The Philosophers' Cocoon

4 responses to “Visiting other institutions while dissertating (after one’s supervisor leaves for another university)?”

1. Anonymous

   September 29, 2026

   I did something similar as a PhD student: I spent five years at my home institution and two years as a visiting student at another. I think there are some potential advantages and some potential costs. Overall, I’m very glad that I did it.

   1. I got to a point where I could more or less predict what feedback my primary advisor would have on my work. It was good feedback, to be sure, but I became so familiar with the ways he would push back that I almost felt as though I didn’t need to attend meetings in person to know what he would say. Visiting another university can expose you to different perspectives on your work that might otherwise be difficult to access.

   2. If you have a de facto advisor at the visiting institution, they could potentially become a very useful letter writer. Letters from professors at your home institution are obviously important, but I think letters from professors elsewhere can sometimes provide stronger evidence. Your own department naturally has an interest in seeing its graduate students place well; someone at another institution does not have that same sort of interest in your future. Additionally, a very strong external letter can help signal that your work is regarded highly in ‘the field’ rather than just your institution. Some visiting programs require you to have a de facto advisor. If yours doesn’t, I’d consider asking someone at the visiting institution to serve on your dissertation committee.

   3. That said, I wouldn’t expect a significant bump in your profile simply from having visited a highly ranked department. It certainly won’t count against you, but I’d be surprised if the name of the visiting institution itself weighed very heavily in a search committee’s decision-making.

   4. One slight risk is that professors at the visiting institution may write stronger letters for their own students than for visitors, even when they regard a visitor as stronger overall. I’m not sure how common this is, but I have heard of it happening, so it may be worth keeping in mind.

   5. I wasn’t completely clear on the OP’s funding situation, but funding can also matter. If you would need to rely on TA funding at the institution you visit, my own experience was that the compensation available to visiting students was significantly lower than the normal graduate stipend there.

   So I’d mainly recommend visiting because there are particular people you want to work with and because you think you would benefit intellectually from being there. If it also produces a strong external letter or expands your professional network, those are potentially significant additional benefits. I just wouldn’t do it primarily for the prestige of having the institution listed on the CV.

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2. Anonymous

   September 29, 2026

   My sense is that no one will necessarily look at a candidate all that differently just for having done a visiting semester somewhere more prestigious, but that these things can help in more indirect ways. It’s advantageous to have letters from people outside your department. These hold more weight because people in your department have an incentive to place their students well. It can also just be advantageous to have more people in the discipline who know you and think highly of you and your work, and visiting other departments expands that circle. But I do not think that anyone will, for example, see that you did a visiting semester at Rutgers and interpret this as increasing the prestige of your PhD.

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3. Anonymous

   September 29, 2026

   Agreed with others – it won’t help on its own, but it *could* be very, very helpful in other ways. The external letter point that others have already made is a really good one, but it’s also helpful to consider the networking you’ll get to do. Like it or not, being known by “the right people” often makes a huge difference to your career – it gets your application a second look in a job pile, it gets you invited to a workshop where you meet even more people, someone you know suggests you for a special issue of a journal, etc.

   I did my PhD at the Australian National University, and visitors’ season (basically, July and August) was absolutely packed with folks from great universities all over the world, from Distinguished Professors to PhD students. It’s hard to overstate how great it is to be able to go out onto the terrace at tea time every day and get to sit and chat with Phillip Pettit or Dave Chalmers or Lara Buchak.

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   1. Anonymous

      September 29, 2026

      Seconding my fellow above. ANU visiting season is absolutely the best. I’ve met so many amazing visiting phd students who later secured excellent jobs.

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