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At good uk universities you get excellent guidance, with multiple intermittent milestones and ongoing scrutinisation of your progress. Unless you pick a rubbish supervisor who simply doesn't care. Though I only can speak of Oxford..

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It's also important to note that the supervising culture varies a lot between subjects. Computer scientists are usually spoiled by good supervision, but in the humanities you might see your supervisor only twice a year.. (and I do know people in Oxford in that situation).

I think it's also worth saying that phrasing it as "picking a rubbish superviser" puts an unfair blame on the student. By the time you realize your advisor is neglectful, or incompetent as a teacher, or actually neglectful, you might be a year or more down a research path. There might not be another professor at your school qualified and willing to supervise your research. The choice at that point, whether to tough it out or to throw away all your progress up to that point, is an incredibly difficult one.

(FWIW, my advisor in theoretical physics was merely neglectful. Almost all of my friend in an experimental field had advisors who bordered on abusive.)

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