Recently, I have seen juniors creating online spreadsheets to share information when looking for advisors. The original intention behind building this platform is good and it can indeed provide substantial help to students. However, everyone’s reliance on such resources also reflects some issues.
When I was discussing this topic with @王白水, some content might inspire some juniors, so I’m sharing it here in the hope it can help those looking for advisors.
Main Text
I actually found a problem: youngsters are increasingly fond of taking shortcuts.
When my advisor recruited my junior sisters, they sent resumes and self-recommendation letters, then learned about our advisor’s research directions, wrote some small summaries and ideas on their own, and contacted my advisor via email.
During this process, my advisor could see their level of dedication and some basic qualities.
In the end, these two junior sisters really became capable assistants in our research group. Moreover, students willing to prepare seriously and communicate with the advisor tend to have higher emotional intelligence, and we got along very well. The whole group was like a bunch of good friends.
But later, a few juniors from the class of 2019 who prepared to seek my advisor included two who just went straight to my advisor’s clinic and bluntly asked if they could be accepted, without any preparation. There was also one who wanted to find an advisor in our department and asked me to inquire about some situations. Surprisingly, she said she wouldn’t check each advisor’s clinic hours, so I had to take screenshots of all the master advisors’ clinic hours on the official website and send them to her.
Yesterday, I saw someone write a message full of complaints to my advisor. I was really angry. We need excellent juniors, and our group is worth juniors joining. So in the spreadsheet, after I complained about someone being full but others saying they weren’t, later I saw someone added a sentence after me saying:
“Maybe that person got politely rejected by the advisor herself.”
My advisor never uses “full” to reject a student. She talks well with students, explains our group’s situation, and gives students some psychological expectations for them to reconsider. If students are sincere, even if she isn’t entirely satisfied, she won’t reject them.
There isn’t an email in her inbox using “full” to reject students, so I guess the “full” comment might refer to an incident half a month ago when one of our members pushed open the door into the advisor’s clinic—when the advisor was even seeing patients—and was driven out.
Actually, by August, many students actively looking for advisors have already been following rounds or have confirmed their intentions with advisors. This shared spreadsheet targets some students who are frustrated with the search, as well as some who are not proactive at all.
In a way, this spreadsheet provides everyone with a shortcut to try one by one and test their luck. Perhaps next time, there will be juniors who come in unprepared and just push open the door to ask my advisor if they can be accepted.
I really think juniors need to know the appropriate way to contact advisors and what preparations should be done beforehand. Preparing is also part of understanding the research group and taking responsibility for their own next four years.
Conclusion
Discussion is welcome. I hope all juniors can find an advisor who resonates with them, study directions they are interested in, engage in research they are willing to invest energy in, and smoothly pass through their graduate stage.