Finding a Research Mentor? 162
bsomerville writes "As an aspiring social scientist preparing to apply to Ph.D. programs, I'm keen to find a faculty mentor somewhere in North America who shares my research interests. This is more difficult than I thought it would be. While links to program websites are readily available, I'm surprised to find no comprehensive collection of faculty research interests in my field (clinical psychology). Instead this information is buried several levels down in each university website. Is this a common problem across all fields? Is there some inherent reason why no wiki-type Web resource exists to meet this need? It seems like a text-searchable database could be built fairly quickly and maintained by users, saving countless aspiring grad students thousands of clicks through university websites."
Great idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wrong way to go about it (Score:4, Interesting)
The other *big* reason to start your inquiry with published papers: Unless your initial e-mail shows that you have read and understood some of the professor's papers, your request is likely going to be ignored. The professors I know get requests every day from random students seeking a graduate supervisor. Many of them are form e-mails. Many more simply show no idea what the professor does. They all get deleted.
Express interest in a part of their work which is interesting to you, and come up with a few questions about their future work.
Re:Papers... (Score:2, Interesting)
If you are aspiring for a PhD, you should already have a good grasp at researching papers and conference proceedings. Actually, should probably have already done that part... From these papers and conference proceedings, you can quickly identify those working in your field of interest and get a (partial) big picture of who's doing what where. Limiting you search to the last 36 months might be helpful.
True story:
*ring* *ring*
PhD Applicant: Hello?
Dr. Z: Hey Applicant, I'm Dr. Z at one of the schools you applied to. Can we talk?
A: Sure.
Z: Ever thought about information retrieval?
A: Not really.
Z: What do you think when I say "information retrieval?"
A: "Search engines."
Z: Is that something you're interested in?
A: (I better say yes, if I want accepted into the university.) It could be interesting.
Z: Great!
Fast forward one year.
Z: Hey Former Applicant, there might be some money for you if you work shopping websites. Are you interested?
A: (I better say yes, if I want money.) I'll give it a try.
Fast forward four more years.
Z: Congratulations on your new PhD in shopping websites!
A: Thanks Dr. Z!
Did you guess who this applicant was? IT WAS ME! (FYI: I actually like my disertation topic.)
And you know what? That scene, or one very similar is played out all around the world every day. No one really their research topic, their advisor does it for them. Most applicants, don't know any current phd students outside of their TAs, and they don't even know them that well.
The best thing to do is a combination of picking some universities you like, and picking a conference (ideally, a top one, but you probably don't know which one is a top one) and then seeing who had papers there. That tells you what schools have labs in that field. Browse the faculty and grad student pages and see what's going on.
Pick 6 to 8 and apply.
Amen! (Score:3, Interesting)
This.
Another key concerns is that the advisorial relationship must necessarily be rather personal. You shouldn't assume you'll end up doing your PhD with the luminary in whatever specialization you initially approached. There are therefore several important criteria that matter when choosing a graduate program, which I'll list in rough order of importance :
(1) institution reputation, (2) faculty size, (3) faculty student ratio, (4) teaching workload, (5) faculty areas of interests, and (6) how much pay you.
Examples : You should not attend graduate schools like Perdue that require an insane teaching load, well you'd get stuck there for like 7+ years. You obviously should pick an institution with the significantly better name too, even if they don't carry your specialization. You should however be careful about institutions like Harvard with a tiny faculty and many students per professor, although choose them if your areas of interest match.
Re:Wrong way to go about it (Score:2, Interesting)
It depends...
IF you have got your own funding, researchers are most likely to "pay attention" to you. So it is a good idea to start your first email communication with "Using my own funding resources, I want do my PhD in a field related to your current work."
That is specially true in UK (well, at least it is where I experienced it on first-hand.
It is better if you actually mention one or two of the papers *they* worked on (note: the ones where they where first or second authors; if they are last authors, chances are that they didn't even read the paper).
The professors I know (Agricultural Economics, Computer Science and Social Sciences) are usually looking for good PhD candidates.
In some places, I have seen the process is like this:
1. Wannabe student sends an introductory email to Top-notch faculty professor [TNFP]
2. TNFP quickly glance over email and IF the position includes "self funded" or a variation, it gets more than 10seconds of attention.
3. If TNFP does not have time for another PhD (most likely), he forwards the email to *all* the people in the department (saying something like "this person is interested in doing a PhD in our department, self-funded, in case anyone is interested"
4. *If* anyone is interested he will reply to TNFP and then a reply email will be sent to the wannabe PhD.
Re:Wrong way to go about it (Score:2, Interesting)
Note that I did not say *you* will pay for your degree. You may as well get funding from a third party.
For the majority of the cases where the research institution/University funds their studies, it is expected that the PhD student solves a "problem" defined by the department/supervisor/etc, that is, the PhD student is *working* for them.
Whereas, if you get your own funding, you have the necessary leverage to decide whether the offered topics are interesting for you.
In my country the science agency provides funding for Science PhD students regardless of the place and subject of study. Of course this might not be readily available in other places.