- At any point during this time, PIs may advertise that they’ll be considering applications. These advertisements may take the form of… tweets, facebook posts, emails to people they know, or emails to academic listservs (most professional academic societies maintain a listserv of some kind).
- Applicants can also reach out to PIs to introduce themselves, talk about whether the PIs are taking students, what the PIs may be looking for, and what the applicant is interested in. Identifying programs & PIs is harder than applicants often expect, because the goal is very specific (see the goal of the application process, above). Applicants should ask for help, discuss their picks with anyone who’s at all knowledgeable about the field(s) they’re thinking of (former professors, people you know who are grad students, etc), and above all, set aside time to explore programs, topics, labs, and PIs. See Should I contact the PI before applying?
August-September: Application material preparation
- You should begin to prepare their application materials.
- Identify who your references might be, and contact them to discuss whether they could write a letter on your behalf.
- Begin working on your statement. A good statement is hard to write, but it’ll make you stand out. Seek lots of feedback.
- See application materials and broad vs. specific for more.
- You should work on your application materials. Get people to look at your application statement (like ASFP!), your CV, your list of schools/programs/PIs, etc. Get feedback on things - the more the better! Application materials go through many revisions.
- Applicants submit their formal applications through university-specific portals.
- Most applications include a research/personal statement, a curriculum vitae, and letters of recommendation. You may also be asked to submit a diversity statement or other materials.
- Historically, the GRE was also required, but many departments have moved toward making the GRE optional.
- You’ll have to submit formal copies of transcripts from your undergraduate education as well. Check for the option of fee waivers, if applicable.
- See application materials for more.
- Departments may receive several hundred applications. Sorting through all the applications, following up on any missing materials, and collating all of the application information into comprehensive summary documents can take on the order of 1-3 weeks.
- PIs read applications, get feedback from colleagues, and may have follow-up discussions with applicants’ references (especially if they know them).
- PIs create a medium-long list.
- PIs may reach out to a small subset of their applicants to do a video or phone chat about the applicant’s interests, things from the application the PI wants to learn more about, etc.
- This is also an opportunity for you to ask more in-depth questions than you did in your initial informal contact, e.g. “where do you see your lab’s research going in the next few years?”
- Don’t be afraid to ask basic logistical questions like “what’s the next step in this process and when does that happen?” It’s entirely reasonable to want to know what’s happening.
- After PIs settle on their short list of applicants, areas or programs within a department generally meet and settle on an interview list.
- Interview invitations are extended.
- There are generally one or two ‘weekends’ (a common pattern is ‘arrive Thursday, interview Friday, leave Saturday’, or ‘arrive Sunday, interview Monday, leave Tuesday’).
- See Interviews for more.
- After the interviews (anywhere from a few days to a few weeks afterward), applicants receive formal offers from PIs to join the PhD program.
- Depending on the university/department, PIs may be able to extend multiple offers to candidates, either in parallel, or one at a time (i.e. if applicant A declines the offer, the PI may be able to make an offer to applicant B).
- See Offers for more.
- Applicants must either accept or decline each offer they’ve received.
This is a hard question that’s likely to have as many ‘answers’ as there are people to answer it! It’s important to find PIs and labs to apply to that are a good fit for you and your interests because this is an intensely personal, idiosyncratic choice. The right advisor for you may not be the right advisor for someone else, and vice versa. There is no single, globally-applicable ranking of PIs from best to worst - but there are advisors that are better and worse fits for you.
Below, I focus on assessing the PI, lab, and their institutional context beyond the question of research fit. I’m assuming here that you are interested in the research this PI does, and could imagine yourself doing research on these topics and having fun and feeling fulfilled. For more on how to find a PI/lab to apply to, see the section on that very topic!
Given sufficiently good research fit to seriously consider doing your PhD with someone, how do you figure out if this is a good option for you?
The PI
Think about strengths and weaknesses (yours and the PI’s). What do you struggle with? What are you not as good at as you want to be? Are you really independent, preferring to do it on your own? Do you want something closely collaborative? Do you want a PI who will… analyze data with you? Help you with your writing? Debug your code with you? Give you experiment ideas? Leave you alone for long stretches of time? PIs are very different! What are this PI’s strengths, and do they complement who you actually are and want to be? What are this PI’s weaknesses, and how would you mitigate them were you their student?
(Note: it’s critical to distinguish between who you actually are in terms of what you need to thrive, and who you wish you were or who you think you should be. You’ll have significantly more success if you consider your needs as they are not as you aspire for them to be)
One ‘litmus test’ I suggest is to imagine that things are bad. Maybe you screwed up or something went wrong - you made a mistake, you wrote a bad paper, you lost data, you’re behind on your degree progress, something bad happened to you personally, someone scooped you… How would you feel about getting that negative feedback from this advisor? How would you feel about trying to find a solution, or a way to make the best of this bad thing with them? If you think you could trust them, communicate with them, and feel supported by them in this bad moment, if you feel that they would treat you fairly and in the way you want to be treated when things aren’t going well, if you think you could be vulnerable with them and that they would approach that situation with you appropriately, supportively, and in a manner that works for you, the rest is probably going to be OK too. If you have doubts, that’s not a great sign. PhDs are hard and there are rough moments. Pick an advisor who can help you through those. Unfortunately, assessing a potential PI for this can be hard - so how do you do it?
Think about the things that make difficult conversations work for you. Many people feel that such a conversation requires a degree of trust, honesty, clarity, and commitment. While you won’t have these things with any potential PI yet (they take time to build!), you can assess potential. In other words, are there signs that they do this with others, and do you get the sense that their style of trust/honesty/clarity/commitment matches yours?
There are lots of other things to think about when considering a PI! Consider asking a little about the PI's process - how do they do things like give feedback, respond to challenges, flexibly adapt, etc? Will that match well enough with your approach and what you think you need? (note: you can ask the PI. but you may also want to consider asking these kinds of questions of their past and present mentees. ).
What is your rapport like with your PI? You want to be able to have productive conversations that feel clear, flowing, safe, and generative (meaning that they go somewhere new, that things are discovered or learned). One way I think about this is that you want your communication to have enough ease to it that conversations can venture into difficult or challenging territory when needed. You will (hopefully) have many conversations with your PI across the years of your PhD. You want to be able to throw out a bad idea and not be judged too harshly for it, you want to be able to learn, you want to be able to get useful, actionable feedback, and most importantly you want these conversations to move you and your research goals forward.
It is a good idea to consider programs where there are multiple PIs whose work you find at least a little interesting. It’s a way of hedging against a match with a PI that turns out to not be what you expected, or a PI who leaves for another institution. At best, these other people become secondary, informal advisors and collaborators and enrich your grad school career. At worst, they protect and support you if things go poorly. No one ever plans to change PIs/labs after committing to one. but it happens. Take this potential seriously. You may need to switch PIs for a wide variety of reasons having to do with you, the PI, your relationship, the institution, and/or other things. Imagine your main PI leaves - what would you do at this institution? With whom would you work? If you can see a route forward, that's good!
Do your research on the PI, reflect on yourself as an applicant and hopeful PhD student, and examine that match - would you thrive, do good science, be happy, learn what you want to know, and generally succeed with this person? Would they help you grow? Remember that growth isn’t always (or often) easy - it can be hard, scary, frustrating, exhausting, and difficult. Is this the person you want as your advisor when the PhD process is hard?
The Lab
Look closely at the lab itself. What are the stated focuses of the lab’s research, the techniques used, the lab’s values/philosophy/approach, and so on? As part of answering those questions, it can be very helpful to look at the students too. Generally speaking, you can expect some of what you do to look like what they do (esp. in terms of the theories, methods used, and topics they investigate) and some of what you do to look different (you won’t be able to do their research – you’ll need to do your own, so what adjoining work might you like to do?).
Consider the people in the programs and the labs you're thinking about. These would be your colleagues. If you join the lab, you may end up spending more time with them than with the PI! Do you get along with these people? Can you learn from them, and them from you? Could you work with them? Leave a little room for growth (theirs and yours!) by focusing on potential, not current state exactly. Their experience can also be useful information because, chances are, your experience will be similar to theirs. Are they happy? Are they succeeding and growing? Don't confuse looking for labmates with whom you'd work well with looking for a friend! You are not looking for friends - you’re looking for people to work with and learn from; while being friends is good, it’s not primary (remember your goal). You can also ask about previous lab members - people who have left the lab. Who left the lab and why: did they graduate? did they transfer labs or programs? did they drop out? did they leave on their own, or were they kicked out? There are fine reasons to leave a lab, and less-fine reasons; reasons that have mostly to do with the person leaving, career stages, or things like that, and reasons that indicate an unhealthy or even toxic environment. Someone leaving the lab isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and not everything from the past is relevant to the future. Gather evidence and information, read between the lines, beware rumor and speculation, and come to your own evaluation.
Note that the potential for collaboration with other students in the lab may vary. Does this PI like to have lots of people contribute to each project? Do they instead like to carefully demarcate projects? The PI may have good reasons for either - consider those reasons and come to your own choice. Note that if there is collaboration between lab members (let alone with people outside of the lab), this may occur in addition to your own research that is primarily between you & the PI. In other words, you won’t just work on others’ projects, you’ll have your own too.
Especially when it comes to graduate school, the institution and the department matter, but not as much as the PI. The things decided at that level include stipend, course requirements, and resources, among other things. Ask around, and find out what you need to know.
The Other Parts Of Your Life
Think about what you want outside of your research and PhD program too, including things like taking time off, seeing friends and family, having hobbies, having or starting a family, doing professional service, etc. These are part of keeping you mentally and physically healthy, and are parts of your life - do you feel that’d be supported in the ways you need and want? Do the PI and their lab do these things? If so, it’s a good sign they’ll support you in the same.
