The intricacies of graduate adviser selection

Three months after starting his PhD program at the University of Cambridge in the UK in 1999, David Ballantyne changed his mind about the research direction he wanted to take. He met with physics department faculty and decided high-energy astrophysics was more alluring than his original topic of study, and one of the faculty members became his adviser. “A lot of people come in and they think they know what they want to do, but they haven’t necessarily been exposed to the wide variety of physics research that’s out there,” says Ballantyne, who is now associate chair for academic programs at Georgia Tech.

Picking an adviser is among the most important decisions that a graduate student will make. In Europe, Australia, and North America, about 60% of PhD candidates quit or extend the duration of their doctoral studies, according to a 2022 PLoS ONE paper . The quality of supervision is among the major reasons for that attrition.

Luckily for Ballantyne, Cambridge gave newly admitted doctoral candidates a few months to select an adviser (or supervisor, as the position is often known outside the US). But that is not the case everywhere. At many universities and institutes in Europe and in countries that were once European colonies, students apply directly to the supervisor or research group they want to work with. In contrast, students at US institutions tend to enter a program and then choose an adviser over the course of months or longer.

The differing methods of getting paired with an adviser are due in part to the various ways countries fund and structure graduate education. Whereas European institutions tend to offer three- to four-year research-based doctoral degrees to graduates who already have a master’s degree, US programs typically accept students with an undergraduate degree who then complete five to eight years of training that combines coursework and research. Some countries (such as Canada) tend to broadly adopt the program-based PhD system that is common in the US; others (including Australia, China, and South Africa) opt for the supervisor-based arrangement, although institutions within those countries sometimes have a mixture of the two.

Giving new graduate students an opportunity to get to know different topics, research groups, and advisers is a major advantage of the US system, says Jacob Barandes, codirector of graduate studies for physics at Harvard University. Although prospective students are usually expected to have potential advisers and research directions in mind, they remain free agents until they make their final decision.

The flexibility comes at a cost, however: time. “Anything that slows the student’s matching with an adviser will, in principle, mean that the student will take longer” to complete the degree, Barandes says. Additionally, the open market for advisers can create a very competitive environment within a program, he warns. To secure a spot in a high-demand lab, students “may jump into a research group that is not the right fit for them.”

In the other commonly used system, prospective PhD students contact potential advisers directly. This ensures that, if admitted, they will work with the adviser and on the topic of their choice. They are also able to begin work on their research project quickly, without coursework and for a shorter time. “You can do it in three years and therefore short-circuit some of the lengthier North American coursework,” says Ballantyne, who chose Cambridge in part because of the expedited path to obtaining a degree.

Still, choosing an adviser before starting a PhD program also has dangers, says Amanda Weltman, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Some of the students who approach her to join her research group come from within her institution, so it is possible to get to know them, she says. But others contact her via email from afar, and meeting in person is not always possible. In that case, she corresponds with candidates online to determine whether they can work together.

With such a system, supervisors are less able to make sure that students are a good match before accepting them, Weltman warns, potentially leading to a higher frequency of conflict between students and their supervisors. Having studied in the US, she appreciates the graduate system there and the opportunity for students and potential advisers to engage more prior to pairing.

Under both systems, funding is usually coupled to adviser and discipline selection and is vital for graduate success. In the European system, students are funded by their adviser for the duration of their studies, which usually have a strictly enforced time limit of four years. “There’s a lot of stability for the student,” says Ballantyne. In the US, a graduate student’s “long-term stability depends on a professor’s funding situation” for the unspecified duration of the doctoral program, Ballantyne observes. Such uncertainty can be problematic for students’ academic pursuits—and for their mental health .

Funding can also bind graduate students to their advisers. In most of Europe and the US, the strong link between funding and research projects means that changing advisers can be difficult, and the ability to switch advisers and projects often depends on the institution.

That is not the case, however, in the UK, where the government’s Centres for Doctoral Training fund most doctoral candidates. Anne Pawsey, a soft-matter physicist who is now secretary-general of the European Physical Society, considers the decoupling of funding from advisers a positive step. “It means you can make the PhD a bit more your own” and are not tethered to a specific adviser if the relationship deteriorates, she says.

Similarly, in South Africa the government funds the student, not the project or the supervisor. That can cause problems for advisers, though. Even though Weltman puts in a lot of work with PhD candidates at the University of Cape Town to craft research projects, she runs the risk of students taking the projects with them if they switch advisers.

Some institutions, such as the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Germany, have a hybrid system. Candidates apply to a program the same way prospective students would apply to a graduate program in the US, explains institute director Giulia Zanderighi. Successful candidates are invited to meet with potential advisers and then are offered positions in specific research groups, adds Zanderighi, a particle physicist. The program takes only candidates with a master’s degree, and there is a hard four-year time limit.

Zanderighi acknowledges that it is not always easy to ensure a good match between advisers and students. Each new student is assigned a formal supervisor, a day-to-day supervisor, and a supervisor outside the research group to provide support.

Regardless of the system, supervisors are in positions of authority, with control over many aspects of students’ lives and careers. “There’s always this power imbalance between the adviser and the student,” says Ballantyne. In most academic settings, supervisors control students’ funding and can confer or withhold rewards, like trips to conferences or support for publications. Students are often hesitant to speak out about toxic research environments.

To combat possible abuses of power, “a lot of programs are trying to make sure that there are always avenues for students to communicate issues without fear of retaliation or retribution,” Ballantyne says. Most institutions in the US and abroad have ombudsman offices or processes for reporting complaints. Several of the people interviewed for this story suggested that prospective students make sure that the offices have protocols in place to resolve student concerns or change advisers if the need arises.

All the interviewees also recommended speaking to a prospective adviser’s other students without faculty on hand. “Whatever the system, they should go and have coffee with the current students without the supervisor present,” says Pawsey. If that’s not possible, she says, then an applicant should think twice about attending that institution.