Suggestions for Grad School Recruiting Weekend
 

I got accepted to a PhD program in Boston in Chemical engineering, and will attending their recruiting weekend this Thursday - Saturday.

I'm 80% sure of who I'd be working under. I have my own few questions, but for those who have gone through or are in grad school, what would you have liked to know before making your choice? What suggestions do you have as to what questions to ask or what things to take note of?

thanks!

Congrats man, I'm in the same spot, just having been accepted to Stanford Ph.D. in Political Science. One thing I'm going to make sure of before I go is that the professor I want to work under is going to be there for a good long time (no long sabbaticals or leaves of absence, not really unhappy and about to jump at the first offer that comes his or her way). But yeah, I'll be interested to see what other people say in this thread.

Make sure that your supervisor is someone you can work with. In a lot of ways its more important than which phd you choose. The only people I know who have failed are the ones who lost contact with their supervisors.

Ask your supervisor about who they have had working for them in the recent past, if they haven't had a student or postdoc for a while then why not? (this is going from experience with one staff member where I work - work is very boring and he is totally unprofessional)

Have a look at your supervisors papers, how many are there, where they published in good journals and does the work truely interest you? This is the closest thing you will get to the work that you will be doing and the interests of your supervisor.

Find out what your day-to-day activities will be - I was suprised because there was some work I was not prepared for and wasn't really interested in.

I have heard it said that doing a PhD is learning to do research like your supervisor.

One more thing, if you decide that academia isn't for you then make sure that you learn skills during your PhD that you will value later on. Be it programming, electronics, presentation or writing.

I would suggest the following, if you read this before your trip is over.

1. Be totally honest with yourself. Why are you getting a Ph.D., and to what extent will the topic of your dissertation / area of your research be crucial to motivating yourself and to what extent will finding a good job be important. This strongly determines how important it is to you that you choose your advisor based on field or on indusrial / academic contact. Do you want to go academics route or industrial, and where does your potential advisor chiefly send his/her students?

2. I would suggest that you scope out local support in your lab. If you advisor is more established (tenured and older than 50), are there knowledgeable post-docs, and do they seem willing to teach the grad students. How many post-docs are there?

3. Does your potential advisor wear a suit to work, or does he wear slacks and a button-down? The suits don't go into the lab, the button-downs do.

4. Is the lab clean / organized?

5. Is your potential advisor tenured? If not, how close? Will your Ph.D. potentially be interrupted by denial of tenure?

6. How well-funded is your potential advisor, and who funds?

7. How important is location to you, and do you like Boston? pssst...You should. Great music scene.

I can think of more if you need them. These are my quickies.