Anindya Chatterjee
Mechanical Engineering, IIT Kanpur
On choosing an institute and PhD
guide
These
are just some obvious things that many students seem to overlook, so I thought
I would put them here.
When
you buy something big or important (a car, a house) you do some background
checks. Do the same for a PhD advisor. What sort of person is he? What kind of
problems does she work on? What level of ability, independence, and commitment
does he expect from his students? How many PhD students has she guided? How
long did they take to finish? Where are they now? How do they feel about their
PhD experience? I think these are legitimate questions, and it is acceptable to
contact past students of a potential advisor and seek their opinions (in an
open, honest, and polite way).
It
may happen that you cannot contact the prior students of the person you are
considering. Then look at his or her prior work. These days it is easy, using
things like scholar.google, to find out about the
papers that a given professor has written. Try reading some of those papers. You
may possibly find these papers hard to read; but you could consult somebody you
respect and trust, and seek their opinion on one or
two papers.
The PhD
advisor is more than merely a source of information and funding. Ideally, your
PhD advisor will profoundly influence not only how you view your subject, but
how you view the world.
Good
luck.