选择博士导师-学长的一些建议

我们9月30日就要把选择教授的名单交上去了，所以开学第一个星期就在忙着收集教授的资料，还有就是去他们的实验室参观，并且和学长学姐们了解情况。接下来我们要和6个教授分别面谈（interview)，现在正在准备的过程当中。
下面就是我的一个学长给我的一些建议：

I will like you to answer a couple questions before you choose:


1. What will you like to do after graduate in 4-5 years?

2. What kind of experience are you looking for in grad school / what is the initial interest when you decide for grad school instead of industry?

3. You mention the 4 professor here, and all of them are in different fields. So what is actually your main interest?

4. What will you like to have after you finish phd? ie publication, patents, experience, research conference, expertise in certain field, or anything that you can think of now.

5. So what if you dint get your first choice, will you be happy to have  then 2nd?

And after answering all these, you should present yourself very proactively. Tell the advisors who are you, your background / experience, your goals in the next few years, and start ask them questions such as:


(Good Question to Ask Professors)
whats the working environment in your group?


what will you expect a successful grad student in your group will do?


what do you think is reasonable results before i accomplish my project?


pls explain the projects in details more?


will i be working with other group members / companies / any other collaborations?


will the funding be a problem in this project for next 3-5 years?


can i join your group meeting sometimes and listen in?

Basically, the best way i think to present yourself is with powerpoint (pictures) instead of a word document. And all those questions makes you a student that have put some thinking into the project unlike others who just go and interview and just "yaya, thanks, pls sign this for me, and yes i like your project". So other than those, read a few of the recently publish / project related paper will be a good start to ask those "smart questions" and of course you will like to know what will you get into in the next few years.

It is very informal email response. Please disregard any grammar error or typo. The idea he suggested is very useful.

Advisor selection is probably one of the most important process during the graduate school study.

A piece of advice: for student with B.S. degree, it is not always good to keep your research direction in undergraduate study. Instead, looking out different research opportunities in the department. The seniors are good resources to provide insider information about professors "fame, knowledge, funding, industry connection, way of treating students etc"

嗯...最近要和某教授聊一聊，心里虽然有许多疑问，但似乎凝结不成问题，谢谢分享～

赞。很好的帖子。好多问题在选择offer的时候也可以用～
btw. 口水lz可以自由选导师……TA还是fellowship啊？最后去的GaTech吧？还是USC

TA/RA，第一年不用TA，基本上都是上课然后过qualify。以后的几年中至少要当3个学期的ta

对，最后选了ga tech~

4# zach

。。。
偶没来之前就已经自己选好了

祝LZ选个超级Nice的牛老板

很有用的东东哦～

收藏一下！以备后用！

很好的帖子，谢谢分享！

usefull instructions
thanks for sharing