Things I learnt during, and about, my PhD
jamie.ideasasylum.com
jamie.ideasasylum.com
If your adviser is an asshole, you probably won't graduate and your grad school experience will suck. Don't.
If you want to get a Ph.D. and do research, pick your adviser very carefully. It is the most important decision of your research career. Grad school isn't like school, it's an apprenticeship.
Pick your adviser (the person you are apprenticed to) on two factors: the success of their past students and how compatible you are personally with them. Their field should be peripherally related to yours, it doesn't have to be very close (1).
I had a great experience in grad school. I also had two great advisers.
(1) My advisers study scattering theory and complex variables. My Ph.D. was in computational physics. It wasn't a serious problem.
The problem is, you can't judge anything useful about your adviser in the time that you have to do it. For those who don't know, at a good school, you'll get a "rotation" (a quarter/semester "working" in your prospective adviser's group), after which you'll have to decide their suitability as a mentor for years of challenging work. If you're lucky, you make a good decision, and grad school is happy. If you're lucky.
That said...there are plenty of other ways to go wrong. Your adviser is a big part of the success formula, but not the only part. Not by a long shot.
I'm happy that you had a good experience with your adviser, but I know enough miserable grad students to know that it isn't the norm. Personally, this guy's essay hit way too close to home....
It's my understanding that in the biosciences, it's the norm for students to do rotations of a couple weeks in every group in the department to help them pick an advisor during their first semester/year.
And if picking and advisor is like picking your parents, your research topic is definitely like an arranged marriage. You have to learn to love it...
My adviser: all students got academic jobs (some multiple offers) and finished in 5 years (5 years from B.S. to Ph.D. is normal for math). The most recent student, with whom I had overlap, said he rocked.
Another adviser I considered: fastest student took 6 years. One student took 9.5 years, and told everyone "pick a different adviser". Several never graduated. I scratched him off my list.
As for the "three dates", it's not optimal, but you can eliminate some bad choices. If the guy forgets to show up for "date #2"? He'll probably do that a lot. He probably doesn't care. One guy (perfectly decent fellow) was very formal, which doesn't really work for me. Several women students mentioned to me they want someone encouraging. The point of the meetings is to judge whether your personalities are compatible.
There is information out there, but lots of people don't actively seek it out. Then they become miserable grad students. One guy in my year ignored the advice of "9.5 years", and went on to become a miserable grad student (and now a happy actuary with an M.S.).
I had a fantastic adviser, which might have been luck. I had an adviser who didn't suck, which was the result of good choices.
Okay, great! I feel confident in recommending your advice: If you want an academic job and can find an adviser like this, go to grad school. Otherwise, do not go.
Of course, if everyone followed this advice I think you might be able to fit all the world's grad students in a high school classroom, because your adviser was freakishly good.
How does the funding work in the math department? Lots of the theorists I knew seemed to be TAs almost until the day they graduated -- and in their field, unlike the experimental sciences, salary seemed to be a major fraction of the expense of keeping a grad student. In the experimental wing, where it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to keep (e.g.) a genetics student stocked with reagents, the whole problem of adviser choice has an additional, frustrating degree of freedom: If your adviser doesn't have money to hire you, it doesn't matter that she's the greatest person in the world.
It might be possible to find someone who scores highly on the flush-with-cash axis, the graduates-students-on-time axis, the good-reputation-in-field axis, the track-record-of-successful-students axis and the provides-useful-research-advice axis... but such folks have their pick of grad student talent, and once they're done the other students have to pick among the remaining advisers, balancing the various factors and hoping to get lucky. Or, of course, they can quit, which is probably a better idea, though it is hard to make yourself do it once you've gone that far.
One overwhelmingly useful thing is to have independent funding. I had a fellowship and I cannot overstate how helpful it was -- I was able to shop for advisers in situations where my fellow students felt trapped by financial realities. If you find yourself headed for grad school, apply for every fellowship you can.
I kind of hope that more people fill their 'do something creative' niche with startups in the future. Its more satisfying, not least because other people caring about what you do is essential for a startup.
Also, I wonder where he went to school, because at every school I've been to, there have always been many resources to go to for support. You could always talk shop with more seasoned graduate students for honest advice on classes, advisors, or places to work outside the office. If you want books, there are many books available devoted to advice on how to finish your dissertation, find a research topic, or manage your time. Even for magazines, the Chronicle of Higher Education has articles and advice for the burgeoning and established academic. Yes, you have to do most of the research and your dissertation won't write itself, but it doesn't have to be one man fighting the academic windmill alone.
The only time I stopped enjoying my PhD was in my last year when I had to totally focus on one small niche and that got a bit boring.
Looking back I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to stay in academia afterwards, or if you're really interested in the tiny area you will inevitably focus on.
Anyway I submit in two weeks and the experience has shown my that I need to go commercial. Then I can enjoy playing about with whatever I like in my own time for fun!
Things must be better in Ireland than in the US with regard to grad student funding. Some of my friends get paid $1000/month as physics and engineering PhD students.
Pretty sure that that's close to the norm for PhD pay though.
(Sorry, no hard figures to compare, due to a feeling that I shouldn't discuss someone else's financial situation candidly online, even if details probably just a google away).