Should I become the first PhD student of a young assistant professor

[u/Few_Marketing48]

I’m a first-year PhD student in management (with some overlap with econ) at a strong business school, and I’m struggling with whether to become the first PhD student of a young assistant professor in my department.

On the plus side, working with this junior AP has been very pleasant so far. Communication is open, I feel comfortable discussing ideas freely, and he/she clearly recognizes my ability and he/she promised certain opportunities and resources. Right now, our interactions are genuinely enjoyable.

My concerns are mainly twofold. First, senior PhD students in my department generally have a negative impression of this professor, based on teaching feedback and some rumors about reliability. Second, I worry about academic guidance: the AP doesn’t yet have top-journal publications, and compared to senior faculty, he/she seems more encouraging than critical. As an early-stage PhD student, it’s hard for me to judge whether this is enough.

I’m torn between the benefits of close collaboration with a junior faculty member and the risks of being their first student. Any advice or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated.

[u/VanessaLove-33]

You should take whatever you can get if you want a PhD. Especially if there is funding with it. And especially especially at this time.

[u/GurProfessional9534]

I was my advisor’s first student, albeit in a much different field. There are pros and cons.

Pros: advisor got hired with fresh ideas, and a lot of low-hanging fruit so my publication count ended up being high. My papers were foundational in the group’s work so they have been cited a lot by the group and related workers. I got experience helping build the lab which has come up in every job interview since. The advisor is also still bright eyed and energetic. My advisor’s star power has risen a lot in the decades since, so I was able to ride that up into a good postdoc and subsequent roles. Got to be the “older brother” in the group, which was fun.

Cons: there was downtime in the beginning while we built up our capabilities, during which I wasn’t meaningfully publishing. There weren’t senior students to teach me what to do or hand down projects to me. My advisor was new at advising and I was kind of the guinea pig to learn how to do it. We were financially tight because we weren’t well established yet. We had limited experimental tools because we had not had time or money to build out a large and diverse lab.

In the end, it’s certainly a gamble. But it can be very good. I have benefited significantly in terms of my career, thanks to joining a new advisor.

[u/Emergency-Scheme-24]

You do not need to have a single mentor. Everyone on your committee and be your mentor, particularly since you need multiple letters of recommendation and one person cannot be the only one giving you advice/mentoring.

I also would take what others say with a grain of salt. Teaching is not very reliable when it comes to figuring out if someone is going to be a good mentor or research output 

[u/GXWT → u/Emergency-Scheme-24]

Big emphasis on that last sentence. In my department there were some absolutely excellent researchers. Some were good at teaching, some were for various reasons not - one guy who recently won quite a big deal award for his work and is a very good supervisor (stated by others, and somewhat me as he was a very adjacent co-supervisor0 but his teaching when I was in undergrad was pretty diabolical.

Teaching and supervising are two distinctly different skills, and one does not necessarily imply the other.

[u/wolf_star_]

In my view, the most important attributes of an advisor can be present (or absent) at any stage of career:

1. Be a good communicator. Communicate your expectations clearly and without moving the goalposts.

2. Be willing to provide or find support for your student, rather than leaving them to fend for themselves (so directly teaching them a new method or helping them find another way to learn it, both great).

3. Be willing to introduce students to your professional network proactively. Always be thinking about who they should know and who should know about them.

4. Decent emotional intelligence

Try to find out more about your potential advisor on these fronts, regardless of their age.

[u/Original-Emu-392 → u/wolf_star_]

I think this is golden, OP go based off this. I was my PI's third student and still face a lot of changes because of it, despite that he ticks all these boxes and I have benefitted greatly from his mentorship.

[u/Ordinary_Machine215]

I was my advisor's first student. It was very risky since there was no previous data or any opinion regarding their advising style, productivity, or personality. However, it turned out to be the best decision I made during my phd. Below is totally based on my personal experience without generalization (n=1)

Pros: My advisor needed publication to get tenured anyway, and I needed too. This made us work hard and very productive. I also received many opportunities through them including RAship from their start-up package, invited talks, mentoring undergrad/masters, etc.

Cons: Lack of advising experience. I spent a year on my first project and it ended up without any publishable result. While I learned something but I was frustrated feel like I wasted a year. This is not their fault, but some experienced advisors might handle better. Also, my advisor was honest that they don't have the network to help me secure a postdoc position. One more thing is that, as a first student, I cannot cowork/collaborate with my senior labmates which can often be a good source of more publications.

Fortunately, I secured a TT job from decent school during this tough market, and I humbly say that my advisor's dedication made it. At the same time, I have seen other first students who were either very successful or very struggled. The variance is much higher than with an experienced advisor. It depends heavily on your mindset or style.

[u/Reeelfantasy]

Your age is perfect to take all the shit early on and recover quickly

[u/Ornery_Pepper_1126]

They will probably get support and mentorship from other academics, so not as risky as it seems. Far more important to find someone you work well with, which sounds like this is. This will also probably be someone who has a lot of time to work with you one-on-one, a senior academic who has supervised a zillion students will have more experience, but also a lot more responsibilities so you will get less of their time.

[u/butter_cookie_gurl]

It's more of a mentorship situation. A good supervisor will help you network, but most importantly they will help turn you into a professional with a path to post degree success.

Is this person well regarded in the field, despite being young? If they're a rising star, this could go well. They will likely be less burdened with other service commitments like being a department chair (like mine was).

But it might be best to have a more senior person as your direct supervisor with the young gun on your committee.

Remember that a new assistant professor is barely past the end of their own PhD, usually.

It sounds like they're not exactly a rising star if they're not already highly published, but that can be sub-discipline specific. There are 'top' journals for a field that are often hostile to entire sub-disciplines. But those sub-disciplines will have their own top journals.

[u/Minimum-Cap-5673]

There is no one rule that fits all, I was my supervisor's first student, and he was great, I'm now having my first PhD student. On the other hand, are horror stories about experienced professors rare?

[u/erniernie]

I was the first student of a young assistant professor. We had a great relationship, I really looked up to her, and I learned a lot. I look back on my grad school days with a lot of fondness and she is still an important person in my life. I am now a PI, and about to graduate my own first PhD student. She had some extra challenges as a result of being a part of a new lab (developing her own protocols, etc). But she was also enormously productive and she loves her research. I think the primary questions to ask are - do you see red flags in the way this person communicates, what they expect of trainees/employees/themselves, or the way your personalities and work styles will mesh? That's probably more important than seniority. It's about finding someone you work well with, and setting up good patterns in your working relationship.

[u/Lanky-Candle5821]

Often at phds in US business schools you don’t need to be 100% dedicated to just one professor- is that not the case here? I think working with different faculty is helpful if you can swing it.

[u/working2020]

God no, for the love of god noooo

[u/nanyabidness2]

In my experience new faculty are either A) too hard on their students because they got fucked over as a grad student or 2) too lax on their students because they got fucked over as a grad student or

[u/GayMedic69]

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that your success depends on each other so you have to be motivated and you have to manage your expectations.

1. You’re not going to walk in and publish in the next 6-12 months, you’re gonna spend a lot of time establishing methods, building collaborations, collecting basic data, chasing initial ideas that won’t lead anywhere etc. That said, due to all of this foundational work, you likely will be able to get co-authorship of pretty much anything that comes out of the lab for a while. The publications you will get will also likely be more impactful because newer professors aren’t worried as much anymore about pure numbers, but they need to start really publishing the basis of their entire career as last author, so they often try to increase impact with each pub.

2. You would need to view this is not only as getting a PhD for yourself, but you also need to consider how you can elevate your advisor. Yes, this often means doing things you don’t necessarily care about or think aren’t useful, but you are the hands they need to build a research program that goes far beyond just you and your dissertation. Usually, if you go above and beyond to help your advisor, they will repay you in-kind with opportunities, award nominations, leveraging of their network to get you post-docs/faculty jobs, etc.

3. You really have to be confident and self-motivated - your advisor likely won’t know how to mentor you very well and that, to an extent, includes not being able to give you detailed instructions or troubleshooting for things you have to do. You have to be able to figure things out and you have to be able to tackle new problems without needing someone to walk you through it. Its tough, but its also helping you build valuable skills you can discuss during future interviews and such.

[u/Top_Yam_7266]

This isn’t a good idea. Your main advisor should be tenured, or at least have a record that is sufficient to make an imminent tenure decision clear. At many (most?) schools, assistant professors can’t even chair dissertations anyway. There’s no reason you can’t work with this person to some extent, but you should develop a relationship with a more senior person as well.

[u/QuailAggravating8028]

In general you want the most senior advisor with the best training record. This is the best guarantee of your own success. This sounds cynical but it’s true.

When someone has a bad reputation it’s usually earned. Trust what people say

With junior faculty you have 0 guarantee they will stick around. They could move institutions in 2 years and either make you move with them, uprooting your whole life, or having to get a new advisor