Interview With a Professor
By Hamed Akande
Adviser Evaluates Advisee
Steps:
- The PI gives a brief overview of the lab, him/herself, current and past research- Here, the PI tells you everything you need to know (pertaining to the meeting). 4/n
- Your turn- Please be specific. “I’m AB, my BSc was in Civil from ABC Uni, for my research under the supervision of Dr. James, I focused on nonlinearity of hydrological system & published in Elsevier journal or presented at DEF conference”. I use MATLAB, & R for modeling.
- (Optional, see my takes) You will be asked what your Research Questions are and what you want to study for Ph.D.- prepare something specific to say here. (They know it may/will change and just hypothetical for now, but you need to show you both share similar questions)
- If your research interest closely aligns (and the feeling is mutual), the PI will ask why you want to do Ph.D./M.Sc. and why their lab- justify this with something substantial (your career goal for example)
(my take) Note
If you have interviews obtained by sending specialized cold emails, you have probably already have passed step (3). In case of committee-based applications, or the one with no direct screening by PI themselves, it is good idea to just reiterate whatever you have on your CV or SoP, since most likely they haven’t read it at all and expect you to tell them. (so don’t try to so say something novel or different from what you have already prepared, just literally repeat the same things; well, your SoP is already original, so why rewrite it?)
Advisee Evaluates Advisor
Group Fit Questions
- Were someone with your skills and background would be employed within the group?
- For the start, will I be working on a existing project, or we will be developing new ideas
- The PIs expectation of his/her successful advisee?
(my take) Note
Ideal scenario would be join an ongoing project to have a smoother setup and resolve potential conflicts before starting a new one as the scientific challenges plus other challenges could be overwhelming. Also, don’t forget about [[aidos-fitness#[T-Shaped People and Academia](https //bastian.rieck.me/blog/2022/t/)|T-shaped student skills]]. (Also in my SoP about getting T-shaped through my failed AI venture.)
University/PI Publication Style
- Does the university have a publication policy such as one paper per year?
- What’s the PI’s policy? assuming one side we have top-tier lower quantity, or the opposite?
(my take) Note
My research style is about the quality; I don’t care about beating the state-of-the-art every second. This is the reason that in fact I only have one research paper as I refused the offer from IUST to publish another paper in a local conference (low quality; with conflict of interest).
Resources
- Infrastructure available in the lab, including hardware, and other resources including travel/conference attendance grants.
(my take) Note
I’ve explained this in my SoP that I plan to increase my network in interdisciplinary teams and attend conf and do interviews as much as possible. So, trivially, asking for how much the school would be supporting is important. I can save enough on my own to go to more conferences.
- Accommodations?
(my take) Note
Given that for my master’s degree I had to travel 7 hours per day which was close to 200km each day that also made me to not wanna go to many classes (had to wake up 4:30 in the morning and since I was in a low-income neighborhood, there was no bus, so barely could make it to the 8 am class), hence getting a lower GPA (I got 17/20, easily I could get 19/20) , I would love to know about the affordability of the housing or leaving outside the city center to save up more for other opportunities.