Each year, applicants accepted to PhD programs have to decide where to enroll. When I was in that situation, I made my decision on what in retrospect seem to me to be really naive, simplistic grounds. I basically looked at how highly ranked a program was, and whether it had good faculty in my area(s) of focus. Having talked to some recent grad school applicants, my sense is that this is still how a considerable number of them seem to decide where to enroll. However, I now think that this is exactly how not to make this kind of far-reaching decision. First, program rankings do not appear to be very good proxies of something that I cared about, and suspect most applicants care about: academic job placement rates. According to the ADPA report, some highly ranked PhD programs place their graduates well, others fare poorly. Conversely, some low-ranked and unranked programs have even better overall placement rates than top-ranked programs. Secondly, there are grounds for thinking that one's choice of PhD adviser/supervisor is one of the most important parts of one's graduate experience, in ways that in turn can have profound effects on one's professional prospects. Let me explain.
One of the more striking things I've noticed in my time in the profession is just how much the success rates of grad students depend upon who their adviser is. Some advisers basically never graduate any students, the vast majority of whom drop out. Other advisers do graduate students, but their students' average time to graduation is like 7-10 years, and their students rarely get full-time academic jobs. Then there are advisers who crank out new PhDs left and right, and whose students routinely end up hired quickly into tenure-track jobs. Then of course there are qualitative differences. Some advisers are encouraging, supportive, quick to provide feedback, provide good job-market guidance, professional connections, and so on. Other advisers are abusive, neglectful, take months to provide feedback, provide no job-market guidance, etc. All of these kinds of advisers can and often do exist within the very same program, including at top programs. So, it can be vital to end up with the right one!
I'll tell my story in a minute. But before I do, here's why I'm writing this post: I came across this Inside Higher Ed piece today where I learned about a 2018 study in Nature that found that "factors strongly correlating with overall satisfaction [of PhD students in grad programs] include number of publications, work-life balance and, especially, the adviser-advisee relationship." So, don't take it from me: take it from science. If you're applying to PhD programs, don't focus all of your attention on rankings, average placement record for jobs, or the overall quality of a program's faculty. No, try to figure out before accepting an offer whether there is a faculty member there who would be a good adviser for you, and whether they would be willing to supervise you should you get in there.
How can you do this? One way is by conversing with some of their current students. Another way is by interacting with the person yourself, such as on a campus visit during a recruitment day. On that note, a couple of important things. First, if it is at all possible, visit a program before accepting an offer of admission. Some (many?) programs have official recruitment events where they host prospective students. These are excellent opportunities to get the lay of the land. Second, don't assume that just because you have a good experience with a potential adviser that they will actually take you as an advisee. It is normally up to faculty to decide who they want to supervise, and some faculty may simply refuse to take on new advisees if they have too many already. Finally, try as hard as you can to avoid self-deception–that is, to avoid convincing yourself that someone would be a good superviser simply because they are brilliant or famous or whatever. I personally know of plenty of cases where people got themselves into trouble this way: people who were so starstruck that an adviser was interested in supervising them that they ignored or overlooked red flags (i.e. their adviser never graduating anyone or being notoriously abusive) that they regret later on.
I'll finish with a story. Many years ago when I started the Cocoon, I shared some of the struggles I faced as a grad student and early career philosopher. Like all too many grad students I've known and seen (not just in philosophy), things really fell apart for me at one point during my dissertation stage. I had gotten nowhere for close to two years, and for a while avoided my adviser like the plague. I've seen more than a few students go this route and end up washing out because they were never able to recover from that kind of death-spiral. Somehow, I was able to recover–and my adviser played a vital role in it. At one point, I finally visited his office and fessed up, saying I knew I was screwing up before humbly asking for help. A cruel or neglectful adviser could have put me down, reamed me out, expressed skepticism about whether I would finish the program, etc. Some might even say that would have been reasonable. In any case, that wasn't what he did. He reassured me, told me he believed I could do it given some of the work I had done for him before, he encouraged me to join a dissertation group, and we met regularly from that point on. I thought at that moment, and still think now, that it was one of those critical "nexus points" where my life and career could have gone one of many ways. If I had walked out of that meeting further broken down and dispirited, I might have very well given up. His kindness, support, and reassurance in that moment and moving forward made all the difference. That's just how much of a difference one's adviser can make in a career, and in a life. So choose carefully, and wisely, including when it comes to whether to accept admission to a PhD program in the first place!
Or so say I. What say you all?
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