The PI on the only research project I ever worked on as a student was relatively chill and collaborative, so I assumed that's how they all were. 20 years later, I once again work with big research projects, and was surprised to learn how tyrannical and petulant PIs are (or have a reputation for being). Much more so than CEOs in any private sector company I've worked at, the PI seems to be both at such a high level that they are disengaged from the daily work of their "employees", and simultaneously inclined to micromanage that work when their attention turns to it at last—the worst of both worlds!
Advice for Prospective PhD Students
71–80 of 97 posts
Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students
#72Dear Prospective PhD Student, Pay careful attention to the optics of this advice. It is addressing how you can best serve your PI. Your goals and aspirations are not addressed. It is advice on how to land a job, but does not address why you should want the job, or if it is a good fit for you. Perhaps you are a good fit for the academic life. But seek out more advice on what the job of Prospective PhD Student is. Seek…
The question then becomes who do you even trust for advice? I always said never ask a first or second year PhD student lol.
IMO you want to distinguish between advice that is tactical and short term or strategic and long term.
The best tactical advice tends to from people who were recently in a very similar position as you, had had approximately the same goal you have, and either achieved the goal or failed. You want a sample of both successes and failures. The less recent, the less useful the advice.
The best strategic advice tends to be from people who have accomplished things you want to accomplish, regardless of time distance. Their tactical advice is less useful (because it is often dated), but the strategic advice tends to be better. You again need a large sample size to filter out noise.
Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students
#73My advice is find a PhD you want in Norway or the Netherlands. They have programs with competitive research groups, salaries that will get you a quality of life you will appreciate, they will end in 3-4 years, and they have money to pay for you to go to conferences, etc without you having to fight for it from your adviser. Everywhere else sucks. This comment is based on my experience working as a scientist in academi…
Add Luxembourg and Switzerland to that list - at least EPFL and ETH. It's so unbelievably better to be at an institute where travelling within Europe is simply not a budgetary problem at all.
Your experience at ETH might vary a lot though. Their PhD programs are extremely heterogeneous between departments and vary from modern, well structured grad schools to the old-fashioned central European style where the student are basically at the mercy of their advisor for five years.
Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students
#74Dear Prospective PhD Student, Pay careful attention to the optics of this advice. It is addressing how you can best serve your PI. Your goals and aspirations are not addressed. It is advice on how to land a job, but does not address why you should want the job, or if it is a good fit for you. Perhaps you are a good fit for the academic life. But seek out more advice on what the job of Prospective PhD Student is. Seek…
It should be a mutually beneficial relationship. That said, I run into far too many PhD students who want to join my lab who cannot answer the question "Why do you want a PhD?"
I work in AI, so there is enormous opportunity inside and outside of academia currently (was not true when I finished my PhD, when it was the least popular area of CS), but I'm very upfront with students about how challenging it is to get a tenure-track job. That said, for those who want that, I help them make plans and set goals to achieve that objective, which means having a much stronger CV by the time they graduate than for those aiming for industry.
Many may disagree in practice, but I see my primary job as creating strong scientists and helping them achieve their career objectives. But, I won't take PhD students if their goals would not greatly benefit from having a PhD.
I do think too few academics are upfront with students about how challenging it is to get a tenure track position and what's needed to pull that off.
Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students
#75I feel like this article is missing a gigantic point: your PI is everything as a PhD student, if you have a PI who’s a shitty person (sometimes even unknowingly), you are going to be in hell for four to seven years. Don’t pick your PI just based on «they seem to be at the forefront of research on this field », also check how they treat their students. This is not like a normal job where you can easily quit, you’re li…
Far too few incoming students value this, even if explicitly told. They will go to the lab of the most famous professor at the highest rank university, even if that PI is not a great mentor. Not all PIs are intentionally aiming to make their student's lives hell, but many inadvertently do by providing insufficient mentorship, which results in students suffering huge amounts of anguish because they are struggling to excel and know it.
If a PI isn't meeting with each PhD student for at least 30-60 minutes per week, especially in the first few years, they are probably not doing a great job.
I always encourage students to email the current and former students of the professors they want to work with once admitted to see if they can have a video chat to discuss what it is like working in the lab. Even then, it can be hard to get frank feedback.
Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d instead say: * talk to your PI beforehand obviously, so you can see if they are a jerk * keep an eye on the failure mode. Check if you are making real progress after a year or two. If not, mastering out in a STEM field a totally legit path that will still leave you with a perfectly decent career potential. Some places will even let you do a thesis with your masters if you for some reason love writing giant LaTeX…
progress can be extremely nonlinear - my year or two progress check would have yielded little, but ultimately I was in great shape when graduating my PhD program. Your advice isn't bad, but it's helpful to understand that the foundation can take a while to lay and then progress can accelerate rapidly towards the end.
This is definitely true. I've had some students who ramped up quickly in the first year or two, but some of my best students didn't ramp up until year 3 and had no output before then. It was very stressful for them, though, since students are prone to comparing themselves to the very best.
Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students
#77Does it ever make sense to do graduate school just to get by? If you’re desperate for work, does the stipend ever cover the cost of living, at least enough to spend all your time in the library?
Just come to Norway. As a PhD student you're actually a full time "federal" employee with pension benefits, you're entitled to sick leave, parental leave, etc. You have 5 weeks of paid holidays per year. Your starting salary is $49k per year, which is decent - about the same level as a nurse or a teacher. To be clear: if you're a woman who move here with your partner for a PhD, and you get pregnant during your PhD, y…
Thanks for this response. It sounds like such a good deal I am checking out the Norwegian universities now.
Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students
#78Since it seems just about everybody who's been in or around a PhD program agrees it's a miserable institution with low chances of satisfaction, I will continue to follow the advice that it is not for me. However, are there alternative paths to a research career? I really enjoyed being in an academic environment in undergrad and dream of working on AI/ML research in some capacity, but I'm a total outsider.
Getting a PhD is hard, and it certainly does take a mental toll. Students are trying to push up against the boundaries of human knowledge to expand humanity's knowledge. That isn't easy, and because we train them to be independent researchers, much of that time is spent working on solo projects with their mentor supervising.
That said, once one has a PhD, it really opens up many exciting careers that are otherwise not attainable. If one wants to be a scientist and do research, you almost certainly need a PhD. It also gives you so much more autonomy in terms of the projects you work on rather than just being a coder working on someone else's projects. I only have one life, and we spend much of our lives working. I'd rather have the ability to control what I work on and wake up excited to get to work every day.
Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students
#79Disclaimer: Did not read the whole thing.
The one advice I often do not see is: While there may be enough jobs for PhDs out there, there are very few that you will want to do.
People get a PhD because they are passionate about the field and want to do research. Not just any research but research on a few topics. Most jobs for PhDs will not let you do the research that you would like to do. It will be totally on you to target those few jobs that will. You have to work towards it throughout the program. Actively network at conferences, and get key people to know you. Position yourself for those jobs. Merely doing good research and publishing papers may not be enough.
Anyone who sticks to it can get a PhD. But no one feels sorry for a PhD grad who can't get a job. It's expected that if you're smart enough to get one, you're smart enough to figure out the job situation.
Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students
#80Best advice for quality of life for a PhD student living off the PhD stipend - live in a low cost of living area. In math (what I got a PhD in), you get paid the same amount (about $20,000 a year when I started in 2013) if you live the SF Bay Area (sat going to UC Berkeley) as you do if you live in Tucson, Arizona (say going to University of Arizona). There are good universities in low cost of living areas that prospective PhD students should heavily consider - at least I wish I did.