Curious to hear from PhD advisors (or committee members) out there: what traits or behaviors really stand out in your best students? And on the flip side, what red flags or patterns make a PhD student difficult to work with or unlikely to succeed?
Would love to hear real-world examples or insights from your experience. I’m sure it varies by field and advisor style, but any common themes you’ve noticed?
Comments
Good – eager to learn.
Bad – expects to be taught.
The best grad students don’t have to be smart, wise, skilled, or come from prestigious places.
They tend to have grit, independence, a teachable mindset, the ability to get along with others, and a fire under their ass.
My best student is so self-directed and organised. She comes to every meeting with an agenda and questions, knows where she is on her timeline in relation to her milestones. She’s just a delight to work with.
Good time management. Good at using their initiative to get on with things and identify next steps.
Social sciences here. The same things that make great professors make great PhDs:
– They read deeply within the field and in related fields as well to get other perspectives. I like how someone said in a similar sub that creativity is about finding unnoticed connections, not coming up with something entirely new.
– They go above and beyond what others have done methodologically so they can get the data that are not easy to get, but really valuable, because most other researchers draw the line where it’s convenient (i.e., need more longitudinal work, larger samples, more demographically diverse samples…)
– If they teach, they care about their students’ learning and continually reflect on how to improve their teaching.
– They don’t just research to publish or promote their careers. They care to find out something that is not yet known and can benefit society.
– They can communicate their research to a wide range of audiences in accessible language without dumbing down the content.
The most annoying thing IMO:
– You want to pursue a PhD but don’t like to read. So you rely on superficial skimming of articles, ChatGPT, or other people’s labor (the worst!) to publish… publish-or-perish being a central part of this profession.
Any researcher who has thoughts of their own on a subject. If the resulting Thesis does not represent an addition to knowledge then it is hardly worth a doctorate.
Those who can write a thesis representing an academically rigorous explanation of why the research was not successful are worth their weight in gold. They help those who follow to avoid dead ends. True scientists.
Those who expect to continue to be spoon fed or who just provide a workforce for others (even Profs) experiments are technicians. Do not get me wrong; there is a great shortage of good technicians.