How to Choose Your Grad School
By Tim Dettmers
TODO:
- add questions in this page for interview one
- can I figure out my research style so I can combine it with the prospective advisor to see if good comes out of it? E.g., my engineering and hacking style with Julian’s conceptualization and abstraction. (see research style)
- a couple of self-reflection sessions with myself to figure out specific values and strengths that I cherish but not yet possess, hence finding advisor that can compliment (see Self-reflection Key to Good Decision)
- Find more question on self-reflection part (see Self-reflection Key to Good Decision)
- Should I create a pdf of these and give the supervisors for the first meeting?
Career-centric view of the grad school remains crucial to get you to the level after that: a great job in industry or academia. So choosing the school which is best for your career can feel like an obvious choice. However, a PhD is a very long journey, and choosing your grad school based on this perspective alone might make you more vulnerable to burn-out, disillusionment, and general dissatisfaction.
Four perspectives that leads to have better outcome overall:
- Career
- Identity
- Stability
- Variability
| Perspective | Description | Key |
|---|---|---|
| Career | Obvious | |
| Identity | If you choose a school where the unwritten motto is “The worth of a person is measured in papers and citations” you will slowly but surely grow to be a person that would live by such a motto. | So choose a society where your find their culture valuable |
| Stability | It is well known that the effect of most moderately painful or enjoyable events that significantly affect your life will wear off within about two years and that you will return to your baseline happiness and stay there. A great and friendly social environment where you always feel supported and not alone will provide you with the most human needs and will make a 5-year-or-so journey a breeze. | ⇒ Being left hanging by a group or supervisor is a killer. Avoid it! |
| Variability | You probably sacrificed in some way to get into grad school. You neglected your passions outside work, neglected friends or your partner or your family, neglected self-development, neglected to work on your mental, physical or spiritual health, or you neglected other things that are important to you. By choosing the school that is best for your career, you might very well continue on this path of neglect. When does it stop? Once you have completed an excellent PhD, you might labor on by choosing that super competitive assistant professor job, then tenure, then being a leading figure in your field, and so on. There is nothing wrong with such a path through life, but continuous exploitation will lead to local minima. The two most common regrets of the dying are “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me” and “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.” The dying probably would have avoided their situation if they would have known better.1 | I sacrificed so much to be here, and there is not much left to sacrifice my true self. So let’s go somewhere that I get to live the life that I owe to my child self and teenage self. ⇒ Sacrificing more is gonna get you killed, so just go and do what makes you happy as there is not much time left of this life. |
Career perspective
- Choosing advisor is like dating: So it is sort of gut feeling; everything might work on the paper but cannot be realized.
- Have second choice: Sometimes it might not as you expected with a single advisor you have chosen. So, have a second advisor just in case.
Co-advisor possibility
choosing a second advisor also opens up the possibility of ***co-advisor *** that otherwise, none of them would do solely.
- Research Style: The truth is that with the steep requirements for ML/NLP PhD positions, many students are already somewhat close to being independent. They can generate ideas with ease and execute them confidently in research projects. However, the actual quality that new students lack is research style. So the advisor, the group and all your advisor’s interaction define the style for you and shape your way of doing research. See reference for some examples.
Research Style is Critical
Zuckerman found that the main advantage gained through this ladder-climbing was not necessarily more resources (money, equipment), but having the opportunity to culturally adopt the research style of other successful scientists. (noble prize winners were taught by other noble prize winners)
What is a good research project? = Style
This is key question to find the style. Are we researching to get more citation (result oriented)? Are we doing research because of the vision?
This question answers:
What is an important problem?
What is the “correct” of doing it?
Question
- “What are examples of research papers you like?”
- “What research papers (in your area) do you think are the most important ones in the last years?”
An important thing to know is that not all styles are good or bad. It is the mixture of styles that are important. For instance, “minimalistic hacker” + “insight-driven neat” = “minimalist-insight-driven hacker-researcher”.
Find your advisor-mate
He switched advisors until he found the right ones. Then he leaned in and tried to adopt the advisor’s central cultural research facet as quickly as possible.
What is my research/identity style?
Advisor Research Fit
Looking for only advisors that the same research interest as you, might not be the best heuristic. They might no longer be interested in research that they are well known for, or they might be interested in a direction which they have not yet published in yet.
Danger
about 66% changed their research direction completely — many of them in the first year.
Vahid's engineering suggestion
Vahid suggested that I have more chance in engineering departments that AI departments. Note that I believe in the same idea considering my skillset, but the fact that almost 2/3 of the population changed research direction shows that it is a reasonable decision.
Seniority vs flexibility
More senior researchers particularly tenured one tend to be fine with students’ research direction if it is compelling to them.
Advising style
In general, what you can expect from a hands-off advisor is that you do all the work, and your advisor gives you feedback on what you have produced. For a hands-on style, the advisor also helps with the producing in some way.
Usually, hands-off advisors are more senior and can also provide more connections for internships and collaborations and are able to link ideas to some good-old research ideas that most people forgot about. They usually also have a more extensive lab with postdocs and a range of senior PhD students, which can provide valuable hands-on advice.
I need activity area
Activity areas include helping with writing, brainstorming ideas, thinking about a research story, grant writing, etc.
I can use this as a selling point
The selling point is that if supervisors is senior or doesn’t have much time, I can show that I won’t be a burden.
Advisor Values, Strengths, and Weaknesses
In general, you want the same as in any relationship: Share as many values as possible and have differences in strengths and weaknesses which complement each other. So what do values in an academic relationship look like? E.g., if you are a good hacker, but lack ideas, look for an advisor that is good with ideas.
Neat vs Hacker
A Neat is someone that values systematic investigation, sound assumptions, proofs, precise claims, and theoretical progress whereas a hacker believes that adherence to rigid schemes slows down progress.
65% hacker, 35% neat
At heart I am a hacker, but I will sure like systematic approach to problems, planning and sound claims.
Discretion and In-group cohesion
Does the advisor value discretion, privacy, and is open at the same time?
This is the trade-off of openness vs privacy. it is preferred to have your own private timeline of progress yet a collaborative environment. In contrary, collaboration could become destructive when independence is lost due to constantly being affected by other’s views.
Well-being and Research Progress
Does the advisor value your well-being over research progress or vice versa? An advisor who values your well-being will make sure that there is freedom for work-life balance and that your 1-on-1 meetings are not only about research.
I care about people
I think given that I prioritize people’s life as much as their career, I would rather the same type of supervisor that believes in this value.
Just make sure to create a balance between being a soulless overworked machine and slacking, sleepy, non-achiever failure.
I like a little push
To be productive, and push myself to my limits, but not too much so I feel anxious all the time to meet the expectations.
Communication
If your advisor values head-on criticism, he or she will call out bullshit and tell you how much your project idea sucks. It prevents wasting more time on this idea, if you are able to remain calm and digest such feedback. The result is a air-tight project.
An advisor with an indirect communication style will hint that something is off, but you might not know what or why. That can make progress slow, or it can create considerable uncertainty.
Note
Indirectness might also demonstrate the intellectual humbleness of your advisor
In the long-term, indirect communication has the advantage that you need to think about problems more by yourself, which makes you more independent and a better researcher.
Self-reflection Key to Good Decision
Find out who you are, what strengths you have, and what weaknesses you want to be covered.
Some questions that could get you started:
- Can you deal with direct, sharp criticism?
- How much do you value your privacy?
- How much honest and open conversation?
- Are you more like a Hacker or more like a Neat?
- Are you a “family person” and favor very close cohesion within the research group?
- How self-motivated are you? Do you need deadlines and milestones to keep you motivated and on track? Do you work well if someone pushes you?
- How much work-life balance do you need?
Research Group, Peers, and Post Docs
Availability vs. Absent-mindedness
Availability does make a difference. It is better to have more frequent meetings, even if these meetings are with more hands-off advisors, and you have no results. However, availability is not only about your advisor’s busy schedule but also their attitude. For some advisors, student meetings are “holy”.
There are advisors who forget about projects, and you have to explain them over and over again. Even if an advisor is available, a certain degree of absent-mindedness can make interactions frustrating and unproductive. This forces you to think carefully about your project and formulate exact problems before a meeting, which will make you a better researcher in the long-term.
Availability of the first, but with "elevator pitch skill"
Being able to formulate your project as a concise elevator pitch with a precise definition is a highly valuable skill that will impress anyone whom you meet at a conference.
Particularly, that I am interested in becoming a research engineer and join the industry, and even become an engineer manager, I believe this skill is crucial for my career. So even if I get the most available advisor in the world, I still should build this skill.
Peers
The peers and the research group are the second most important factor to go to a school, and this factor is not far behind the advisor in importance.
it is difficult to get to know people in detail in this short time, a group of people that you “click” with might be a good reason to go to that school.
Danger
Avoid a lab where it makes you feel like you need to change who you are in order to fit in or impress others
Research Group
The values of the advisor (see above) shapes the dynamics in the research group strongly. You can use a similar framework as presented above to assess the values and expectations of your peers within a research group.
Diversity is particularly important for creative endeavors because diversity helps to prevent echo-chambers (that is why leftists are so out of touch with reality). For instance,
- having combo of neat and hacker is better than having all of a single type.
- combo of playful and serious people
- or any other style/weakness/strength
Postdocs and Senior PhD Students
If your advisor has postdocs and senior PhDs which frequently collaborate with new PhD students, it can be a big win for both parties: You get additional hands-on experience, and a research perspective which is different from your advisor (especially with postdocs) and they might be able to get another publication before they move on to the next job.
Success
Having senior PhDs and postdocs is, in particular, valuable if your potential advisor is hands-off — in this case, you can get the best of both worlds in terms of advising. (See my need on an advisor being Advising style)
Ref:
- https://timdettmers.com/2022/03/13/how-to-choose-your-grad-school/
- https://cen.acs.org/careers/graduate-school/Choosing-graduate-adviser/99/i33
Footnotes
-
I didn’t summarize this section at all, as I believe every word said there needs to be repeated by me on a daily basis. ↩