How do professors evaluate existing PhD students seeking to change labs to theirs ? What are some obvious red flags and what signals potential for success? Especially for students who might have had a rough few years and might not have made great progress as a result. What would be understandable and what would not ?
Comments
Based only on the limited selection of professors with whom I spoke in my life: unfortunately most have a bad impression, although not all. More unfortunately, the system is set up so that the former are often “right”, or better, have more chances to survive, while the latter are either so powerful that they can ignore any faux pas or risk damage to their career.
In such cases they think that maybe the students have incompatibilities that would be transferred to the new working environment. Whatever caused frictions or insuccess could reappear and they don’t want to risk (unless you have tons of documentations that prove that you were the best of the best and yet victim of deep and unarguable injustice). You often had ferocious arguments with a toxic P.I.? Not making assumptions my dear but perhaps it is you who can’t get along with people. You complain about overworking? Strange, most students I met seem to carry on, perhaps you are not enough determined or strong and you will suffer pressure even with me…
They also think that, with so few positions and fundings, why should they give a second opportunity to someone who is failing their current project, instead of bringing fresh new cheap labor from the stock of recently graduated masters?
Unless you have your own funding, then you are free to come and work, of course.
And sadly, with the publish or perish culture, plus the vicious circle of writing grants to publish to get more grants to publish again, the rat race favors the skeptical attitude.
That said, kind hearted professors will be always open to give you a hand and try to point the right path, even if you don’t change lab. Keep them close, they will be mentors for life.
But beware that even them could have biases: like, if you are dropping out because of mental fatigue and burnout symptoms caused by wanton overwork and a workaholic supervisor who doesn’t care, they might still think “I will help you so that you can stop having these symptoms and continue to work at the same rate and conclude your project with a publication in a high impact journal” rather than “we should change the system”.
A good idea is always talking with students in private to get some opinions of the working environment. A bit of scouting so that you know if that lab will be good for you. There is a recent thread about red flags in a professor, it is good to try to investigate if some of these points are brought out by students in a private context. Be careful that some students might still consider good what would be bad for many others, and viceversa.
If you switch groups because you realize you don’t like your research topic/subfield or are in over your head in terms of background knowledge (normally when your undergrad or masters’ background is significantly different), it’s understandable. If funding for the project or group is the issue, that’s also understandable and out of your control.
But most other reasons will likely be scrutinized and you’d better have a pretty good explanation as to why you won’t face similar problems in the new group. Especially true if it has been years into your degree rather than months.