What to Look (Out) for in a PhD Advisor

Okay y’all, we’ve made it to the most important stuff. We’ve sifted through different universities. We’ve refined by finding good department fits. Now, how the heck do we go about choosing a PhD Advisor? This is the biggest decision of all. Your advisor will be your boss for the next 5 or so years. It’s critically important to choose someone that takes their work seriously, supports their students, and has a mentoring style that matches what you need. Let’s close out this PhD series!

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Are students in the lab happy? What is the advising style like?

Like for the PhD department, I and others recommend never joining a lab without getting a sense of the state of current PhD life. Talk to students away from the PI. What’s his/her style like? Hands-off to a fault and hard to get in touch with, classic micromanager, or somewhere in between? You should know at this point which style you’ll work best with.

Do students feel supported? Do they feel respected?

What about support? PhD programs are notoriously long and difficult. You will fail time and again (that’s science). How does the advisor respond during those times? Angry that you aren’t producing enough, or understanding from their own time as a PhD student? Also important, do students feel respected? PhD “students” aren’t actually students or trainees. We’re employees, and should be treated with respect and dignity. If you get any vibe that the PI yells at or degrades his/her students, boy/girl bye. Run far away. That won’t get better. You aren’t the special case. Promise.

How’s the culture of the lab?

The advisor of a lab has a MASSIVE influence on the culture. Advisors with a relaxed approach will tend to foster that behavior in students. Similarly, an advisor that is overbearing and wanting to “win at research” at all costs is likely to foster unhealthy behaviors among students. In one extreme, everybody in the lab is best friends. In another, some students are suspected of, and are, intentionally ruining other students’ experiments so they can get ahead. Is the culture more collegial or cutthroat?

Does the advisor play favorites?

Might need to do some digging on this one. If you ask a student and they say no, that could be true. However, they might be one of the favorites, so who knows. A superior “we don’t do that here” attitude is almost CERTAINLY one of the favorites. Every university is political, period. There’s maybe an equal probability that you become the favorite or not. That’s too big a risk for me. Tread carefully.

Do they seem overeager to get you into their lab?

This is a great question. It’s nice to be wanted. But there is a huge difference between being a strong candidate that attracts interest/competition among PIs and a PI being very OVER eager to get you in the lab. It may be nothing, but it may also be a red flag. They may not have funding, in which case prepare to write grants. They may be very aggressive, rude, demanding, or unprofessional per above, and previous PhD students quit or switched advisors. Just be careful. At a school I didn’t ultimately attend, one advisor shut down my inquiry only to follow up months later after hearing through the grapevine that I had received a competitive fellowship. Jokes.

Do they support diverse career paths?

This is a great question for students with career interests outside academia. The stereotype that professors want to train students to go on and become professors themselves is strongly rooted in truth. It makes sense, of course – in academia, your “impact” and value as an advisor and scholar is partially based on where your PhD students went (within academia) after graduating. It’s self-serving. Ask current students about their career paths. Sometimes they’ll give you fluff, but sometimes they’ll give you what you’re looking for. Be careful, too, about PI rhetoric regarding supporting diverse careers. In one lab that I considered joining way back when, I was told by the PI that the department was very supportive of students pursuing non-academic careers. I didn’t join for other reasons, but I would later come to find out through friends in that lab that the PI meant that for all students other than hers/his.

Work-life balance

This might be the most important topic in this whole post. I will say this until I am blue in the face: A. PhD. Is. A. Job. It’s a job. Like any other job, I expect work-life balance. It’s pretty easy to find out the culture of a lab. If the PI is supportive of their PhD students and allows freedom so long as students are productive, AWESOME.

However, the opposite is way too common. PhD students all over social media will report that their PIs mandate working nights and weekends. A friend’s PI yelled at them for taking a Sunday off. A SUNDAY. Sometimes it isn’t that extreme, but there’s an expectation of responding to emails on demand. Sorry, but except in cases of a hard paper submission deadline or a really crucial experiment, I don’t work on weekends, almost ever.

I also work primarily during the day. A normal day for me looks like being in at 6:45am and out at 3:45pm unless I have non-lab stuff to stay late for. I expect to have fun outside of lab. To spend time with and take care of my family (read: wife and houseplants). To be able to pursue my best life. I expect to spend time in the gym, working on my blog, volunteering, etc. Also, reminder that I’m Catholic. There’s zero possibility of me working in a lab that expects me to miss Sunday Mass. Sorry ’bout it.

Is there support for out-of-lab activities?

This goes back to the importance of a social culture in our previous two posts. Ask current students what they do outside of research. If the answer is nothing, be wary, that may be a huge red flag that the advisor doesn’t “let” them. In my time as a graduate student, I’ve served in a variety of roles on campus, held several leadership roles, volunteered consistently, and am now starting a leadership training program. This isn’t a contest, I’m pointing out that having a life outside of lab was important to me and I made it happen. In my opinion, an ideal PhD advisor is all about this – they want to see their students become complete human beings. Other advisors believe that any time you have to do other things is time you could be spending in the lab and I really hurt for their students.

That’s a wrap!

There are a thousand other things to consider when choosing a PhD advisor, but these should give a good primer. Have thoughts you’d like to add, or enjoy reading this post? Please add a comment below. Catch the other posts in this series at the links below! A HUGE thank you to PhD Diaries for helping me on these posts, and to Academic Chatter for helping to promote them. These discussions are SO important. The time spent in your PhD can be some of the most formative of your entire life. Invest in the planning on the front end, make a great choice, and never look back!

Sean

Catch up on the other posts in the “What to Look for in a PhD” Series below!

Overview: How to Pick a PhD Program
1) What to Look for in a PhD University
2) What to Look for in a PhD Department
3) What to Look (Out) for in a PhD Advisor (this post)
4) What to Look for in a Lab Partner (bonus post)

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