Advice for Prospective PhD Students

The question then becomes who do you even trust for advice? I always said never ask a first or second year PhD student lol.

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.

Finding a good PI is the real advice.

This 120%. Your day-to-day, your mental health, and your research success are largely a function of your lab's culture, and it's the PI who sets that culture. And the unfortunate reality is that PIs really don't get any formal training on culture-setting and people management, so there are some really successful folks out there who suck at running their groups.

The way you tilt the odds in your favor for getting a good PI-student match is to be embedded in the field. If you're an undergrad, getting involved in research is a great low-risk way to do this. People in research have reputations in their field, and people in the know will direct promising students away from labs with bad cultures.

From my experience

1. Don’t opt for a phd just because it sounds cool (remember the first tweet shared in that article).

2. Academia is a pretty hard space if you can’t get your own funding or if you don’t like hustling for it. Getting tenure track jobs without having funding attached is impossible.

3. Very few jobs in industry need a PhD. Most are ok with a masters. Those that require a PhD can be selective based on where you graduate from and what your publication record is.

4. Know your PI well and reach out to his/her previous students who have already graduated. Some may reply - especially those with a bad experience.

5. Back to point #1, don’t take up the PhD just because you get the assistance and stipend. Make sure you really like your subject - it’s the only thing you’re doing for the next 4-12 years depending on your discipline while subsisting on poverty level stipends

Yes - this is unfortunately everything. There are a number of categories to optimize (research area, lab size, funding, university, other lab members, etc) but the biggest factor is your relationship with your PI. I cannot imagine working as a PhD student in a lab where I don't deeply respect and get along with the PI. I was very lucky but selected for this when choosing PhD labs. A surefire way to have a terrible few years is to ignore others advice about PIs to avoid.

I think the entire grad school "industry" really needs a "Me Too" moment. Abuse and exploitation are the norm it feels like :(

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.

This is my advise to people who ask me for advise when applying to PhD / graduate school for research. The advisor is probably the only other main factor besides finances and any other personal constraints. If you have a great advisor all around (not just the best researcher in their field, as in they also know how to mentor, teacher, network, and help you reach your goals), they will know how to navigate your different research interests and goals of your PhD and get you to where you want to go.

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 documents.

Yep, I was half-expecting this to be a single-word post: "Don't."

(I worked as a research engineer at a big name university for 8 years, helping people do experiments for their PhDs, and I have Seen Some Shit.)

as someone who mastered out SEVERAL years into it this is the only advice anyone will ever need regarding a PhD. of course if you come from money and can roll a dice on a career go for it

Yeah I’m currently in my 5th year in a top Econ program and a lot of this is just foreign to my experience. The torturous part was how my department handled Covid but after that it’s been pretty smooth sailing.

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.

Any thoughts on Poland?

> it seems just about everybody who's been in or around a PhD program agrees it's a miserable institution

I disagree, quite strongly in fact. But my experience is not with US PhD programs, which is what discussions here often center upon.

As for working on research outside of pursuing a PhD: one option is to become a scientific programmer. Typically, you'd work on helping to execute the research, without the pressures of having to publish.

Of course, your "clients" do have that pressure, but your job typically is to Make It Happen, explain why it can't, and find crafty workarounds to Make It Sorta Happen Anyway.

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.

for yourself, write down in great detail what your dream is. What do you imagine yourself doing day-to-day? What experiences did you really enjoy?

Identify (via posting here, linkedin, discord) some people that have the sort of job you imagine and have a dialog with them. (if they are actively posting, they likely have the time to converse with you)

If your exerpience is anything like mine, you may find the activities you enjoy are a small part of the researchers jobs, which in many cases is a grant writing machine.

There are some independent research organizations out there now that one could condider, like invisible college, astera, and arcadia.

I'm seeing way too many comments about not being able to change the relationship.

I was in a top school. I saw plenty of students change advisors and do fine. You have to be a bit careful - your former advisor shouldn't be in your thesis committee, and some advisors are unwilling to take you if they think it will cause bad blood between him and the original advisor. But it definitely was done. Over and over again.

Of course, it helps if the department is big (mine had about 100 professors).

They are worth it if you’re trying to emigrate out of a bad situation. My partner is in a lab with an awful PI, but she is Lebanese, and wanted to be able to bring herself and her family out of a very unstable situation.

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, you will be entitled to 9 months of fully paid maternity leave, plus your planned dissertation date will get postponed by 9 months, no questions asked. You can even do this twice if you're "efficient". Kindergarten is quite cheap at around $320 per month. As a man, I had one kid before starting my PhD and the second about halfway through, then I got 10 days leave just after the birth, and 3 months leave from our daughter was 9 to 12 months.

There are several bona fide unions you can join as a PhD student, you have a relatively well functioning HR system that will help quite a bit against toxic PIs. You will have annual "evaluation talks" with a professor other than your supervisor, where you can voice any concerns you might have. The PhD programme duration is 3 years, maybe some people do an additional few months, but I've never heard of someone doing more than 4.

It's still hard work though, there is supposed to be blood, sweat and tears. But it should be because sciencce is hard, not because you are living in poverty or because you have to postpone starting a family until you are in your fourties.

For some reason we get a lot of candidates applying from Europe and Asia, but almost nobody from North America, and I don't see why.

As always, "it depends" but it's very possible if you go with the understanding that you're going to live like a poor college student for the next half decade and don't want or need your expenses to go up like your peers that go into industry.

You also have to take into account that you're going to be working more hours than a traditional job and that you're going to be stuck there for half a decade, but also you get something out of it at the end which you won't get just working some other low pay job.

I'm seeing a lot of answers in the negative, so I'll give my experience:

Find a relatively low cost of living area. The good news is that there are several top universities in such places (e.g. Midwest).

Find out the pay you'll get.

Find out the fees you'll pay.

Now you know how much you'll make. Check rents in the area, and then decide.

For me, (2003-2010), as a single person, the pay was more than sufficient to get by. I could afford a single bedroom apartment, got a good used car, and drove across the country (staying at motels, not camping) twice. I bought a DSLR, and had a very nice PC that lasted me all those years. Would eat out from time to time.

It wasn't much, but it was all I needed, and a bit more.

The main difference between then and now is that cars have gotten a lot more expensive. Rents may have gone up, but perhaps not as much (i.e. pay may have gone up enough to compensate).

Back in 2010, studying for a PhD in the UK meant I got an EPSRC stipend of £13500 per year. I was fortunate to find rooms to rent in houses with other grad students for around £350-400 per month. I didn't go out much, cooked my own food, commuted by bike, and made use of free or low cost uni services like gym and therapy. On some weekends I drove ~100 miles to visit my girlfriend, but I was a pretty lousy partner at the time and didn't do that as much as I wish I had. Also petrol was a fair bit cheaper back then. The only time I remember coming close to worrying was when my stipend cheque got put in the wrong place and I didn't get it for a few weeks.

>Does it ever make sense to do graduate school just to get by?

most people who do them are coerced -- i made about as much as my pizza delivery driver. i attempted it because it seemed a way to become financially independent. instead, when i tried to leave with a masters i was forced to eventually return to my homeland and be subjected to the same things that drove me from it.

I don't see how it even covers people's rent. My partner's worked out to less than minimum wage.

Starting salary for Dutch PhD students is roughly median national income. So: yes, easily.

Basically, it's a job at MSc. level and you're paid (somewhat) close to market rate for that.

rarely sufficiently covers the cost of living, though yes in some cases (e.g. if you get the top end of the stipend range from a rich university that also happens to be in a low-cost-of-living area).

terrible idea for someone who just wants to work (if you can get into a good grad school you can find some job that pays better and has better working conditions); conceivably not a terrible idea for someone with specific career goals who is trying to ride out some specific industry downturn.