Hi,

I have recently completed my master's thesis and throughout my thesis work, I was working independently i.e., there was almost no supervision provided by my professor. My professor has offered me a PhD position in his group. He is an excellent person but often remains very busy and does not get much time to provide proper supervision. Whereas my personal preference is to work with a dedicated supervisor who can give sometime to discuss the problems and new ideas. Now I am confused how shall I reply him in return of his offer.

Any suggestion?

Hi iqbalu,

I would definitely prefer someone knowledgeable who doesn't have time to help me, than someone very helpful who doesn't know how :)

If he can pull some money in for the project and spare one hour per month for feedback you will be fine. You don't need more. Good luck

Hi iqbalu,

If your personal preference is very different from what this supervisor can offer then I would likely say no if I was in your position. Like you, I prefer discussing ideas on a regular basis, but I went ahead with a busy supervisor. I am now looking to finish with a research masters instead, after 3 years as I lost all motivation after 2.

However, it certainly isn't an impossible situation. So if I were to start over, here's my (more optimistic) advice / some questions I think would help with your decision:

- do you have a concrete project in mind, and how much do you already know about that subject area? If you don't, then working with a someone who can only respond to you once a month can seriously hinder progress, especially in the beginning. Even more if your preferred working style is having someone to discuss ideas with. This can be overcome if there are other senior researchers within the group who you can meet on a more regular basis. Are there reliable people like that in the group?

- how was your working relationship with this supervisor during your MSc? Better yet, if you know any of his current/past PhD students, ask them what it's like to work with him on that level. Don't ask about whether he is nice or not, more important is feedback and working relationship (does he respond to email, offer opportunities for teaching/attend conferences). This will be someone who will effectively be your mentor for the next 3-5 years. How often do people have the same manager/colleague for that long, by choice? This is the kind of choice you're making.

- what is the research group like? Both in terms of research interests (potential for collaboration) and as friends (for support!). They can work with or against you. Most groups are great and you'll make lifelong friends from them, but it's not always the case (there are some horror stories from this forum!).

Hope this helps.

Hi DrJeckyII,

Thanks for the kind answer and yes Professor is very knowledgeable and provides every possible support in terms of funding. The only issue I have is the time and discussion. During my master's thesis I met him twice and all other conversation were done via emails.

Dear contradirony,

Thanks a lot for your detailed suggestions. I have not yet discussed the project with him in detail but most probably it will be very closely related to my master's thesis and previous work experience. So, you can say that I have enough background knowledge to start with. The Professor is very good and replies to every possible mail in time. I didn't get a chance to discuss research ideas with him as he was on a visit abroad (2 years) during my master's studies. He is back now but I am not sure whether he will stay here for long or not. There are many researchers in the group working on various topics but during my master's thesis my immediate advisor was from a totally different field and was not aware of the topic of my thesis. Therefore, I suffered a lot during my master's thesis.

It is really nice idea to ask his current PhD students as it is quite likely that he was not paying attention on my research because I was just a master's student and may be his approach would be a bit different now. As I have told you earlier, the professor is very supportive and provides funding for conferences, buying hardware, teaching, etc. Some of the PhD students I know were also facing a similar kind of problems and were requesting him to hire a postdoctoral researcher to provide some guidance and discussions.

Research group is good and I am 60-70% percent willing to pursue my PhD in this group.

Any further suggestions?

Best Regards,

Good to hear your reply iqbalu - you sound like you are in a reasonably good position :)

I guess the one thing you need to make sure (and it sounds like you are already aware anyway) is how much interest and therefore how much time your potential supervisor would likely spend thinking about your research problem. But since he's offering you a position then he perhaps he is already prepared to do so. Again, check with current PhD students to get a feel for this, I'm just speculating ;)

More interesting is that you mentioned that other PhD students were requesting a postdoc to join the team (makes total sense to me!) - do you know if that's likely to happen? I would think that if there is a lot of uncertainty around the supervisor's availability then you would be wise to make sure that there is a 'backup' of sorts. I know that in some more structured (and arguably more successful, meaning less dropouts/failures) PhD programmes actually require that there be a secondary supervisor or a mentor which serves this purpose.

Other than that, it sounds like you have a decent offer here, just double-check with the current students, especially those near finishing. Of course a PhD at the end is what you make of it, and that includes putting effort into evaluating your options :)

Good luck!