years of experience in the game and have earned tenure. There's a wide range; some associate professors never get promoted to full professor, so you could be working with an associate professor who just got tenure last year or an associate professor who's been around for 20 years. Generally speaking they tend to be in the 7-15 year range, though. These folks typically have more stable funding (but not always!) and more developed networks (but again, not always) than assistant professors. They're also less likely to leave the department than assistant professors...usually. But elite universities often poach superstars, and if you find yourself doing your doctoral degree particularly at an R2 or a less active R1, these associate professors are sometimes angling to get a better position at a higher-tier school. My point is simply that working with an associate professor doesn't necessarily mean they won't leave. (My own former department managed to snag quite a few high-flying associate and full professors from other strong programs, including one full professor who was deeply entrenched with another department and who I thought would never leave.)

And full professors generally have been around for 12-15 years or more. They've earned tenure long ago, and also got another promotion. They tend to have the deepest roots and the widest networks. Again, there's no guarantee - it kind of depends on how gregarious and professionally savvy they are. Associate and full professors also aren't necessarily less research active than their less advanced peers; there are lots of folks who have been in the game for a long time and are still very passionate and active in their research. But often the quality is very different; at top programs, full professors and more advanced associate professors may have an army of undergrad RAs, grad students, and postdocs to do most of the day to day research work for them and they do more planning and management and research direction.

My advice is always if you go with an assistant professor (especially one who's been around for less than 3-4 years) that acquiring an official or unofficial second advisor who is more advanced is usually a good idea. I had two advisors in grad school: my primary advisor was at the time an untenured assistant professor who had just passed third-review, I think, when I started; my secondary advisor was a full professor who was admired in the field and had been around for quite a long time (he was on my primary advisor's dissertation committee, hee hee). I feel like I got the best of both worlds with their advisement together.

Which one has more time? There's no guarantees for that, either. I would say that generally speaking full professors have the most time, but only in the sense that there are a lot fewer constraints on their time. They usually have more assistants in the lab and have an easier time generating money, so in theory, more of their time is unstructured. Assistant professors have to spend a lot of time writing, writing, writing, and at certain types of programs when they hit year ~5 they go on what I call their Tenure World Tour (they have to establish that they are nationally known, so they start speaking at conferences all over the damn place). But some assistant professors are just very good at managing their time and will make time for their advisees.